Investigator Traits in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy
As anyone who has been following this blog knows, with Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, we really wanted roleplay and rules/mechanics to be strongly intertwined. In any good RPG, the rules/mechanics should facilitate the story, not hinder it, and the actions and behaviors of the characters essentially are the story. Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy allows for and encourages a great many different types of people to be made as PCs, and we never want the players to have to fight the rules to play their character—if you have to do this, you’re probably playing the wrong RPG for the kind of story you’re trying to have, but that’s a different topic entirely—so instead of trying to squeeze a character concept into or out of a “class” or “playbook”, we designed the Traits system in Eureka so that the unique personality of the PC becomes their own unique mechanical gameplay.
This post is talking about Traits, but Truth is another example of this, and we gave that its own post here.
Traits are, well, traits of the PC. Every PC gets 3 of them by default, and they can be mixed and matched in just about any way. Traits can wildly affect the way that a PC plays, because each one changes the way that the PC interacts with certain mechanics in the game. Sometimes they’re personality traits, sometimes they’re physical traits, and sometimes rarely they’re even narrative traits(but they are not backstory traits; knowing a guy is not a trait, owning a car is not a trait, etc.)
Some traits have small mechanical benefits, others have big mechanical benefits that are very situational, and still others have big mechanical benefits balanced out with big mechanical downsides.
Let’s take a look at a few Traits right now.
Bumbling Detective || When this character rolls to investigate using Knowledge skills, always subtract -2 from the roll, but they gain an additional +2 Investigation Points.
This trait is meant to evoke the comedic ‘detective work’ of Inspector Jacques Clouseau, causing the PC to have a significantly higher chance of failing any investigation rolls related to inspecting the scene of an event or crime. However, as their fail, their investigation points stack up real fast, gaining them easy Eureka!s. Here is a post explaining investigation points and Eureka!s in greater detail, but the short version for this post is that they can be used to retroactively reveal clues or increase the PC’s odds in a climactic action roll, like Inspector Jacques Clouseau, they will appear to completely botch the investigation in the front half, but then they will be able to use their huge stock of Eureka!s to serendipitously save the day in the climax, revealing them to actually be an unassuming genius, or just an even bigger idiot than everyone already thought they were, but still not without merit as a detective.
Just One More Thing… || When this character rolls to investigate using Intrapersonal skills, always subtract -2 from the roll, but they gain an additional +2 Investigation Points.
This Trait is meant to evoke the particular investigation style of the recently tumblr-famous Columbo. Like the Bumbling Detective Trait, except for Interpersonal investigation rolls that deal with talking to NPCs, this character will frequently “fail” when asking questions and trying to get information out of people, but in doing so will quickly rack up lots of investigation points. Later on, with the Eureka!s they’ve gathered, they can reveal how they needled and provoked the suspect into revealing just what they needed him to.
We have a lot of other traits based on famous TV detectives, but I don’t want to go over all of them in one post, so here’s one more based on Sherlock Holmes.
Elementary! || This character has a keen eye for detail and can deduce a lot about a person just by looking at them, or at least they think they can. When meeting a new person for the first time, this character may choose to have the Narrator make a hidden Social Cues roll for you. Full Success = This character is able to guess two correct facts about this person just by looking at them. Partial Success = This character is able to guess one correct fact and one incorrect fact about this person. Failure = This character is able to guess two incorrect facts about this person. The Narrator will tell the character these facts, but will not tell them if they are true or false, and will not tell them what the result of the hidden roll was. This roll does not grant investigation points.
(couldn't find any .gifs that weren't of BBC Sherlock)
With this Trait, a PC can instantly sus out small details about an NPC just at the slightest glance, though they better hope their analysis is right on the money, or they might end up looking a total fool! This trait is a favorite among certain playtesters.
Hardened Hearts || This character will not have to make any composure rolls for witnessing blood/gore, corpses, or death. Subtract -2 from all Comfort rolls made by this character. If an NPC, apply this to Morale.
Maybe this character has seen plenty of dead bodies, or maybe they just don’t much care about them, either way, they are immune to losing composure points from particularly gruesome scenes that might send others running for a place to throw up. On the flip side, however, this indifference acts as a barrier between themselves and other, more squeamish people, and this can make it difficult to approach them on their level and provide a calming effect when they need to.
That isn’t to say that in real life there can’t be people who are unaffected by seeing corpses but aren’t bad at comforting others—there’s plenty of morticians who see gruesome scenes every day, but and are also very experienced at speaking to grieving families without worsening their already fragile emotional state. For a character like this, the Hardened Hearts Trait isn’t the right fit, instead you’d want to make Corpses a +3 on that character’s Tiers of Fear, which is a mechanic we haven’t really talked about on this blog yet I don’t think, but basically there is a list of Fears in the rulebook and you write them into a chart on the character sheet, ranking them by how much they would distress the character, with +3 being the least distress and -3 being the most distress. This determines the modifier when making a Composure Roll, the result of which determines how much Composure the character loses when faced with particularly harrowing events. (And it is not a measure of “sanity”)
For one last one, let’s look at one of my personal favorite Traits.
Final Girl: When this character is alone against any sort of supernatural threat, add +1 to all rolls made with Physical Skills. Additionally, when this character is alone against any sort of supernatural threat, they may spend one or more Eureka! points on one of the supernatural threat’s skill rolls, adding an extra D6 for each point. The supernatural threat must drop the highest dice.
This Trait allows the character to emulate the narrative trope of the “final girl” in horror movies, particularly “slashers” or “creature-features”. It gives them the little boost they may need to get out alive or fight the creature off, but only when they’re the last one left or otherwise all alone. It also allows them to spend a Eureka! in just the right moment: the slasher’s knife miraculously misses their throat, the creature gets snared up while lunging through the foliage, whatever it is that makes them lucky enough to survive what was certain death for the rest of the main characters long enough to mount an effective defense or make a daring escape.
As you can see, there’s a lot to work with with these traits, 31 of them at the time of writing this, and they can vastly alter the way that a character interacts with the rules/mechanics of the game, all based on their personality and, well, their *traits*. This encourages and rewards characters acting in their own unique way, rather than simply being a “class”, “playbook”, or “archetype”, or just a collection of different skills, while actually supporting this unique gameplay and roleplay with the rules of the game.
We also include guidelines in the rulebook for how to create your own homebrew Traits as well.