Some thoughts on crime fiction.
Whatever crime you do isn’t actually what we want to see on screen, unless what you do has to do with relationships in conflict.
This is an early lesson imrov actors learn. If you have a scene where two people are fishing, the last thing you talk about is fishing.
The same is true of crime fiction. John Harper, Stras Acimovic, Adam Koebel and I often chastise ourselves that the Bloodletters don’t spend any time actually “hawking”. We’re usually fighting, but sometimes we’re brokering deals or fronting to other factions, or hunting down own foes in their homes.
But why? Because those things are interesting! Sure, we’ll show montages of here and there of someone getting a tattoo with demon blood, or our junkies collapsing in the alley, but how much fun would it be for us to play out a drug dealer with an addict? If the addict had something we wanted besides a few chits, plenty interesting, but otherwise, we care about the other factions and rivals (really one in the same) in the city.
There is a reason why the default crew were Thieves (now Shadows). The default action of thieves is taking something from someone else. It’s crime, but it’s also relationships in conflict, and that’s why it’s exciting.
So, call yourselves hawkers or smugglers or breakers or cultist or astronomers, it’s all the same. The action we want play (and want to see) is which of your neighbors soups you’re pissing in, and what they do to your soup in turn.
[Note: I’m not advocating changing anything in Blades, just not worrying too much (or at all) if you spend all your time doing other things.]
In the latest rendition of BitD, John included the citizens of neighborhoods as factions. I think this works very well with hawkers, since any sort of vice you’re pushing is going to be effecting the citizenship in a certain way. And while the citizens themselves might not have a lot of ability to react it would be interesting to see who they reach out to for assistance.
The other possibly entertaining relationship, would be the high profile clients. Like the factory owner who is spending his money on your vice instead of worker protection/raises. Or the noble, with very nosy relatives.
Not saying the bloodletters are doing it wrong. Your play seems great. I think the hawkers just have an opportunity to explore different facets of Duskwall than say other mafioso types would.
Actually this has been one of the few problems my group had with BitD. They chose to be smugglers but then found out that transporting stuff quietly is way less fun than acquiring claims, dealing with the crew’s problems or even doing “assigned” missions. And so they didn’t really do much smuggling. They are pondering on whether to switch to another crew playbook or not.
The good thing is that John apparently rehashed the crew XP section in v7 so there’s less stuff about transporting things, logistics, and routes and more about the interesting bits of the game (looking at the smugglers’ specifically). So they might give it another shot.
The only concern for me as a casual fan is that this makes each crew type somewhat less unique? But I’m sure John has thought about that and it’s a good trade-off.
Sean Nittner Good insights. Thanks for posting.