How do you handle drop in/drop out for crews? In my experience, groups I’m not running just hand-wave it; these people showed up to play, so their characters are in the crew.
I feel like there needs to be some barrier, though. Other crews wouldn’t let our membership stroll in and sit down at the table so easily. (“Hey guys, I’ve got a free weekend, so I’m a Red Sash. Where’s your safe house?”)
There are secrets, and we’re putting our lives in each others’ hands, and this is a cut-throat city of competition and rivalry and schemes and plots. It seems kind of suicidal to let people just wander in and out of your crew.
To me, there should be two elements to bring someone new in. One, who vouches for them and what happened in the past that earned the character a shot in the crew. Second, some kind of oath or fealty ceremony or hazing or SOME way to mark the rite of passage that joining the crew entails. A tattoo, a dire oath marked with a curse if it’s broken, at the very least a dowry.
It could be fun to randomize a character already in the crew, and randomize a list of potential reasons that character would vouch for the new person.
Also, when people just go (and characters too) is the crew roster cool with just, you know, thanks for joining up and come back whenever you feel like it?
“So yeah, we’ve been at war with the Piecemeats, and the Spirit Wardens have been asking hard about where our secret base is, but now that Pinky has just strolled in without a mark on him and muttered something about having spent a little time hanging out with family in Charterhall, let’s get him up to date on our secrets!”
It makes the Spider in me cringe. Like, that crew deserves what it’s about to get when it turns out Pinky, predictably enough, has been in a Spirit Warden bottle for two weeks getting his noggin unpacked and repacked with a few new souvenirs.
Maybe that’s a chart too; were you compromised while you were off wandering around ignoring your mates, and if so, how, and if not, why not?
I assume everyone else handles this with handwaving. I’m too itchy for that, and I’ll own it, maybe it’s just me.
But what if we had 4 tiers of membership? Leaders, Inner Circle, full member, and probationary. Getting from one tier up to the next is a long term project, you decide how hard and what other costs are involved. And if you go on walkabout with an unexcused absence, you drop a tier.
That’s a shorthand for who gets paid most, how sensitive information is, and your regard within the crew (and ability to speak for it.)
Having a number of tests and dowries that are customized per crew could be fun.
Anyway, just thinking aloud. I’m playing a Spider in a crew that is looking to start up a second arc, and it just jangles my spider-sense that the borders are so porous in the gang; I find it harder to want to invest in the crew and trust it, if just anybody could show up and be a member, and if trusted members may just vanish without a reason perhaps never to return.
How does your table handle it?
In a regular game, how do you handle when a crew member gets Lost or Incarcerated? Similar situations for being out of the action for a while.
Haven’t they just been there the whole time but working on other jobs? That’s how I’d do it.
I know in my other group, we’ve had a new PC show up, and the player chose an NPC who was the leader of one of their cohorts – which was very neat indeed.
Otherwise I’d go with Matt Wilson’s option, either they’ve been part of the crew all along and have been doing other work (maybe infiltrating a rival…), incarcerated, or have a strong connection with another member/patron.
Certainly, it’s something I’d have a general conversation about ‘at the table’: “what’s your connection with the group, why would they accept you with 100% trust?”
Don’t punish players for their schedules. That is so crummy. “You couldn’t make it for a few weeks because work? Screw you Bob! Your character’s brain is scrambled!!”
And don’t punish your players for wanting to have fun. That is also crummy. “Oh, you want to try being a Hound for a night instead of a Spider? Screw you Barb!”
Characters come and go. Sometimes they’re working other jobs, or working other rackets, or they’re probationary members called in once in a while and gotten rid of when not needed, or they get lost in Vice and wander off, etc.
As for how to handle it, if you want to know where all these randos are coming from, it would be neat to draw new characters from the Friend/Rival/Contact lists.
At my table trust within members is not an interesting question unless there is a reason to think otherwise. When a character is missing it was for personal reasons we may discuss or not, be it business, pleasure or obligation, the crew moves on without them and welcomes them back because they all put money, effort and blood into the crew and every single one of them benefits from the crew succeeding rather than failing.
If the characters would be interested in another crew, they wouldn’t have made their own crew.
I mostly play one-shots, so it doesn’t come up. In my regular game when people can’t make it they fade back, but it’s also expected that the character will be back before long.
I absolutely agree that characters (and players) should not be punished for scheduling issues. Most of what I run is open table for that reason.
In my regular group it’s easier to have people background because you know they’ll be back. Online play is different because you don’t know whether people will be back or not, and if you tie it off then they come back for a session six months down the line that’s a door that should be able to open and close.
That’s another thing I like about gangs, too; it’s much easier to work people in and out.
When a new person joined our current group we decided they had just gotten out of prison.
It is also interesting because I feel much more protective of my character and crew as player, where I’m much more free-wheeling and willing to see where it goes when I’m running it.
As the person running the game I can see lots of ways people can come and go and the players are cool with it so whatever.
As a player, I want to protect my character’s interests.
When I ran it, my go-to explanation was that all PCs were always part of the gang, but not all of them were involved with every score. For example, our Lurk (his player often couldn’t make it) would be off elsewhere gathering info or running interference, and our Cutter (he was an alternate character) spent most of his time as a bouncer at the crew’s vice den. We did have a Spider who was explicitly a new member (her player joined late), but we justified it saying she had befriended the crew earlier so this wasn’t her first time meeting them, just the first score she’d been part of.
If you don’t have a metagame objection to members coming and going and your concern is just about keeping your character safe, then you could just play your Spider as a paranoid person who’s slow to trust newcomers and assumes anyone who goes missing is compromised. That way you can be careful to protect yourself without structuring your gang in a way that locks out new characters.
For a relatively consistent group with only a few players, I think hand-waving is fine. Though it does make sense that if a new person drops in (or someone rolls a new character) then that character probably shouldn’t immediately become a crew leader without some establishing fiction.
For groups with really inconsistent rosters, I think it’s an interesting point to consider. Maybe the crew has a leader, and an inner circle, but the spotlight isn’t always on them (read: the players don’t show up often). Or they might establish some NPC to be the leader, so they don’t have to worry about that player showing up. (I’m not a huge fan of long-term projects to rank up, but exploring the hierarchy could be pretty cool.)
Or maybe they’re just a really loose network of scoundrels, and everyone else knows it, and treats the crew accordingly.
Alternatively, liberal applications of Ghost Contract? “Hey, I want to sign onto the crew.” “Sure, sure. First, this is our Spider …”
We hand-wave it. But fictionally, like you mentioned, our Spider (who had already taken the Paranoid and Cold traumas – obviously) stayed extra vigilant. Not letting the new member go off alone, etc.
I always did the drop-in/drop-out idea so that any who take the lost option can bring in a new PC relatively easy, but also to help “hand-wave” the idea that the crew is more than the people at the table currently. (an extra 1 or 2 crew doesn’t really affect Tier Scale to me, even at 0 — so I don’t find this to be an issue)
Very similar to how Star Trek shows still show new cast/people in their 5th season of the show even though they’ve had no contact w/ “home fleet” since the pilot episode.
Ben Wright I struggle with that point of view. The PCs formed a crew to pursue their own fate, and if there are people who are in that crew who don’t have a say in the decisions that those who are there make, that’s a terrible representational model. “We decided to do what?!” Better then to be taking orders from people you marginally trust, than implicated in decisions where you weren’t consulted (and you’re responsible, as crew member.)
Star Trek was totally stopping at star bases periodically! =)
Jacob Spafford The trouble there is then I’ve gone and made a character who would kill other characters for posing a risk to the crew, and that’s irresponsible from the player perspective. It’s rough when it’s like “we have no leader, we have no clear objective, we’re in it because everybody here wants to play but there was no selection process, so those who showed up decided to start a crew, and if any other characters show up they’re in the crew too.”
I want to play a spider, but it’s hard to play a spider who is not a control freak. Maybe I just need to make a different character so I can relax already.
I mean, I like my Spider, but I’m not sure he’ll be any good at a table as open as the one I’m looking at.
I always took crew view as separate from character view, so players always had a stake in the crew level things, but it needn’t be because it was demanded “in scene” so to speak. And as far as not always having a full voice in what is said/done feels true to how the crew has to interact w/ larger factions sometimes and the other entanglements that they deal with, so that never posed an issue to me.
In our group, I try to make an effort to bring about fictional circumstances where it would make sense for a new recruit to the crew. In at least one instance, this was an NPC that the crew had recently picked up as a contact, and the player was interesting in actually playing them as a PC.
Groups I’ve been involved with have usually treated characters who are not available as being tied up with other business. Sometimes it is tied into what the crew has going on, but sometimes it is of a more personal nature.
I tell the players that in the world of scoundrels it is perfectly normal for someone not to show up. Everyone has enemies, drug habits or vices that they must tend to away from the job.