Destroying the gang of another faction
So my Hawkers crew took the job to run the Black Anchor for the Red Sashes, who recently seized the gambling den and animal fighting pit from the Billhooks. The Hawkers know the Billhooks are coming back to reclaim it, but my players want to defend their position and lay an elaborate trap.
Now the Billhooks are Tier II with strong hold, so they send a gang of 20 thugs at the crew. And all 20 Billhooks end up dead in the street.
Aside from all the other fallout, what happens to the Billhooks’s tier and hold? I’m leaning to dropping their hold from strong to firm, because it was just one of their gangs. But my players didn’t specifically perform an operation to reduce the Billhook’s hold (p14 of 7.1 Quickstart), so maybe the Billhooks’s hold shouldn’t change. On the other hand, 20 gang members are gone, so maybe the Billhooks’s hold should drop even further?
I’d suggest either dropping from strong to firm, or if you feel it should drop more, then having it drop more but with more complications.
So options like:
– Strong to firm, but relationship with billhooks is reduced
– Strong to weak, but relationship with billhooks switches to war & their allied factions is relationship is reduced by 1
– Reduce billhooks to Tier I, but other factions are worried about these new guys who are literally destroying established factions, so start a whole lot of clocks about them. Some want to get the new group under their thumb, others want to deliver retribution, others want to create assurances that this won’t happen again. Basically, they’ve made a big splash and now are involved with everyone who has a stake in the status quo.
Follow the fiction! Absolutely drop their hold!
“But my players didn’t specifically perform an operation to reduce the Billhook’s hold”
Well, they didn’t specify it, but they still did the operation by having that battle where they killed ’em all. So I’d see no problem with dropping the hold.
I’d be cautious if the players were trying to double-dip by wanting multiple outcomes from one action. E.g. “I’m gathering information, by catching and interrogating billhook members then killing them. So I want the information, but I also want them to not have gang members since I’ve killed em. And that should reduce their hold.”
But I’m pretty comfortable with:
“I’m going to reduce their hold. We have this battle”
being equivalent to:
“They’re attacking us, we’ll battle them. Hey, can that reduce their hold?”
I think dropping their tier but starting a war is perfectly fictionally appropriate
I’m fine with following the fiction and making a call, but I think there’s a question here about how the tier ladder is intended to interact with the fiction.
Since Tier and hold are abstractions, what should losing a gang and a vice den mean for a Tier II faction with strong hold? Should I consider if the faction’s hold is vulnerable or not to losing people? I mean Billhook thugs are probably a dime a dozen; they need no special skill except being brutal with a cleaver.
Or should losing a gang always be a big deal for a faction?
From the pdf: “tier—a measure of wealth, influence, and scale.”
The Billhooks just permanently lost a gambling den and fighting pit. That probably makes them less wealthy. That probably also reduces their influence in that area. They also just lost 20 of their vicious fighters (and given their fearsome reputation, it’s probably not as easy to recruit new gang members as you might think: anyone with a hint of a soft spot probably wouldn’t clamor to join). That certainly gives them a smaller scale. How much their hold actually drops, that’s up to your discretion.
I’d say every gang is vulnerable to losing people, it’s just a question of how many people they lose. Losing an entire gang in one fell swoop is probably a drop in hold, especially if accompanied with any other loss.
If the Billhooks lose 20 of their vicious thugs, that probably matters. If the Unseen lose 20 of their agents, it’s probably not that big a deal, but they have a much bigger scale.
Good answers everyone.
Oliver, there’s no singular answer here. Make your ruling and communicate about why you made it, so the players understand.
Your thoughts here about the Billhooks thugs being a dime a dozen is just the right kind of thing to talk about.
That also sounds a lot like war with the Billhooks. 🙂 But let it cut both ways – think about which factions you have in play that might like that the PCs took on the Billhooks.
Adam Schwaninger Good though! This is what I love about Blades: Everything cuts both ways. The good things come with pain (“You do it, but there’s a consequence…), the bad things come with an ally you didn’t knew before
Cheers everyone!
Well, alternatively your hawkers can use this as an opportunity to now start an operation to reduce the Billhooks hold: spreading rumors that they have lost it and are now ripe for the taking, for example.
I thought a tier 2 gang had a scale of 20 people. Doesn’t this mean that your crew just killed the whole gang? Or is scale more how many people we’d expect to see them send / how many we’d expect to be at a piece of turf?
Antimatter I thought the same thing, but a gang in Blades is a cohort. A faction/crew can have multiple gangs, and each of those gangs for a Tier II crew can be about 20 people.
Blew my mind when I realized I’d been running the other way for months.
Adam Schwaninger Wow! This makes tier 2 factions a lot more scary! I feel bad for my players who just went to war with the Crows!