Guns And Clocks
A few rules questions that are bugging me. Original rules here - still a work in progress. Thoughts on how to run an investigation.
Blades In The Dark has this idea of “clocks”. Draw a circle, divide it into segments. Now it’s a clock. It measures the time until something happens. Fill in a segment each time the PCs do something useful, or each time they fuck up.
I reckon this is a good all purpose tool and solves a lot of problems. You can use it for:
Stealth. How long until the guards notice you’re there? Advance the clock each time you make a noise.
Persuasion. How willing is the duke to give you the manuscript you’re after? Advance the clock each time you do something to earn his favour. Have another clock that tracks how much his wife hates you - when it fills up she kicks you out of the mansion.
Villainy. How long until the vampire strikes next? Advance the clock each time a day passes, or the PCs get her attention and make her accelerate her schedule.
Combat. How long until the pirates give up and run away? Advance the clock each time you hurt or kill one. Have another clock for the cowardly sailors on your side.
Chase scenes. How long until that pickpocket who just stole your wallet gets away? How close are you to catching him? Advance a clock each time you successfully hurdle over a passing fruit cart, or fail to do so.
Super useful technique that I think should be a part of this. Fills a lot of gaps. Good essay about it here.
How do fights work? The last thing I want is for people to be standing in one place exchanging combat rolls.
A simple fight - a boxing match, an attack by thugs in a darkened street - can be settled by a single Strength roll. (Remember that if your character has 0 Strength, you auto lose. But what if you used Dexterity or Charisma in a creative way…)
A fight in a complex environment with enemies changing up their tactics might have “rounds”. Only if the players have reason to describe their actions differently each round. If it’s just “I hit him, then I hit him again”, compress it down to a single roll.
This is the 20s and people have guns. You can’t dodge bullets, you’re not James Bond. If someone is shooting at you from a distance and there’s no cover for you to duck behind, it’s up to them whether they hit you or not. You don’t get armour. Roll their Dex.
The same is true for you of course. Getting the drop on someone works.
In general you should endeavour to avoid allowing situations to be created in which your enemies can shoot you. A little GM fiat is required here so that Al Capone doesn’t just finish the PCs off in a drive-by when he gets mad.
Damage is always a single point of Sanity. There are two kinds of bullet wounds in movies - “the leg/shoulder”, which is a damage point, and “the heart/head” which is when you’ve run out of Sanity and you die.
If you are reduced to 1 San and survive you might come out of it w/ a limp. Or a pathological fear of bullets I guess.
Pistols are short range and easy to carry. Rifles are longer range but unwieldy and draw attention. You can’t walk around London w/ a rifle. In the heart of Africa you could get away w/ it.
Tommy guns are shorter range but more lethal. I’m not doing a whole gun breakdown, fun as they are. Shotguns, elephant guns, lightning guns, pocket derringers… maybe think of it as an element of the fiction like you would a swingable chandelier?
Brass knuckles, walking canes, sacrificial daggers, the occasional sword. Good old fisticuffs most of the time. May or may not be useful to have a set of stats for these and avoid the GM having to make too many ad hoc calls.
Like chase scenes - classic question of, how do I model this competitive physical exercise? You still want to test player skill so you’re asking them to describe classic Hollywood-style ways to evade obstacles. Not a strength of role playing games - easier to have them tackle social engineering problems.
What about money?
The team (not individual players, the whole group) starts w/ 1 Credit point and gets a new one each time they solve a mystery. Or just, like, get a job in a factory for a month. Big mysteries can earn more credits.
You are proletarians - you have to work for a living. Luckily, someone is paying you to do interesting things.
Most normal purchases (food, rope, tools, candles, bandages, whiskey, tobacco) are made without a roll - you just buy them from the shop. Easy for someone with an income. This is an advanced industrial society, not a medieval fiefdom - you have access to all the fruits of capitalism. (Unless you are in Soviet Russia, of course.)
Up to the DM to decide what expenses are big enough to require a Credit point. Guns for the whole party. Drugs. Rare books. Explosives (you can pretty much buy blasting powder over the counter, along w/ cocaine.)
It’s assumed that you are working in between sessions. Doing minor detective stuff like divorce work or debunking fraudulent mediums. Solving big cases boosts your reputation and gets you more small jobs - so they earn you Credit even if nobody actually pays you.
A Model T Ford costs about $300 in 1920s dollars. That’s about $5,000 today. So if a Credit point is about $100 you could save up for one in three sessions. Seems fair to me.
You can spend Credit to hire specialists. A doctor, a bodyguard, a research chemist to find out what that strange goo is, a safecracker to get into that mysterious locked chest you found in the pirates’ cave after you beat them.
Paying off informants is a good substitute for a Connections roll. Of course some people lie for money.
You can spend Credit to take a couple of weeks off work and commit to full time research. This is how you learn spells. You need to get the right grimoire first and spend some time studying it. I will develop a list.
Casting a spell always involves a Sanity roll. There is no such thing as a good magician. They all go mad in the end so be careful with that.
Ideally I will have a d100 book list, organised by topic, so your players can dig up debatably relevant texts with Credit or Academic rolls.
Possible that a PC can have her own personal story, tracked across sessions. Who killed my sister? Who’s my real dad? Where’s that lost Egyptian treasure I’m obsessed with? Why do I always hear that strange song in my head when Jupiter is in the sky?
Track these with clocks. Spend Credit to do some research and advance a segment. Not everyone has to have one of course, it’s okay to just be a regular crook.