I’ve got a Tier 0 Shadow crew. After crew creation they ended up with a -2 Status with the Cyphers faction (the messenger guild of Doskvol). So I’m wracking my brain trying to come up with ideas about how this would manifest, and I’d like to solicit the Group for help. Any ideas?
My initial thought: Any time the crew attempts to contact someone and they do not do it in person, it is assumed they send a message. So perhaps a Fortune Roll to see if the message gets through unmolested?
Sure, you could also potentially have them start receiving unsolicited job offers mixed in with legitimate ones which end up being traps and ambushes.
-2 is pretty bad. Not outright war but the Cyphers certainly have a reason to not like your crew.
I’d start with people. Why do they dislike the crew? Who done who wrong and what can they do to get even? Grab some particular members of the Cyphers and make it personal. Did Jara’s underground seditious zine get found and destroyed by the Bluecoats all because the Shadows led them to the printing press to cover their own crime? How many of Jara’s friends are in Ironhook now? Does Jara have to look over their shoulder at every turn lest they get picked up as well?
Once you’ve got a strong reason for the animosity, the “what to do” can come from there. Tip off the Bluecoats, talks shit about them to other crews, reveal their misdeeds in the papers. Call on friends to do violence to them. Get dirt on them and try to extort them into paying for the families of the folks in the Hook?
So consider the Cyphers as “mail sorters” in a sense, with the freedom to put junk mail and spam and phishing and all that towards someone’s box. What would Doskvol’s equivalent be, of sending someone’s email address to all the spam sites?
Hopeful perverts come to their address at all hours expecting the strangest treatment; they win the lottery of “for a good time call–“
Their names are attached to many formerly anonymous statements given to bluecoats, provoking a number of suspects to silence them.
For the next month, any time a fence is questioned about where they got stolen goods, guess whose description will fall from their lips.
And then there’s the deliveries. OH GOD THE DELIVERIES. “You guys ordered, uh, two tons of rock?” “Here, sign for this. I dunno, some package.” “I told him to put it around back–did you order something?” “Six vintage dolls with real hair, one Coin each, no backsies. Pay up or send them back and they are custom jobs, so you’ll really steam the artist.” “Where did they even get five crates of used and confiscated sex toys?!?”
The crew is Shadow’s right? That means their Lair is hidden. The Cyphers deal in information. Maybe start a Faction clock for the Cyphers to find the crew’s lair and sell the information to their enemies.
Side note: as a fellow GM for a crew of Shadows, I recently realized that the true value of the Hidden crew upgrade is precisely that it gives the GM an easy way for enemy factions to work against the PCs without needing to go straight to “they bash down the door and open fire.”
Lots of fantastic ideas, thanks! Yes Thomas Berton the Shadow’s have a Hidden lair. I wasn’t sure if I should threaten to take it away, since they ‘payed’ for it and all. But I do like the idea of starting such a clock. That makes a lot of sense.
Sean Nittner, they tied the -2 status to them getting the ‘Maps & Passkeys’ crew upgrade. Again, like I mentioned above about not thinking I should take away something the player’s purchased, I do like the idea of the Cyphers wanting their maps and keys back. So perhaps another clock.
Next session is tomorrow, so I’ll ask about just how the crew screwed over the Cyphers, and see if we cannot tie some faces to the negative status. And like Sean mentions above, make it personal.
It could be hilarious to pick a random contact from each player’s list each downtime and have the Cyphers act out on them because of their relationship to the frustratingly hidden crew.
Andrew Shields Absolutely this. Messing with the players’ friends/rivals is a ton of fun in general, and seems like a great fit here.
The Cyphers can run smear campaigns on the crew members’ friends, and pass damaging information to the crew members’ rivals. It feels like pissing off the Cyphers should lead less to direct war with the Cyphers, and more to further complications with everyone else the crew tangles with — as a result of the Cyphers’ manipulations.
Interpret every Entanglement roll as Cypher interference. =)
+todd estabrook You definitely shouldn’t take stuff away without warning, but you should threaten it. The description for the Hidden upgrade specifically tells you how to hide a Hidden lair that’s been found, heavily implying that it’s within the GM’s purview to let factions find Hidden lairs. Plus, if you do it right, it can make the Hidden upgrade feel much more useful – for instance, you could have the Cyphers make a mistake and attack the wrong place and when the PCs hear about it they’ll think “phew, I’m glad that our lair is hidden. That could have been us!”
Thomas Berton Ooh… Better yet, maybe when the Cyphers make that mistake, they target a person or place only tangentially related to the crew, thinking it’s more important than it is. Have a leech your crew goes to for healing? Cool, the Cyphers called in a favor and had another gang firebomb his place.
I think having -2 faction status with the postal service is pretty standard.