Playbook: The Rat-Pack

As MC, there's nothing that I have to remember all the time, except the principles. If players forget to mark their experience from rolling highlighted stats, that's their problem. If the rat-pack player forgets to tell me about Abandon Ship, that's his problem. I'm not trying to penalize anyone, but I'm also not going to memorize everyone's character. That's the player's job.

I grant you the move is similar to Fuck this shit, but it does differ in a few fundamental ways, which were intentional. If you look at each die roll outcome, and the trigger for when each move can be used, they both have benefits and drawbacks over the other. Also remember that the rat-pack doesn't have access to Fuck this shit.

In response to your other question, this move can be used as an individual or for the entire gang. The rat-pack is unique in that whenever someone says 'it', 'they', or whatever, they are equally referring to both individuals and the pack as a whole.

This actually reminds me of a thing I've been meaning to articulate. It's this: If any of your members are not explicitly somewhere else at the moment, they can be wherever you want them to be. Obvious modifications to this are Like a plague of locusts or when it makes absolutely no sense for it to be possible. But I can probably think of a plausible explanation for just about any scenario in order to have some other member show up.

What's the reason for this? Your character is the gang. This playbook doesn't function like any of the other playbooks. Your gang is not an extension of your character. In this case, your individual members are simply a logical extension of your gang.

Anyway I had some people asking about this, so there it is.

Why not give them a free escape and 1 XP if they do if someone is killed? That let's non hard packs escape at a cost too.

Anyway, this playbook looks fantastic and I really hope someone in my campaign picks it up!

After a lot of schedule collisions, and a general lack of time, I have finally manged to get the campaign running in somewhat regular sessions again,  and have had the Rat-pack in play for quite a few of them now.

Overall the playbook have been working really well both in the fiction and in the game itself. The children quickly found a place in the hardhold as just about everyone’s under-paid errand-children (on top of general thievery and mischief), while being Mrs Langs (the hardholders) eyes and ears. Binding  all the other PCs together by their relations to the individual children in a way I have had a hard time doing before.
They even manged to create a lot of cool and memorable situations already. Among them, stealing an Angel kit from Doc, delivering it to the Maestro who then unknowingly gifted it back to Doc.  And later they badly humiliated the Chopper in a 'fight' by swarming and harassing him until he had to give in. (This far marking our only use of Like a plague of locust)

This actually reminds me of a thing I've been meaning to articulate. It's this: If any of your members are not explicitly somewhere else at the moment, they can be wherever you want them to be.

I didn't actually read that until just now, but I did run them like that without really thinking about it, really seems to be the only decent way to do it without forcing the player to micro-manage every member all the time.
 
The only 'problem' have been that the player player haven’t really been into any 'internal' interactions between the children (without me pushing him with questions) and at first had a hard time running them as a individuals and not just as a gang, but recently they have really started to get their own personalities.

I'm *very* excited about this, Reax. I would love if you could keep me updated via this thread.

The only 'problem' have been that the player player haven’t really been into any 'internal' interactions between the children (without me pushing him with questions) and at first had a hard time running them as a individuals and not just as a gang, but recently they have really started to get their own personalities.

I'm not sure this is so much a problem. I feel like this playbook has the potential to become disruptive if the player starts meta-gaming with himself, so the fact that your player is not doing that is a good thing. As far as personalities taking a while to develop, I find that's generally true of all characters, and not unique to this playbook.

Wonderful Playbook Gerald. Simply inspired. Well done all.

I may have a weekly skype one-on-one game starting soon and this looks like the preferred playbook for the game! Woo! I'll let you know how it goes if it gets off the ground.

I feel like this playbook has the potential to become disruptive if the player starts meta-gaming with himself, so the fact that your player is not doing that is a good thing. As far as personalities taking a while to develop, I find that's generally true of all characters, and not unique to this playbook.

I pretty much came to the same conclusions after a few sessions, kinda tried to push him into it with questions at first but once everyone at the 'table' (..Skype) started to treat them as individual kids and not just a grey mass (like they still do with most of the choppers gang) it worked itself out.

I did run another short session last night, the kids really are starting to become one of my fallback 'play-generators' when the other characters get a bit too passive. And even without my questions driving them to mischief they keep forcing everyone into.. interesting situations, always funny to watch the the chopper trying to cope with the thieving children.. without angering the hardholder that is sort of protection them (Especially since one of them are the choppers 'secret' son).

@ Noofy: That's great! Thanks for the kind words, and I hope to hear some feedback from your game.

@ Reax: The more you talk, the more I feel like I've created a beautiful monster. /single tear of paternal pride

Hey, my group and I are really interested in the Rat-Pack, but I have a clarity question for you before we really go for it. The rules say that when taking harm together, they can take it as a gang -- does that mean that after 2 harm one of the kids really dies (some fatalities)? Or does "fatality" here count as "unconscious" as mentioned in the playbook section on getting harmed as a gang.

Just doing the math, it seems to me that if I have a 5-kid pack, and take 3 harm as a gang, maybe 2 kids would die, right? That would leave me with 3 left, stats reduced, just barely surviving. But if they were to take 4 harm, 3 kids would die, and then the number of kids in the gang would fall to less than 3 and it would fall apart. The extra rule about one of the kids dying instead of taking a disfigurement couldn't apply because the pack would fall apart just from regular gang damage before ever getting that far, wouldn't it?

Besides. I mean. Gosh. Kids, man.

Hi, David. I just looked through the harm and healing section of the playbook again, and I'm not really sure where your confusion is coming from. If you could quote something specific that is throwing you I would appreciate it, so I can make it more clear. Having said that, to answer your question, no, kids only die in place of a debility, not from simply taking harm. So, with other playbooks, you would normally take a debility when you go past 12, and it prevents you from dying. In the case of this book, when you go past 12 one of your kids dies, and since your kids each provide the playbook as a whole with a mechanical benefit in the form of a stat bump, this provides the same function as a debility to other characters.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to ask if you have more questions.

Yes that clarifies things a lot for me, thanks! The part that confuses me is on page 169 under the special rules for harming a gang, there's a little countdown clock, copied also on your trifold character sheet for the rat-pack, where it shows this:

1-harm: a few injuries, one or two serious, no fatalities.
2-harm: many injuries, several serious, a couple of fatalities.
3-harm: widespread injuries, many serious, several fatalities.
4-harm: widespread serious injuries, many fatalities.
5-harm and more: widespread fatalities, few survivors.

Then, in the example, Dremmeler's gang inflicts 2 harm on Uncle's gang (Uncle's the PC), and two of his gang members just die, just like that, "looking through crosshairs" style. Uncle also takes 2 harm, since he's leading the gang. Trying to escape, Uncle's gang takes more harm, and ends up with just a few of his gang left alive, and Uncle himself badly hurt.

In your playbook, you wrote, "When you take harm as a gang, take harm as a gang," hence my confusion. How would you suggest we interpret gang "fatalities" on the gang harm countdown with the rat pack?

Your confusion, confuses me as well. It sounds more like an organization issue.

When you take harm, either as a gang or as individuals, you should be detailing and keeping track of which members are either dead or unconscious (or whatever), and what bonus’ and wants you’re missing because of death.

^from the rat-pack playbook

There is a rat-pack being played in one of my games. I have the PC keep track of all their gang members on a separate sheet. Each gang member has their own wheel for individual harm and the advancements or hinderances they bring to the gang.

For gang combat(on another sheet or index card), I have the PC make a circle for every member with the gang members name under the circle. As casualties happen they fill in the circle to represent death then reference it to the sheet that has the individual wheels. The PC picks who dies(fills in the circle on the index card) then cross references it to the individual sheet to keep track of advancements or hinderances that the gang currently has.

I'm unclear on this issue as well.  Let's say you are fighting as a gang (2 elder, 5 middluns and 2 pups) against a gunlugger (effectively small gang vs. small gang).  The gunlugger inflicts 4 harm to your gang.  How is that applied?

Looking at the gang countdown clock, this would normally incur widespread serious injuries and many fatalities.  It seems though that this is ignored (at least in terms of death) for the Rat-Pack as it has been stated that kids only die when you past 12.  Are a couple middluns and an elder injured and your gang is now at 10 o'clock and 2 harm away from having the first kid die?  It doesn't seem you can say a pup is (really) injured, because 1 harm kills a pup.  If the fight breaks off at this point, does it then become individual damage to be kept track of on each individual kid's harm wheel?  Who decides how the harm is allocated?

It would be great if someone could detail what happens if a full Rat-Pack gang takes 4 harm twice, both in the combat and then what that looks like to the Rat-Pack after the combat is over, in terms of how injuries are applied.

Thanks!