Forged in the Dark SRD · December 2017 SRD
Entanglements
Entanglements
Your crew didn't just spring into existence tonight. You have a complex history of favors, commitments, debts, and promises that got you where you are today. To reflect this, after each score, you roll dice to find out which entanglement comes calling. An entanglement might be a rival crew looking to throw their weight around (and demand some coin), an Investigator of the City Watch making a case against your crew (but ready for a bribe), or even the attention of a vengeful ghost.
After payoff and heat are determined, the GM generates an entanglement for the crew using the lists below. Find the column that matches the crew's current heat level. Then roll a number of dice equal to their wanted level, and use the result of the roll to select which sort of entanglement manifests. If wanted level is zero, roll two dice and keep the lowest result.
| RESULT | Heat 0-3 | Heat 4-5 | Heat 6 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-3 | Gang Trouble or The Usual Suspects | Gang Trouble or Questioning | Flipped or Interrogation |
| 4-5 | Rivals or Unquiet Dead | Reprisals or Unquiet Dead | Demonic Notice or Show of Force |
| 6 | Cooperation | Show of Force | Arrest |
Bring the entanglement into play immediately, or hold off until an appropriate moment. For example, if you get the Interrogation entanglement, you might wait until a PC indulges their vice, then say the costables picked them up when they were distracted by its pleasures.
Entanglements manifest fully before the PCs have a chance to avoid them. When an entanglement comes into play, describe the situation after the entanglement has manifested. The PCs deal with it from that point—they can't intercept it and defuse it before it happens. The purpose of the mechanic is to abstract a lot of the complex stuff happening in the backgrounds of the characters' lives in order to generate trouble for them. Entanglements are the cost of doing business in the underworld—a good crew learns to roll with the punches and pick their battles.
The entanglements are detailed in the following sections. Each has a list of potential ways for the PCs to be rid of it. If you want the entanglements to be a momentary problem for the crew, stick to the suggested methods to resolve them, and move on to the next part of downtime. If you want to dive in and explore the entanglement in detail, set the scene and play out the event in full, following the actions and consequences where they lead.