Changes to your Gangs/Gigs/Hardhold, Advancements, and the Fiction

To do it, do it. When you do it, you do it.

If a Chopper with a 2-harm gang takes out a bunch of guys with assault rifles, can his gang become 3-harm without him taking the advancement? If he takes the advancement, do his guys have assault rifles now with minimal fictional positioning, or are there hoops?

Other situations: An Operator cuts a deal with the hardholder to run compound defense. Does he get the gig? An operator shoots the subject of his Avoid Someone obligation in the head. Does he lose the gig? The Hold owes tribute to someone. The Hardholder leads his a coalition and burns the fuckers out. Does the hold improve?

Same situations, but with taking the advancement, maybe in the middle of an unrelated scene: do you then [need to/get to] cut the deal, shoot the guy, burn out the warlord?

Happy Friday Hobbesque!

To do it, do it. When you do it, you do it.
If a Chopper with a 2-harm gang takes out a bunch of guys with assault rifles, can his gang become 3-harm without him taking the advancement?

If The Chopper gets those guns in the fiction of the game, as the rules say and also similar examples in the book say> tell them that they now put out 3 harm...they get it without the advancement! Not without a price though... you could make a front or change a front as the gang is more dangerous... perhaps they may be in someone's crosshairs now!

[/quote]Other situations: An Operator cuts a deal with the hardholder to run compound defense. Does he get the gig? An operator shoots the subject of his Avoid Someone obligation in the head. Does he lose the gig? The Hold owes tribute to someone. The Hardholder leads his a coalition and burns the fuckers out. Does the hold improve? [/quote]

Gigs and Holding improvement - Yes, and yes...why not anyways? The Gig roll is a golden opportunity to make a nice fat move if they fail or weak hit to get the action rolling! If the tribute collector no longer exists, then sure its gone! There is always the fact that the other members of the coalition may want something in return....

Hope that helps!

Couldn't agree more with Hankle (and that's not just cause I'm in his game and get things like this happening to me) :D

To quote the book

"The players’ character sheets, like your front countdowns, are both prescriptive and descriptive. Prescriptive: changes to the character’s sheet mean changes to the character’s fictional circumstances and capabilities; that’s the game’s experience and improvement rules, following. Descriptive too: when the character’s fictional circumstances or capabilities change naturally, within the character’s fictional world, the player can and should change her character sheet to match.

Bran bolts a machinegun onto his truck. I tell his player its stats.

The holding takes in refugees, and some of them naturally gravitate to Keeler’s gang, doubling its size. I tell Keeler’s player to change the gang from small to medium.

Uncle invests time and scratch in improving his holding, building up and armoring its walls. I give his gang the appropriate 2-armor bonus when they fight to defend it."

But don't forget this very important balance

"Fair’s fair, though!

Bish’s ambulance-infirmary gets blown up. I tell his player to cross it out.

Uncle’s manufactory workers rise up, overthrowing their overseers and seizing the manufactory for themselves. I tell Uncle’s player he’s lost the gig and its surplus.

Thee warlord for whom Wilson runs compound defense winds up at the wrong end of a sniper’s sights. I tell Wilson’s player that he can still work the gig if he wants, but for no profit. Nobody’s paying."

This is a rule/idea I always forget as an MC but it's such an important one. If someone gains something in the fiction, then they gain it on the sheet too. And vice versa, you can blow up the Driver's car with a grenade or have the Operator's crew member who runs the scavenging jobs for the crew and suddenly the Operator can't work that gig any longer. Such a great yet hard to master rule here.

There's a bit of a thing behind this, I think. My guess is you don't so much need answers to your actual questions as you need some kind of criteria to base your own decisions during play yeah?

So, the stuff on your sheet that you get straight at chargen is kind of special, right? To the point where you're specifically told to lay off it a little bit as MC - you can target the Gunlugger with bad moves, but him losing his guns is a serious deal you don't spring unless he really, really asks for it.

Stuff gained at chargen as well as stuff gained through advancement has a bit of plot armour - in the first case, it's not the first thing the MC targets, in the second, it's something that you can get by 'skipping' the detailed fiction of actually doing it and thus skipping all of the things that could have possibly gone wrong (so if you remove "Avoiding a Dude" as an Operator, the dude maybe just stops paying attention to you and you don't talk much about it).

Stuff I gain through the fiction has no such mild plot protection. If I'm a Driver and I have a at-chargen car, the car is unproblematically mine (with just a sprinkle of problems to keep it interesting) - I have an assumed source of fuel, a dude who does maintenance on it, and a general acceptance of the less-threatening NPCs that the car is mine and that they should stay well away of it.

If I'm a Chopper and I get my gang a bunch of guns off of corpses, it's more problematic - I might not have a source of armour, the things may need serious repair after the battle, and the corpses might have some friends that'll want to have stern words with me. I get the gun upgrade alright, but I also get a problem.


Now, this is somewhat more controverstial, but a case can be made that some kind of plot protection extends to negative "stuff" you get at chargen, too. For example - if the Hardholder gets rid of an Obligation want by shooting the dude he was obliged to, he certainly gets rid of it. But, if you still want to play and have the hardholder's Wealth move still have an interesting miss result, you can just think up a different Want to sub in for the one that got picked at chargen.


So, while you treat the fiction seriously - what happens changes stuff around your sheet, as well, your job as MC is to pay a certain amount of special respect to the stuff your players got through chargen or advancement, and none to the stuff they get through play.


The balance is a bit like making custom moves. You don't make a free Sharp based custom violence move, but you still allow the -1 Hard Driver to go aggro. You don't give a Brainer a grenade launcher to buy at a town market, but he can certainly try to mindfuck a compound tough out of one.