Author Topic: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character  (Read 3006 times)

Offline darkfire14

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Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« on: November 17, 2011, 04:05:19 AM »
In the World of Darkness there is a hunter group called "Network Zero" that is dedicated to gather information on the supernatural and expose their existence to the world. Could such a concept work in the Dresden Files. A character who wants to convince the entire world that the supernatural exists. Here is a concept for a character.

Shawn Vernen
Template: Pure Mortal
Power Level: Submerged

High Concept:

Intrepid Reporter On The Supernatural

Shawn Vernan is driven to expose the supernatural existence to the world. He feels that the  ignorance of the human populace makes them victims to the creatures that are out in the world. He's a reporter pure and true and believes in freedom of speech and the American way and that the supenaturals have NO RIGHT to remain hidden and use their powers to subjugate humanity. To that end he seeks supenatural events and reports on them, distributing his "Evidence" through secure internet sites, YouTube, underground newspapers, podcasts or other methods of getting the truth out.

Fate Point Uses: His high concept is useful when performing investigation of supernatural events as well as understanding what he sees in the field as well as actions to report on his findings to others.

Compelling Uses: This aspect can be compelled when Shawn gets wind of an excellent chance to investigate and report on a serious supernatural event. This of course can cause him to get embroiled into supernatural events that could be dangerous. It also can be compelled when someone tries to prevent him from publishing a story. As a journalist his duty is to report any and all truth, no matter who might be harmed in the crossfire.

Trouble:

Its a God Dammed Cover Up!

Shawn's actions rubs the wrong way a lot of supernatural groups. His efforts to break the news wide open about the supernatural meets numerous roadblocks. His works are discredited,  serious evidence gets wiped and he's had equipment confiscated by illegal seasure of his hard copies. At times he's been threatened and intimidated by numerous supernatural groups to give up on his muckraking. This only reinforces his belief that the supernatural are corrupt and drives him further.

Fate Point Uses: He can use this trouble to his advantage at times when he takes advantage of the cover ups to protect himself from being discovered.

Compel Uses: This trouble is a Fate Point mine! The storyteller can easily screw over Shawn's efforts by compelling this aspect. Such as "Woah! I've published a werewolf attack on youtube!" and its compelled and the video either vanishes from the site or adjusted so that people who see it think its a fake.

Background

Born the son of a James Vernen, an owner of a small left-wing newspaper business. The business shut down when he was 10, but his father kept the family afloat by working for a larger newspaper in the city. Taught his son the value and integrity of a journalist. A childhood beating by bullies inspired him to take up martial arts as a form of self-defense. Graduated from college and joined as a beat reporter for a respectable newspaper in town. Made a good deal of contacts and connections in the city over the numerous stories he covered.

Phase Aspect: Connections of Spooks and Mooks

Rising Conflict

When on a freelance assignment, Steven Varson followed a mage of the White Council and witnesses him using magic battle and kill a black court vampire. Intrigued he spent months digging and researching, finding out the existence of numerous other supernatural creatures. He decided that it was his duty as a reporter to expose these creatures to the public. Some rough customers were sent to rough him up and shut him up, but he turned the tables on these thugs, surprising them with his martial arts training and escaping. The bad guys then got him fired from his job and discredited, but he still fights to get the truth out to the world.

Phase Aspect: I Fight For Truth

First Adventure:
Tagline: When the Hard Broiled Supernatural reporter investigates a serious of occult murders in the city, looking for the scoop of the century, he crosses paths with an insane Outsider Worshiping Cult seeking to bring their master into the mortal world. There he crosses paths with a rookie police officer Penny Holton, who was captured by the cult and was an intended sacrifice. Using his skills he was able to sneak in and save Penny Holton, expose the cult's activities and get the police to arrest them. Penny awakened to the know, now believes in Shawn's cause and works as his bodyguard and assistant on his cases.

Phase Aspect: Penny Holton, Ace Assistant

Other Aspects:

Phase Four Aspect: I Cover My Own Ass

Phase Five Aspect: A Nose For Trouble

Skills:

Scholarship: +4
Brawl: +4
Investigation: +3
Stealth: +3
Contacts: +3
Rapport: +3
Awareness: +2
Endurance: +2
Resources: +2
Empathy: +2
Discipline: +2
Conviction: +1
Athletics: +1
Lore: +1
Drive: +1
Presence: +1

Stunts:
Let Me Tell You A Story: -1 (Rapport)
I Just Know a Guy: -1 (Contacts)
On My Toes: -1
Hacking Wizard: -1 (Use Scholarship instead of Burglary for hacking purposes)
Martial Artist: -1
High Quality Workspace: -1

Adjusted Refresh: 6













« Last Edit: November 17, 2011, 04:09:30 AM by darkfire14 »

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2011, 04:39:04 AM »
Apart from a few minor formatting issues, he looks pretty good.

The Spare Character Concepts thread could use him.

Offline EdgeOfDreams

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2011, 05:23:37 AM »
Looks like good stuff.  I know when building pure mortals, my friends and I tend a lot toward Murphy and Kincaid knock-offs.  It's nice to see a different angle on a mortal who can be a competent protagonist, but is not primarily a combatant or "hero".

Offline Richard_Chilton

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #3 on: November 17, 2011, 05:30:34 AM »
This looks a bit like Susan used to be - a "the truth is out there" type can be a great addition to a game.

You might want to make sure the others at the table are okay with this - but it looks good to me.

Richard

Offline Todjaeger

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2011, 05:41:26 AM »
The concept is interesting, but the viability very much depends on the tone of the campaign you're in.

According to the novels, the Butters the ME and sometimes doctor to Harry was the person who examined the remains after a Harry-caused building fire at the end of Grave Peril.  From the comment (made in Dead Beat I believe), Butters reported that some of the remains he examined were humanoid, but not human.  He then spent somewhere between three and six months (depends on which novel you read...) involuntarily undergoing evaluation in a psychiatric ward. 

Side note; In order for the Involuntary admission of Butters for three to six months to have been legal, within the 72 hours prior to his having been admitted a qualified physician, examiner or psychiatrist had to certify that he met the criteria for involuntary admission and hospitalization, meaning that he has mental issues which made him an immediate danger to himself or others.  Further, within 24 hours of his having been admitted a different qualified mental health professional would also need to certify the he needed involuntary admission and hospitalization, again with the requirement that he was a danger to himself or others and that within 24 hours (not including weekends or holidays) of the second certification the facility/facility director would need file the certifications with the court.  Within 5 days (again not including weekends and holidays) the court would need to have held a competency hearing for Butters before a judge, with an attorney for Butters.  Again, one of the key parts is that the patient (Butters in this instance) needs to be a danger to themselves or others.  You can be completely crazy, but as long as you're harmless you can't be held and treated involuntarily without breaking a number of laws and medical ethics.

In short, for Butters to have been held as long as he was without his consent, there were a number of people involved and either breaking the law by ignoring the required due process, or stating that Butters was a danger to himself or others.

Sorry for the long bit above, but I wanted to properly 'frame the scene' as it were within the Dresdenverse according to Jim.  Basically the supernatural powers are very interested in keeping the 'mundanes' ignorant that the supernatural world is real and exists side by side with the 'real' world.  Mortal authorities  (who might be aware of the supernatural, or could be completely ignorant as well) are going to treat, literally, people who spout off about the supernatural in everyones's midst, like they are crazy and dangerous.

On the supernatural side, and also possibly on the clued-in mortal authority side, there is the distinct possibility that a 'hit' or even multiple 'hits' could be ordered on someone who became too much of a nuisance or was attracting too much mundane attention. 

Susan, when she worked for the Midwest Arcane, basically appeared to be safe because the Midwest Arcane was considered a 'tabloid' publication, not unlike the old National Inquirer which would report people seeing demonic faces in storm clouds, unicorn and bigfoot sightings, Elvis with aliens, etc.  Not the sort of publication people would ever take seriously.

Now, if the setting you're playing in or planning on running has room for someone trying to peel back the veil over mundane eyes, by all means go for it.  It wouldn't work for long in the campaign I'm in, simply because eventually the character would become an inconvenience or obstacle for one or more of the supernatural groups and the character would get taken out.  Whether it would be Fix being sent in by the Seelie Court to err, 'fix' things, or the Nickelheads drafting a new member, someone would end up getting to the character.

Also in the campaign itself, the storyteller has setup an NPC who is a reporter on the supernatural for the "New England Parapsychology Gazette" which is basically supposed to be a 'rag' publication like the Midwest Arcane, but focused on New England instead.  The NPC is intended to be used to report on some of the supernatural events going on in the background of the campaign, as well as report on some of the events the players get involved in.

The write-up which has been posted so far (campaign started Oct. 22nd) is located here:
http://www.epicwords.com/entries/8337

Now this particular reporter isn't a Pure Mortal.  Instead he's an investigate reporter and closet Minor Talent with the supernatural power Supernatural Senses: covering a Nose for the Truth, a Nose for the Supernatural, and a Nose for Traces of the Supernatural.  The reporter can literally smell when he's being lied to, when the supernatural is present, or when the supernatural had been present.  Unfortunately for the reporter, he doesn't know that he has those supernatural powers...

-Cheers

Edit, additional comment: For those interested, the Illinois statues which dictate the requirements and processes for involuntary admission and hospitalization for mental health issues can be found at the link below.
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=040500050HCh.+III+Art.+VI&ActID=1496&ChapterID=34&SeqStart=11400000&SeqEnd=12900000
« Last Edit: November 17, 2011, 05:44:40 AM by Todjaeger »
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Offline computerking

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2011, 04:12:19 PM »
In short, for Butters to have been held as long as he was without his consent, there were a number of people involved and either breaking the law by ignoring the required due process, or stating that Butters was a danger to himself or others.
Which could also be the result of tampering by a number of supernatural plants within the medical and judicial systems, to discredit mortals who know too much and try to spread the knowledge too far. There's more ways to "Take out" a troublesome blabbermouth than just physically. Butters probably suffered an extreme Social consequence due to this (Perhaps "Known to be a Nutjob,").
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Offline Richard_Chilton

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2011, 05:10:37 PM »
I don't think anyone was breaking the law or that there are plants.

Butters is a medical profession.  He has job where he has to be dependable.  Suddenly, he's gone completely delusional.  Totally completely delusional.  He's talking about human like beings when we all know that they don't exist.  Can you imagine this exchange:
Officer on the witness stand: "And the cause of death was found to be blunt force trauma.  The medical examiner determined that the object was <blah> and we found an object like that in the defendant's possession."
Defense lawyer: "The medical examiner determined that? Is this the same medical examiner who insists that supernatural, or at least preternatural, creatures live among us? I have a report from the same examiner who, well, the jury can judge for themselves how much weight they want to give his words."

And did he just snap or has he been insane for a while? Every single case Butters had worked on in the last year (at least) might need to be looked at by a sane man.  Of course that could be very difficult - forget cremation, after a while decay makes cause of death hard to determine.

I can see everyone in connected to law enforcement having problems with that.  Enough so that rules might get bent a bit and the system work against him to protect the integrity of the system.

As for whether he was there voluntarily or not, I think part of the issue was he didn't want to lose his job (and pension).  That he had to work inside the system or he would have been out the door.  I can easily see someone from the insurance company handling the medical examiner's liability policy speaking in a calm voice and explaining to Butters how the policy couldn't cover him if he didn't seek help for his stress related aliment.  And someone from HR being in the room explaining things.  Maybe he would have union rep there (he does work for the city) or maybe not, but people will jump through a lot of hoops to keep a good job.

So 90 days (from Dead Beat) under observation to prove to the insurance that he wasn't nuts and another three months seeing shrinks as he fought to get his job back - that I can see.


Back to the topic at hand - someone who goes around saying "the supernatural is REAL!" is going to be viewed as either a nut, a hoaxer, or extremely gullible.  Susan worked for a paper where people assumed that there was a little hoax mixed in with the news while Butters worked at a place where none of those options were acceptable.

I can easily see a "the truth is out there" type being labeled a conspiracy nut.  Maybe a "Vampires had Kennedy shot! Oswald was the fail guy!" sort of thing.  Or maybe "vampires are behind the pimps!" - where people nod and assume that you can't handle man's inhumanity to man so have invented monsters to explain away how monstrous humans can be.  In some ways it's more comforting to believe that a monster is forcing students to take drugs than to accept that kids choose to do dumb things (like taking drugs).

But that doesn't mean that some people won't believe him or that the character can't be a fun one to play.  And if the character can go entire conversations without trotting out his beliefs in the supernatural than most people will accept him as just a little off on some subjects.

Richard

Offline Silverblaze

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2011, 12:15:06 AM »
As a player and therefore excpetion to many rules: the concept is sound and likely fun. 

That said:

As an NPC organization, unless someone or something powerful backs them up... they'll be ignored until they get dangerous.  Then they'd be real real dead. 

This applies to World of Darkness as well as the Dresden-verse.  The supernatural threats have too many resources and are too powerful for human threats aside from a huge widespread attack by humanity to be of consequence.  Hunter organizations live by picking off fringe members of the supernatural community and thinking they are making a difference.  When heavy hitters show up they die.  It stands to reason.  It works that way in almost all media, not just gaming.

Offline Richard_Chilton

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2011, 04:29:04 AM »
That's not completely supported by the books...

The Werewolf video was on TV and Youtube for a while - no one died over that.  Stoker didn't have any overt protection (the White Court doesn't do things overtly) - yet he exposed the Black Court and lived to tell the tale.

Maybe Harry is wrong, but time after time he says that there isn't any supernatural conspiracy keeping  the mundanes ignorant.  That's it's mankind's unwillingness to believe that keeps the supernatural from coming into the light.

Richard

Offline Silverblaze

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #9 on: November 20, 2011, 04:36:40 AM »
Fair points.

I do think that Butcher writes that way for dramatic effect and to keep novels interesting.  I'm pretty sure if supernatural creatures truly deared the crusades happening again, they'd behave much more like the ones in White Wolf publishing games do.

I don' think they'd kill if they could squash it without killing.  I think the werewolf thing was easy to pass off as a hoax.

Hence the reason I said if they felt threatend, they'd end the threat.  Similar to the White Council printing dangerous rituals over and over to deplete the strength or the Venator Umbrorum fighting the war that doesn't exist... I'm betting very few things want the truth to get out.

Of course it will vary from game to game.  Just my take on it.

Offline Wyrdrune

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #10 on: November 22, 2011, 08:25:37 AM »
the situation reminds me a bit of the old "kolchak - the night stalker" series with darren mcgavin. a reporter from an independent news service finds all sorts of supernatural phenomena like aliens, ghosts, devil worshippers in high politics, werewolves, vampires, native american myths coming to life, but he does not get a single story of this printed because his chief editor dumps them, not believing any of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolchak:_The_Night_Stalker

Offline mdodd

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Re: Viability of a "Expose the Supernatural" type character
« Reply #11 on: November 22, 2011, 08:16:04 PM »
the situation reminds me a bit of the old "kolchak - the night stalker" series with darren mcgavin. a reporter from an independent news service finds all sorts of supernatural phenomena like aliens, ghosts, devil worshippers in high politics, werewolves, vampires, native american myths coming to life, but he does not get a single story of this printed because his chief editor dumps them, not believing any of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolchak:_The_Night_Stalker
Absolutely. I don't know if Chris Carter produced that but I know the X Files was a progression of Kolchak.
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