The Shadows Crew comes with a Hidden Lair. Lord Scurlock has gone to War with the Shadow Crew in our game. Scurlock has stated he intends to find and expose the Crews Lair. I made a clock and if it fills then the Crews lair will be discovered.
Question 1)
Does that sound legit? That a clock can uncover a Crews hidden lair.
Question 2)
The rules state:
Hidden Lair: Your lair has a secret location and is disguised to hide it from view. If your lair is discovered, use two downtime activities and pay coin equal to your Tier to relocate it and hide it once again.
If the Crews lair is discovered are we basically un-checking the Hidden Lair box on the crew sheet? Is that a thing in BitD, un-checking crew upgrades?
That would be my interpretation but I want to ask in case I am missing something.
Using a progress clock for uncovering a hidden lair is perfectly legit. I would just make sure it’s a bigger clock so your players don’t feel like they have been steamrolled. But discovering the lair wouldn’t cause them to permanently loose the upgrade. The lair would just be revealed until the crew dumped the appropriate downtime and coin into getting it back.
I know that might sound counterintuitive with the fiction, but look at a hidden lair as not just a building but gear and workshops that can be packed away and relocated. This lair could also be a vehicle of some kind that (houseboat, caravan, or railcar) can be moved to a different location and then disguised.
Yeah, I made it an 8-tick clock so that should give them a few sessions.
They are in an abandoned tower in Six Towers. It would be interesting to see if they would move to another tower or someplace completely different. Of course, they might not get exposed at all depending on how things go.
Another way you might choose to play this out is by using a “tug-of-war” clock. In my BitD game we had a Smuggler’s crew with the Hidden Lair feature, and a police detective who had a lot of questions about some unsolved murders in a warehouse. Every downtime I’d roll for the detective to work on his long-term-project finding the crew, and one of my crew members would use a long-term-project action to reduce the ticks on the detective’s clocks by sowing misinformation. I made it harder for the crew to reduce it than for the Detective to increase it, but it let the players feel like they had some control over the situation while accepting that sooner or later they’d have to move or “deal” with the detective. (They eventually bought off his CO and had him assigned to different investigations.)
Telegraphing the search somehow is probably a good idea, maybe they see suspicious people around the neighbourhood or Scurlock’s magical scrying leaves traces or whatever. Just to keep the players on their toes if nothing else
Thanks for the comments everyone. A tug of war clock is definitely possible.
@Tubal, yes, the players are fully aware of the clock. The crew has heard through their sources that Lord Scurlock is looking to expose their lair.
It actually flowed pretty well through the fiction over a couple sessions. The crew successfully stole a painting from Scurlock Manor (It was a Raffello original, with the Circle of Flame, and Raffello wanted it back). So Scurlock was already negative on the Crew. Later they rolled “Show of Force” on Entanglements. They didn’t give up a claim so they went to war with Scurlock. It was natural for Scurlock to want to target their lair since the crew already targeted Scurlock Manor.
Lean on the fiction. He’s going to uncover their lair? How?
Are their associates being tailed? Are the locations of their scores being mapped out?
Give them opportunities to figure out how they’re being hunted and lay false trails, or take away their foe’s assets. Someone following you? Lead them into a trap.
