How many Gangs in a Faction?
The book says Tier defines “the quality and scale of the gangs your crew employs” (emphasis mine). To give examples, the Billhooks (Tier II, pp. 285) have “a large gang of bloodthirsty butchers” and “a pack of death-dogs” listed under Notable Assets, which to me implies two Gang cohorts of around 12 members each. The Bluecoats (Tier III, pp. 285) have “many large gangs of vicious thugs” under Notable Assets, which to me implies 6+ gangs of 20 people each. But then the Deathlands Scavengers (Tier II, pp. 288) have equipment listed under Notable Assets instead of cohorts of any kind.
I know there are no objective rulings about this sort of thing, so this is a question for individual GMs/tables: how many gangs do you give to factions at different Tiers? Do some of your factions have more Gangs/Experts, and some others have assets of a different kind? I’m thinking about the overall population of different factions and trying to get some insight into the ways other GMs approach the situation.
Personally, I entirely wing it based on the flavour of the gang in question. To give the starting situation as an example, the three gangs there are all Tier II. I imagine the lampblacks have a few dozen working class thugs, the Crows have maybe 20 good cut-throats, and the Red Sashes have about a dozen well-trained and well-armed sword-fighters.They all even out in the wash to being equal (more cohorts of lesser quality, or fewer cohorts of better quality, but all the same tier). In other words, yes, I think Tier is made up of any number of Notable Assets that could be raw numbers but also quality of equipment, assets, or even allies.
But it’s all also arbitrary for me – whatever Tier the Bluecoats may be, I can’t quantify how many there are in the city. To me, the Bluecoats are inexhaustible. You can’t beat up every cop in the city.
I can try, Tim. I can try. 😛
Thanks for the insight! I think that’s the way I go about it too but I noticed I was nebulous about the number of Grinder goons in my last AP session and it got me wondering about faction populations in general.