How does your group decide on Heists?
Do you have NPC contacts that approach the group and offer jobs, and the PCs say “yes” or “no”?
Do you have NPC contacts that the PCs can go to and ask “what jobs are on offer?”
Do your PCs work towards some plan (wealth, power, crew reputation) and create their own Heists?
So far in our game, our crew has mostly been deciding on heists for themselves – I’ve told them to look at what’s on the sheets as inspiration. So during the first plot (lampblacks vs red sashes) then they decided “Hey, let’s run a brothel” so when they were told to help the Lampblacks they said “Sure! We want to take a brothel away from the Red Sashes, and want your help holding it once we’ve got it” and used that conflict as a way to advance their own agenda.
Next, they wanted a fence, so I rolled randomly on the chart to figure out a heist involving a fence (He’s been fencing supernatural goods to one of Lord Scurlock’s rivals. Lord Scurlock wants that to stop) – so that gives them a few options, they could contact Scurlock and ask for a job taking out the fence. They could take out the fence and hope favour flows their way. But they decided to protect the fence, and earn him as an ally (and earn the “Fence” crew turf advantage)
So they talked to him, we RPed stuff, they investigated and whatnot, and convinced him to switch from fencing to clients directly, and instead to hold illegal auctions. That way he could still fence these illegal goods, and Scurlock and his rival can bid on them – whoever ends up with the goods, that’s not the Fence’s responsibility or fault. The hope being that Scurlock would no longer have a motivation to remove the fence, while allowing the fence to continue operating. So they’ve been organizing what will be necessary to conduct an illegal auction (find a way to advertise, find a venue. They’ve just arranged one of the auctioneers from the slave markets to be their auctioneer. They’re hoping to break into the house of an absent noble and hold the auction there, and make that a “signature” of their auctions – held at a different noble’s house each time)
All lots of fun, but as you can see, the “heist” evolves as the story progresses, and it’s heavily dependent on the downtime RP, NPC interactions, etc. – which probably explains why we have an issue with the “starting in the middle of the heist” mechanics, since that skips a lot of the fun stuff.
I’ve had an NPC at the slave markets tell the hound “Hey, if you’re ever looking for work, I’ve got a list of wanted people. If you can grab them, I can sell them as slaves and split the profit” so that there’s at least one opportunity for the player to say “give me a heist” – and something like that, I can see as much easier to “start in the middle of things”
I’m not complaining about how our games have been going – I’m satisfied so far, and having fun. But I was musing about whether the way our group decides on the heists might explain this disconnect.
With my group, it’s been a mix of all three. At the beginning it was mostly them going to the Lampblacks, the Sashes, or the Crows and seeing what needed doing. Lately, it’s been a lot of them looking over the claim sheet to see what interested them, when there wasn’t something that just presented itself in the story (which there’s been a lot of as well).
My understanding is that the mechanics are not designed to prevent planning, they’re designed to allow you to set how much planning you want to do, and to prevent *over*planning. In my own group, we’ve found that our comfort level is to do a bit of gathering info (I usually give each character one roll), in order to give the job some kind of shape and context.
Tony, you are definitely doing it right.
The game has a method to skip logistical planning, but it doesn’t skip the part where you decide what you want to do. That’s always a very rich part of play.
Use the planning mechanic to skip any tedious logistical stuff as needed (like, “But wait. Is the canal wide enough? What if our boat is too big? We better get a smaller boat. Or can we measure the canal?” etc. etc.).
I suspect that your group doesn’t get bogged down like that, so don’t worry about it.
We do tend to get bogged down in questions like “Is the canal wide enough?” in the early stages – if they’ve decided to sneak in via the canal we don’t get bogged down there. But if they’ve decided to sneak in and haven’t yet decided how they’re going to do it, the group tends to ask to scout the area or similar, and want details described (like “there’s a canal that runs alongside”, “How wide is it?”) – they then put those details together when deciding what score they want to do, and how to do it. Perhaps I should answer those questions with more questions, rather than with answers.
“There can be a canal. What are you thinking?”
We also totally get bogged down on little details on purpose. The players like to “create their own complications” as part of their RP.
So, with the auctioneer, as well as the auctioneer they hired, they also asked me to RP a totally reliable, reasonable NPC woman auctioneer that was available for hire – so that the one PCs sexist behaviour and bigotry could come into the RP.
And then they argued over which auctioneer they’d hire, and bickered over it “this guy is overcharging!” “Yes, but by the end of the negotiations we’ll have brought him down to a reasonable price” “Sure, but that price will still be higher than what the other one is charging, AND she’s reliable and professional” “We can’t have a woman auctioneer! The clients won’t take her seriously!”
Lots of fun! And I’m totally not worried about it 🙂
But it does make it seem strange when we spent most of the session “planning” such a tiny detail, and end up spending longer on that RP than on the score itself.
But that’s great! The score is still really useful, because it gives us context and in-character motivation for that other RP. It gives a reason for the PCs to be arguing and planning over whether to hire a woman, or whether to stick with the man.
It doesn’t matter as long as everyone is having fun. That’s the end goal!
Yeah, if your method is working for the group, then keep doing that!
If you want to skip the canal scouting as a pre-planning phase, you can do that kind of stuff in flashback. When the engagement roll is a 1-3, and you tell them that their wide boat gets jammed in the canal and a sentry is coming over to investigate the noise — then they can do a flashback to scouting the place and figuring out a contingency plan.
Their flashback planning will be focused on the problems that do happen, not the problems that might happen.
But you probably don’t need that tweak if everyone enjoys the current method.
I’m a storyteller as a GM and my groups are used to that, so they tend to accept the heist hooks I feed to them via NPCs and the like. This hasn’t stopped them from creating their own part in the story, though. 😛 The most recent heist in one of my games grew organically out of a war with Ulf Ironborn and a long-term project the party Cutter had to help an old Bluecoat friend get back on the streets. Long story short: Ulf Ironborn is in Ironhook now.
I have little experience about this, I’ve GMed only one session so far and We are still setting in the system, mechanics and narrative-wise.
In our experience, the “skip to the middle of te action” kinda got us off guard in terms of roleplay.
My players, like Tony Demetriou’s, enjoy roleplaying between Scores and the nature of the heist also evolves from the roleplaying happened in there.
And we found that 2 actions per downtime is somehow odd, because my players asked me “what if we want to do more things before we start the heist?” Like..where is the limit between an actual Downtime Action like Gather Information and a roleplayed scene with a NPC in which they obtain something too? I feel like I can’t say just “No you can’t do that, you have done your actions already”.
I’ve thought of make some of these scenes an score if involves some kind of risk, like negotiate with the leader of another faction. I want my players feel free from roleplaying scenes between scores. But I can’t tell for sure where to draw the line.
Hmmm. A few clarifications:
Roleplaying between Scores is a part of the game. I’m not sure how you got the idea that it wasn’t allowed, but I need to revise that text if it’s in there.
(If you’ve seen my YouTube series, you can see that there’s lots of roleplaying between scores and during downtime).
2 downtime activities is all the time you have before you have to start paying — either in rep or in coin. You can take more downtime actions until you run out of rep or coin. If you want to keep taking even more, maybe one of your friends or allies will loan you the coin. Otherwise, you have to work for a living, not just sit around prepping for days on end.
A “roleplaying scene” isn’t a downtime activity, so it doesn’t count as one of your 2 things. Have as many as you want.
Also, there’s no limit on the number of flashback actions you can take. This is kind of the magic trick in the game. You can say, “Okay, let’s go after the Grinders. We can assault one of their holdings.”
Then you go into the engagement roll and the GM cuts to the opening action of the score.
Then you can flashback as much as you want to various preparations or whatever — but they’ll be usefully focused on the situation of the score as established by the engagement, rather than a lot of “what if” theorizing.
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You can definitely make “between score” actions into scores. Like negotiating with the Lampblacks can be a Social plan.
Thank you your answer certainly clarified some questions!
Oh, I don’t think the text in the book is confusing. I wasn’t thinking that I’m not allowed to roleplay between Scores. But maybe I didn’t explain myself clearly (sorry, I’m not a native speaker, so bear with my english ^^u)
Uhmm.. maybe the point is not if the crew can roleplay or not between scores, but more like if they can “benefit” from it the same way they can benefit with downtime actions like rolling for indulging their vice, train, gather info, etc
In example: They can spend 1 downtime action to roll gather info… But what if they roleplay with a friend or a contact to gather the same information. Yeah, a contact always can ask for coin or a deal in exchange. But for the sake of this, let’s assume that there is free info.
So, they could use that downtime action to do other things, and roleplay the gathering of information.
I’m tyring to be a little extreme here, because I know some players are min-maxers and they will abuse the system if one thing is more convenient than another. And I want to know how to deal with them if that happens. I will remind them about “Do Not Be A Weasel”, but if I have more argumentation, the better. I will definitely use the “you have to work for a living” thing.
You can tell them that they get two things on the downtime list for free. If they do more things that are on that list, they have to pay for them. That’s just how it is — it’s a limitation in exchange for not having to track every little living expense or other factors. Since we abstract the daily living details and costs, we also abstract the PC’s available time for downtime actions.
If they do things that aren’t on the list, they probably don’t have to pay for them.
Yeah, I have a strange mix in my table. Some are very interpretative players and the others a bunch of min-maxers.
Thank you, I will tell that to my weasels players 🙂
A situation that came up in our game – leading up to the aforementioned illegal auction, the players decided “let’s get a fence” and I dropped some clues (the ghosts know about something that Lord Scurlock is doing regarding a fence) so they wanted to spend their downtime actions gathering information.
The creepy character spent her downtime action going to talk to the ghosts for more info (and brought along another PC) – so that’s one downtime “gather information” action, right? But we roleplayed it, and that roleplay involved some dice rolls against ghosts, some stress, and some damage.
Then, having found out that Scurlock wants to stop this fence from trading items to his unknown rival – they decide that if they can protect the fence, they might be able to convince him to be their ally.
So the hound character decides to “gather information” by watching the fence. I describe his business front (deliveries – organizing overseas shipments, but also running messages and packages around the city) and they see some lower class people coming and going from the store. So it seems like he’s receiving goods at the store, then sending them to buyers via courier. The players describe that they keep watching, until the end of the day when he leaves work, and goes to a bar. Then they roleplay going up to him, talking to him, trying to convince him that he’s in danger and that they’re allies.
So, with the ghosts, there was a clear goal of the scene – find out what the ghosts knew. But even so, the line between “score” and “downtime action” seemed vague to me. It was only a downtime action because the player said that’s what they wanted to do with their action.
With the second case, it seemed a clear downtime action, but the players roleplay kinda-sorta turned it into a social score, when they tried to turn the fence into an ally and get the turf claim. It wasn’t clear to me whether I could have him say “Thanks for warning me.” and then the PCs, now knowing about this fence, could have the turf claim. That seemed insubstantial to me, maybe?
(So instead I had him say “Oh dear, how will we solve this!” and the players said “Auction the stuff instead of selling directly, and let the rivals fight it out”, and so holding an illegal auction became the score that would win them the fence.)
It’s kind of that fluidity between “OK, I’m roleplaying out this downtime action – but now I want to start doing the sorts of actions that I might do during a score” that throws me.
We also had a similar (but reversed) situation at the end of their first score, where they’d shot a few people at a brothel – they rearranged the scene so that it looked like those people had shot each other, waited for the bluecoats, invited them in, and said “our patrons got in a fight!” – in that case, since the score was pretty much done, I just had one of the PCs spend their first downtime to “reduce heat” to show that the bluecoats weren’t suspicious. I guess I could also have taken their framing into account when judging if the score had been chaotic or not… but it felt strange to say “reduce heat is a downtime action” when they’re interacting with bluecoats, bribing them etc. during a score. Or trying to convince a fence he’s beholden to them during a downtime action.
In my group, whenever there’s a question of whether something should be just a downtime action or something more, the main question I ask is “What’s the risk involved?” If there’s any kind of risk, it’s not a downtime action. That usually keeps things fairly simple. More often than not, my players will start talking about something they want to do, come around to talking about the possible risks involved, and then realize on their own “Wait, that should be a score.”
“Risk” was my first thought as well. As GM, at the moment where the ghosts are moving toward a conflict that might inflict stress or damage, I’d try to remember to ask the players, “Do you want to abort, or keep pushing and possibly turn this into a score?” If I forgot, hopefully the first roll would remind me.
As for the fence roleplay scene, it sounds like there was uncertainty, but not about stress or damage, just about how much persuasion would be required. I wouldn’t have known how to handle that until John said “they get two things on the downtime list for free” above. That makes sense to me. Now I think I’d turn a roleplay scene into a downtime spend at the moment something useful on the list is gained.
I hope I’ve got all that right!
Separately, I really love the idea that you could theoretically work on a ton of stuff between scores but you’d be going into debt in the process (borrowing coin). Kinda makes me want to see if I can figure out (in character) a way to harness that prep to pull off a super-lucrative score that’ll pay everyone back and leave me in the black…
I love the idea that you end up in debt between scores for a meta reason – it’s a really strong game mechanic that emphasises the setting full of criminals.
Like, the OOC physics of the game world literally don’t allow your character to prosper as an honest worker – they need to supplement their income with crimes, grift, or scams.
The NPCs (who don’t have to follow the game rules) might be another matter.
I find that when games really strongly tie the fictional situation and the game mechanics together like that, it makes for a much more satisfying experience.
I tend to translate everything I can into in-fiction causality, but I like the dynamic too. I’ll just pile a little “can’t get out of this life” or “this is all I know” or “these are my expenses” atop the rules. 🙂