Hey there! I just bought Blades in the Dark and I’m going to be GMing the game later tonight for two of my friends. I have a few questions about how Crews work though:
1) Does every type of Crew start with a Cohort, or only the ones that has one listed at the top right by default? How many people are in a gang Cohort?
2) If a crew has no Cohorts, is anyone in it besides the PCs?
3) One of the Crew Quality upgrades is “Pet/Special.” I’m assuming the pet refers to a Hound’s pet, but what does Special refer to?
Thanks for the help!
you can get a Cohort to start with if you spend your 2 crew upgrade points to buy it. Otherwise no crew starts with a cohort. And yes that means its just the PCs to start with.
1) A cohorts size is determined by Crew tier. Tier 0 is ranked as a small gang so cohorts have 5 members. (Under Gang Scale By Tier in the Factions, Tier, & Rep section)
2) I don’t believe a Crew has any additional NPC members that aren’t Experts or part of a Cohort, but they do start with all the Gang contacts and the characters friends, which may be members of the gang fictionally.
1) Cult and Breakers start with cohorts by default (Adepts and Thugs, respectively). The other crews don’t. Size is determined by Tier (see page 13).
2) What Dan said. 🙂
3) Pet refers to any pet (including the Hound’s). Special refers to any special items that the crew adds during play. Maybe they have a demon-summoning pool and want to spend a crew upgrade to improve its quality.
Who needs a demon summoning pool when you can just have the pool send people to where the demons are?
Awesome, thank you!