On intimidating warring factions (standing up to bullies):
Our group ran into something that might be considered a problem. To our players, it made a lot of sense to do a job to mess up a faction who decided to start a war with us (See Entanglements: Show of Force) to send the message of, “This war ends when you stop deciding you want our turf so damn bad.” We wanted to make a plan to steal a few of their smuggling boats, showing them we’ll take what’s theirs until they decide they don’t need to take what’s ours. We saw this as a job capable of narratively moving the faction status to -2. We even considered putting heads on spikes and painting the walls red with blood. Ya know, the usual.
Our GM pointed out that the mechanics seem to make this kind of idea impossible, and as far as I can tell, he’s right. The rules say, “When you execute an operation, you gain -1 or -2 status with
any factions that are hurt by your actions.” Being
at war means your status with a faction is -3, and vice versa. As a result, it seems like after the job we’d just immediately go back to being at war.
Was this an oversight? Is this the kind of situation where you forego the rules due to house common sense? Is it supposed to be impossible to teach a faction that their war with you is unwise, because all factions in Doskvol are hardened/ambitious enough to not care?
All thoughts appreciated!
You can’t ever end a war by just doing stuff, wars end by mutual agreement. In other words, weakening them won’t end a war, but it might force them to agree to end it. That’s not tracked by your status, though.
Jason is right. See page 14 of the v6 PDF:
“You can end a war by eliminating your enemy or by negotiating a mutual agreement to establish a new status rating.”
One handy way to get that agreement is by stealing their boats and then sending them a message: “Agree to a neutral status or your boats burn.”
If I were GMing this I’d call this either an attempt to lower their enemies hold or to gain turf (smuggling boats/docks). The crew would still be -3 faction and thus at war but they’d be in a much better bargaining status when they set down to call a truce.
Yep, exactly right, Colin.
As it says in the rules “You can end a war by eliminating your enemy or by negotiating a mutual agreement to establish a new status rating.” What your crew is attempting is to have the upper hand in any future negotiation by putting them in their place. Hence the operation to which would hurt the enemy where they are vulnerable and Reducing their Hold. If you were being generous, you could have the operation both Reduce the enemies Hold and gain the crew some Turf (the smuggling boats/docks). The future negotiation could then just be run as the last part of the operation to steal their smuggling boats. Just frame the scene and make it a Sway roll.
Thanks guys!
In our game I never really felt like there was a “declaration of war.” It felt like the other faction randomly decided to be at war with us because we wouldn’t give them a claim. As a result, I assumed leaving war status would also work via a random decision on their part that we might help along. My feeling that way was just an unfortunate side effect of our not zooming in on the scene where war was declared or the Force was Shown.
You’re clearly all right about how this should work. Thanks again!
If modern politics have taught us anything – it’s that anything that isn’t a war can be declared a war, and you can be at war without ever calling it a war…
tl:dr; War status is a game mechanic, not a fiction descriptor.
Peter Cobcroft I feel pretty sure it is supposed to be a fiction descriptor as well as a game mechanic, but you’re definitely right that you can be at war without calling it a war.
The Iraq “war” and the war on drugs leap to mind.
Yeah…and depending on the participants it might not even be declared for anything you did. “Mad Madam Mendelssohn says kill everyone on the block, so here we are.”