So, after some difficulty with the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh coming to collect their Hollowing sacrifice following a Bad Outcome on the Engagement Roll, the ritual the players had planned to kill a crew of Leviathan Hunters went rather smoothly. Only one character was traumatised by half a dozen spirits pouring all of their pain and sorrow into his soul. They set about discussing their next move, and after arguing whether their crew of Thieves was actually going to start doing some thievery and thus whether the Luxury Fence was worth it. In the end, they decided it was.
What I’m trying to work out is, what’s a Luxury Fence? So, the base-line return you get from a fence is 5% (or at least, that’s my understanding of real world fences). But even if, let’s say that, this fence is luxury because they have an ‘in’ with the Fog Hounds giving them more potential buyers, I can’t think of a good reason they wouldn’t just keep that quiet and pocket the extra cash. Maybe fencing is competitive in the Crow’s Foot?
In that case, what is the means by which the players can take this Claim? Because the Fog Hounds are the ones who make this fence ‘luxury’ and getting rid of them would be counterproductive. Do the players just need to cut themselves in?
Or am I massively overthinking this and a luxury fence is just a fence that can actually buy luxury items off you, whereas a normal fence wouldn’t?
But there’s still the whole question of: how do you Claim a fence? Surely if you own a fence, then that fence cuts you into all of the sales they make, consequently, it has nothing to do with personally robbing anyone. Is Claiming a fence merely convincing that fence to buy from you?
Apologies for all these questions, I’m certain I’m overthinking this. But one final thing: with v4, the value of a Coin has dropped, but the amount of Coin a fence gives you is the same. Is that intentional? Also the Coin space a Crew and Vault gives you is the same.
This previous conversation may help.
https://plus.google.com/106707833102836285495/posts/SQeCdYyCXfM
I picture the luxury fence as a guy who can broker deals between you and people willing to pay more for incidental nice the stuff you’re stealing in robberies (art, jewelry, etc). This nets you +1 coin on any job where you can find that kind of nice stuff.
Currently this fence works exclusively for some other gang, and you’ll need to break some legs, make a deal, do some blackmail (whatever kind job you’d like) to get him to work exclusively for you.
You may pay him a retaining fee, and maybe he even does some small side work. Ultimately this money is small potatoes and not worth keeping track of, it’s not worth 1 coin. The net effect of having this guy work for you is the extra coin from jobs.
Admittedly I’m the kind of guy who likes to keep this kind of stuff mostly abstract, so I don’t put much more thought in to it than that.