I’m in the process of setting up a Blades in the Dark game focused on spying and was looking for ideas on how to handle Wanted Level and Incarceration. I want to keep it at least in part to represent the attention of counter intelligence agencies, but actual prison terms don’t quite fit the fiction.
A little setting background: the game is set in the world from the show Princess Principal if you’re familiar with that. If not, it’s a show in the style of a Cold War spy narrative, but set in a moderately steam punk version of London after a revolution divides Britain into opposing powers. There’s even a wall dividing the city in two. The protagonists – and the PCs in my game – are a spy cell allied with the Commonwealth working in the Kingdom’s sector of the city.
I was considering having Incarceration represent something more on the lines of laying low or going to ground to avoid the opposition until things cool down, but simple re-flavoring doesn’t quite feel like enough. I don’t want to drop it because Heat/Wanted Level is a good way to track the attention the cell draws in their operations. Any suggestions?
While I’m on the subject, the setting also doesn’t have magic and the weird science fits pretty comfortably under Tinker, so I’m open to possible replacements for Attune.
Not sure if it fits your fiction, but Wanted Level 4 could mean your Intelligence Director is brought to answer before Congress. 🙂
BitD by way of PrinPal? Cool! Just picked up the series with my viewing group, and looks nicely dieselpunk. Can’t think of anything on reworking the incarceration system yet, but would raise another aspect: what are you also thinking of doing with Prison Claims?
I don’t know the fiction, but for general spy stuff, “detainment” can fit quite well. It happened quite a bit during the Cold War, someone suspicious would be detained for a weeks until they were cleared or found to be a spy. If Wanted Level represents your cover’s current exposure, then it fits that somebody only with a level 1 would be in prison for a few days, until they check out. But somebody with a Wanted Level 4 is basically blown and ends up being thrown in prison for years.
That’s a fair point, though one way the setting differs from the Cold War is that class matters a lot. Some of the characters involved have enough privilege that if there was enough suspicion to justify detaining them, there’d be enough suspicion to take much more serious action as well. The setting is closer to the Wild West days of the Cold War. I was going to say the style is “Mission Impossible as written by Le Carre,” but that pretty accurately describes Atomic Blonde so that’s maybe a better touch point.
Looking at it some more, I think the key issue is what triggers the “Incarceration” roll. Being detained or having to lie low for a bit or going overseas while things cool down all fit as reasonable stand ins for an actual prison term, and the claims can be re-flavored without too much trouble. But triggering specifically off of someone doing time feels sort of backwards in this genre.