In almost every campaign there comes a time where the player characters must rely on outside sources for information to aid in an investigation, heist, or operation. The Scrounger can offer the characters insight into a target via a unique source of information: their garbage.
NPC: The Scrounger
High Concept: Information Broker
Trouble: Antisocial
Background
The Scrounger long since abandoned his birth name and has lived on the streets since childhood. If life had taken him in a different direction he might have become a data analyst or gone into intelligence work. Instead, he cultivated an intense desire to live homeless and free on the outskirts of society. The Scrounger prefers to interact with people by discovering them through their garbage. And what he has learned about people only further cements his desire to be left alone.
Aspect: I Can Tell a Lot About You From Your Trash
Meeting The Scrounger
The Scrounger may already be an unnamed contact on a player character’s sheet, making it somewhat easier to find the mobile information broker. Other information contacts and allies may also have knowledge of The Scrounger. Private investigators and identity brokers may point PCs to The Scrounger as an information source while police and security may not be aware of the homeless man’s knowledge skills but have seen him by the target’s home, digging through trash. It will then be a matter of finding The Scrounger’s current location, which may mean questioning other homeless or street-dwellers.
Once found, the information broker will be wary, untrusting, and reserved. If the player characters are dressed or act like authorities (especially cops, security, or military) The Scrounger will be even more reluctant to talk to the PCs. If the characters are more “down to earth,” then the homeless man won’t exactly be social but will be more willing to talk.
Street addresses and proper names mean little to The Scrounger; the players will need to describe where their target’s trash might be before the contact will part with clues. He won’t act like it, but The Scrounger has an exceptional memory; a piece of information he never outrightly shares. Instead, he pretends to ponder over any questions, stumbling with answers and correcting himself.
Aspect: Near Perfect Recall
Presenting the Information
The information offered comes from the target’s garbage, so may not immediately make sense to the player characters. The easiest details about a target will come from any un-shredded paperwork like bills, mail, discarded notes, and receipts. Even if the target is a dedicated shredder, The Scrounger can pick up a lot of details about their life: their eating and drinking habits, general lifestyle, passions, and sense of style. Lack of trash can also indicate how a person lives. For example, if the target’s refuse never contains clothes then they are likely dedicated re-users, recycles, and donators. The data pieced together by The Scrounger should give the player characters strong, but not entirely obvious, clues about how next to approach their target.
Aspect: Filled with Useful, but Often Obfuscated, Information
Payment
The Scrounger doesn’t want money directly. Handling money means dealing with more people. Instead, his payment will be for sustenance, lodging, or entertainment brokered through the player characters. This means the money trail goes back to the PCs and their decisions on what to purchase reflect on them, not The Scrounger, and gives the information broker insight into the minds of the PCs.
Aspect: Everything Costs, But it Doesn’t Always Cost Money
Retribution
It’s possible the PCs will cheat, provide the bare minimum of payment, or threaten/harm The Scrounger for information. If this occurs they will not only have lost a contact, but they will have made an enemy who specializes in covert data analysis. He will use his own information and contacts to dig through the player characters’ garbage when they are unaware and will sell that information to their enemy.
Aspect: What I Know About Others I Can Find Out About You
Across the Multiverse
A homeless information broker is best suited for modern and cyberpunk settings, but can fit into most genres without much work. In fantasy worlds, The Scrounger may not only have analysis skills but have cultivated spells to learn more from an individual’s garbage. In space or high sci-fi, the scrounger likely lives on a large space station and while waste may go into a central processing facility (for re-use or destruction) it is likely only “flushed” from locations at intervals, giving the broker enough time for quick analysis.
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