#CopperheadCounty
To honor the launch of a second playtest group this week, I present a comprehensive Copperhead County: Almost Done Edition update.
Copperhead County is Blades in the Dark if it married Justified and had children named The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Fargo. It is a full hack set in a fictional Appalachian county in Tennessee in the year 201x, where a corrupt establishment is creaking under the weight of change. Old South vs New South. Town vs country. Locals vs interlopers. Crew vs crew.
Inside you will find:
* An original setting with original factions
* Six playbooks, including the all-new Mover
* Three crews, including the all-new Blood
* Revised Claims and more
* An official and very good Spotify playlist
* PDFs with bookmarks
February 2018 edit: This preview is now offline while I finish the game. You can find a playbooks preview here:
https://plus.google.com/+JasonEley/posts/HRCdv51wkm5
To Do:
* Polish everything
* Test and iterate Mover and Blood
* Finish and include area writeups
* Finish and include descriptions for non-criminal factions
* Write other copy
* Better maps
* Art???
Fantastic hack and settings. Very good use of the BiTD rules to create an immersive and fun setting and game. (full disclosure I play in it)
I’m so glad Jason is doing this, because this is the hack I would have been compelled to make had he not. 🙂
Sounds very cool! Would Winter’s Bone be one of the offspring as well, or maybe a cousin?
Jason Lutes Winter’s Bone is good! I’ve tried to make the direct touchstones more focused on ongoing organized crime tales, but there have been several good southern crime-adjacent properties recently. You could add Blue Ruin, Hell Or High Water, Winter’s Bone, etc.
Must. Play.
Hyped for the Mover playbook, because Baby Driver.
Totally not-selfish question: I see you swapped around the Mover’s vehicle edges/flaws, and the lack of Distinct (+1 heat when you use it) got me thinking if you’d come up with a way to reconcile the idea of having a personal custom vehicle with the likely outcome of being arrested for using your personal custom vehicle? 🙂
Oh, I just noticed the different options for overindulging. I like how you took out “lose a vice purveyor”, aka “the softball option”.
Adam Schwaninger I don’t know, it just seemed less interesting than the others, and there’s limited sheet space if you want to list the effects (your own sheets don’t and might be better design…).
I think there is still that tension about the Mover and their car and I’m not sure of the best option. The biggest gameplay problem seems to me, to be if the Mover is in a getaway with the cops and the crew has worse Heat Exposure because they’re using their own vehicle.
An idea behind having a Garage and crew vehicles (which isn’t really in the text right now 🤷♂️) is that it helps reduce your exposure because you have these vehicles that are probably registered to other people or have false plates or whatever. But the Mover wants to drive their own car, not some shared crew vehicle. Are they doomed to be more noticeable because of that? Is that just a fair trade off for the benefits they get from having a custom car?
Or is it not a big deal in play and the game should just hand wave it? If the Mover gets arrested, they’ll have bigger problems to worry about.
I thought about it some and here’s how I see it. Every playbook has your personal vehicle on their items list. That’s the baseline, and you don’t add bonus heat for the baseline. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the baseline. The Mover has B-A-B-Y which makes their personal vehicle better. Then, the crew upgrade Garage helps reduce exposure, so I think you don’t need to mess with it from that POV.
Adam Schwaninger Oh, re: vice, I think the Friend Loss overindulge option might be “the new softball option”, but it has more fictional weight than a vice purveyor. I like the idea of a PC choosing that option a lot and eventually losing all of their friends.
Jason Eley I’m interested in making a Son’s on Anarchy hack. Would you mind id I used Copperhead County as a jumping off point?
Nicholas Wen Thanks, but please do not.
Jason Eley Okay man, no worries!
Watching Ozark right now, seems like a good fit for Copperhead County!
netflix.com – Ozark | Netflix Official Site
I’ve been meaning to watch that and Claws. I heard there’s an interesting crime family in Ozark.
(Contemporary TV crime drama sidenote: Snowfall is pretty good.)
Jason Lutes there are some cool characters in Ozark! I want to GM a crew with Ruth in it.
Yeah, Ruth is a great character.
The Snells are like Tier V.
This looks amazing. Any particular reason why you didn’t call the Cleaner’s Move “Red Right Hand” instead of “The Devil’s Right Hand”? I suppose it’s more of an explicit name to people who aren’t familiar with the song, unless you weren’t trying to make that reference at all!
Dylan Durrant Thank you! The Devil’s Right Hand is a Steve Earle song. It’s also a nod to the indispensable nature of the Cleaner and how they are the ‘right hand’ of the crew (ala Mike Ehrmantraut, Hanzee from Fargo). I didn’t know Nick Cave also had a ‘right hand’ song or that it was in Peaky Blinders!
youtube.com – Steve Earle – The Devil’s Right Hand
Jason Eley What an interesting coincidence! I look forward to seeing how Copperhead County turns out, I’m already tempted to give it a spin for myself were it not for the other Blades hack game I just started!
I’ve been eyeing this hack for a while and kind of went ham making my own map! It strays pretty heavily from the one you posted but I thought I’d share it anyway!
drive.google.com – drive.google.com/file/d/0B7UEucciZFRtSjF3dnR6Wjdybm8/view?usp=sharing