I’m going to start GMing a campaign this month with a crew of Breakers. Any advice/experience running this crew type? Is there any Actual Play report with breakers as protagonists that could be read for “inspiration”?
Thanks,
D.
I’m going to start GMing a campaign this month with a crew of Breakers.
I’m going to start GMing a campaign this month with a crew of Breakers.
There was a potential of my group becoming breakers (They turned into shadows eventually, but still, gotta keep those bases covered), I could probably type out some of the ideas I had for inspiration if you want me to.
My group is ostensibly Shadows but they crime like Breakers. Search #heestcomplete.
Bavo Th.Yes, please, share!
I have a limited experience with Breakers, having run a one-shot with the gang deciding to be Breaker.
Bazso send them to shake down a store not telling them that it was in Red Sashes territory. They burst in and all was going well with the intimidation except the shopboy had slipped out to bring in Red Sash reinforcements.
Two tier 2 opponents were a tough fight for the novice gang and the cutter took a serious wound, but they won the day and Bazso rewarded them with half the takings.
As I said, a one-shot, but it helped give the players an idea of how the system worked.
I was thinking in something similar to start the campaign. Glad to hear that went well for you.
Yeah. We had a full campaign of Breakers.
We started a lot like the old-school mafia. We protected our neighborhoods and businesses for a cut. Spent a bunch of downtimes repairing relationships, rebuilding some places that got wrecked etc.
Breakers in general are warmongers. There is a ton more fights in the streets, and places being burned than with most of the other gangs (we framed up and shunted our heat off onto our rivals twice).
Peaky Blinders is probably a good show to watch for Breakers inspirations.
What sort of Qs do you have?
I have read from many people that start playing as other crews, but end acting as Breakers. If we start as Breakers, where will we end? 🙂
Talking seriously, I am looking for suggestions for introducing some variation so that not every session turns out in an assault/fight (as breakers, the players are asking for that, but I’d like to throw a curve every now and then).
I have a couple of ideas about having them to protect someone/something, and about being blackmailed by an inspector/magistrate (blatantly stolen from Peaky Blinders :)), but we’ll see (“Play to find out what happens”).
Mechanically, I’m worried that, with more fights, the harm rules cripple them too much, or force them to spend out too many downtime actions recovering. Have you find that this is a problem with Breakers?
David Barrena I’m in the process of moving, but I’ll try to find some time to type up some of the ideas I had!
David Barrena if I can add some advice from long-term play with a bunch of murderous bastards:
1. You can set precedents for how much resistance rolls reduce harm. When I started, I was worried about the PCs’ durability so I set a precedent where you generally avoid harm with a resistance roll unless it’s, like, level 3. I let them resist and then choose to spend armor instead, and I let armor stop harm entirely.
This is a mistake, because later on when they’re Tier III and have a dot in each Prowess action and roll 4d to resist stabbings, you will cry GM tears and they will laugh with glee. 🙂
I suggest you set a precedent where resisting harm downgrades it instead of avoiding it entirely. Then in situations where you want them to avoid it entirely, it’s you being nice instead of being a “killer GM”.
If you’re worried still, I suggest (and this is how I’m running currently) letting Armor avoid harm entirely. It’s such a limited resource that I’m okay with it being useful.
Recovery: Let the players make their own decisions. If they don’t like an 8-count recovery clock, they can take Cutter::Resilient as a veteran advance to heal faster. That way you don’t dilute the usefulness of that ability by hacking recovery times in general.
Also a leach with Physicker gets at least 3d6 on all downtime healing rolls for the crew (don’t forget that s/he can make the rolls for other people’s downtime actions).
The group I play are a group of Skovlander child soldiers turned street urchins turned Breakers led by one of the kids Uncles.
Our first mission was to rush a bar that the Lampblacks had recently lost to the Red Sashes (after having negotiated with Bazo Baz to a truce between our gangs.) We then starts a riot by throwing a Skovlander pride festival and leading a bunch of drunken Skov’s to trash a Red Sashes bar as a distraction while our Leech snuck in to blow up their distilery that was making counterfeit Skovland whiskey.
After this we negotiated with Grinders to stay out of our business with Ulf Ironborn because our group has a blood feud with him. This led to the Grinders helping to arrange a formal street battle with Ulf a la Gangs of New York. Our last session we left off with our gang fighting with Ulf in the sewers as both our gang and his tried to use to sewers to ambush the other gang on their way to the fight. When we win we plan on claiming his bar and asserting ourselves as the official protectors of Skovlanders in the city.
Our future plans, aside from continuing our snatching of Red Sashes territory, is to set up gambling dens with fighting pits, which we plan to fill with exotic animals stolen from the zoo in the Docks district.
I will be posting some more fleshed out Actual Plays in the next couple weeks but hopefully this brief overview can give you some ideas.