Entanglements based on wanted level vs heat?

I am a huge fan and user of Francesco Pregliasco’s Expanded Entanglements. But doing entanglements based on heat always felt funny. I liked the idea of doing things off of wanted level more, as a few others have talked about here as well. So I took Francesco’s work as inspiration and created a wanted-level based expanded entanglements. I did it as a googlesheet, that way if you hover over an item, the description appears as a cell note. You can also read the descriptions below (good if you print it).

I used almost all of Francesco’s work and added a small number of new ones to fill in the gaps made by the new layout.

if anyone would enjoy providing feedback, here are some of the new entanglements I dreamed up (and haven’t playtested yet):

Pestilence. A disease rips through your District. Start a 4-Clock “Pestilence Passes.” At the start of each downtime make a 2d Roll Fortune and add the relevant number of ticks. Each downtime until the Clock fills you must either lock down and lose the benefits of ALL of your claims until it passes - OR - Make a 2d Fortune Roll and distribute that many ticks of harm among your cohorts. Is this pestilence a traditional disease? An infestation of dangerous creatures? An arcane blight? How dies it manifest itself? How does it change the political landscape for your allies & enemies?

Ransom. One of your most valuable friends is kidnapped. Pay 4 coin - or - let your contact be killed - or - run your very next Score to rescue them. What impact do your actions have on your crew’s reputation?

Bluecoat Lockdown. The Bluecoats have had enough! They raid all of your claims and known haunts, inflicting one harm to every one of your cohorts at the start of each downtime AND removing the benefits for ALL of your claims until: you offer a PC up for arrest - OR - Bribe the precinct captain with 6 coin - OR - complete a Score to move their attention elsewhere. How do Bluecoats start complicating your Scores? How do your allies & enemies respond?

If it proves useful to anyone, or you have suggestions, let me know. :slight_smile:

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Wow, excellent work. I dind’t even know the original Expanded entanglements sheet, this will add a bit more variety for when we feel like rolling the dice instead of something evident cropping up!

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For Blades in the Dark GMs who like Francesco Pregliasco’s Expanded Entanglements, this adds a few more entanglements and, more importantly, the selection rolls are based on Wanted Level instead of Heat.

This document is now at Version 2, sporting a bunch of usability improvements, not the least of which was turning it into a much more readable PDF vs the google sheet only my mother could love :).

https://roezmv.itch.io/wanted-level-based-entanglements-v2

Really nice ideia.
Special mention to the coloring of the sheet, going through green towards red.

Through I sort miss using the heat. I agree that “wanted” is more meaninful than “heat” when it comes to entanglements, but it becomes just a wanted counter in this scenario. Heat itself is sort weird. I guess ideally it’s how active the coats are after you, but if so, why would it reset when you get a wanted level? Either way, unfortunately I didn’t find a way to add heat into the mix that is worth mentioning.

Nevertheless, good job with the chart (=

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The Reddit group kindly helped me realize that the original Entanglements (or the Expanded Entanglements) were better precisely because they used both heat AND wanted level. They made it so ANY entanglement could come up, but the probabilities were skewed towards the right difficulty. It also provides another reason for PCs to try and keep their heat down, vs “just under the line for tipping to a new wanted level.”

So in other words, I’ve realized this wasn’t really needed. The color coding IS nice… so I’ll see if there is a useful way to use them with the Expanded entanglements table.

Thanks all!

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The way I understand it heat is just a vague bluecoat alertness level. Crimes are going on, they don’t know who did it, but they have a superior angling for a promotion who’s yelling at them to get results, so they’re out there shaking down anyone vaguely suspicious for information. Given time things will cool down and there’ll be fewer beat cops on the streets.

Wanted is the cops have something on you specifically; they’re looking for you, but they don’t necessarily need guys on every corner, so the general heat is low, but the consequences are generally higher

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