I was having a conversation with my gaming group about gangs. And the general feeling was that it simply doesn’t make any sense to worry about getting a gang until maybe Tier 2 at earliest, and probably Tier 3 realistically. The reason for this is that because of the way dice work, the Expert is the only thing that will really be useful at Tier 0 and Tier 1, and probably Tier 2, because they HAVE to be able to roll a few dice before they’re worth bothering with.While this a bit of a metagamey aspect of things, the math is also important.
I was wondering what other people thought. What’ve your experiences been?
More hands and eyes are a big advantage for fictional positioning.
Certainly depends on the crew and what they are going for. Assassins and Shadows might not have much use; but crews mugging people in the streets or selling drugs on a corner might want to have lookouts set up to give early warnings.
Also, for holding territory, keeping claims secure; it’s easier to justify if you got some people to put to work.
Gangs can also participate in team actions, and even at zero dice, a small gang fighting alongside the cutter should improve their effect.
At Tier 0 I think you’re right, because a 0 scale gang is just 1 or 2 people, but once you get to Tier 1 that scale advantage starts to help a bunch.
Do you guys think that the scale advantage offsets the die that you lose from it not being an Expert? And that’s a good point Mathias!
I think Mathias Belger has the right idea here. Fictional positioning is such an important element in Blades as I understand it. In the game I’m running, our crew of Shadows purchased a gang of thugs almost immediately — having that muscle available is invaluable, especially since it’s only a crew of 3. On their own, there’s only so much that’s possible in the fiction. With a gang, they can get into a lot more in any given session.
Thirding the comment on fictional positioning. In BitD and other PbtA derivatives, fictional positioning is a lot more important than dice pools: there are a whole host of things the GM and players should consider off-limits just because they’re not do-able with the resources and fictional set-up. That’s codified more formally in BitD with the positioning/etc. three-tier system, but it’s still the same underlying idea: the scams you can pull off when you have extra people to look out, rip people off, distract guards, etc. are different than the ones you can pull off w/o. The classic essay, IMO, on the power of fictional positioning is the original 15 HP Dragon essay for Dungeon World (http://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/).
If you guys don’t feel the difference, it may be that either you’re being too easy on yourselves and getting away with stuff that you shouldn’t, or that you’re not being ambitious enough in how big your scams are.
Scale also directly ties into Effect calculation.
Gangs have been vitally useful at all levels, in my experience. If you have a gang, that expands what you can do with flashbacks. Even if it is just a few people, they can plug a hole in your expertise or be doing something somewhere the PCs aren’t.
For example, I had a crew with no whisper who had a gang of adepts who could help them cope with some level of supernatural challenge. And they added a crew of rooks who could provide the necessary fresh faces to pull a con.
One of the characters botched an attempt to buy a property, even though he had the money, and we found out he did the bureaucrat’s daughter wrong and he was NEVER going to get that property. So, enter a gang of rooks to pose as buyers and use the crew’s Coin to acquire the property.
As for dice pools, that’s command, so especially if you plan to lead gangs and build your character accordingly you can get all sorts of mileage out of them.
Fiction first and flashbacks combine to make a few extra groups besides your PCs super helpful.
So many helpful answers so quickly! God I love this community. Thank you everybody for the help, especially Mathias Belger for the wisdom, J Stein for the really nice article link, and Andrew Shields with the extremely helpful example 😀