Going Aggro or Manipulating Groups

So how do the moves work with regards to using them on groups? I know how it works once bullets start flying, but can you go aggro on a group of people or manipulate a group of people, or can you only target a single person?

I think that targeting a group is cool, but the possible consequences of that are nasty. Like if you go aggro on a group, if they suck it up you are in big trouble.

Well, going aggro can be a lot of things, right?  Like if I wired up bombs hidden all over this gang's camp and then I'm like, "Dudes.  Bombs.  Gimme the water or I blow 'em all."  That would be going aggro against a group, wouldn't it?

Like Fnord says, I think if you want to go aggro on a gang, you better have some kind of weapon with the area tag. Then they can't suck it up quite so easily.

Like, if the gang knows that you'll turn on your painwave projector if anyone looks at you funny. For example.

Yeah I guess I had been figuring that moves only work on individuals but in practice I'm finding there's no way you could really do that.

Last session the Gunlugger wanted to Go Aggro on a small gang and I didn't have any problem with that.  As it happens he dealt 4 harm to them, which is enough to make them break.  So he killed a bunch and drove the rest off.

His weapon didn't have area, which is an interesting point.  Still it worked well for us.


In general I don't think a move shouldn't work on a group.

Was the gunlugger NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH?  If so, it makes sense to me that he or she could go aggro on a whole gang.  If not, personally, I'd question it.  But if it seems like it worked, that's what's important.

Why don't the harm rules for gangs cover this? It's already harder to inflict harm on a gang, but if you can do it, why not?

Well... it might be a problem in my brain, or with the way I understand going aggro but... here's my problem with it.

You go aggro when you want to make someone do something and you've got some method of force or violence to threaten them with, right?  And they can't or wouldn't immediately strike back.

So how's that work with one person against a group?
I'm imagining someone walking among the group, pointing a pistol at some random gang member, and saying, "Gimme yer gas or I'll perforate ya!"  It seems like either someone else in the gang would probably take you out while you're focused on this one dude or... something.  I certainly can't imagine, in this kind of scenario, allowing for going aggro against the group.  Against that dude you've got the gun pointed at, sure.  And maybe says, "The crazy bitch is gonna kill me!  Just give 'er the gas, guys!"  and maybe they like him and don't want to see him with a bullet in his belly, so they do it, or maybe they go, "Ehhh, fuck that guy, we don't care about him."

And... after typing all that out, I'm now thinking maybe it WOULD work just as well as a going aggro roll against the whole group.  "Sucking it up" would just be them letting that guy get shot.
I guess the biggest problem in my mind is whether you'd be able to have enough over a larger group to be able to go aggro in the first place rather than it all just exploding and getting dog-piled.  But that's something that would only be clear in the particular game.

I think sucking it up could mean letting that guy get shot, or it could mean him getting grazed while the scenario you described goes down. I mean, if it's a group the damage from that gone is gonna get scaled down to Harm-1. Harm-0 if they're armored.

Or say you walk into gang HQ holding your pistol to a kitten's head. "Give me the gas or I let the kitten have it!" That's going aggro on the gang.

If they force your hand and suck it up, you inflict harm as established: 2-harm to the kitten. You're hoping that the gang doesn't want that, and so won't force your hand. If they DO force your hand, though, you should maybe expect to be acting under fire immediately thereafter.

In general, going aggro on a gang by threatening one of its members is a calculated risk: it's an efficient use of your capacity to inflict harm, but you have to hope that the gang as a whole cares about the member you choose.

-Vincent

I can't remember whether my Gunlugger was Not to Be Fucked With or not (since he bought it either right before or right after the scene).  Still, rules say he'd deal 4 Harm (5 -1 for small gang) and they're unarmored.  Unless I miss understood, he was a legitimate threat to them.  That seemed real too. (Trained guy with an AK vs 12 unarmored ya-hos who get caught out of cover at close range.  That's murder time.)

If he'd had a revolver, he'd be forced to threaten one guy or a kitten or some light harm, which they wouldn't have minded.

"Sucking it up" would just be them letting that guy get shot.
I guess the biggest problem in my mind is whether you'd be able to have enough over a larger group to be able to go aggro in the first place rather than it all just exploding and getting dog-piled.

I think this is pretty straightforwardly covered by:

1) The gang sucks it up, taking the Harm.
2) The gang then decides to beat the crap out of the PC as a result.

So, all those moments in fiction (and maybe sometimes in reality) where the Sheriff goes up to a gang of guys about to hang some poor fucker and points a gun at them and they're all like "Hey there are five of us and one of you" and he says "yes, but one of you will be dead, which one of you wants to volunteer..." that's pretty much this, right?

Some stories handle this better than others, but from Wyatt Earp on it's a pretty standard trope of hardass fiction. You can scare a group as one person if you can convince them each, as individuals, that the harm you can do to them before they can drop you isn't worth paying.

If that's a legit threat that you could kill all or many of them, that you could kill "me" even if you couldn't get "us", or that you could kill Benny when everyone loves Benny... well, hell, why not?

Personally, I love it when PCs do stuff like this because its in these moments that you can watch even players who like playing heroes sliding their characters towards being terrorists.

That is a good way of looking at it! I hadn't considered that.

Last game I had Iris the Brainer try to go aggro on a few guys with a pain-wave projector. They sucked it up and got some bloody noses and a major headache, but afterwards I think she was sitting on like 3-Harm since they beat her with lead pipes and shit.

Afterwards Sorrow was trying to manipulate them into stopping and I was trying to think of how to swing it. I had him manipulate the a leader-type character but looking back I see he could have roll against the group, he just would have had to offer leverage against the lot of them.

Like this game a lot. I realize that the more I play it, the better I get at it as I understand some new subtleties to moves and things.