So my group and I had identified the lack of a conman style of crew in the core game. Much to my chagrin and pleasant surprise, Rob Donoghue put out his Grifters sheet on the Blades website just this past week as I was working on this. His version is fantastic! However, our design directions were quite different so as I finished my attempt at it I figured I’d love to get feedback!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qLSS3B5NibvOHGGIb4UNqwWBFJTBQXja/view?usp=sharing
Primarily, I’m looking for if the abilities seem too strong (ie why wouldnt any crew take this as a veteran advance) and if there are thematic abilities for a conman/dealbroker style of play.
Many thanks in advance for feedback!
Also all credit to Ben of 1066 AD Design for the form fillable playbooks! http://ad1066.com/bens-character-sheets/blades-in-the-dark-playbooks
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I’ve just taken a look, and none of those special abilities looked overpowered and a ‘must-take’ compared to some of the existing crew types.
The Accord and Synchronised special abilities seem a good match for this kind of crew playbook, but presumably you’ve not used them because they are in an existing playbook? (I’ve used them for a diplomats playbook in my FitD hack I’m working on)
The classic grifter things in my mind include
- the long con
- getting away with it
I wonder whether you’ve considered anything that supports either of those two things better? I think I spotted some things about heat reduction in the claims map, but perhaps something in a special ability too?
It’s not much in the way of feedback, but I hope it helps a little.
Cheers
Not at all! Thanks so much for the feedback!
You hit the nail on the head in terms of why I’ve opted to go for excluding Accord and Sychronized.
I’d agree with your ideas about what makes a grifter a grifter. The long con is a tricky subject in terms of how to game-ify it. It’s either long term projects or a flashback HEAVY score, and it’s definitely something I’v been trying to play around with in terms of how to write mechanics for that.
Fortunately my current crew are grifters all but in name so I’ve been watching closely to see what abilities would be helpful for them!
I’ve been re-watching Leverage at the moment, and I’m finding that very helpful for examples of flashbacks and elements of longer cons!