Hit the streets.

Hit the streets.

Hit the streets.

Sooner or later comes the time when PCs decide that they just have enough of particular NPC and time has come for that NPC to be crossed out from the list.

Assuming that it is not a very powerful NPC, how do you handle player’s ambush on an NPC?

1. Allow them to camp outside NPC home and wait?

2. Use Hit the streets to set the scene?

– NPC having what is need can be interpreted as finding opportunity for an ambush

– juggling their own problems can be for example – a not perfect ambush opportunity, there are some others all the time nearby target, it is highly uncertain situation with a lot of variables

– cost more than anticipated means players give debt or other favor to an NPC that helped them set an ambush

How do you frame such hostile interaction between PCs and Factions where you know that violence will be involved as well as fangs, claws, clubs and guns ??

7 thoughts on “Hit the streets.”

  1. I would ask the players how they want to approach it and only use a move if what they describe sounds like it triggers a move. My players are big on planning and strategizing, though. Have yours not discussed how they might go about this?

  2. So far I have not get that far in game I’m GMing, but in game where I play we had a discussion about it, but we haven’t really reached any conclusion so I’ve come here to ask.

  3. Well, you can use hit the streets for a lot of stuff—pretty much anytime they go looking for someone in the hopes that that person can provide them with something. What’s it say, again—”They have what you need”? I’m not sure it applies when “the thing you need” is “a heartbeat, which we would like to take from him by force,” though. Feels more designed for going to people for favors and such. Of course, they could always frame what they’re doing as, “We visit him under the pretense of going to him for a favor, and then when we get him someplace private….”

    But that kind of gets back to my point from before: I’d wait to see how they frame it. If they say they want to wait outside his house, okay, maybe they’re misleading, distracting, or tricking to set up a hidden trap or creating a distraction so he doesn’t spot them. Maybe they’re just going to jump him as he walks by and you can skip right to unleash. Maybe they wait on the rooftop across the street and let it out to extend their senses for a stakeout. I’d wait to see what they describe, though. Let them set up the scenario in the fiction, and only follow with moves when moves get triggered.

  4. I agree with Jason Tocci​ here – Hit the Streets is, in my eyes, more of a hand-wavey move where you meet some contacts and get some item or info. Not intended to be used to jump a guy outside the club and beat him within an inch of his life.

    Setting up a scene for a confrontation is sort of a separate thing. In fact, it’s probably the meat of a game like this. Here’s some one-off examples from my game:

    – An NPC they needed was in a nearby federal prison. They disguised themselves as laundry workers, bribed the guards when inside, and then beat her to death in the laundry room when they brought her in (yeah they had to fight the guards to escape).

    – They talked their way through a security desk and headed to this rich businessman’s penthouse suite to find him sitting on his nice couch waiting for them with some guard with SMGs.

    – A petty wizard they thought was going to be trouble turned out to be a drunk and was willing to trade some magic for a couch to sleep on.

    None of these were Hit the Streets rolls, they were just conversation after “what do you do?”. If they responded with “I go see Tony”, then yeah maybe we roll with Tony and see what’s up. But if the answer is “hmm Tony is going to be trouble, I go get my guns”, then you got a scene brewin.

  5. Love the examples, Aaron Griffin. 🙂 Here, I’ll throw in some fun fun kill times too:

    The leader of the Sidhe sicced two faeries on the PCs all glamoured up to implicate a rival faction. When the PCs discovered this, rather than go after her themselves, they revealed it to the rivals, who proceeded to slaughter that whole faerie court while the PCs watched.

    While discussing in one PC’s apartment how to take out a couple gang leaders, a rock smashed through the window. The gang leaders were there already, with goons in tow. An all-out brawl broke out.

    It took days of getting allies across the city to help research demonology, reshaping hellforged pit-fighting weapons into bullets, preparing a ritual circle in cleared-out subway station, and finally cashing in a debt to get the target to leave his seat of power, but the PCs finally cornered the Tainted’s patron and shot him in the head.

  6. Oh, I should add how that all went down mechanically:

    The first one (the faerie conflict) involved no moves at all, just telling the right people, “hey you might want to take care of this.” (But I think they did cash in a debt with the local wizards academy to get them to ward the battleground so that no innocents would be harmed.)

    The second one, with the people they were plotting to kill just showing up, was probably an MC move after they botched a social move during planning, wasting time trying to read each other’s motives when they knew people were out to get them.

    The third one, killing the major demon, involved tons of mechanics: hit the streets to enlist help, the Veteran’s workshop and crafting rules, probably a custom move to perform the ritual, cashing in a debt to get the target to show up, and even more along the way. It was a big deal.

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