Kill contracts
My players have made a group of assassins and I’m wondering how to handle the whole “murder for money” thing. I already told them I don’t want them to sit around waiting for me to hand out quests but another thing I’m unsure is the following: if they get a mark how do you start the score? My players are gonna say (once they accept the mission) “ok we follow him for a long time and see what’s up”. Do you describe the npcs entire day? Give them an option of 2 or 3 possible locations for a kill? Or include it in the contract like “kill the gang leader in front of his man”? Also my group has a ex military sniper, so what are some interesting ways to make a kill challenging without denying sniping?
Perhaps give them an NPC that’s always got a list of bounties. The PCs can go to that NPC at any time and get a handful of possible targets.
And whenever you need a new target, either the players can give the outline, and tell you whether the pay is low, medium or high. And then explain why.
“Low pay. This brewer has annoyed someone, but he’s not body in particular and should be easy to kill.”
“High pay, because the target is a noblewoman.”
“High pay, the target is a thug, but always surrounded by his Red Sashes friends.”
“Medium. The target should be easy enough, but they’re friends with the Bluecoats, and you’ll lose faction status.”
So then the players follow him for a long time to see what’s up, and if you’ve got ideas you drop them. If you don’t, you ask the players what’s up.
You don’t have to shoulder all the creativity yourself.
To make a kill challenging:
– Add context. It’s not just a target, it’s a target who works in the steel mill, and goes home during the evening crowd all leaving together, and lives in a crowded, squalid apartment building. Even if the kill is still “easy” you’ve got more story around it.
– Add complications. Don’t deny the sniping, but ask the players what they do to help the sniping. The target is coming home in the rush, so they’ve set up a sniper on a rooftop. But the target stops to get food with his friends from a stall, instead of walking down that street. How does your crew respond? Does the slide try to get him back on his path? Does your lurk poison him instead?
– Use the dice. Failed dice rolls can mean that something went wrong rather than meaning the PCs didn’t do their job right. A failed sniping roll might mean that the bluecloaks have the sniper’s position surrounded.
– Use politics. So, you killed the steel mill worker. That means you lose faction status with the sparkwrights. You get your pay, but nothing else. If you’d investigated more, you’d have known that the spirit wardens wanted this target dead, and might have contacted them first so they’d know you’re the crew that helped them out, then you’d have gained faction status from this score (and also gotten RP), and you’d have known to avoid this kill if you wanted to stay friendly with the sparkwrights. Or maybe you’d have discovered that this guy is an inventor who’s trying to make ghost-protecting-cloaks, and the Spirit Wardens didn’t want the competition – he could have been a much more valuable ally than target.
– Provide information in different ways. Skip the boring RP. “OK, so you tail him. You now know his usual schedule.” can then lead to “so we set up a sniper position and wait” and you don’t need to play any more than that. But if they want to, let the players be proactive (and encourage them) – “I want to talk to his neighbours”, “Let’s break into his apartment and search through his stuff”, “Who are those friends he’s having meals with – maybe they can tell us who might have put the bounty on him” – this about the different playbooks. Slides, lurks, whispers, leeches… all of those imply different skillsets. Think about how the different “types” of characters might get different “types” of information.
– Don’t get too hung up on gathering information before the score starts, unless everyone is having fun with it. Also, encourage players to jump into the score and then use flashbacks for their information gathering. “You corner him in an alley. His bodyguards are looming, and clearly ready for a fight.”, “Oh, wait, I want to flashback to finding out who put the bounty on” [After one flashback scene] “Wait, my friend, we’re not here to fight! The Spirit Wardens have a bounty on you because of your spirit cloak. We’re here to help make sure you survive!” “Hey wait, I want a flashback scene where I talk to the bluecoats” [Another flashback scene] “… the bluecoats hired us. They want you to supply them once your design is complete.” (and now you’re playing a totally different score to the one you thought you were doing!)
– Put emotion in. This isn’t just a target, it’s a father who rushes home to spend as much time as possible with his daughter. Who’s spending his savings to bribe the landlord so his daughter doesn’t get sent to the workhouse, and who really appreciates his neighbour who keeps an eye on her during the day. He’s also a drunk who starts fights after a few ales, but if you calm him down you’ll discover that he’s fighting because he has no other way to express his sorrow after his wife died in childbirth with what would have been his son. Now, the PCs can still kill him, but their choice to kill or not is more meaningful regardless of what happens.
– Not all emotion has to be positive or sympathetic. The target might really deserve it. The target might really deserve it, but also have other redeeming qualities. The target might not deserve it at all, but it might still be necessary. (Imagine a target like Typhoid Mary. They spread disease, but don’t intend to.)
– What do the employers need? Not always just death, but “do it messily to send a message”, or “make it look like an accident” or “kill them and bring me their pocket watch” or “I don’t even care if they die, just make sure that you assassins get spotted, and make sure you’re wearing military uniforms when they spot you.”
And also:
– Don’t always make it hard. There’s a target, they say “I follow them” and you say “OK, you know their schedule” so they say “I set up a sniper position and shoot them when they come past” and you say “OK, roll the dice” and they say “successes!” and you say “Great, you blow their head off and collect your money” and everyone cheers, and you roll to see if there’s any trouble and add heat and do all that. And that wasn’t particularly interesting, but it only took 30 seconds of game time and the players got a victory. That’s good too. Then you can move onto your next score. Maybe the next score is the one where they don’t roll so well, or where the bluecoats are sending out patrols looking for them or whatever. Or maybe the next score is the one where they decide to spare the target, because the “easy” scores are enough that they already feel like a band of murderous assassins. Let the dice guide the outcome, even if the outcome is “it all goes smoothly”
The level of abstraction and pace of your game are almost entire up to you as a group of players. If you all find interesting to zoom on a detailed scene of the victim stalking, just roll with it. On the opposite, the entire situation can be handled with a single gather information roll (probably preceded by an action roll to actually stalk the mark an entire day unseen).
As for the score, the players don’t actually tell you a detailed plan; there is a specific procedure for that called planning where the players are supposed to choose the means by which the plan is carried out (e.g. by overt violence, by deception, by persuasion… There’s actually a list of types of plans) and then they will give you a single detail about the chosen plan that’s entirely up to them. Then on the basis of the type of plan and the detail given, you assess the number of dice for an engagement roll which determines if the starting situation of the crew is in their favor or not.
I try to give you an example here of how I’d manage the situation (this is obvy just my view on the game, not the only way you are supposed to do it).
Let’s say the mark is a crooked bluecoat who runs an extortion racket in Crow’s Foot and the labor union leader of the district has secretly hired our crew of assassins.
The players tell you they want to carry out an assault plan; they will shot the crook in the head in plain sight in Crow’s Nest Circus to send a message. Such daring! Note here that we are assuming that the patrol route of the marked bluecoat is common knowledge, so no gathering information roll needed. If you feel that stalking the bluecoat could lead to an interesting situation, consider it an obstacle and call for an action roll and then a gathering information roll, revealing a couple of possible good spots for the killing, plus some extra sweet tips with a result of great, like “he sits every day at the same time on a particular bench in Crow’s Nest Circus to read the news”.
Now the players must give you only the detail of the plan, and in the case of an assault they should give you the point of attack: they decide that the point will be the roof of a building overlooking Crow’s Nest Circus.
Then you have to assess the number of dice fo the engagement roll: the operation is particularly daring, since it is done in plain sight, so +1d. You know that the target stops his patrol to read the newspaper every day at the same time. That’s a vulnerability of the target, so +1d. Then a player tells that a friend of them, a street urchin, can provide aid as a lookout for possibile witnesses, +1d. Now you can consider other elements. You can state, for instance, that a bluecoat is an higher-Tier target, so -1d. That’s a total of 2d.
The players roll 2d and get a 1 and a 3. Alas, that’s a bad result! They’r in a desperate position when the action starts.
Now you have to cut directly to the action.
You can say, for instance, that the ex-military sniper is camping on rooftop, when the crooked bluecoat notices the glare of the rifle barrel, so he gets up in a hurry, blowing his whistle and running for cover in a tavern. That’s a pretty desperate situation: bluecoat backup is on the way (you can make a clock here) and the target is under cover. The crew’d better come up with some brilliant idea to lure him out as soon as possible
John is leading a group of Assassin’s on Roll play Blades. If you haven’t checked it out I’d recommend doing so that way you can see how John does it. Then you can use some or all of his methods combined with yours.