Hi everyone. I’m new around here and planning on running Blades in the Dark soon, but I have a couple of brief rules questions, mostly related to the faction game.
1. How does a crew get Turf, other than as a Claim? The Turf boxes on the Rep/Turf track vs the Turf spaces on the Claims map and the explanation of Turf Claims as “some claims count as turf” make it seem like they are distinct somehow.
2. How does a crew come up with the coin to rise in Tier? Given how little coin a crew can hold and a character can hold outside of their stash, once you get past Tier II or so, I’m not sure where you would even hold the huge amounts of coin you need to go up another tier. It’s 24 coin for Tier III, for example. A crew of 4 characters without a vault can only hold 20. If they have to get it from their stash, then the tier advance really costs at least 28, not 24 (because at least 4 of the coin has to come from stash at 2 for 1).
3. Conceptually, I am a little unclear on how other factions might take action against the players’ crew, since the mechanics of the game are driven by player action, not NPC action. Say the players’ crew is at War with the Billhooks. What does it look like in game terms for the Billhooks to go on the offensive against the players’ lair, hold, cohorts or other assets outside of a players’ score?
I think that’s it for now. Thanks in advance!
1. There are some abilities which give turf in addition to the turf you get from turf-type claims (not all claims give turf, only those marked as turf).
2. By getting a vault? I mean, your calculations work fine up to tier III if you have a vault. Alternatively, by getting a patron. EDIT: also, you could tier up after a big score even without getting a vault – overflow is only lost at the end of downtime.
1. Claims that are labelled “Turf” are Turf. Claims with other names (like, say, a “Vice Den”) are not.
2. An upgraded Vault, a Patron, or doing a lucrative job while you’ve already got money stored (as Jakob points out, you only lose that excess money at the end of downtime).
3. I’m not that clear on that myself. GM declaration, basically, I think?
3. you may play it as complicantions from botched rolls, or Entanglements or as a full paybck Score / Freeplay. There’s a session in the bloodletters where the Red Sashes attacks the crew just because it made sense in the fiction. If you have rulelawyer players, you may have a problem with the last approach, but if you have players who likes a cool story, you may have more liberties as a GM.
https://bladesinthedark.com/faction-game
Faction Status Levels:
-3: War. This faction will go out of its way to hurt you even if it’s not in their best interest to do so. They expect you to do the same, and take precautions against you. When you’re at war with any number of factions, your crew suffers +1 heat from scores, temporarily loses 1 hold, and PCs get only one downtime action rather than two. You can end a war by eliminating your enemy or by negotiating a mutual agreement to establish a new status rating.
If your crew has weak hold when you go to war, the temporary loss of hold causes you
to lose one Tier. When the war is over, restore your crew’s Tier back to its pre-war level.
—–
No matter what the crew is doing, add the Billhooks to the Free Time, Downtime, and Score. The Billhooks “will go out of its way to hurt you even if it’s not in their best interest to do so. They expect you to do the same, and take precautions against you.”
The “+1 heat from scores, temporarily loses 1 hold, and PCs get only one downtime action” should make the PCs want to resolve the war with the Billhooks even if you don’t add the Billhooks every where.
Hey, thanks for the replies, everyone.
Regarding Turf, it is clear that not every Claim is Turf; only the ones labeled as such. My point is that there appears to be no regular procedure for acquiring Turf outside of the Claim map and the few special abilities that grant Turf (like the Hawkers’ Accord). If that is in fact the case, then why does, e.g., the Assassins’ Crew Sheet have space to mark off 6 turf on the Rep/Turf track, since I can only see clear ways for them to ever get 2 turf from their claims map and maybe 3 more max by using Veteran to take the Hawkers’ Accord power. Obviously you could do it in an ad hoc fashion, by having the crew run a score to get a turf, but I don;t think that’s actually spelled out anywhere.
Regarding actions taken by other factions against the players’ crew, I am clear on the mechanical effects of being at War, but those are fairly abstracted. Ostensibly, other factions will take concrete actions against the players at some point (think the IRA blowing up the Garrison in Peaky Blinders or the Grey King destroying the Gentleman Bastards’ hideout and killing Calo, Galdo and Bug in Lies of Locke Lamora)–it’s stuff like that that i’m having a hard time conceptualizing within the game rules. And the rules talk about this in the sections on claims and hold: just as the players’ crew can work to reduce other factions’ hold or take claims from them, other factions can do the same tot he players’ crew without having to be at war.
Obviously you could do it just by GM fiat if it makes sense in the fiction, but something about that does not sit well with me in a game that is more formalized like this one. After reviewing the section on Entanglements, it does seem like a lot of those results are the kinds of things I am talking about, although they are usually couched in straightforward mechanical terms, some of them could lead to more open ended scenarios to resolve (Gang Trouble, Reprisals, Rivals).
I suppose you could also model those kinds of events using the “mark a clock of a faction that interests you” part of downtime. Give the Billhooks a clock that says “Move against the [players crew]” and when it fills up, they try to smash up one of the players’ claims or something. Probably with a fortune roll involved. And maybe some actions taken against the players might not need a clock–maybe it’s okay if more minor things happen as demanded by the fiction and they’re just one-offs, like a clock with one segment. But it still follows as part of the “tick another faction’s clock” part of downtime.
Oh, you know what, reading about NPC & Faction Downtime on p.158, a lot of what I am thinking about in terms of other factions’ actions against the players’ crew is really described there.
But I guess I’m still not 100% sure how any of this would look in actual play, since it’s sort of a score in reverse. I guess it only matters if the players are present when it happens–plenty of NPC/faction downtime actions against the players could be against their assets or cohorts or friends when they are not actually on the scene. That’s not a problem for me–just throw a fortune roll or two. It’s the reverse score when the PCs are present that I’m not sure what it looks like.
“If that is in fact the case, then why does, e.g., the Assassins’ Crew Sheet have space to mark off 6 turf on the Rep/Turf track, since I can only see clear ways for them to ever get 2 turf from their claims map and maybe 3 more max by using Veteran to take the Hawkers’ Accord power.”
Because they could also take Fiends from Bravos.
Huh, okay.
Take a look at Bloodletters Episode 4, in which John hits the crew with a Red Sashes assault. It’s an older version of the rules, but it should illustrate one way you can do NPC retaliation. (Also suggested by Stefan, but it might have gotten lost).
If you want a mechanic for the war you could do a fortune roll at some point. Probably best to start the free play with it since it’s fresh on their minds for the current session. Roll poor and the rivals did something nasty. Roll 4-5 and you get wind of it in time to confront them directly. Roll a 6 and you’ve got a reprieve. Crit and you get a golden opportunity to hit them.