I know I’ve seen it before, but I think it deserves revisiting now. I have been playing since v3, also watched Six Towers Gang/the Bloodletters AP.
* Scurlock is a Tier III
* Crews can be Tier III, eventually
..and as of v7 or so..
* Citizens of Six Towers is also a Tier III
Scurlock is, by all accounts, just one nefarious vampire. Citizens is (I would guess) all of the people within a neighborhood. The text gives values for “scale of that faction’s gangs” as 10, 20, 40, or 80 people (for Tiers I, II, III, and IV respectively). Which gives rise to my question: When are those figures actually meaningful and how should I use them in play?
Also: I have been using it as a general “they have the influence and capabilities of this many criminals” but other interpretations arise if you use a very literal reading of the text while hunting for an answer one can use across the board: that the value indicates the size of the entire gang even though it says “each” and “gangs” and also says “per gang” OR literally each of the faction’s gangs is that size, and that there might be multiple of them but there is no telling how many
I’d clarify that gangs are 5/10/20/40/80 for 0/I/II/III/IV (p.13)
I’d love to hear interpretations of this as well. I suspect that it’s an upper limit for each individual gang. Though it’s worth noting that for the Criminal Underworld descriptions, none of the factions have “gangs” plural. Which is interesting.
I haven’t sicked a 20-man gang on my tier 0 players yet, because that seems mean. I take it more to mean that if the Lampblacks wanted to, they could rally 20 people to fight.
“Gang” is a specific game term for a type of cohort, which NPC factions can have just like PC crews can. How many gangs a given faction has, and what type they are, is up to the GM and the fiction, but the “Notable Assets” section of the faction write-ups serves as a guideline.
Scurlock is a special case, in that he himself is Tier III, as described on p. 58 of v7.1. All by his lonesome, he counts as a gang of 40 people. So if your crew is Tier III and your entire gang of killers tries to assassinate him, you don’t get advantage in Scale or Quality.
Citizens of Six Towers is also Tier III, but since we don’t have faction write-ups for the non-criminal factions yet, it’s harder to say what that means. Given that they’re civilians, it probably means they don’t have gangs as a faction, but that their Tier is a generalized representation of their influence in the city and how hard it is to act against them.
Oh right Steven Dodds I edited to correct my typo
I seem to recall, at least from the Citizenry aspect, the type/scale of “complications” that can occur. (Number of bluecoats around, private security people have, effective-ness at being prepared for scoundrels, ease of getting a mob quickly(?) ). I would imagine there are more than say.. 80 people in the higher districts (and the lower tiered districts definitely have more than 20 people…. )
I greatly enjoyed the added faction/tier status of citizenry, but I think a few sentences further defining its narrative impact could help clarify a lot.
I only see one specific use: If you’re crew is tier 1 and they want to skirmish a tier 2 gang, you better bring additional 10 people as support or suffer a scale penalty.
“Ok, we’re only 9 people. Where’s Fred? He promised he’ll come!”
“Well, you know how it is, his mom got sick and the dog ate his homework, so he’s grounded”
“WHAT? Do you know anything about scale penalties? DO YOU! SCALE! DOES THAT RING A BELL? Ok, boys, the battle is canceled, go home and make your homework. I won’t play football with you ever again.” 😉
Steven Dodds that is my interpretation as well
Travis Stout Maybe, but the practice of game mechanics getting special bold styling is used throughout the book to distinguish when the text is talking about a mechanic. And in this case (the text I am talking about above from p.13), “gang” is not. So I am inclined to disagree
“Gang” and “cohort” are not bold anywhere in the rules except where they’re initially defined on p. 48 (and, for some reason, are bold and small-caps in the summary of the Command action), even when the text is clearly and unambiguously talking about a gang in the mechanical sense. See for example the Spider’s Mastermind ability, the Cutter’s Not to Be Trifled With, the Gang Trouble entanglement on p. 37, etc.
Game term formatting: the bugaboo of designers everywhere. 🙂
There are more than 40 people in Six Towers. The faction of its citizenry is Tier III because that’s their overall quality and scale when it comes to getting something done. They don’t have the ability to rally together 100% of the citizens to do one thing.
A faction can have more than one gang (like a PC crew can), each with scale equal to their Tier. This is somewhat rare. But the Imperial Military, for instance, is a good example. They’re Tier VI, but they have more than 320 total soldiers. When they field a battalion, that’s how many troops they can easily muster in a single ‘gang’, but there are other battalions stationed elsewhere.
So, in other words:
“This faction decides to deal with a problem you’ve caused. They can quickly gather up and send X people.”
If you get into a protracted shootout with a tier I gang, when their backup arrives expect about ten thugs.
If you get into a protracted shootout with the military, when their backup arrives expect about 320 trained soldiers (and appropriately equipped, possibly with steampunk tanks, snipers, siege weaponry, etc.)
I assume this would vary depending on what the faction does. So you get into a protacted shootout and the cabbies send backup? That backup is much more likely to be transport-related, possibly evacuation for their combatants, maybe carriages that allow them to charge your lines and drop combatants directly into melee. If the fog hounds send backup, it might be less than would be expected for their tier, as they don’t really specialise in anything specific that would help with a fight.
Tony Demetriou Yep!
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