8 thoughts on “Ok, another question—”

  1. This depends a lot on the group, how much focus on characters vs focus on advancing the crew there is, how many good opportunities for making lots of Coin and Rep present itself (so essentially the GM), how many of that Coin and Rep is used for recovering, or personal projects, instead of for advancing the crew, how much the players WANT to go to high Tier, and session length, of course

    I would say there are too many variables, but I would posit a minimum of 40 sessions or so, with the caveat that no game I’d play in would actually get there in a measly 40 sessions.

  2. Sounds like a fun thought exercise. OK lets step through a set of variables since there are so many:

    Assume a crew might never spend rep for extra downtime actions, they always save up enough coin to advance tier level as soon as the strong rep track fills up, and that they are always trying to punch up; running scores against factions that are at least 1 Tier higher than them.

    Then assume a Tier 0 crew sticks with the war in crows foot starting situation for a while, running scores against those Tier 2 crews and not actually picking a side. That’s 3 sessions until Tier 1 and 8 sessions to Tier 2.

    Then assume the crew is conservative and continues running scores against factions that are 1 Tier higher than them: That’s another 8 sessions to hit tier 3 and again another 8 sessions to hit Tier 4.

    Lots of assumptions.

    So a super focused crew MIGHT be able to hit Tier 4 in 27 sessions. That all goes wonky if the crew tries to keep any scores completely silent, runs scores against crews of equal Tier or lower, runs scores with little or no coin payout, if they acquire turf, etc.

  4. Omari Brooks case here is really a thought experiment of stretching everything to its theoretical limits. I don’t think it reflects a typical game in any way, and involves very little character-focused gameplay or paying rep for downtime actions or having to clean up the mess they made of things, I.e the things that tend to happen in most games.

    (He didn’t say otherwise, but I thought it needed some emphasis here)

  5. I’ve played with my group for just over a year. They’re only tier 2. So I’d say it highly depends on your group and what they aim for. You shouldn’t be doing things like “pacing” in blades, you should do the Faction Game between sessions and just let the fiction flow.

  7. Jakob Oesinghaus

    “I don’t think it reflects a typical game in any way”

    There is no way to quantify a “typical” game, which is why we use qualifiers and assumptions in the first place. I only scratched the surface of variables in my theoretical example; I didn’t even go down the rabbit hole of coin management or crew/claims/player ability synergies…

  8. Omari Brooks thanks – that’s what I love about BitD. Each component of the game is approached strategically by players. It isn’t just, “ok, now level up.”

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