New Rules: ROLES
Streets of Bedlam takes a lot of inspiration from cinematic sources. After playing the game, you’ll see how characters in your favorite movies can easily translate to Monsters, Dogfaces, Troubles, and other Streets of Bedlam archetypes. But aside from the character types and locations common to neo-noir and crime films, I’ve also ported over another common cinematic device: Roles.
Roles in Streets of Bedlam allow your character to spend Bennies in order to perform major (sometimes plot-altering) actions that you’re allowed to do simply because you’re the Hero, Sidekick, Love Interest, Plot Twist, or a Supporting Character in the story. These actions range from courageous feats of derring-do to sudden-but-inevitable betrayals to putting yourself in harm’s way in order to give the Hero focus (and a nice bonus).
Roles are optional but they’re also a lot of fun. As an independent system, you can lift them from Streets of Bedlam and drop them into any Savage Worlds setting—or any setting or system at all, if you like! For more details, check out the Streets of Bedlam corebook when it comes out in April. In the meantime, be sure to back the game to get some Kickstarter-exclusive perks and even put yourself in the game!
(Please note that the rules above are currently in playtest and subject to change.)
January 6th, 2012 at 12:57 PM
Idea:
You can (once per adventure? once per rank?) switch your Role, so sometimes you’re the sidekick and sometimes you’re the hero or love interest or what have you.
January 6th, 2012 at 1:07 PM
It’s even more frequent than that. You select a Role every session.
January 6th, 2012 at 1:12 PM
Dig it.
January 9th, 2012 at 3:18 PM
This is a brilliant mechanic, and right up my alley. I’m running a long-shot Pathfinder game right now, and it’s sort of breaking down like this, but I’d love to be able to add something like this to the mechanics themselves.
I love the idea of not only getting cool powers based on role but that this gives players a direction and a focus that kind of anneals their character concept to the plot at hand. This is awesome.
January 10th, 2012 at 3:36 PM
Aaron,
Thank you! I’ve used this before in other games and it works really well. Great thing is, instead of inventing a currency system, I can add even more value to Bennies. I hope folks dig it.