I like the tier list and how it firmly establishes the pecking order. I love the faction statuses and how it causes every action to ripple throughout Duskwall. I wish there was an asset list. I think an inspired asset list could cleanly link to new exciting scores. Andrew’s Heist deck makes up for this a bit, and to be fair, PC’s don’t have a list for their long term projects, either.
The faction actions leave me a little bit wanting. Maybe it’s because I’m coming from Kevin Crawford’s games. My biggest hang up is the increasing and reducing hold. Reducing hold is firmly established as taking two actions. One to identify a vulnerability, and another to then reduce the targets hold. Increasing hold isn’t given any parameters. Making it seem as though you could increase hold every downtime. I know that’s not true, but it’s unclear what is the best course.
If the PC’s hadn’t gotten involved in the Lampblack and Red Sashes war, I’m not sure how I would of brought that to a conclusion. I guess opposing fortune rolls, with the winner ticking their long term project of destroying the other? What happens if one increases their hold while at war? Do we change a clock? I could wing it and eventually figure it out. But the point is, I’m not getting much support from the system. Luckily, my pc’s got involved, so it was easy to determine the winner.
It hasn’t effected play at the table much. Between entanglements and faction statuses, BitD has created a brilliant perpetual motion machine. But it does mean I’m having a hard time thinking off screen. I can try to build from the fiction, but its been a struggle for me. I like to (and maybe a little dependant upon) use faction turns as GM tools/mechanics which help generate interesting fiction.
How have other people dealt with other factions downtime? Any interesting stories of a gang that spiraled out of control, due to the PC’s neglect? At this point I’ve begun to make DW fronts and linking dangers to other factions. That’ll likely to do the job, but I’m interested to hear other people’s solutions.
In a one-shot I ran, players convinced Bazso to let them stay out of his war, but they had to do a good faith job first. Something to prove they weren’t going to take side — basically buy their way off the hook. So, they did the ‘steal the Red Sash treasury’ job. Rolling some stuff on the tables turned up that the Dimmer Sisters were holding the Sash treasury in their spooky ghost house for safe keeping, so the crew had to get in there. Long story short, they stole the war treasury and a demon idol that some ad libbing revealed the Sisters possessed. During downtime, I rolled some dice for the Sashes, the Lampblacks, and the Dimmer Sisters. Got some successes with costs, and a pretty bad failure, I believe.
So, interpreting these terrible rolls, it worked out that the Sisters were now joining the Red Sashes war vs the Lampblacks. The sisters are hunting for the bastards that stole their demonic master’s idol — real horrible dark magic, ghost-torture escalation kind of stuff. The end result is that, from these rolls, despite the PCs efforts to get off the hook, they made the war worse, have put the Lampblacks in a position where they’ve been almost wiped out, and the Dimmer Sisters are hunting for them. If this one-shot ever gets a follow-up, its going to start with Bazso confronting them in their hideout, demanding to know just what the hell they did.
You seem to be thinking about this the same way I would. I think the correct approach will rely most on your player’s feelings concerning those things outside their control (do they care or not). I do suggest clocks as a form of rep tracker for other factions though; this will better approximate the gradual change in hold that occurs than a hold-gained/hold-lost result.
PS: I deleted my previous comment after accidental comment with things not relevant to your OP
Also, you can choose the entanglement rather than roll it for more tailored results. Or create your own that follows the precedents set in the text
I love rolling the entanglements. Since it happens at the table, we usually discuss what has occurred elsewhere to cause whatever entanglement has been rolled. I think its largely on the entanglements merit, that I’ve gotten by with so little going on off screen.
I didn’t use the quickstart intro, but stuck the players in Crow’s Foot in the middle of the war. After the first score, I rolled the tier of both LB and RS and the LB got a crit vs the RS who failed the roll. I interpreted this as a major hit by the LB on the RS whereby they took out half the gang in an epic ambush.
The bodies hung off the silent bridge by their own sashes, the right-hand of Mylera had her sword sheathed to the hilt down her throat. This happened after the first session, and one of the players is Iruvian with RS connections and this drew them into the war.
They hit the Lampblack HQ in stealth mode, killed a bunch of them and stole their money in an interesting reversal of the quickstart plot.
Ok, what the heck is Dustwall? I see it mentioned, but that’s not the name of the city. I went looking for a basic setting reference and could not find one. Is there something I am missing here? Some world building document that describes the setting, or are we to pick it all up through oblique references in the text. “Oh this group is composed of leviathan blood refinery workers… So someone has to get leviathan blood somehow and then this group refines it to do something…”
The city is called Duskwall throughout the playtest document. Although its canon official name is actually Doskvol, the city has multiple names accumulated over generations. On the page 75 map, it says “Doskvol, also known as Duskwall and North Hook.”
There is no world building, except for the district descriptions starting on pg 81 and the simple summaries of the other regions on page 95.