Hey Blades hackers:
I’m experimenting in my hack with having a playbook that has cohorts at the individual level (sort of like the Hardholder/Chopper in Apocalypse World, or the Pusher/Fixer in The Sprawl) and I’m not sure what to tie their cohort’s dice pools to. Personal wealth feels like an obvious low-hanging mechanical fruit to try to latch onto, but it feels kind of arbitrary. Tying it to an Action rating (or Action-like rating a la Band of Blades) feels like you have to choose between “I improve” or “They improve” in a way that doesn’t sit super well with me. Curious if anyone else has tried barking up this tree or may have thoughts.
What makes them improve in the game world? If they’re not increasing their capabilities because of their PC friend’s wealth or actions, how are they doing so? Could it still depend on crew Tier, just as an abstraction of the crew’s increasing status?
I’m not sure personal wealth is arbitrary. They can afford to pay the cohort for more of their effort/equip them better/give them more resources to work with. It does explicitly establish that their relationship with the cohort is financial, and not necessarily personal (though it could be both), so depending on your themeing you might not want to do it, but I think it could work.
Jesse Abelman Yeah, are the Cohorts the PCs’ employees, rather than the crew’s employees? Then PC wealth might make fine sense.
I find personal cohorts annoying to GM around. Best of luck with this. You can always tie their performance to Crew Tier.
You could also use playbook advancement to advance your cohorts a tier. Make training them a long term project. Or give them their own advancement track and let the player use a downtime action to train that. In that case, a playbook advance could be “When you train a personal cohort as a downtime action advance two ticks.” It kind of depends on what you want this playbook to be/what you consider the role of the cohort in that.
I was going to say tie it to Tier, but Becky beat me to it. 🙂
The distinction between a personal and a crew cohort is very slight. The example of this in default blades is The Hound’s pet. That’s tied to crew tier and a crew upgrade, just like any other but has special narrative benefits.
I believe you are over thinking it. The game mechanics are in place like others have pointed out.
Now, if you are experimenting with new mechanics, that’s great, and I think there is a niche for tying a cohort’s tier to a players wealth score depending on what you’ve got in store for your players
Ive barked up this tree myself. Lifestyle rating is basically interchangeable with crew Tier, and I’d argue it’s fine for a lot more than just fortune rolls.
Take the low hanging fruit. Sometimes what feels too easy or obvious is actually just.. what is best.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. This has given me a couple options to try out in play testing and made me make a specific note “is a playbook that does this interesting enough to actually be worth playing?”