Two quick questions for the Doskvol hive mind.
Firstly- my Smugglers Crew have the Smugglers Rigging upgrade which means that two items can be carried without being noticeable. Does this mean they can carry 5 Load and still look like they only have 3 Load (ie they choose “Light Load” but actually have 5 Load worth of items?) or that they still only have 3 Load for “Light” but two of them can’t easily be found.
Secondly – a matter of taste I suspect but I’d value opinions. The next Score I have in mind for my players is a request to smuggle some firearms to some oppressed union workers in Coalridge. This is likely to involve
a) Finding a source for the items (whether by theft, bribery, negotiation etc)
b) Actually smuggling the weapons in.
Would this be one Score (the smuggling) or two (the acquisition, then the smuggling)?
I can see it working either way and the acquisition could be interesting enough not to gloss over it, but it would feel odd to have Downtime after that part.
Thoughts anyone?
For the second question, I think it entirely comes down to whether you feel your players are interested in running the pickup as a score. Downtime can represent as little as a day or two narratively and if the first score is interesting enough to be worth running as well score in the first place, the Crew laying low for a couple days before delivering the merchandise makes perfect sense.
For your Smuggler’s Rigging, if you compare with Hawker’s Rigging (“(1 carried item is concealed and has no load”) I think it is the second case.
1- the latter
2- finding a vendor doesn’t seem like an interesting score unless you put unusual obstacles to it (and even then, it seems like a hawkers’ score)
You could do the firearm “acquisition” as a setup maneuver that influences the engagement roll of the smuggling score.
Personally l think acquiring a source of firearms is worth turning into a score for the Smugglers XP trigger alone not to mention the potential for future complications of keeping that source under the control of the crew.
The way the smuggler’s rigging upgrade reads, it sounds like they would still have the same amount of load, but any two items are concealed in such a way the rest are not.
For the 2nd question it would depend on the situation the crew is in. Do the people asking them to smuggle weapons have a source for those weapons? If not, that sounds like a score for the crew. You could apply some familiar tropes and consequences here, for example a lot of firearms and explosive are controlled in Doskvoll and you can easily accrue a lot of Heat when stealing such items. Or perhaps the weapons are weird and interesting in some way that would be enticing to some of the characters in the crew, tempting them to keep them for themselves and risk earning the ire of a new enemy.
At the end of the day, you want to cut to the action when it comes to scores, so whatever you think would be interesting to the characters, and flows from the fiction.
Michael Elliott Thanks – in my head getting hold of the guns would be an interesting score – either breaking in somewhere to steal them, doing a deal with some shady figures, wining and dining a corrupt quartermaster etc — one brake on me doing this though was thinking that this done as a score itself would not itself yield any coin, so going into downtime afterward would be unfairly weighted – no extra coin to spend on the usual activities etc, but continuing on with another score may be unfair in giving no chance to reduce stress. I think I will go with “acquisition” as an activity and figure out the logistics at table
Start with “acquisition” in Free Time, and see if the players turn it into a score. If they do, make the delivery a Chase scene!