While working on some setting things for Folded Steel, I hit on the idea of the group changing over time and becoming something else. The thought is that certain crew types are tied to certain tier ranges. There is only so high a team of Racers can climb in the setting before they hit their cap, and need to change. I don’t want it to be a full stop change over though. Two different groups that started as different types in the lower tier should have a mechanical difference if they become the same type at a higher tier.There needs to be some sort of legacy crew ability. Something the Racers in my example get to retain when they step up and become involved on the bigger stage, that the other group wouldn’t have because they were Scrappers, or a Street Gang, or whatever.
Thoughts? Am I making it more complicated than it needs to be? Should I just shut up and go back to working on the setting info until I see more mechanics from the core game?
I think it’s an interesting idea.
What if the crew just carries forward any upgrades, effects, and special abilities they had, but now they have a new list of options to choose from (and new advancement triggers) going forward?
A one-time cult with a fine ritual sanctum, adepts, and zealous attitudes among their gangs will feel very different when they later switch to thieves than a former crew of hawkers with client perks and black market contacts.
I have a system I run called Fictive Hack, where there is an inherent ability to a character’s template, and 5 talents (like special abilities.) You can get talents from other templates, and when you have 2 from another template, you can transition to it next time you level. When you get all 5 of its talents, you can gain its inherent ability.
I think a similar model could work here. Everything you earned previously is available to you, but when you get 2 special abilities from another crew template you can switch to that template. You can no longer advance things on the previous template, but everything on the new one is open to you.
I wouldn’t worry overmuch about keeping track of a type, just note they’ve got some gritty experiences behind them and they’re currently an X crew.
New Crew: Councilmen of Duskwall.
Compendium Crews!
If we’re talking new kinds of crews, sewer jacks could be a thing. You have a territory to keep cleared out from a massive list of things that can go wrong, from infrastructure to haunting to predators to trespassing squatters. Good luck.
I want to play the Gondoliers so bad
Heh, playing the press could also be a hoot. Scooping sensational stories and scandals and causing them when things get dull.
Maybe gentrifiers/real estate developers?
A down-and-out noble family seeking to restore a tarnished name?
Dangerous academics diving into projects beyond the ken of mortal man? Or inventive scientists designing war machines for the emperor?
The problem I have with keeping ALL of the abilities of the previous crew type, is that it seems like it could become unwieldy. What I keep circling around is something like the special ability that lets you pull an ability from another crew, but maybe with some more oomph. Something that continues the legacy of what your crew started as while giving you room to grow into what your new role is.
Andrew Shields, I do really like the idea of transitioning into another crew type by picking up abilities from their crew playbook before you can actual make it your new crew playbook. I may have to steal that.
As far as the conversation drift about new crew types for things beyond the mech hack. Journalists all the way. I want to be ink men who have pissed off the other gangs by exposing their secrets by the inch.
Sorry for the tangent. 😛
Similar to what you say, I was considering a crew playbook advancement option that let you swap one of your Advancement triggers for one from another crew. Possibly an upgrade: “Vision shift” “Diversification” or something.
That seems to be the simplest essence of ‘feeling’ like another kind of crew since you can already take a couple abilities from other crews, and gain permanent specialized upgrades through long-term projects and acquire asset rolls.
The tangent is totally fine. I hadn’t put in any thought about it, but it made me realize a game about people reporting the news in Duskwall would be awesome.
Another thing I am looking at for the crew type will be that they effect your Mechs and their loadout (so will your character playbook). That may be another area to carry forward to keep the legacy going.
Couple of thoughts off the top of my head: If you’re worried about it being unwieldy, limit the amount of abilities they can have ‘active’ at once, but let them draw from either their previous playbooks or their current one. They can swap out during downtime.
Alternately, when they leave their playbook for a new one, they don’t keep their abilities, but they gain a ‘Former Racers’ (or whatever) ability that sticks with them forever, that calls back to their past. Maybe it lets them use any of their former abilities, but only one at a time (and again, they can swap out during downtime). Maybe it does something else.
I’m currently leaning toward the second option. Have a spot on the sheet for a legacy ability. Give it a name like “Racing Roots” or whatever, and after that it’s done and time to focus on thew new status of the crew.
Maybe keep the crew effect ratings too? Otherwise it seems quite like starting from square one again.
Effect ratings. relationships with other organizations, and the equivalent of hold and coin will carry over. Special abilities will be what really changes
and any gained crew upgrades would stay behind.
Hey, here’s a thought. You don’t want to lose any of the great gains as one type of crew, so how about this: when you change types, you can gift the advances left behind (as well as some hold) to one of the gangs that works for you. You gain faction status with them, they become an independent crew, and you move on. Then you are the crew that gave them their start.
Why would you need to leave any advances behind? If your Thieves become Hawkers they might use their rooftop routes to transport drugs instead of stolen merchandise, but it’s not like they’d forget them.
Jeff Johnston Yeah, I’d let special abilities stay. But if the desire is to leave previous abilities behind, this is a way to soften the blow and make it interesting instead of just loss.
The context for this hack involves dealing with being in an invaded country and dealing with that fact. Some crews will be content to just eke out a living (their crew hits the tier cap, and they just keep playing with their current set of abilities), but others will want to step up their game and make a bigger impact. This is what the legacy ability would be for. The crew has made a choice to step out of their comfort zone to an area where they no longer benefit as directly from their current experience. It is meant to be a hard choice and to show sacrificing for greater potential.
To use the Racer crew that I mentioned earlier. They are on the top of their game, they do the occasional job to keep their racing mechs running, but they see the city crushed under the invaders. Finally enough is enough. They decide that they can’t sit by anymore and want to do something about it. The crew playbook changes to show their change in direction (which now has a higher tier range) as they become Saboteurs (not currently a crew playbook I am planning, but that list is still being worked on). They have a lot to learn, but part of them will still be Racers at heart (reflected by the legacy ability)
So what you really need is a system to transition gracefully. It sounds easy to keep everything because upgrade maintenance isn’t part of the fiction but your not going to keep the same engine jigs or travel routes after after you change team books. Nobody cares if you had a in fiction meeting to give up your now useless roof routes, it’s just not interesting.
A graceful transition is definitely part of it.
What I am specifically looking to emulate is the tendency I’ve noticed in many animes to shift thematic gears mid series when the characters get series about the bigger problems and acknowledge that they are going to need to drastically change who and what they are to reach their goal.