In a recent episode of the Bloodletters, John mentioned that if a player has a vice that could potentially net them assets that the player can pay a coin to actually pick up that asset (the example was the Cantor could drop a coin to pick up the fancy jacket he’s trying on).
What about when a PC has the obligation vice, and wants actionable intel? I have a player with an obligation vice to bring her dead demon lover back to life and spends her vice actions trying to research a way to do that. If it were not a vice, and just a plan she had, that would require many ticks on multiple LTPs, but it also doesn’t make sense for her repeated vice actions to get her nowhere. Should she spend rep to get useful intel? How many ticks is that worth?
I guess the other answer could be that this is not a good choice for vice, but I have another player in a different crew with the same issue. He’s searching for his parents who abandoned him as a child. These kinds of vices really give a character good stories and motivations, but I’m not sure what to actually do with them.
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I think of vice as “thing that pulls the character away from useful scoundrelling.” It is something that threatens to pull the character out of the life altogether, or kill the character, and it absorbs time and bandwidth and damages the character’s focus.
So, when vices like that are chosen, I tend to want to link them to things like the faction layout. Bill is desperate to find his parents, and he’s made some enemies among the spirit wardens, who he thinks took them away. He writes angry letters, stalks their archivists, and tries to bribe people on the inside to get at information he’s sure they’re hiding. He also is +1 on the Docks, because he’s made promises and spread around money and generally pimped out his services (and those of his unsuspecting crew) in exchange for information.
So now when entanglements come up, or complications during a mission, I’ll be thinking how it’s possible to link that back to Bill’s ill-advised full court press to find information that probably doesn’t even exist. Does this guy know Bill from that time he was ranting and had to be subdued in the guy’s office? Or maybe he promised that woman he’d take care of her problem in exchange for actionable intel, and now she’s in trouble and may or may not have the intel she promised, but she approaches him with it when he’s in disguise at a party and his focus is seriously split and the whole thing could go sideways.
Anyway, that’s all reflection. The short answer is, yes. I would absolutely let a character progress along the lines of the obsession. There are a couple reasons for this.
One, hitting one goal uncovers the goal beneath it, and frequently there’s no bottom. Like for Bill, he finds his mother, and she tells him there are three men who could be his father. Trying to bring someone back from the dead? You discover the 5 objects you need, and the date when it has to happen. And once all that goes down (assuming your campaign has legs and can go on that long) the person you brought back is either the wrong spirit in a body, or the wrong body for the spirit, and now THAT has to be fixed before you can be happy together. Dole it out; keep it a vice, but make that vice’s shape and cost morph so the harder the character pushes, the more there is to do.
Just keep in mind the vice should always be “thing that pulls the character away from useful scoundrelling” and it should be fine.
I haven’t seen the episode, but I do think these, though they are great drives, are not great vices. As drives, they make good LTPs, and provide good opportunities for the PCs to hit their ‘express your drive or background’ XP trigger. But the function of a vice is that it’s an indulgent, (probably) unsavory activity the PCs do to relieve stress, which might also blow back on them or hold them back. A PC might want to search for his parents, but the stress of his scoundrel life makes him find comfort in the bottle.
If you think of a vice as an unhealthy obsession that you pursue and get lost in, those certainly fit the bill in theory. Trying to bring someone back from the dead is indulgent, probably unsavory, and it will almost certainly blow back on the character. Basically everything you’re describing.
But the function of a vice is to relieve stress, which is why they are things like religion, gambling, and pleasure. When a PC indulges a vice to find their parents, are they enjoying a seductive respite from their life of crime? Or are they taking actions to further a long term goal?
It sounds like trying to fit these goals into a vice is undermining what vices are intended to do. The game is set up to handle goals like that through the long term project action, and for vices to provide scoundrels a release from their stresses.
I’m not saying you’re wrong necessarily, but to play devils advocate, I don’t see that researching in a library is inherently less stress relieving than getting beat to a pulp in underground fights. Depends on the person and what they take seductive pleasure in.
From the rules it’s clear, vices are obsessions, uncontrollable habits that bring risks and drive characters to act against their own best interests. Unsavouriness is a common trait of vices but not a requirement. The vices your players have created fit this definition fine; they’re clearly Obligation vices. And the relief, that’s seems clear too; it’s a relief if all they really want is to reconnect with their loved ones, to get to know them, to seek or grant forgiveness, to grow old together, whatever. Any progress they make toward that by indulging their vice is going to relieve them because they’ll feel they are not just treading water, they’re actually getting closer to their heart’s desire.
For your question, I say chuck a clock or two on the search, let them get closer to finding their loved ones. Then when they fill all those clocks, let them actually finally find them and reconnect with them. But that’s not where the Obligation vice ends, its probably where it really begins. Now they have to manage all the obligations that come with having them back in their lives. Should provide plenty of grist for the Vice mill.
For the record, I’m pretty sure that whisper is looking for his parents to take revenge for his abandonment. That player never said it out loud, but a heartfelt reunion is probably out of the question since he’s playing a mutilate the bodies level psycho.
I suppose you could ask why stop at the parents. Who else was to blame? What other wrong does he need to rectify? A taste for murder.
Or you take the Norman Bates approach. Killing them doesn’t have to be the end of his obsession with them.
He definitely has a taste for murder
In our game we had a similar situation where the vice was obsessing over gaining magic. We decided, in the end, the actions of researching magic when done as a vice action were actions obsessing over stuff rather than actual research. It was perusing pointless tomes or researching on long dead approaches that lead to nowhere significant. So it still manifested as a vice.
That might work for you in the sense that it still has the character do actions, but since they’re the vice and not logical thought, they don’t really help him out just relieve Stress. (“I tried.. i tried today at least..”)
That seems more similar to cantor’s vice of fancy clothes. More like acquiring objects useful for scores than an obligation that doesn’t have much, if any, mechanical value. In that case you can use the rule John mentioned of spending coin to actually gain what was discovered in the vice action.
Yeah, this is something of a minor house rule that we threw in for fun. There’s no rule about spending a coin to get something during your vice indulgence, and there isn’t meant to be such a rule.