Vice.
So as a GM I tend to keep the mechanics of a game running in my head and they help (and sometimes hinder) me when making decisions. Vice has the overindulge option “Lose your purveyor” which seems to imply you need one ‘fixed’ purveyor to use the indulge vice action (and from the Bloodletters AP, this can lead to some interesting stories).
But one of my players essentially whores around and has a regular brothel she visits. At some point she was invited elsewhere for some partying and I was asked if this can count as the de-stress action and I said “well no, because if you overindulge etc etc” So I’ve limited the players to have that one contact or at least, that one contact until they LTP for a backup.
Am I over fixating on the spirit of the rules or do they exist for a reason?
Mechanically it’s definitely set up for “pick a specific purveyor” but lose your purveyor can be played with. The intent of that consequence (as far as I interpret it) is that until they go to some effort (probably a long term project or score) they can’t indulge their vice again. So if your player loses their purveyor have something go horribly wrong on one of their whoring nights, so bad that all the prostitutes in town blacklist the player. Working whores looking out for each other know when a client is trouble and your player is now too much trouble for any of them to want to deal with. Until they figure out a way to smooth things over with the community or search out a new way to relieve their stress they’re going to be a pent up ball of frustration.
So I’d say it’s totally fine for them to go somewhere else and do it as well, this is often done in the series John GM’s on his channel the bloodletters where Arcy just sleeps with an assortment of different people. So if the player overindulges while they’re out somewhere irregular feel free to just change up the consequence. The point is just that it’s another consequence. Some of them are consequences of time and effort and money, the loss of purveyor really probably just means something is in the way of them relieving stress in their normal fashion. Maybe she goes to the party and picks up a VD and can’t engage in sex until she gets it treated long term by a doctor. Maybe she lets out the secret of her favorite brothel houses at the party and they end up being booked up for weeks until she can find somewhere else or some other way to get an appointment.
That’s how I’ve been playing it, but for some vices, it’s weird not to be able to just cross the street and indulge elsewhere.
I would wing it like, your specific purveyor lets you indulge your vice for free. (besides the downtime action) You can go elsewhere if you like, but it’s going to cost you coin. So yeah you can get your stupor anywhere, but only Frank down at Ash st, lets you run a tab and never refuses service.
It could also be something internal for a character like that, though. Sure, every street has someone selling eeldogs, and you love them (although the old-fashioned ones at Tockers are the best!). Like “Oh why did I ever eat eeldogs” screaming between the sobs and canal-side sickness.
Now you’re going to need to undertake a long-term project to cultivate a taste for something else that will satisfy your vice. Might I suggest a slightly higher-class affair? Maybe a nice bat-brain sandwich?
John Dornberger “I’m a consenting adult!”
What Chris McDonald said in his 2nd paragraph: If you don’t have a specific vice purveyor, then when you overindulge you just can’t pick the option to lose your vice purveyor; you have to pick one of the other penalties.
I’d think it’s fine to for them to indulge at another brothel. I’ve had players who have weird vices that change a lot and they didn’t necessarily have a single purveyor. When they over indulged I just had it so they either burned their normal haunts or whatever weird shit they got up to normally just wasn’t doing it anymore (basically they burned themselves out) and they had to hunt to find a really weird thing to find that kick again. In your player who likes to frequent brothels you could have it that they fucked up and word is on the street so no sex workers (or at least none they want) will do business with them. Or you could have it that none of the workers they normally frequent are really getting them off so they have to search for high and low for someone that will.
Indulging a vice is inherently risky in my interpretation. Otherwise, having a purveyor wouldn’t serve much purpose.
A bit of a subtle thing I noticed: I structure the narrative such that having a purveyor for your vice is always safer than Not having one. Which is to say that whenever players indulge without an official purveyor, I call out a significant risk for that fiction rather than let them fast-forward to indulging. Those rolls might risk coin, time, or whatever else makes sense to get there, all preceding the roll to clear stress.
LTPs of varying lengths have handled my players looking to set up a relationship with a new purveyor. Action rolls have also served this role nicely when it made sense (a clock isn’t always needed).
I’d like to see more clarity around purveyors myself.
My group made their characters alone, much to my chagrin, so when we got together for the first time only two of them had picked actual purveyors (and none of them had picked faction standings).
So one guy just sleeps with people (Pleasure), and another goes to clothing stores (Luxury). And when the latter overindulged once, he chose to be cut off from the clothing store he had never actually named or described and had no attachment to. I let him, but I also gave him Hell for it because it was a huge cop-out both mechanically and story-wise. He basically choose “no consequence” as his consequence, which was boring, so I made fun of him a bunch. Eventually he decided it should cost him coin to establish a new place, but it’s still just another unnamed clothing store.
I’m not a huge fan of requiring a long-term project or score to reestablish a new purveyor, I just think it shouldn’t be consequence-free. Story consequences are interesting, so that’s sufficient for me.
Thanks guys, my mental reprogramming is complete.
The easiest thing is don’t pick “cut off” unless you can make sense of it in the fiction.
(this is true of every rule and system)
It’s more the knowledge that it’s there and, at some point, could be triggered.
When I first started GMing some twenty years ago my group came from a hardcore AD&D background and took advantage of my naiveté to exploit rule language and any sort of precedents I gave out. So over time I developed an automatic ‘lock in’ when I see some things in a book, just so I don’t get surprised by a clever player later (even though that group has long since gone.) Blades is the kind of game I wanted to run back then, but now I have all these bad habits and techniques that I need to shake off. Easier said than done.
I hear ya, but that’s the cool things about playing lots of new and different games, your old habits start to disappear.
I have this exact situation in my head. Arcy sleeps with lots of folks. Including, but only occasionally with her husband Julian (though he is off limits most of the time). If she ever overindulges and I select the option to lose her purveyor that will be because she’s sworn off sex with anyone but someone she doesn’t currently have access to (probably Julian, but who knows).
So, I think is very doable, but it’s got to be something the player is willing to invest in, otherwise it’s an empty choice.
I ran my first session last night and came across that issue (the book saying “visit your vice purveyor” on page 155 and on the next when it went into more detail, saying you need to specify ehich purveyor you go to, implying choice). Given the “lose your purveyor” consequence, I figured the specific purveyor must matter somehow. My ruling until I could find an actual answer, was that your named purveyor is like a named contact. They know your tastes. They know exactly what you like. Maybe they hook you up because you are a valued customer. So you get +1d when you go to them, just as you would for any other action with an NPC offering assistance.
It’s just my first session, so if in your experience you think that won’t work long term, by all means, please lemme know.
Sean Cox I agree vice purveyor is important, but I think friends and contacts are just as. I treat them as actual game mechanics terms, and the way those words are used in the book I’m fairly convinced they Are like purveyor, and just lack capitalization in most usage.
So if their friend or contact ends up becoming their vice purveyor, then I give them the +1D for indulging with them. However i don’t say their vice purveyor is automatically either of those.
Of course, for being their friend or contact, the project to make them a vice purveyor (unless they’re already one, though I know of none on the friends list for PCs) is potentially within reach. Similarly, the project to make them give the PC “free” vicing should be within reach. So that’s something!