Hey, does anybody have any recommendations for how to run a crew of Con men? The Shadows crew sheet doesn’t really have a lot to do with this kind of heist. My players want to be more like Oceans Eleven or Hustle rather than sneaking in and stealing. Any thoughts? Custom crew sheets?
Thanks
A custom crew sheet for that would be super dope.
I can see it being called “Hustlers” or something like that.
Some ideas to throw out there would be starting upgrades as Quality Documents and Resolve training?
Upgrades might be things like,
– Elite Experts “+1 tier when creating an Expert Cohort”
Special Abilities could be
– “+1 on Consort,Sway, and Study rolls”
– “On Social plans, +1d engagement”
Just spitballing here but I think the idea has some potential.
Special Move-
“I Know a Guy”
” When you Acquire and Asset to find a contact for a score, +1d”
So the easiest way is to wait for the Grifters crew sheet to come out, which was iirc a kickstarter stretch goal. But until that comes out, I’d recommend going with Shadows but heavily utilizing Veteran to grab con-themed abilities from other playbooks. Abilities of note:
-Hawkers: Silver Tongues, Accord, High Society
-Assassins: No Traces (because the perfect con ends without the mark realizing they’ve been conned)
-Smugglers: Just Passing Through
That should set you up just fine. Just treat all references to ‘burglaries or robberies’ or similar as including confidence games as well, and you’re all set.
Alternatively, make your own. The abilities above make a good starting point; mix and match other playbook’s abilities, claims, etc, or just write your own. If you want to put in that effort, that’s awesome (and you should post the result here, because I for one would be interested.) But if you don’t want to go through the effort of making a full-scale new crew sheet, then the existing ones will serve you just fine. The playbooks are surprisingly flexible.
Then, of course, bring along a Spider and a Slide and let them do their thing. (Do be careful that the other playbooks aren’t overshadowed, of course.)
Oh, I didn’t know a grifter sheet was coming. Any idea on when that will be released?
What if, instead of making new rules, you play the game as written but start the score in the classic moment when everything is going terribly.
And then you use flashbacks to explain how – like in Oceans 11 – they’d set up their plan leading to this situation, where they do the big reveal?
Perhaps flashbacks would need to be cheaper/free, and maybe you’d spend more time roleplaying them?
The issue isn’t in roleplay or how to do a grift in the system. That works really well. But what we want is to mechanically encourage it through abilities and XP. Just like other crew types have a unique combination of abilities and XP triggers.
Several thoughts: A custom playbook might be cool and You don’t need a custom playbook mostly come to mind. There is more than one solution and it depends largely on what you/they truly want as well as your ability as a GM to work towards the kind of fun they say they want to have.
Maybe a custom playbook will alleviate the disconnect your players are having. A trigger like “perform a successful deception, manipulation, contact acquisition, or racketeering operation” might be an okay start if that in fact gets the players doing the things they want. Just be sure to also change their Hunting Grounds choices to match, and consider swapping out crew contacts/upgrades too.
However, it’s worth noting that a custom playbook is often more work than simply framing a theft-type score which meets the trigger but which features a social or deceptive plan opportunity. This is the route I recommend. Further reasoning:
The Shadows playbook works great as is for Ocean’s Eleven style crews in my experience. The people they use to grease the wheels and gain illicit entry in the first place? Probably Elite Rooks and Skulks (see upgrades). Or contacts like the deal broker and the noble. The reason they get away with things all the damned time? Probably Slippery (see abilities). And as others have mentioned, there are abilities they can access via Veteran which lets them mix things up and get at some of the more social abilities.
In other words, even if you really think the crew type is a bad fit, look inward first: be sure you are framing thieving jobs with challenges which could be overcome using more social approaches (and while that is probably always a possibility, there are things you can do to make certain types of action more evident or useful when you present the opportunity at hand). The work that Ocean’s Eleven does is all over the Shadows’ crew XP triggers: burglaries, robberies, sabotages, and espionage.
how about Hawkers as a baseline?
your product varies from score to score and is usually imaginary.
Modify the XP trigger so it fits your expectation of scores you’ll do and you are kinda set. Maybe shuffle the possible turfs a bit.
Michael Yater I think the Spider’s Connected upgrade could cover that.
I think it might really help focus a crew of confidence artists if they have a target. Setting out to generally make money and tweak the noses of their enemies is one level, but if they gathered and plan cons to advance towards an ultimate purpose, that galvinizes the group without needing to do much mechanical adjustment.
Here are some suggestions.
plus.google.com – One thing that might help focus character and crew generation is a motive, a …
Andrew Shields That is pretty much of a staple of the genre. If there isn’t a good villain, there’s no romance in it. Ocean’s Eleven are just a bunch of thieves if Andy Garcia’s character isn’t unlikable. Everybody in Hustle or Leverage are just taking advantage of greedy idiots if those shows weren’t built on the premise that the greedy idiots also are morally bankrupt and detestable.
What ended up helping a lot was just changing a few names of abilities without actually changing mechanics. First off, we made “Confidence Game” a hunting ground activity instead of Robbery, because using the threat of violence for theft is so uncouth. Then we just tweaked some names. “Slippery” became “Smooth”, “Second Story” became “Got us an Invitation”, that sort of thing. Suddenly the abilities really seemed to fit what we want, despite mechanically being exactly the same. Just goes to show how far the name of a thing influences your perception of it.