Hello there,

I'm currently looking for more sophisticated means to track a Player Character or the Player Group's Ship.

Since my players are quite paranoid, they have the habit of finding tracking beacons rather quickly and tracking Hyperspace Jumps without any trackers feels to GM Fiat for me (since its supposed to be really unlikely).

I'd be interested if any of you has come up with any neat ways to track your players and what a fair difficulty of detecting said means would be.

Cheers.

Who are they hiding from, why, and where? The way the Empire tracks them to an uninhabited world the Unknown Regions is going to be very different to the way a crime syndicate would find them on a civilised world.

5 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Who are they hiding from, why, and where? The way the Empire tracks them to an uninhabited world the Unknown Regions is going to be very different to the way a crime syndicate would find them on a civilised world.

A Pair of Bounty Hunter's is tracking one of my Group, a Tech-Savvy Rival is trying to steal from my Archaeologist and an ISB Agent is trying to spy on the Group as a whole to blackmail them.

The ISB Agent is not a real problem for me, he's sliced a Droid the Group had dealings with and got their Comm's ID's .

The other 2 and especially the Bounty Hunters pose a Problem for me.

As for where, that a bit of an unknown.
They Group is currently mainly travelling around in the Outer Rim and sometimes Mid-Rim since they try to avoid Imperial Patrols and especially the Customs Office like the plague

My question was more regarding to general methods though.

First off, it's a movie, not a reality, so you don't need real answers if they are too inconvenient. All these guys by nature have the resources to track people down and won't have any reason to share their methods with the players. So they can just show up when the story requires and it's ok.

But... Sometimes you need to keep things straight in your head as the GM, so here's some ideas:

For the bounty hunters:

-They are just well connected. They've got friends and contacts and informants over a good chunk of the Galaxy. You show up in the right system, someone who knows them sees you and makes a call. It's star was, that sort of thing happens all the time.

- They are smart. They can just figure out the places the players are likely to go. Maybe they can figure out the jobs the players are running and logically deduce where they're likely to be. Maybe they just narrow down a key location and stake it out, running local bounties to sustain. Maybe they already know all the good hideouts in the sector and already know to check them from time to time.

- Fobs. The Mandalorian introduced tracking fobs. While they can't work everywhere, all the time for reasons of both logic and story, they certainly can help narrow down locations. So the hunters might go from planet to planet with a stack of fobs and see which ones get a hit. Fobs seem to run off DNA or something so the players can't just ditch it.

- They are just plain good hunters. They know how to run down leads, beat info out of witnesses, bribe officials, and otherwise just plain track people down. This is good as it can appear miraculous up front, but a session later when they go talk to someone from earlier in the adventure they can see he's been roughed up.

- Traps. A classic bounty hunting trick is to get the bounty head to come to you. You can set up a bogus job for them, or get word out they won some contest. When they come to collect you spring the trap.

So there's options for the hunters to show up whenever you like. You've got you logical background reasons, and there's no reason at all to share them.

The tech/archie:

So this guy is less likely to show up at random. Fortunately it's still easy to explain him?

The Antiquities field isn't big, and scoundrel archeologist get a name fast. So everyone in the biz probably has heard of your player at least in passing or by reputation. These only so many people that will deal in Antiquities, both out of risk and simple supply and demand, so the tech savvy rival probably just electronically surveils the top dealers your player will work with. When the player contacts him to make a deal, the rival knows and can make his move, or work to set up something. And the electronic stuff doesn't have to be easy to detect. The outer space equivalent of a spoofed sim card would do it and be almost undetectable unless the tech slipped up.

Are the Bounty Hunters allied to a guild?

I can totally imagine guilds running some sort of Scanners away from the Core which pick up the Transponder-Codes of arriving Ships within the System and check them for active Bountys. Or they are in contact with the BOSS on those Backwater-Systems - as long as there is a spacedock of some sort there should be BOSS around.

Just think about the fact that those guys are kind of the only policing force (at least for the kind of folk who are over the paygrade of Marshallls) and even if you don't like them, they take care of the really dangerous folks out there.

On the other Hand - if they can't find them just set up a trap. Are there relatives or places they retun to from time to time?

Thanks for the Input.
Ghostofman, you made a good point, it does not need to be all water tight and transparent, I seem to forget that sometimes;

I think I will go with the "Well Connected" Route for the hunters, since they are in the Bounty Hunter's Guild and since another Hunter from the Guild was recently thwarted it would be in the Guild's interest to up the ante on the target.

I'm also thinking of what kind of trap I could lay out, that would be also very interesting 😃

Thanks again for your help, sometimes I just need a small nudge to get my plot-writing going again

Random thoughts, based on the usual understood method of how hyperspace works. Namely that you have to pick routes that avoid massive gravitational/astronomical bodies, would naturally make for "hyperspace lanes", as evidenced by a lot of the franchise star charts they've published over the years. So, assuming that's the baseline for hyperspace travel in your setting, a few thoughts.

1. Anyone that actually witnessed them jump, and seeing the direction they were jumping, in relation to the background stars, could calculate a likely path of jump, and adjust for astronomical bodies along that heading, to make an assumption about destination. For example: Pursuer: "Hmm, they just jumped, heading Rimward and Upsin, towards the GlookaFlooka Nebula." *checks star charts* "So that means they are most likely going to be going down this lane, due to all the bodies in that area of space, so they will likely come out in the Boombo Neepto Sector, just outside Hutt Space. Hmm, people don't usually go to that area of space unless they are trying to do something illegal...which means they are most likely going to Nar Poopto, the sub moon of Nar Shadda, a known Hutt location for Doing Bad Things. Ok, by deductive reasoning, that's probably where they are going. I'll head there and see if I get lucky."

2. Depending on the resources available to the pursuers, they could seed passive jump tracking systems along the known hyperspace routes, looking for jump signals to detect. With a little math, calculating the time to destination from origin point could help them build a timeline of likely locations. For example: Pursuer: "Hmm, ok so the records from the Empire show they jumped away from the blockade around Glombdo WoopWoop at 04:34 Galactic Standard Time, heading Rimward and Downspin. They are flying a B0-08Z class ship, which standard model has a x3 hyperdrive. So given their heading, and the speed of their drive, the closest exit point along the hyperlanes is X107, and for them, it would be roughly a 1 week trip. If they exited at X208, that would be 2 weeks. Which, based on the day/time they left, means I should look for a ping on my passive network on...*does math* This time/day for point 1, and this time/day for point 2. Let me see if I got a hit along either of those." This would then dovetail into point 1 above, as to deducing where they would go, based on location of exit from jump.

See, the fun thing about this part of star wars, is that it's all basic physics, ignoring the made up parts of course. But it's perfectly reasonable to just let them do basic astrophysics, like, what an Astromech droid is for, and/or a navicomputer, to just "Do the Math" of how to track them. The laws governing stellar mechanics are easily determined, when you are just talking about movement over time of stellar bodies, and stellar drift, etc. That's literally like entry level Astronomy course equations, which are mostly just standard Physics equations.

Now, I'm not saying that you should actually DO all this math, far from it, as that's a lot of boring math stuff that would make a table of gamers go to sleep. But you can use that as the justification on how they got tracked by someone without using a tracking device. They just used standard math and science, and their super powerful astromech droids computational power, to calculate, based on known variables, where they would likely go.

The other thing you can do is if the players stick around in any spot for long enough = "word travels fast." That's enough of a lampshade to let players fill in the blanks.

So, if needs be: force the issue by having a complicated adventure on a planet where it's not one-and-done. By the time they're finished with the current issue, the pursuing antagonists show up.

Facial recognition becomes ship recognition in Star Wars?

You have a Tech-Savvy Rival and an ISB Agent trying to locate them. With their connections and skills, they should be able to tap into the ship and registry recognition database of the Empire. Postulate that any ship that comes into contact with any other registered ship, starport, outpost, or any place with a modicum of technology, may be automatically reporting such (via computer and comms) to the hypernet and thus ISB databases.

Your ship is broadcasting its registry, unless you turn it off. That enters the database when received by at least passing government ships, starports, outposts, installations, and beacons. You stop at a starport and make a fuel purchase. That enters a database. You make a purchase at a shop. That possibly enters a database (depending on location, purchase method). You walk through a civilized town and your image is caught on cameras and processed by facial recognition. That enters the database.

So, unless they are only visiting unoccupied worlds, or barbaric worlds, and avoiding any sense of civilization, the NPCs may be able to "connect the dots" of the data they are leaving behind and guess where they are heading or actually know where they currently are?

Tracking beacon.. but with a twist.

Rather than a straight up beacon, how about someone places some sort of daemon program in the ships navicomputer. Whenever a jump is made, it sends the calculations and coordinates to the organization that planted it. A skilled slixer or someone who is extremely perceptive may notice that the computer has been tampered with, but likely it's something they would have to be actively looking for.

What about finding them the old fashioned way: investigation and informants? Do the bounty hunters have an infochant who is wired into the underworld like nobody's business? Ergo, a contact with a tone of contacts? Do they have other bounty hunters or just plain old scum they enjoy a "reciprocity of friendship with" who might tip them off in exchange for a future favor or tip? Do they have a corrupt low-level imperial bureaucrat with access to ship registry tracking information who keeps feeding them the players last known location? The players have to refuel, resupply, and deal with their own contacts at some point. Their ship can be identified and they will be seen by someone somewhere.

Slight aside; Gand Findsmen are the ultimate trackers. If they get hold of or learn of the characters in principle they should be tracked anywhere. Likely exceedingly rare to the point of only being hired for pretty desperate individuals, but it can certainly put the terror into the PCs the first time it happens. “Oh kriff these hunters are serious now.”

Thanks for all the Input,
really great ideas, I'll be sure to steal some of these

The force power Seek lets you track pretty much anyone anywhere in the galaxy, might not quite be the thing someone uses to track scum and villainy types though. Keeping an eye out for the transponder of the ship would be a less mystic way of doing it. All ships and their transponders are logged with the Bureau of Ships and Services, a bureaucratic institution stretching as far back as the Republic does. If they wanna land on a settle planet at a space port, or at a space station or even fly through core systems then they need to ask for permission or file a flight path. That one will then be logged with the BoSS and say a pair of bounty hunters might have a connection there that forwards them information they need.

17 hours ago, kaosoe said:

Tracking beacon.. but with a twist.

Rather than a straight up beacon, how about someone places some sort of daemon program in the ships navicomputer. Whenever a jump is made, it sends the calculations and coordinates to the organization that planted it. A skilled slixer or someone who is extremely perceptive may notice that the computer has been tampered with, but likely it's something they would have to be actively looking for.

Love this idea, and have mentally logged it for future use.