Question regarding Crew XP.
(PS: Spoilers for the Pathfinder adventure path Edge of Anarchy are within)
(PSS: My crew runs in Marienburg of Warhammer fame)
My Shadows crew, the Crowtalons, are contacted by Zellara, a fortune teller from Dead Canal who wants them to steal back her heirloom Harrow cards (used to read the future).
They have been stolen from her by Lamb, a old man with the magical ability to charm children and simpletons.
(In my world, the Dead Canal is the home for the Lampblacks and Red Sashes, as well as the Bloodletters – see below)
They head down to the Dead Canal and begin asking around and run afoul of the Lampblacks who, as it turns out, are also looking for Lamb. Pickett agrees to overlook their transgression and let them have run of the Canal if they agree to bring the Lamb back to her when it’s over. As they are after the cards and not the Lamb, they agree.
Ultimately, they find the Lamb holed up in a ruined fishery. The Leech climbs the roof to create a distraction so that the others could rush in and take the goods. Many failures were rolled but ultimately the characters prevail.
Finally the question:
When they set out, this was a fairly straight-forward burglary (steal the book back). After they meet the Lampblacks it becomes a possible kidnap (capture and return the Lamb). Finally, their tactics were smash and grab (break stuff and rush in).
Do the Shadows get experience for the burglary job, despite the fact that it became something else?
The answer depends in part on the tone you want to set for your campaign, of course. It seems to me that you were at least partially responsible for the “drift” in the Score by adding the kidnapping angle. Kidnapping could be considered a form of burglary if you squint hard enough, but I’d ordinarily consider that a Score for Assassins or Bravos. When they did finally get to the fishery, they acted more like Bravos, it seems.
The book mentions that Crews can sometimes take on Scores that aren’t part of their core competency. A group of Shadows can decide to smuggle some artifacts into the city if it will help them achieve their goals. But I wouldn’t give them Shadow Crew XP unless they did it in a way that reflects their usual expertise.
Just for clarity (I like to keep language consistent): the xp trigger for Shadows is “a successful espionage, sabotage, or theft operation,” whereas “Burglary” is a type of hunting ground, and “Smash and Grab” is a type of plan. Neither of the latter two explicitly count for xp triggers–they don’t need to do a Stealth plan to get theft xp, and they don’t need to be operating within Burglary/Robbery hunting grounds to get theft xp, either.
So the question is, “did the crew successfully steal something, or can they otherwise consider the operation to be a theft (or espionage, or sabotage)?” Kidnapping is kind of like stealing something, so if the players think it should count, then it should count. But if they also stole something else, in addition to kidnapping, then I’d say it definitely counts.
Restricting what the crew can do to earn crew xp, saying “You didn’t behave enough like Shadows to get this xp,” feels like punishing the players for branching out and trying something new, and I’m not a fan. Sure, Shadows’ abilities and claims are tailored to stealth and deception, but sometimes you just want to go in the front door with a bunch of grenades and make a great first impression.
Haha, also, technically, the players decide how much xp they get for xp triggers (page 6), so really it’s up to the players if they think it counts. Usually, as a GM, I just encourage the PCs to consider things for xp, reminding them of things that happened, and let them decide, and occasionally encourage them to take more xp. I never tell them how much xp they earned, though.
Shadows can go in the front door with a bunch of grenades as much as they want. But I’m not sure they should get XP for it. By choosing the Shadows Crew, they players decided that they wanted to be rewarded for being sneaky and doing sneaky stuff. Implicit in that choice is not being rewarded for kicking in doors with grenades in each hand.
The crew of Shadows can still get Rep (although maybe not as much as if they’d been sneaky), Heat, Coin, and all of the other rewards. I’m just suggesting that they don’t get XP.
I’m sure we could get into semantics about what “theft” could mean. If I kill my opponent, I’ve “stolen” his life, haven’t I? I missed the detail on pg. 6 about players being the ultimate arbiters of whether XP should be awarded. But in the group I play with, the GM also has a voice in deciding whether or not XP is earned. As a player or a GM, I wouldn’t have voted to award XP for the scenario described in the OP.
This got really long: sorry in advance.
So I disagree a bit: I’d say that the players pick Shadows because they want to generally be sneaky or do things sneakily. Meanwhile, they’re rewarded for completing types of operations which are typical of Shadows, just not based on how they’re completed. Otherwise the xp triggers would be something like “Execute a successful espionage, sabotage, or theft operation in a stealthy way; Contend with challenges above your current station in a stealthy way; etc.”
Likewise, REP is tied only to the Tier of the opposing faction relative to the crew, and has nothing to do with how the score was done–unless it was done so stealthily that no one knows it was the crew, in which case they get 0 REP.
What you’re describing sounds a lot more like Reputation to me, and if the crew’s reputation is something like “Professional,” and if to the crew “Professional” means “stealthy and without being noticed,” then I 100% agree they should only get xp for that trigger if they’re stealthy. Alternatively, maybe being stealthy is “The essential nature of the crew.” There are already xp triggers to potentially reward them for being stealthy.
Another alternative, maybe the crew doesn’t feel like they should get 2 xp for certain triggers if they weren’t stealthy, and instead only get 1.
Or even design a new crew ability that’s a new xp trigger or bonus for being stealthy, or for completing operations with a certain amount of Heat: “If the crew took 4 or less Heat, take +1 xp, if they took no Heat, take +2 xp and 1 REP (instead of 0).” Disclaimer: I have no idea if this would be a good ability.
Though, there are already consequences within the fiction for a crew of Shadows being overt and loud–maybe clients would be hesitant to hire a crew to steal something if all they do is Smash and Grab. Haha, and I can totally see a crew of Shadow-Assassins who “steal lives” as being a thing. “Body-snatchers,” maybe?
Of course, what I’m describing is the rules as written, and if the table is happy playing with certain restrictions or house rules, then go for it. The sheets say you only get 2 xp if you do something “multiple times,” but I’ve seen John encourage players to take 2 xp for a single really big or impact instance of something, and he wrote the sheets, so clearly they’re more like guidelines anyway. And a vote is a great way to handle it.
Balance-wise surrendering arbitration for XP is a real game-changer. I run two groups. One is very wheedly about experience: well I did this, so theoretically that could be considered mayhem…. right? The other is the opposite: well granted I used stealth to infiltrate into the building but realistically I didn’t encounter any challenges so that shouldn’t count…. right? This is particularly true with expressing backgrounds, beliefs, etc where one group has a ton of text and role play around that and the other (the wheedlers) do not.
An interesting GM challenge – no mechanical balance to self-awarding XP.
I hear you, Steven Dodds. I suppose I put more emphasis on what you said above about the fiction of a crew of Shadows. To try a different example, if a crew of Bravos set themselves up as extortionists, but kept their victims paying through blackmail, I’d also argue that they might not deserve Crew XP for those activities. Let’s say that this crew of Bravos performs lots of Social and Deception Scores in order to obtain damaging blackmail information, is that really what a crew of Bravos should get Crew XP for? What if they do start to get Crew XP and spend it on Bravos special abilities like Blood Brothers or War Dogs? I know the Crew could decide on Veteran advances for special abilities from other Crews. But the fiction starts to look a little weird.
I understand that the rules as written provide a lot of leeway, but there have to be some limits in order for there to be meaningful choices between the different Crew types. The design of each Crew resonates because they’re organized around certain themes. I’d argue that we shouldn’t discount those themes partly to respect the choices made by the players in choosing one Crew instead of another.
Well said Dave – my struggle exactly.
There are other ways to get crew xp beyond that first trigger. If you don’t get it from the score sometimes — eh, whatever, you still earn some from the other triggers.
Shouldn’t be a big deal.
It isn’t. For me it’s more about getting the mindset so that it comes naturally.
In Savage Worlds, I could automatically identify when Benny doling was appropriate – it kept the economy of that system lubricated.
These questions are more about how to interpret the rules to interpret them as the writer (thanks John!) intended. Ultimately, my group will use them in the way that make the most sense for us anyway. Good discussion though.
Yeah, the players have to sort XP out among themselves. It’s part of the challenge of being a player in Blades. You’re doing it right. 🙂