Started up a new BitD campaign last night. Very excited to work with the full release. Went through the starting situation stuff pretty well. I def like the way the questions are set up more than the quickstart. The players choose the crew type cultist and I stumbled a bit trying to fit it to the starting situation. Thinking about it has brought of some questions of the game flow for me.
The game has an amazing perpetual motion engine. Once things get rolling there always seems to be hooks ready to roll you into another score. There are so many angles that sometimes I feel like crew types might get a little bit lost? I default to gang war type scores pretty often.
You have scores to gain Claims or work on long projects.
You have scores from your crew opportunity sheet
You have scores from the starting situation which tend to be work for hire stuff.
Its a nice sandbox to play in but I’ve been having trouble getting the players to be proactive so that its not just me selecting their scores? Is the idea that the crew does work for hire stuff before striking out on their own? Which is why the starting situation is always some sort of faction war in the background? If I was a player I would think the best scenario is to get as many claims as possible to start speeding up the slow advancement of crew tier. But that’s a hard place to get to fictionally when the crew is doing work for hire stuff? The work for hire should be connected to their crew type usually right? I wonder what a score that involves and augury would look like.
I want the players to feel in control of the destiny but they usually take a reactive posture. This can be a problem with any sandbox game, and I was just curious how other people have dealt with it.
What I do to keep the crew proactive is introduce options for jobs at the outset of every session. I roll something from the opportunities list (in the description of the crew in the book, but unfortunately not in any of the quick-reference sheets) and also generate a job that a patron or contact might offer them, either from my brain, or from the job tables.
Then once the free-ish RP has started, I ask “OK, who has a contact who might know about X?” and then do a quick scene. Repeat for the other opportunity. Then I remind them that if they ever want more Turf, they have to take it. Whatever job they don’t take, I make a note of and start a countdown clock, and if they don’t deal with it by then, I change the fictional background based on having not taken it. Like if Scurlock offers you a job and you don’t take it, it lowers his relationship to you and maybe weakens one of his long-term clocks.
If I’m feeling lazy, then I only make one job offer, but that still requires them to choose between the job and seizing Turf.
Also, keep in mind that a crew doesn’t only have to do their specialty. Sure, that’s their favourite, and they need to do it to gain XP, but there’s no reason a Cult couldn’t do an assassination, or a crew of Shadows couldn’t smuggle some goods.
Whether the crew sells its skills to the highest bidder, works for a patron, or operates on their own is really up to them. Some crews float between it, my own Bravos that I’m playing in hire ourselves out but we also tend to snag and grab moments of opportunity as well.
The starting situation should always be a scenario that gives them plenty of opportunities to jump upon or come up with in their mind. The crew is small and new, being a Tier 0, and have their first big opportunity to make a major splash in the scene. Then again, you really want to reinforce that if they don’t want to take the job, they don’t have to.
It is the hardest thing I’ve had with my group of Assassins so far, they are slowly realizing they don’t have to take every job that has arrived at their door. They decide what is important, what they’ll do, and I just react to them.
I think the best advice I could give is to ask them questions. Ask them where they go for work, what kind of work do they look for, produce rumors and such and instead of letting them find a person that gives them the job, they just hear about a situation. Don’t be afraid to give some big, heavy-handed suggestions like “yeah, you guys probably could rob that place” or what have you. Never forget that an opportunity is made of a target, a location, a situation, and an obvious vector to get in. Otherwise, I’d suggest having the players read through the book as much as they can. It’ll help them as much as it’ll help you.
As for the cult’s sacred sites for augury, it means they’ll be doing things to try and attract the god’s counsel and attention. You should ask why they even want their god’s attention, what will it help with? Maybe they have a goal or a situation that a divine being’s wisdom would aid in? You should also learn how the venerate their God? The chart for random gods and cult practices would be super useful for that for suggestions and ideas.
Adam D That’s a great write up. I’ve run BitD campaigns in the past very similar. I guess the thing I’m working against is my impulse to backseat Quarterback for the players. They are just going to have to slowly come to the conclusion themselves that taking turf is important for expansion. It’s best if I just jump forward with NPCs who have opportunities.
I am curious if anyone has details of scores that involved augury or consecration. Those feel like interesting rituals but I’m having trouble figuring out how to involved the whole crew. I guess the idea would be to come up with a lot of requirements for the rituals.
In general, I feel it helps for the crew to have a unifying goal. I’ve played with crews where different people wanted different things and while that can sometimes balance, it can also pull things out of alignment so they wobble and there’s less fun in the game.
One way to help a crew have a unifying goal is to explicitly pick one at the beginning, like this.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/113881370051836623777/posts/XSMfGYdgR8C
Once they’ve gotten started, it can help to see who they like, and who they don’t like, and put those people in situations where the crew can make a difference.
“So long as the Barker Street Station stands, the Fog Hounds will never recover their network.”
Well now, it’s time to build up or undercut the Barker Street Station, depending on how you feel about the Fog Hounds. =)
If the players aren’t coming up with jobs, there might be a few different reasons.
Some people just aren’t used to creating their own opportunities. Most games are GM led so it is a strange feeling for a player. Maybe you could make a crib sheet of some general possibilities they have and just keep it on the table (things like ‘Get Coin, Take Turf, Undermine a faction, Repair a fractured relationship, Work for hire, Acquire something important’, etc.). Keep it on the table during play and when something comes up in the session that might lead to a future job, hint at it. You could even have the players keep a ‘Possible leads’ sheet of all the things they learn. If you expand the world with things that they see or hear while traversing the world (overhearing some gossip, a newsboy or a meeting taking place in an adjacent room, wanted posters on the walls of an alley they’re in, a memo in an office they’re raiding which has details of a shipment being moved soon), they’ll find some. And if they miss them, that’s fine, but that shipment went to another gang who is now using/selling it to get more powerful, that man on the wanted poster is seeking their help or is causing them problems and the gossip is now well known and unexploitable.
The other reason might be that they’re just not invested in the world yet. That requires more of a GM to players talk about what they’re looking to get out of the game so you know what kind of leads to drop or if they want to change something to make it work for them. If you’re honest with each other, you should be able to find a solution.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter too much. If your players prefer to sit back and be spoon fed their next opportunity, and you’re fine with doing that, go for it. You can put them on a slightly more linear path with a more handcrafted narrative which definitely has its merits. Do what makes you and your group happy.
One of the things I’ve noticed about our games is that we usually have three or four jobs we look for, select and do. Usually the proactive starts when you hit some juicy entanglements.
Did this job piss off the Circle of Flame? Well what if they wreck some of your gang members and light your favorite bar on fire to send a message. Is your barkeep crying and telling you he threw in with you and he’s begging you to make it right?
Well now the gang has to come up with “how do we hurt the circle” missions and they’re out of your hands. And in the process allies will be tapped, friends will be questioned etc. It snowballs. And once they understand how to leverage the faction and turf mechanics it tends to chain further and further into the game.
I reread the the starting situation and offering opportunities sections of the full release BitD. I was largely operating off past knowledge from the quickstart when I started the campaign last week. John has done a nice job clearing up some ambiguities I had. I do remember the entaglements and constant changing faction statuses make the players have to react. I’m looking forward to that. I think Andrew Shields also has an excellent point of laying out questions that the table as a whole try to answer.
Our starting situation centers around Fog Hound and Vultures war. Lampblacks and the Gondoliers are on the periphery looking to profit or avoid ruin. So the questions I’m thinking to help focus the crew are…
1.) Who will control the Waterways in Silkshore?
2.) Can the Gondoliers be convinced to cooperated with the Criminal Underworld?
3.) Will Bazso Baz be able to profit from this?
I’m running the first full session tomorrow I’ll let you know how it goes over.