Hello,
I was curious if any one would be interested in using the Block by Bloody Block system in our hunter game. The book brings in the concept of territory - for example, the Spiral and its neighborhood belong to the Hunters. But perhaps that string of business parks three blocks away belongs to the street gang. The Nightlife district with the best clubs belong to the blood suckers. The parks belong to the beasts. The freeways belong to the jackals. The university belongs to shadowy things that whisper along the darkened rows of book shelves.
The book brings in a few bonuses for claiming territory:
When a hunter cell does claim a territory (as decided by
the Storyteller), that cell is given some benefits. Those ben-
efits are as follows:
• Each territory has a number of assets and liabilities list-
ed. The cell gains access to or the benefits from these assets
for as long as they hold the territory. If the Storyteller deter-
mines that another group reclaims or steals the territory, they
gain access to the assets and the cell loses them. The same, of
course, goes for the liabilities: when hunters take a territory,
they have to deal with certain consequences, and any new
owners take those consequences on themselves while divest-
ing the hunters of them.
• At the time the cell claims the territory, each hunter
character gains one Willpower point and one additional ex-
perience point. In addition, the cell receives five total practi-
cal experience points to bank, divvy up or spend as the group
sees fit.
• In addition, for every chapter (game session) in which
a territory remains held, each hunter character gains one
point of Willpower.
The cell has to oust a group currently in control of a territory. Once a cell has claimed a territory through control conditions, they receive assets.
Here is an example of one territory:
Control Conditions: A hunter cell has one primary means
of controlling this territory, and that involves getting rid of the
Black Smoke Pack. Unlike some packs, they don’t attack en
masse, because Mare’s Tail knows what can happen (see Mare’s
Tail, pp. 32–34). Instead, they turn to guerrilla warfare, traps or
attacking from the shadows before retreating. The pack shapes
conditions to suit its needs before striking—they’re crazy,
they’re feral, but they’re also deeply cunning. They will fight,
every one, to the death. Even if one of them remains alive with
the rest dead, the territory is still theirs—they have the shad-
ows, the ghosts and the spirits serving them.
Assets: Controlling the territory means having occasional
access to some quality machine shops and laboratories—both
the Crafts and Science Skills can be bought up more cheaply
at a rate of new dots x 2. In addition, spending enough time
in this area attunes one to the spiritual disruption caused by
the Lupines over the course of the last several years, and so
the hunters are now considered to possess the Unseen Sense
Merit as it relates to spirits. Finally, hunters who create a Safe-
house here get two free dots in Safehouse (Traps), provided
they first buy up to two dots in Safehouse (Size).
Liabilities: The place may be sprawling and in many
ways very defensible, but it has quite a few downsides. For
one, persistent exposure starts to poison the characters: unless
a character possesses Toxin Resistance as a Merit, after about
two weeks the characters will need to check against a daily in-
haled Toxicity of 2. That’s the physical effect. Unfortunately,
the territory confers a spiritual effect, too—it’s a dark, blasted place, and the depredations of the Black Smoke pack don’t
help.
This is where you can ask your questions and pose your ideas about how Block by Bloody Block will be introduced.
Draft this Post
