I think there may be room for a third kind of activity. We have heists and downtime currently. I think it might be useful to codify “react” as an action that can be triggered by the GM or by an entanglement.
Heist is a proactive mission. Down time is what happens between those missions. I see “react” as coping with an attack on hold, coin, or crew members. Any decent crew is going to be making enemies. The inspectors especially, and other crews that have their ear to the ground and pick up on the crew’s activity may take an interest. They may attack, or shut down lucrative opportunities, or punish allies, or even raid the lair.
There is an example of this in the quick start, with someone maybe wanting to stab a character in her sleep, and what do you do? But that doesn’t fit in as a heist, and it’s a bit odd as down time; it would feel punitive, out of nowhere, I think.
I have represented “heat” to my players as being trouble not just with the law, but other factions. So a mechanic might tie into heat; the hotter things get, the more likely either a downtime reaction is triggered as an attack on the crew, its assets, and its allies; or as a full-blown reaction mission, where kidnapping or assassination or theft escalate to actually damage character and crew.
This plays into the grit of a game where you are pushing on people who are likely to push back. You don’t get to choose the point of engagement all the time; you devastate them by hitting their weak points, and surely they’ll respond in kind.
Just a thought.
I’ve just run reactive type events like you describe as a score or mini-score with minimal coin reward. It has worked fine enough so far, since usually a successful reaction can legitimately solidify Hold and then you have another Downtime following the reaction.
I’d clarify calling them the broader “Score” rather than “Heist” but would even consider “Mission” instead of Score.
Still I see your point of a need for something for events that target a single PC rather than the crew, although I can see running that as a score where only one PC is present and acting, then maybe only that one PC gets Downtime?.
So far I’ve only run 4 heists across 2 sessions, and I’ve had entanglements dictate what we do next for heists. I would feel a little odd about telling them, you know, “Down time is over and ha ha you are under attack defend yourself or lose 2 hold!”
One way to handle this without making a reaction category is to put out there some push-pull clocks, or time clocks if the investigators are that good, and have those tick down towards assaults on the characters and their crew. That would be a practice, not a structure, and would work with what’s already there.
I do several progress clocks, good and bad ones for the different crews. Sometimes the success or failure of another crew influenced the clocking of a Crew. So i try to have different rumors and events taking place described as news articles within the Downtime.
The only thing that I think is missing by using clocks is to have the GM and the players all surprised by a sneak attack from a rival faction. Maybe that could be an entanglement. I kind of want it to unpack into hitting an ally, the lair, or ambushing a character, or hitting hold. Then, depending on scope and scale, see how detailed an engagement it becomes.
Nobody wants to be in downtime and then find out one of the friends of the crew just got sent to prison and their possessions claimed by a rival.