I am starting a game in a week or so and the players picked Hawkers, they are interested in brothels and such. I am struggling a bit to come up with something for them to start with.
Do you think Hawkers can work for brothels? And by extension anything other than drugs?
I am particularly struggling with figuring out how to bring “The Good Stuff” into this sort “Vice” and with the “Supply” and “Sale” Scores.
What would be a good starting Scores for Hawkers interested in Brothels?
Anything works, we got a Whisper and a Leech, both with little combat skills but good skills for their respective playbooks.
Hawkers are the best crew to play when the primary goal of the players is to supply the city with any kind of vice. Drugs, gambling, prostitution, ect.
Some good starting scores might be:
Getting a gang or patron to sponsor their efforts to open up their own brothel.
Securing a location for their brothel, maybe a haunted house (maybe occupied by The Reconciled?) , as a way to involve the whisper.
Some sort of social score (maybe a party?) to recruit the future employees of their brothel.
Stealing furnishings for the establishment.
Developing a niche for their business that sets them apart from their competition and finding a way to obtain and provide that niche.
Well the obvious one is that the Crew are basically combo pimps/managers. They run a brothel and likely have workers on the streets. “The Good Stuff” means that the prostitutes are higher quality (Prettier men and women with less chance of catching something) and some gangs may use the crew’s services exclusively (as they get good or better treatment / service through the crew or the crew has a prostitute or service (Like dominatrix) that they are hooked on).
Supply can either be working out deals to get exotic men and women of the trade to work for the crew or lure in VIP prostitutes from other brothels (Or on the dark side acquiring slaves, hollows, or setting up scenarios to drive certain people into the crew’s employ).
Sales may be convincing a group or a noble to utilize the crew’s facilities or setting up exclusivity contracts / Purchasing the prostitute as a mistress or the male equivalent (If your in-universe brothels pay peoples outstanding debts and then have them work off what they owe or purchase slaves)
As for starting scores? Acquiring new prostitutes, Derailing an investigation into your business (for a variety of reasons such as tax dodging, illicit goods, or pissing off someone with money), Dealing with a gang of bravos trying to strong arm the crew or who have outstanding payments, Acquiring a slave prostitute from a rival brothel for a noble (The brothel refuses to sell and the noble either wants them exclusively or has fallen in love with them but the brothel makes too much money), Convincing a noble to stop using the services of a rival brothel and instead use the crew’s brothel, or try to sell a short term exclusivity contract to said noble.
I think first you have to acknowledge the problematic aspects of this – it would be offensive to play as sex-trafficking pimps who treat women as products, right?
But I don’t think it’s impossible to run a good story about sexwork hawkers. Some ideas;
1. The prostitutes should be equal-opportunity; a mix of different genders and backgrounds and sexualities
2. The prostitutes should have agency; I would suggest that in Doskvol, sexworkers are fierce and organized into protective collectives. Your crew would then be one of these collectives – the scoundrels are there to advance the interests of the collective, they’re not the pimps/bosses.
3. I would look at the Gondoliers faction for inspiration; “Venerated by ancient tradition. Said to know occult secrets (many things are submerged in the Dusk).” I imagine that streetwalkers would also be venerated by ancient tradition and also know all kinds of occult secrets. “Beloved by most citizens, who prefer to go to them with “weird problems” rather that relying on the ruthless and indiscriminate judgment of the Spirit Wardens.” You could easily steal that for prostitutes, which gives your crew an interesting angle and some potentially interesting scores.
4. Underline that the prostitutes aren’t the hawkers’ “product”. You want to avoid situations where you’re trafficking people. The johns (clients) are the product, or more specifically their kinks/fetishes that they pay massive amounts of coin to satisfy – their thing for ghost-sex, or Tycherosi feathers, or whatever. “Sale” operations are fulfilling particular transactions with a good client willing to pay top dollar. “Supply: A transaction to acquire new product or establish a new supplier” basically means gaining a new supply of clients/johns – an under-serviced neighbourhood, a good street to dominate, a particular niche in the market (e.g. become known as THE brothel to go for ghost-stuff).
5. Have you seen Deadwood? I’m imagining the scoundrels as allies to a gang of Trixies.
6. If the scoundrels are a non-combat Leech and Whisper, that’s the perfect complement to the above. They’re not pimps, they’re allies – the leech is the doc, the whisper helps with all the weird shit a streetwalker would encounter on the streets of Doskvol.
7. The first score? Let’s grab one from the hawkers score list; “A brutal gang of savage killers has wiped out a rival’s vice den. Now they want you to step in and run it for them.” Maybe the Lampblacks have cleared out a Red Sash brothel and want the PC crew (currently just streetwalkers) to step in and do business there. This a golden opportunity to have an actual premise, to move up in the world, at the cost of being under the thumb of the Lampblacks and dragged into their war with the Red Sashes.
Tim Denee
“it would be offensive to play as sex-trafficking pimps who treat women as products, right?”
I mean OP didn’t mention it but if the players are also pimping out male prostitutes alongside their female counterparts, (and why wouldn’t they?; it’s more coin for them…) I’m having a hard time seeing it as “offensive”.
This is a game were literally kidnapping, murder, and drug use are all on the table; seems kind of weird to draw the line at prostitution…
Omari Brooks There’s always a line. Your mileage may vary, but for me, protagonists whose trade is sexual violence is over that line. That’s why I think it’s important to give the prostitutes agency. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that sexual violence/exploitation is much more of a charged and upsetting topic than murder or drug use.
Omari Brooks It’s up to my players, but I will absolutely give the sex workers some teeth, I am not going to normalize that kind of abuse, it will be clear that if they do something like that it is something pretty shitty.
Laneofthought You know how one of the starting Hawker upgrades is a secure lair? “Your lair has locks, alarms, and traps to thwart intruders.” It would be cool if in the case of the brothel, the hawkers’ secure lair represents the hardass prostitutes themselves – a lair that’s always got eyes, ears and muscle around.
Tim Denee What would be the tensions in the first score of running a vice den for someone else? Sorry but this is my first time running Blades.
The main starting score for Hawkers interested in brothels is for them to take over a brothel! Figure out who controls one near their hunting grounds and let them decide how they want to take it over — violence, blackmail, mind control are all decent starting points from which a Score can develop. The brothel itself would count as a Claim from their crew sheet — likely a Vice Den, but it could also count as Turf, a Local Graft, a Cover Operation, or even Supply Caches.
As far as Supply or Sale scores the key is to think big. A sale isn’t merely about selling some drugs on the streets — that’s happening constantly in the background — a sale is something big: opening in a new market, recruiting a gang to sell for you, convincing a factory owner to drug up their employees. Supply should be about getting the materials for months to come.
Laneofthought I agree with Adam, the logical scenario would be that they have to secure the premises through whatever methods they prefer, running off the remaining red sashes and making sure everyone knows there’s a new crew running the joint.
I think the starting scenario in the book is a useful background device because it has a lot of interesting hooks – it’s an inherently unstable situation that WILL blow up in any number of different ways. The lampblacks have given the crew this opportunity – but will that relationship blossom into an alliance or sour with time as Baszo makes demands in return? Meanwhile the crew has made enemies of the red sashes – how will that develop? Expanding their operations is going to be interesting when they’ve pissed off the biggest vice-runners in the area. What happens if the red sashes win the gang war?
Tim Denee
You a making a lot of assumptions about what prostitution means in a fictional setting. You assume the sex workers can’t choose to be there or that their employers treat them well (and protect them from bad Johns/Joans, etc.)
I’m just thinking about fictional settings I’ve read/watched were the workers choose prostitution over being completely destitute (most recently when watching the TV series Incorporated) or were courtesans are highly valued (Firefly), etc.
Or maybe I’m just naive thinking players don’t actually want to live out some abuse fantasy in play.
Omari Brooks I mean, that’s exactly what I wrote – ideas of how to include sexworkers in Doskvol that gives them some agency and steers away from problematic waters. I agree with you, there are sympathetic ways to portray prostitution in a fictional setting. My disclaimer up front was simply about stepping carefully with this subject matter, because while it is possible to do it well, it would also be easy to do it very badly.
As a side note, in a world like Doskvol, where you have spirits, demons, leviathans, magic, and everything else, drugs is probably the most boring thing hawkers can sell. Selling sex is a perfectly valid choice (though you may have the tricky issue of violence and exploitation to navigate depending on the situation).
As an example of a gang of badass prostitutes, weren’t the ladies in that one area of Sin City (in the movie) a district of prostitute gangsters? They were all for shoot-outs and cutting someone up with a katana.
As for “product”, if you’re selling the sex worker, that comes across as more exploitative, whereas if you’re selling the sex, that’s maybe better?
Jason Lee Yeah, I’ve kinda found a good spot to solve that problematic issues about sex workers, selling the experience with a particular sex worker is a lot better than the power dynamic that comes from picturing sex workers as a product.
I think the starting Score I will go for is that Marlo, the gang boss contact wants a small brothel in Silkshore out of business because he has a beef with the owner but doesn’t want to get directly involved. The crew seems to have the tools to deal with it to start, obviously we don’t know how it will go but we can trust they will figure it out.
There is also an alternative for human sexslaves, “have-been-human”-sexslaves, read hollows, they could be considered as a product without any offense.
but it would be kinda even more cruel to rip off souls from humans just to sell them as totaly obidient sexslaves.
Anyway i recommend talking it through with your players,
like how far they would like to go, to find the limits of the group.
Hermes Voeglein Yeah, we are all in the same page from the start when it comes to sex work, we have been talking about how to make it work without it being terrible and the way we are framing relationships with the workers and the crew overall already reflects that.
Do to the difference between the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh and most real world religions, sex workers could have legitimacy in Doskvol. Which would mean that brothels aren’t necessarily shady establishments where abuse gets a pass on account of it all being illegal anyway.
Laneofthought Sounds like a solid start – do let us know how it goes!
Yeap, gonna give it a try I will come back for help if I think I need any. haha