If I understand right, using Tier rating to clear off Heat means that for every mission, a Tier 0 crew (where everyone starts) rolls 2 dice and keeps the lower. Ouch! Am I missing something? Or is it just that hard to clear off Heat for new crews that no one has ever heard of before? This is especially brutal since high profile or killing adds 2 Heat instead of 1 now.
Also: could we get one-sentence descriptions of the new factions? Previously I’ve cut and pasted that from the FAQ into my Quickstart, the names alone are not very helpful.
So the roll to acquire an asset is crew tier. Again, pretty rough for everybody starting at 0, and no skill comes into play. Could you use an “acquire asset” roll to get medical help for lasting conditions instead of paying for it? I would think so.
I like unlocking downtime actions so you get two and not the ones for free and the ones you pay for. So if you are really stressed you can use Vice two times, for example. But if you are not stressed, you can do two Heat rolls or whatever.
Okay… am I just dense? What the hell is Rep (reputation, I assume) and what does it do?
I think I like Suffer Harm better now than I did with the last update, but not as well as the lasting condition simplicity from the first version. =)
Thanks for the update. I’ll be pushing the domino rows to get my game lined up with changes.
I thought Rep was the Hold you got from Scores (as opposed to Claims). I agree that the Tier 0 rolls are tough.
Hmm I also wonder how stable this version will be. My gamers played last week with 3.1 the weeks before where skipped. So it results 3 sessions with 3 Version after each other 😛
Marcus Shepherd On the crew sheet I see “Claims Hold” next to “Rep” next to “Total Hold.” So, it’s not quite the same, but also not quite different. Maybe.
From p. 6:
“Rep is the reputation, clout, and renown of a faction or crew. Rep is gained by performing successful operations. Each point of rep equals one hold.”
Tier 0 downtime rolls are rough, yeah, but I think that’s intentional. Remember that you get +1d on downtime actions if you get help from a Friend and you can spend Coin one-for-one to improve your result level. Tier 0 crews should be out there working their contacts and pulling jobs if they want to get ahead. That’s kind of the point.
Travis Stout I see that one point of Rep is one point of Hold, but why not just add Hold? Why the extra distinction? I’m not sure what it gets you.
I guess to me it is counter-intuitive that new crews have a harder time avoiding bluecoat notice than bigger more experienced crews. You are small and therefore more vulnerable to police attention?Â
I’m also less clear on how being in a small crew makes it harder to acquire equipment. Seems like if individual crew members have to spend actions during down time to do that, then their own personal skills and connections would matter more than the crew.
Andrew Shields Rep is the “fungible resource” half of Hold, while Claims are the more permanent half. Since you can spend it on various things and it occasionally resets when you move up in Tier, it makes sense to give it its own name, both for clarity of rules text (otherwise you’d have to keep saying “spend non-Claim-based Hold” or something) and to reinforce the fiction (you have a reputation in the criminal underworld and you’re leveraging that to get results).
As far as Tier, remember that Tier represents, in abstract, both the size and influence a faction has. At Tier 0, it’s hard to get rid of Heat because you don’t have a network of crooked cops, magistrates that owe you favors, and political clout that makes it easy and automatic to just make problems go away. You might know a fence or two, but you’re not known as a reliable business associate in the black market in the way that makes it a straightforward matter to say “I need three crates of leviathan gizzards by next Fornsday, mate” and have it happen. Building those relationships and connections is part of raising your Tier.
Also remember that these Downtime actions represent a sort of “off-screen” competence, for stuff that’s not a major operation. If your Tier 0 crew really needs to ditch a lot of Heat and wants to do it by blackmailing the Chief Inspector, that sounds like a long-term project (collect dirt on the coppers) followed by an op (Social, the dirt we have on the Chief Inspector). Higher Tier means you already have those inroads and know how the back channels work.
I will give my players the options to ask their patron Organisation to make a roll for them. They are actually working as an operative Gang as part of a network of interconnected criminals enterprises.
Josephe Vandel That seems like a good thing to add as a Rep-costing option for crews that have a higher-Tier patron. More likelihood of success, but word gets around that you can’t take care of your own stuff.
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Well, if they are asked by the drugring to aquiere dangerous meuchelnd from the wild deadlands, they got some gasmasks provided and I didnt ask for a roll or a score to robb some railjacks.
Travis Stout I guess. To me this is another example of making assumptions about the mechanics that the fiction may or may not bear out. I don’t see that it makes lots of sense to say that going up in tier means automatically getting more influence over the bluecoats, for example; it might, but there might be smaller groups with far more or less influence.
It isn’t a big deal to me, because I am not playing with the crew playbooks and therefore I sidestep the whole question. Still, it does not yet seem clear to me, how claims and hold and rep are supposed to interact.
We can chalk it up to my grounding in more traditional gaming and dissatisfaction with many aspects of story gaming. =) I want the fiction and the mechanics to make sense together, I prefer a different set of abstractions.
I like the way you have parsed this Travis Stout 🙂
I agree that the Tier Advancement mechanics imply a lot about the setting and how the characters interact with that setting. I can’t wait to have a campaign advance a crew from nobodies to the movers and shakers of the setting and the resultant fictional and mechanical results therein.
Its rather neat.
I also hear your dissatisfaction Andrew Shields, but I think your analysis of why you are not so pleased is probably spot on! Kudos for you for making the game work for you 🙂
Travis parses Tier the way I do. It represents overall klout (including credit and favors) and is the main thing you want to increase as a crime organization. When you’re a small fry, you have trouble ditching heat because no one cares if you go under. “Being small time” is not an actual defense against the cops — quite the other way around. There are a hundred small-timers in Ironhook for every big-time crook.
You also have a hard time acquiring assets at a low Tier because you have no credit and you’re barely getting by  (basic food and shelter at Tier zero).
But, Andrew Shields, remember this: the primary game mechanics never “go away.” There’s a downtime roll to reduce heat, and you can always use that (it’s part of the downtime fictional positioning). But ALSO, the normal action roll is always in play. If someone does something in the fiction that might reduce heat, then that’s their goal, and they say what action they perform, and you set their position, etc. etc. as normal.
The fiction and the mechanics always make sense together, if you use them that way. 🙂