Gambling

When is the last time you used the Gambling skill in your Savage Worlds game?

Chances are that unless you're playing Deadlands, opportunities to use that skill never come up.

In Wiseguys, America's gambling capital; Las Vegas is front and center. The temptation to test your luck and beat the house is everywhere. However, it isn't all you can do with the Gambling skill.

Want to run your own casino or bookmaking business? That's Gambling. You can look at it as a knowledge skill. You know how to set the odds of a wager, how comping works, and what measures are set in place to stop cheating and how to defeat them. Which casino has the best winning odds in town?

In most cases, this would be a use of Common Knowledge but when it involves gambling, the Gambling skill is a valid choice.

Is that gambler over there cheating? Where is the accomplice? Which scam are they working on? Notice can definitely be used in those circumstances but Gambling is also a perfect fit.

Take Care of Your Friends

I've played a lot of Shadowrun over the years. To some, it was about the gear, to others it was to stick it to the Man, or various other reasons. To me, it was about the Contacts. In Shadowrun, every Contacts has ratings that indicated how loyal and helpful they are, along with a short bio. I was fascinated by the effects these relationships my character had on the campaign.

I wanted Wiseguys to give the players one more reason to interact with the colorful nonplayer characters and cultivate relationships with them so I designed the Friends of Ours Setting Rule that you could use in any setting.

Contacts aren't sitting by the phone waiting for you to call them and do you a favor. They are as much a part of the Underworld as you are and have their own agendas.

In Savage Worlds, Contacts are handled through the Connections Edge. Wiseguys builds upon that by making the interaction between the player characters and their Contacts more dynamic. In Savage Worlds, the Persuasion skill provides guidelines to the Reaction Level of nonplayer characters. This a nonplayer character's attitude toward your character. Each Contact is given a Reaction Level by the Don. This attitude is subject to change through the course of the campaign. Let the attitude fall down to Hostile and this Contact may turn on you. Improve it to Helpful and new services open up to you. You learn that the drive-thru clerk at your favorite local fast food joint is also a biochemistry student and she can provide you with venom or anti-venom doses. The labor union leader you've been in business with likes you enough to declare a strike the day you want to rob the joint. Your personal tailor who always makes you look your best now has access to a bulletproof fabric and can make you a nice suit. Wiseguys contains over 50 such Contacts that you can use out of the box along with guidelines for the Don and the players to create their own.

At the beginning of each session, the Don may ask a player whose character has a contact to draw a card from the Action Deck. Certain cards trigger an event that the wise guy must deal with. The outcome of this event is going to change the relationship between the wise guy and his Contact for better or worse. Wiseguys is a world full with betrayal and unlikely alliances!

We Don’t Need Another Setting

I own enough Savage Worlds settings for a lifetime of weekly campaigns.

When I started designing Wiseguys I set myself two goals. First, I wanted a compelling and original setting with interesting and colorful characters at the core of it. Second, I wanted this book to be THE resource for organized crime for Savage Worlds.

I’m a big fan of Codex Infernus: The infernal guide to hell and Agents of Oblivion because of the practical applications beyond the default settings they were created for. In the former, you found a hellish bestiary, rules for possession, and a plethora of Edges and Hindrances among other things. In the latter, a framework for agency-based campaigns was set in place, again with several edges to support it.

In my previous article, I discussed how you can use Wiseguys to spice up your campaign by using the extensive information on the Mafia, 1% Motorcycle Clubs, Drug Cartels or Chinese Triads to create memorable adversaries.

I’d like to share with you some of the character abilities you can find in Wiseguys that can be used by both the player characters and the antagonists.

EDGES

Hostage Taker

Requirements: Novice, Intimidation d8+

When the lead starts flying and you must make your way out of a tough spot, it’s good to have someone else take a bullet for you. Even if they are unwilling.

You need one hand free to hold the hostage. Anyone attempting to shoot you while you're holding a hostage must use the Innocent Bystander rule (if they miss and roll 1 on the trait die, they hit your hostage). Furthermore, if you suffer one or more wounds, you can spend a Benny to redirect all the damage to your hostage. Most hostages won't try to fight back or escape; you can just grab them and drag them around.

STREET ABILITIES

Monstrous abilities are for monsters. Gangsters and the denizens of the Underworld use Street Abilities instead. Yes, some of them are also monsters, but that’s beside the point. Don’t get smart with me!

Lackey: This Extra possesses a unique skill set that makes him valuable. They roll a Wild Die with every Trait roll.

In the following articles, I want to talk to you about the Friends Of Ours Setting Rules that builds on the Connections Edge to establish a dynamic network of contacts for your character.

The Halfling Mafia

While the default campaign setting for Wiseguys involves playing gangsters and scoundrels looking to get rich in Las Vegas, it was also designed to be an organized crime toolkit for Savage Worlds.

That's right! Just Insert Imagination understands that not everybody is interested in playing the bad guys. So what is it to you and your heroic campaign? Sooner or later your campaign is going to need a villain. Crime syndicates make fantastic villainous organizations to oppose the heroes. Wiseguys not only has extensive information on the Italian-America Mafia, but primers on the Drug Cartels, 1% Motorcycle Clubs, and the Chinese Triads. These primers include history, rites of passage, hierarchy, modus operandi, and a lexicon.

Imagine your campaign world with a halfling mafia where the gangsters cook stews instead of pasta? They sure know how to protect the neighborhood! Imagine an outlaw realm that smuggles necromantic artifact into a lawful realm with the help of an organization modeled after the Juarez Drug Cartel? Imagine a group of half-orc mercenary on horses profiting from the war by dealing weapons to the armies? You get the picture?

It's more than just a concept. Wiseguys contains over 35 new Edges and 15 new Hindrances to help give these characters more bite. Coupled with one of the most complete modern bestiaries with over 50 NPC stat blocks, you are sure to have more than enough tools to design a campaign you and your group will remember for years to come!

Next up, we'll share more information on these new edges, hindrances and Setting Rules that you can use in any campaign regardless of the genre. Don't forget to "like" Just Insert Imagination.

The Wiseguys Jumpstart is now available for free on DrivethruRpg!

What is Wiseguys?

Wiseguys is our love letter to mafia and heist movies of the 90s. In Wiseguys, you play colorful Las Vegas characters building their criminal empire. Perform daring casino heists, clean up bloodbaths before the cops lock you up, take part in adrenaline-fueled chases, hunt down rats, and evade state-of-the-art surveillance.

Wiseguys is fully compatible with the latest Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. Look out for the upcoming Jump Start! Next year, Just Insert Imagination will launch a crowdfunding campaign to finance the production of Wiseguys. We want to fill the book with more art like this. We hope you will join us on this adventure. Don’t forget to bring a shovel. There may be many holes to dig out in the Nevada desert.

Wiseguys Video Diary #7

In episode #7 of my video diary I talk about designing Edges and Hindrances.
#wiseguys #justinsertimagination

What's Next for Wiseguys?

Yesterday, Just Insert Imagination (Winter Eternal, Fuhgeddaboudit!, The Mutation Deck) released a FREE Demo Kit for the upcoming setting and tool kit for Savage Worlds that I wrote, Wiseguys.

In the coming months, I will continue my developer's vlog on YouTube, write more blogs, coordinate play test groups, publish new one sheets, and of course continue to write the full book.

The plan is to go to crowdfunding for artwork and editing once the draft has been completed.

Happy gaming!

Eric Lamoureux (justinsertimagination@gmail.com)

Wiseguys - Organizations

It's time for another preview of the upcoming demo kit for Wiseguys, the Las Vegas crime and 90s cult movies setting and tool kit for Savage Worlds.

Who you know in Sin City is as important as what you can do. For player characters, organizations are potential allies, people that can be called upon to provide information, resources, services or man power. In Savage Worlds, this is represented by the Connections Edge.

For the Don, organizations are perfect villains of the criminal underworld. They can build whole scenes, misadventures or campaign arcs around them.

In Wiseguys, we provide you with several examples of organizations.

Bell Bottom Brigade

La Cosa Nostra isn’t the only player in Las Vegas. As a matter of fact, competition is fierce and, as a result, the demand for people that can eliminate said competition is at a premium. On the rise in this elite market is the Bell Bottom Brigade, a group of deadly female assassins with soul. That’s right. Their wardrobe is filled with platform shoes, bell bottom pants and low cut, large collar blouses. That’s when they aren’t back at the car wash in their bikinis. These ladies aren’t averse to beguile their victims first if they feel it may give them an advantage, nor do they feel that the element of surprise is absolutely necessary to complete the job. The Bell Bottom Brigade comes at you with style and an attitude to match.

Rumors & Story Seeds

• They received their training in a monastery up in the Himalayas.
• They all use a codename and don’t know each other’s real names.
• One of them is the illegitimate child of the Colossus Casino and Resort owner and she waits for her chance to get her piece of the fortune.

Wiseguys - Demo Kit progress

#wiseguys #justinsertimagination

The Wiseguys Demo Kit manuscript has come back improved from the editor and is now ready for layout. Half of the illustrations are done with more on the way. Here are two of those.

Here's a bio for each of the characters!

Tommaso “Tommy Blue” Mazzotta

Burglar/Wiseguy

You grew up on the streets of Brooklyn, shining shoes for the made men of the neighborhood. Twenty years later you were one of them on the account of having been a good earner for the family. You learned how to defeat surveillance and security which helped you to become one of the best house burglars in the city. You grew tough and smart. Now, people respect you or they get a few broken bones. And that’s if you were in a good mood that day.

You saw an opportunity to shed some of the heat and make money by moving to Las Vegas to protect the family’s interests. Turns out, your reputation precedes you everywhere you go, and every time something goes wrong, the cops come knocking at your door and asking questions. You’re more clever than them, though. Have you been pinched? Sure, plenty of times, but nothing sticks to you.

Little Debbie

Roller Derby girl/Knee Breaker

Everybody has their way to let off some steam. After your husband left you alone to raise the kids, you sure needed to channel all that frustration somewhere. That’s when you joined the local Roller Derby team. You used to play sports in high school and always had an affinity for it. Save for beating up your husband, nothing beats the feeling of a contact sport like Roller Derby. You always bring baked goods to the games. This has translated to your new side job.

That’s right, a mobster crew needed an enforcer, a real tough broad. You’re having more fun than ever but have kept this part of your life a secret. You love your kids and wouldn’t want them to be taken away from you. If only the other parents at PTA meetings knew what you are up to at night.

January 24th Update

Hi folks!

Eric Lamoureux here with an update. This blog is a great vessel for my thoughts and meandering but I unfortunately don't give it enough love. Part of it is procrastination, part of it is the Wild Die Podcast, but mostly it's that most of the time I have to write is dedicated to Wiseguys.

I started writing a book for Savage Worlds back in May. Yep, Wiseguys. I shared a preview of it in my last entry, and if you follow me on G+ or Facebook, I've been sharing snippets under the hashtag #gangsters and #justinsertimagination.

Wiseguys is an organized crime toolkit and setting about a group of gangsters building a criminal empire in an alternate 1990s Las Vegas. It's the movie Casino as if directed by Quentin Tarantino with some Ocean's Eleven, Fargo, Breaking Bad, and The Big Lebowski added to spice it up.

I've been running playtests since last November and it has gone well so far. I have around 100 pages written so far. A starter/demo set is in the works for Spring. I'll then open up the playtest to other groups. If you're interested in helping out with that, follow me, +Just Insert Imagination or email me at lamoureuxe1276 at the gmail dot (com).

Other than that it feels like I've been playing more than GMing lately. I'm playing in a FFG Star Wars campaign with a cool group, I'm playing in a mini-campaign on the Wild Die Podcast and joining one shots every other week.

RPG books I've been reading these days include Cthulhu City, Blades in the Dark, City of Mist and the Cypher System Rulebook. Very different books, but so good. Right now I'm probably closer to finishing Cthulhu City, mainly because it's the shortest one. All the others are 300-500 pages. Ugghh...

Campaigns I'd like to run these days: Shadow of the Demon Lord, The Strange, Beasts & Barbarians, and City of Mist.

Latest RPG purchase: Blades in the Dark.

That's it, folks! Keep playing games!

Wiseguys

What do you think? Yes, no?
What does this tell you about the setting? What do you expect to find inside after looking at it?