Policing Teams

A companion piece to our Policing edition

To be clear, we watch a lot of police shows on TV.  I don’t just mean as a society, I mean specifically at my house.  Now, not all the shows have realistic action, but some of the true crime shows do.

One of the things they do when multiple officers arrive on a scene is that they call out to each other.  What do I mean?  For example, they might arrive on the scene, and as they all start moving in on the house they are going to enter, they start calling out things like:  “I have non-lethal”, “I’m on lethal”, “You hit the door”, “on three” (and they don’t need to argue about whether they go on three or they count to three and then go).

This stuff should make sense to you.  Whether you have seen it with the police, or perhaps a military unit, or you do it with your friends or family, where you don’t have to speak in complete sentences in order to be understood.  This would be common for any group of people who get into hot action and other dangerous settings, even if those settings are only moving heavy objects.  This would likely apply to adventuring parties too and is why I allow conversations that are longer than combat turns around the gaming table.

But this is most important for policing units, especially when they are all carrying the same equipment, but may have to do different jobs.  We suggested having multiple people working in concert, such as when three nets are used to secure a single target.  In a situation like that, the multiple police need to coordinate, without having a major conversation.  Calling out things like, “I’m on weapon”, “I’m on legs”, and “I’m clean-up” would allow these three to first secure the weapon hand, then the legs to immobilize, and then the last guy to net the entire person.  This would also be vital if one were using a man-catcher or other form of securing while others were attacking.  Knowing what the other guys on your side are planning to use is required.

But if the enemy understands what you’re saying, they can react and defend better.  In modern times, these calls for lethal or non-lethal and some of the other things are often done as they approach, which prevents the enemy from being in the middle of the conversation, but often times in our fantasy era, melee means that the enemy is right there.  So, what to do?

It’s simple; do what they do for the police dogs.  Many police and military dogs are trained in Germany and are therefore trained in the German language.  This prevents enemies from confusing the animal by hollering out commands that the animal might attempt to follow.  Assuming the team knows a different language, they might be able to use it during battle, but it might also be confusing if the characters barely know the language.  The whole point is to call out and react quickly, not stop and think what the word for “legs” is.

Does any of this matter?  Of course, it does!  During your next encounter with humanoids, have one of them call out, “Go for the head” and then have one of the enemies fall back only to try and flank the PC and go for a head shot / knock out.  See what the party does after that, especially if they do it a second time, or the next group of them the party encounters attempts the same thing.  This would give the party a chance to avoid some of the enemies’ tactics and possibly even their special abilities.  Then next week, have the enemies start calling out similar things, but in a different language.  They could be ordering lunch, but it is going to freak out your party.


This post was written as part of the recently released The Miscellaneous Anniversary Edition aka All About Everything Else, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Every other Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing small items that didn’t make it into earlier editions, mainly due to size.
We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 60 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.