Questions about scale in terms of crew and cohorts: Let’s say there is a tier 2 gang that hasn’t taken a cohort upgrade.
1) Is the crew a handful of PCs AND tier 2 worth of gang members (12 people), or is it only the group of PCs and when they take the cohort upgrade they get those dozen gang members?
2) If it is the case that the crew is PCs + 12 members, but no cohort ability, how are these gang members different from an actual cohort? It seems like they could be a cohort without choosing any benefits/flaws for them.
3) What happens if this gang gets a cohort, and on their next advance creates a second set of cohorts, do they have two groups of 12? The Bloodletters did this but I never noted the specifics
1) No, the crew has to take a cohort upgrade to get a gang.
2) see 1
3) Yes
My crew has a few NPCs acquired from a turf raid (“you work for us now”) that are not part of a cohort. They’ve got names, they’ve got personalities, but they’re just around for flavor. If one of my players tried to use them for anything mechanical, I’d give them a hard no. If later on they wanted to turn one of them into a cohort with a crew upgrade, though, that’s totally legit.