Question about Scores:
If the crew can take a “specific” Score to lower another factions hold, choose a Score to take a claim, and choose a Score within their specialty and hunting grounds…
Can a Score only be one of these things? How do you decide if/when it can be more? Is a Score that takes a Claim from another faction not “specific” enough to decrease their hold?
Players CAN choose scores that are not within their specialty or “hunting grounds”. That is more likely to occur when they are doing a score as a setup to another score or to expedite the removal of some plaguing issue in the fiction. There is also the possibility these types of scores resulting in 0 coin payout…
Scores can be a lot of things. My general rule of thumb is that if it’s not something that can’t be resolved in one scene then it’s a candidate for a score.
I get that the game is story focused and that a player group can do almost anything as a Score. The part that confuses me is that the book seems to refer to several different types of scores…
Regular, anything for Coin
Specialty, rituals for cultists
Claim, taking turf from others
Hold, weakening other factions
Can 1 score cover multiple categories? Doesn’t taking someone’s turf always weaken their hold? Do you need separate scores to accomplish both?
Of course, a score can do whatever it is fictionally set up do.
I also often insert side scores within scores too, which is essentially what the text describes as a “linked plan” though these will typically lack a codified plan.
As a GM for one season of the game I wound up feeling that there usually needs to be at least some Coin paid out for most scores, even if they have goals that are a little monetary-adjacent.
I usually would explain this baseline as justified through off-screen elements: perhaps minor items swiped during a score and sold off to pawners, information brokering of otherwise-irrelevant rumors heard during the score, or most commonly just the boring background income of the player’s various enterprises (even as the PCs rush off to do exciting PC things). That latter justification is a bit easier for Hawkers or Smugglers crews where you can hand-wave the business operating in the background, but I imagine Bravos are still collecting racket money in the margins of the fiction and Cults are receiving donations or offerings from their adherents. It also fictionally helps (but I do not feel is necessary) if the PCs have cohorts who we can imagine doing some of the dirty drudge work these things require.
The reason I did this was partially table preference/tone… I didn’t want to meat-grinder out the PCs even though it’s entirely within the possibility space of the game if the GM plays hardball with the reward/heat structure.
It’s worth noting that the first XP trigger for each crew playbook is already pointedly asking if the players did their crew’s specific ‘thing’, so denying Coin in addition to that XP source for a slightly off-brand score places the reward structure into a “double-jeopardy” situation. My suspicion is that when players realize they aren’t getting Coin for doing wacky and fun scores, they will instead start to do boring and predictable scores and dampen the table’s enthusiasm for acting outside the ‘box’ of their chosen Crew type. I wasn’t willing to risk that in my game, but for a different table I can see that tone working and telling a grittier tale.
Jarvis Mishler
Don’t forget about “Linked Plans” (page. 131)
The is no niche protection for scores. If players can justify why their bid to take a claim or weaken a hold would result in them getting coin (perhaps as loot) consider it.
My gut says that weakening a faction’s Hold and seizing a Claim from them could readily go together, but that both are mutually exclusive with doing a job within your own hunting grounds.
(Mainly commenting so I get alerts snout replies. I’ve got a crew of Hawkers and this is very relevant to my interests.)
Nathan Dorey, I’ve got Hawkers here as well which is why I think this came up. Assassins killing folks for coin is bound to weaken the hold of other factions from time to time, but cutting a favorable deal for new product is less straight forward.
So far, I’ve been letting the fiction dictate. Taking claims from small games is enough to also weaken their hold, but a massive gang probably wouldn’t miss one of its 12 taverns.
This seems natural, but the book keeps throwing me off when I see the line about reducing hold: “You may perform an operation specifically to reduce the hold of another faction, if you know how they’re vulnerable.”
Makes me wonder if scores to reduce hold can’t cross over with taking claims or the crews regular operations as Hawkers…