How often does your Crew’s Load impact the game?

How often does your Crew’s Load impact the game?

How often does your Crew’s Load impact the game?

So far, my group has tended toward what seems like short Scores. They last for 5-7 rolls at most. Most players choose a Normal Load (5 boxes) and they have the Shadows’ upgrade that gives them two bonus boxes.

With four scoundrels in the group, we’ve never even come close to any particular character running out of Load and getting in a bind. Given that there are three Load options, I sense that choosing your Load for a Score is meant to be at least a little consequential. It’s supposed to be a potential limitation if play goes a certain way. My reading shows that a scoundrel’s choice of load might have implications for Scores with a more social or deceptive approach. You can’t stroll into a masquerade ball with a Normal Load without drawing a lot of attention and possibly jeopardizing your Score. Our crew hasn’t taken an approach to any Score where this type of limitation might come up.

What have been your experiences with Load? I’ve already anticipated some potential answers. Yes, I could run Scores longer than 5-7 rolls and eventually exhaust a scoundrel’s Load through different Consequences. Yes, I could use Consequences to directly remove points from a scoundrel’s Load to represent a loss of gear after a bad roll. Yes, I could put more social obstacles in a Score that could make choosing a Normal or Heavy Load more trouble than it’s worth.

I’m mostly curious about how Load has influenced play (if at all) for other groups. How often has choosing one level of Load over another had any noteworthy impact in play? Has anyone run a Score where a group of 3-4 scoundrels with Heavy Load were in danger of multiple scoundrels running dry?

Thanks! 🙂

24 thoughts on “How often does your Crew’s Load impact the game?”

  1. Our crew skews social, so our load is light by default, so it introduces some tension, but not a huge amount. Number of crew members provides quiet buffer for this.

  2. What load they have also determines their speed of reaction. So that can be a thing. Lights quickest. If you have heavy then maybe even an average goon can get the jump on ya. I’ve described heavy load as looking like a marine in full combat gear with backpack and everything.

    The thieves riggings have limitations on those load options. I believe for shadows it must be gear or tools. (so no weapons).

    How you’re playing resist rolls also matters. If you allow players to resist all of a level 3 harm then armor isn’t going to be as important. Which is where the load limit comes up a lot for my players.

    It’s also not a bad thing if it doesn’t come up. The load limit is there to let people ignore the logistics and get to the action.

  3. Speed and subtlety are the main two effects. Either of which can have an impact on Position or Effect when looking at Actions.

    Load may also come up when stealing some things. Stealing 12 Coin in silver, for example, is 12 Load. Might even be more if they don’t take the time to transfer it from the chests that Coin was in to sacks they bought. So split among 3 scoundrels (maybe a fourth scoundrel is on lookout outside and/or has created a diversion elsewhere), that’s four additional Load each. If they’ve taken even “Normal’ Load at the outset that means they’re leaving topped out at max capacity and are both slow and conspicuous. And if even one of them came in with a Heavy Load that means a couple items are getting left behind to be able to get the Coin to the waiting gondola, cab or what have you.

    I’ve seen Load mostly forgotten and I’ve seen it have an impact. I’d like to keep it in mind more often and have it have more impact on my sessions than it has to date.

  4. I hadn’t thought of using Load as a sort of “soft initiative,” Aaron. That’s something to tuck into the back of my mind in the hope that it crawls out during play. 😉

    So far, I’ve leaned away from allowing resistance rolls to completely mitigate harm. But I’ve also shied away from inflicting harm, too. It strikes me as one of the hardest, most direct ways to put the hurt on the players. We’re still feeling our way through the first few sessions and I haven’t wanted to encumber their characters with too many harm penalties. But maybe I need to get a little looser!

  5. Ah, we’ve been ignoring the “1 Coin = 1 Load” rule, Matthew Gagan! That’s one to definitely keep in mind, especially since my group has a strong Torchbearer background. Should make it easier to swallow. 😉

  6. Load has little consequence most of the time. If someone does take an unusually heavy load, that’s fodder for devil’s bargains or consequences, two grasping plot claws the GM is always flexing for purchase against any fictional detail in this game. =)

  7. However much you want to attend to or engage with the Load rules, I think the 1 Coin = 1 Load rule is an interesting and very intentional design case which should not be ignored; it prompts scoundrels to move their Coin to Stash and crews to expand their vaults.

    If you want to have even one Coin on hand for bribes and such that’s one-fifth of a normally loaded scoundrel’s Load right there.

  8. In the last game I ran they found their way into a treasure horde, and part of the question of how much they could make off was related to coin and load. I did, however, let them look for gems and smaller objects, so they could get 3 coin per load (but that cost time and they had to roll to do some on-the-spot appraisal.)

  9. Yeah, we haven’t intentionally been ignoring the Coin/Load rule, just overlooking it. And my crew were all carrying 3-4 Coin going into last week’s session before blowing it all in a sudden orgy of Downtime actions. 😉

    The combination of enforcing the Coin/Load rule and remembering to use it as “soft initiative” will probably have the right impact at the table.

  11. My players will curse the day I found this thread. They’re a crew of smugglers that specializes in catching ghosts with slick little traps. It’s high time we discuss how much load each trap is. I have a feeling we’ll end up at ½-1 load/trap, but we’ll see. When I asked them what size thier traps were they reflexively defined the size of a trap from Ghostbusters with thier hands.

  12. We have a character or two run out of load all the time. Climbing gear, buglary gear, a weapon, some armor, it all adds up fast. Especially when a job goes south and they need to improvise, suddenly great becomes so important. Reading this thread, it sounds like you don’t want more rolls or to be causing harms, but that’s the game and that’s where the fun comes out.

    We use a lot of clocks, and often getting those segments to tick off are so dependent on fine gear to get effect up. Simple jobs turn into wild scrambles because of a few bad rolls. The dice tell the story. We’ve had super risky jobs go off without a hitch and simple “Rob this guy while he’s out on a ship for a few days” jobs turn into angry demon fights where the player with a broker leg pushes himself off a balcony into the canal to get away. Through it all, picking the right gear has been important. Do I want armor if this goes really bad or some fake documents to avoid the trouble? I just took a nasty hit, but if I say I was wearing armor, I can’t take anymore gear.

  14. ? Load always has an impact in my games. “Normal” means they aren’t fast. It also means they are suspicious looking. “Heavy” means they are slower, and look threatening. These fictional assumptions factor into positioning constantly.

    I have had scoundrels run low as well. Not all the time, but often enough that I know they wish they had access to more things (and often they do, and when they don’t: flashback city)

  16. Load is a factor when I ask the crew to set it at the start of a job. The fact that they spend at least a little bit of time and effort discussing their approach is really all I could ask for out of this mechanic.

    They have pushed it to the hilt a couple of times, but in keeping with the “fly by the seat of your pants” themes it has never been the deciding factor between success and failure on a job. I feel like punishing people too heavily one way or the other is counter productive to the “get into the action now and sort out details later” gameplay encouraged by the game.

    Overall I’m quite happy with the function it serves, and I don’t feel it needs any particular rebalancing or too harsh of a reinforcement. If anything, I view it as another tool for me as the GM to judge what my players want out of this session: Light, sneaky and deceptive. Normal, ready for violence but not necessarily seeking it out. Heavy, we want to break stuff.

    Some good ideas here though about position and initiative being a way to encourage players to take their load seriously. And that’s really all I want out of the mechanic: Another way for my players to engage with the world and their characters.

  17. So far, nobody’s gone up against limits. My group seems quite ready to take hits on armor, so who knows, we may end up seeing them with heavy armor next time.

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