THE STATS
Name: being respected, being reliable, being connected.
Hush: being discreet, being subtle, being close-mouthed.
Brass: being bold, being determined, being pragmatic.
Wise: being prepared, being cunning, being aware.
Straight: being clean, being lawful, being a citizen.
Debt: how much someone owes you.
Heat: how much attention you’re drawing to yourself and your activities.
Some moves give you heat; you can also take heat when you miss a roll.
Heat is mostly bad but you’ll learn faster when the heat is on.
BASIC MOVES
ASK AROUND
When you ask around, roll+name. On a hit, choose options. On a 10+,
choose 1. On a 7-9, choose 2:
○ What you fi nd isn’t quite what you expected.
○ You fi nd out where it is, but you’ll have to fetch it yourself.
○ There are strings attached to acquiring it.
○ You owe someone for this; mark them for payback.
This isn’t like going up to someone and interrogating them, but about using
your reputation amongst the criminal fraternity to fi nd whatever you’re looking for. You make it known what you want and you hope that the answer
comes back to you; it’s a lot like sending out a sonar ping and hoping to get
a good strong return signal. You can ask around for any object, place, person
or information; if it’s an object with the hot tag, you can only get it by asking
around.
COVER YOUR TRACKS
When you cover your tracks, roll+hush. On a hit, choose options. On a
10+ choose 1. On a 7-9, choose 2:
○ It takes a long time.
○ It can be traced back to you.
○ You need someone’s help; take -1 debt with them.
Covering your tracks can mean a lot, like tipping someone a few quid to
look the other way while you do what you need to do, picking a lock without
damaging it or faking an identity. This is the slow and cautious approach to
getting things done; for the fast and messy version, see below.
TAKE THE HARD WAY
When you take the hard way, roll+brass. On a hit, choose options. On a
10+, choose 1. On a 7-9, choose 2:
○ Take +1 heat.
○ You’ve made a new enemy; mark them for payback.
○ Take -1 forward.
Taking the hard way means getting past an obstruction as quickly as you
can and not worrying about how much attention you attract: it’s all about
getting the job done and getting away before anyone comes to have a look.
Pushing a guard out of your way, battering down a door or driving straight
through a road block are all examples of doing things the hard way.
TAKE THE HEAT OFF
When you take the heat off, roll+brass. On a hit, defl ect 1heat to another
PC. On a 7-9, they gain +1 debt with you.
Heat is like lightning: it needs to strike somewhere, so the trick is to guide it
to the right target. Let’s make things clear though, this isn’t a good thing to
do to your outfi t. Taking the heat off redirects some incoming heat from
you to someone else in your crew, maybe because you left them in the frame
or tipped off an interested party. Whatever it is, you’re looking to pin the
blame on them when you do this, so they have a right to be pissed with you.
ARGUE THE TOSS
When you argue the toss, roll+wise. On a 10+, NPCs do it your way and
PCs either do it your way or take +1 heat. On a 7-9, if they do it your way,
mark NPCs for payback and PCs take +1 debt with you.
This isn’t about forcing someone to do what you want, just haggling with
them; you can’t make someone give you all their money for nothing, but if
they’ve agreed to pay you for something, this is the way to negotiate the
price. This move is all about the small details, not the big picture, so you
don’t get a say in what happens so much as how it happens.
PLAN B
When you go to Plan B, roll+wise. On a hit, the MC gives you a way out of
whatever trouble you’re in; choose options if you take it. On a 10+, choose
1. On a 7-9, choose 2.
○ You have to leave someone behind.
○ You don’t get what you came for.
○ Your livelihood is threatened.
When it hits the fan, you need to be prepared; this move usually follows a
hard move after a missed roll, when the outfi t are up against the wall and
need a way out right now. Not all plans are perfect however and there is
always a price to be paid for getting out of trouble.
LIE LOW
When you lie low, roll+straight. On a hit, take -1 heat. On a 10+, you may
also take an additional -1 heat, but you owe someone for this; mark them for
payback. On a 7-9, you do not get the additional -1 heat, but you still owe
someone for this; mark them for payback.
Everyone has family, friends and colleagues, ordinary people who aren’t of
interest to the police (or not as much interest, anyway). When you make
this move, you call upon one of these connections to provide you with an
alibi, cover up for you or give you a place to hide. Eventually, the heat will die
down and you can get back on with things, but it’s likely the people who help
you out when you’re in need will expect you to return the favour some day.
PERIPHERAL MOVES
When you make trouble, roll+heat. On a hit, friends or family turn their
backs on you; on a 12+, take +1 heat; on a 7-9, you can mark them for
payback and they don’t turn their backs on you. On a miss, your friends and
family will help you out, this time.
Sometimes, you’re just not wanted around: family, friends and colleagues
might turn their backs on you if you keep making life hard for everyone
around you. When you turn to them for help or support, or even when you
just expect things to carry on as normal, you could be making trouble for
them; the more heat you have, the more likely they are to turn their backs
on you. This could mean anything like they don’t go out for a drink with you,
to your girlfriend dumping you or your boss giving you the sack.
When you cross a partner, they take +1 debt with you.
If you make a deal with another PC but don’t keep your end of it even
though they keep theirs, you’ve crossed them. This is entirely a verbal
matter: it’s up to the players and the MC to decide when a cross has taken
place, but if it’s not obviously a cross, then it probably isn’t one.
When you double-cross, use your special move.
If you make a deal with another PC but neither of you keep up your end of
it, it’s a double-cross. Both PCs use the special move from their playbooks.
As above, it’s up to everyone around the table to decide when a doublecross has really taken place, but it should be even more obvious that a cross.
When you pay cash, spend dough and mark experience; take a 10+ on
any move right now but with no consequences, e.g. choose none. Money
talks and you can get anything you want done if you can aff ord it; when you
pay cash, you pay someone to do the job for you, which costs you as much
dough as the MC thinks that service is worth. The dough represents a fee or
bribe paid to either get the job done, to get someone to look the other way
while you do it or to pay for any damage it causes so it doesn’t bring you any
trouble.
GET ROUGH
When you get rough, roll+edge. On a 10+, take your opponent down. On
a 7-9, choose 1.
○ They take -1 forward.
○ They back off .
○ They’re down but you take -1 ongoing for this situation.
You can only get rough if you’ve got a weapon that gives you +edge; if
you’ve got no such weapon, you can’t make this move.
OPEN FIRE
When you open fi re, roll+lead. On a 10+, take your opponent out and
take +1 heat. On a 7-9, take your opponent down and choose 1.
○ Take +1 heat.
○ Dump the weapon you used.
○ Leave without getting what you came for.
You can only open fi re if you’ve got a weapon that gives you +lead; if
you’ve got no such weapon, you can’t make this move.
THE HEAT IS ON
When your life gets loud and messy, it brings the heat down on you; heat can
come from the police, who start investigating things you’ve done, or other
authorities who poke their nose into your life, such as the Department of
Social Security or the Trading Standards Authority. Heat can also come from
the bigger fi sh in your pond, the real villains who sit at the centre of all the
nets and pull on them: upset them and you’ll be looking at the daisies from
the wrong side.
The two main ways of gaining heat are by taking it as the price of a move
or taking it when the MC makes a hard move against you, following a miss.
Either way, your heat goes up by +1; when it does, you can try to take the
heat off right away and defl ect that +1 to another PC. They don’t have to
like this but if you do it, it’s done: they can’t defl ect it back to you or onto
someone else.
If you’ve already got heat, then you can try to lie low with an NPC: you
might end up owing them a favour, but that can be a small price to pay for
staying out of serious trouble.
When your heat reaches 5+, you’re burned: either the authorities have
enough evidence on you to send you to prison or the heavy mob have
enough reason to take you out of their way for good. Whichever is the case,
the PC is permanently taken out of play.
Add your heat to your experience when fi guring out if you take an advance;
whenever experience+heat reaches 5, reset experience to zero and choose
one:
○ Choose a move from your playbook.
○ Take +1 in any stat (max:+2)
○ Advance a basic move.
○ Advance a move from your playbook.
DEBT AND PAYBACK
When another PC gets one over on you or makes use of your services
without paying for them upfront, they owe you a debt. This hack uses debt
instead of Hx to represent the relationships between the player-characters:
it’s not about how well you know each other but how much you owe to
each other.
When you want to help or interfere with another PC, roll+debt: on a hit,
they take +1 or -2 to their roll, your choice. On a 7-9, you expose yourself
to the same consequences as they are exposed to.
Debt can never rise to more than +3; anytime it does so, reset it to zero and
choose one:
○ Mark experience.
○ Choose a move from that PC’s playbook.
○ Move an NPC from your payback box to theirs.
○ Swap all of your heat for all of theirs.
○ Make a deal with that PC: they must do what you want, but they
can argue the toss over the precise terms.
When you screw an NPC or take advantage of them, you owe them: write
their name down in your payback box, along with a note of how & why they
want repaying, such as:
My Mum: I borrowed her car to run some errands; she’ll want me to drive her
somewhere far off .
Mental Mickey: I left him to face the music on that last job we did; he’ll be
looking for my blood unless I fi nd a way to sweeten him fi rst.
As long as an NPC is still listed in your payback box, you can’t make use of
them any further; anytime you have to owe someone for something, you
have to pick an NPC who is not already awaiting payback, if there are any.
There are two main ways to erase a name from your payback box: either
you can seek them out and try to repay the favour they did you (or the
trouble you caused them) or you can wait until they come looking for you. In
the former case, you get to choose how you’ll pay them back; in the latter,
the MC chooses what sort of payback they’re looking for. Whenever you
miss, the MC can use any NPC you owe to interrupt your plans or to make
demands upon you. As always, it’s a conversation between the players and
the MC, so talk it out and see what works; a common method of payback
is promising to do a job for the NPC who is owed, but the payback isn’t
complete until the job is successfully over. If you make a promise and fail
to carry it out through no fault of your own, it’s up to the MC whether the
NPC fi nds that acceptable or not; if not, they can extract another promise
from you and so on.
The names in your payback box are your problem: even if you make a deal
with someone else to help you with the demands of an NPC, the NPC in
question will still be coming to you if things don’t work out, not the people
you sub-contracted to handle them.
DOWN AND OUT
There is no harm in this hack; players don’t track how badly hurt their characters are, because there are only three states they can be in. By default, all
characters are
fi ne: in fact, you won’t normally see any reference to being
fi ne anywhere else, because it’s assumed that’s the state the characters are
in. Being
fi ne makes no diff erence to how the game works, as PCs can’t
do much unless they’re
fi ne and you can be fi ne even if you’re bruised and
bleeding, as long as you can walk away from whatever hurt you.
When you can’t walk away on your own, that’s when you go down: this
means you’re badly injured and really in need of medical attention. When
a character goes down, they can’t infl uence the current scene any further,
which means no making moves of any kind: they’re reduced to speaking and
moving only, nothing else, and they’ll probably need help with the moving.
When you go down, your livelihood is threatened and you take -1 ongoing
for as long as your injuries or illness persist; to recover from down back to
fi ne just requires some time, some rest and the proper treatment. If you
can’t get all those, you’ll stay down until you can get them; this is one of
those areas where there aren’t any hard rules for how long you stay down
for, but it should take at least a few days of time in the game.
Ongoing: as long as the current situation continues, unresolved.
If you’re down and more bad shit happens, or if you get hit hard enough all
in one go, then you’re out: end of the line, game over, send fl owers to the
family. Players: you’re not immune from this happening just because you’re
playing one of the lead characters in the story. MCs: don’t pull your punches
on this one; if a PC gets taken out, and it makes sense in the story for that to
happen, then it happens. There are moves in some of the playbooks which
provide a bit of insurance against being taken down or out, so don’t dilute
the signifi cance of those by giving everyone a safety net.
The main threat to the player-characters comes from the other playercharacters: the only direct way to take someone down or out is by getting
rough or opening fi re, moves that are only open to PCs, not NPCs. That
said, if you try one of those moves against an NPC and miss, the MC can
respond with a hard move by taking you down, if it fi ts where the conversation is at: failing that, you can certainly expect to take +1 heat just for trying
what you just did.
One of the Feelgood’s unique moves, I can make you feel good, lets them
quickly heal a character from down to fi ne or even from out to down; in
the latter case, the move needs to be made without delay and characters
can’t waste time doing anything else or the opportunity will be lost.
For example, if a shoot-out goes badly and you’re lying bleeding on the
fl oor, the other characters need to get you to the Feelgood now: staying
here to fi nish the job is not an option. If some moves are required to get
to the Feelgood (ask around, take the hard way) or negotiate his services (argue the toss), that’s all part of the drama, but if the characters
get held up or diverted, then it’s a safe bet that they won’t reach their
goal in time to save your life.
THE SILENT ECONOMY
All the characters in the ‘hood are getting by somehow, whether they’re
jacking cars, pushing drugs or just taking bribes to look the other way. As
long as they’re getting by, they’re keeping their heads above water and
they can aff ord to do ordinary, everyday things, like pay their bills, buy
groceries, go out for a drink with their mates and so on. Like everything in a
consumer-driven society, it’s not a problem as long as you’ve got the money
for it; you’re not going to make a fortune that way, but at least you’ll have a
roof over your head.
In every playbook, there is an entry for Loot that tells you how you make a
living. As long as you fulfi l this condition, your livelihood is safe and you can
carry on as normal. The trouble starts when your livelihood is threatened,
which can come about in a number of ways:
○ When you have to spend a lot of money at once, e.g. buying a car,
paying legal costs & fi nes, etc.
○ When someone demands a large sum of money from you as
payback.
○ When you’re unable to protect your livelihood, e.g. when you’re
down.
○ When a move says so, e.g. when the Feelgood’s supply of drugs is
interrupted.
○ When the MC makes a hard move against you.
If your livelihood is threatened, you’re short: as long as you’re short, you
can’t aff ord to do anything that costs more than a token amount. You can’t
pay your bills, buy groceries, etc, and you certainly can’t aff ord any major
expenses. When you go short, that’s when the credit on your travelcard
runs out, when your horse doesn’t even cross the fi nish line and when your
kids all need new shoes all at once. Being short isn’t just about lacking cash,
but lacking means: job off ers dry up, opportunities slip through your hands
and all your accounts are in the red, with the bailiff s hammering on the door
and their van ready to take away all your worldly possessions. Being short is
bad: the longer you let it go on, the worse your situation will get.
Restoring a livelihood is part of the conversation between you and the MC:
the fundamental goal of all the PCs is protecting or restoring their livelihoods. Whenever you restore your livelihood, mark experience; how you
do that depends on how you make your living and how you ended up short,
but basically, fi nd the problem and deal with it. If it’s the authorities nosing
around, making it impossible to do business, then fi nd a way to move them
on, even if that means grassing up a mate; if you’ve had to pay back a big
favour and its left you short, then fi nd someone who needs a favour from
you and do it, no questions asked. Whatever makes sense in the fi ction,
that’s what you need to do, and until you’ve done it, you’re going to stay
short.
As long as you’re out there getting by, you’ll be in a position to make some
real money and improve your circumstances; all the extra cash you earn,
steal or otherwise acquire, as well as all property you own but don’t need to
detail (clothes, beds, kitchen utensils, TV, game consoles, etc) is represented
by dough. Anytime you do something that earns you cash or credit above
and beyond what you get for getting by, take dough; the MC will tell you
how much you get, but unless you’ve made an extraordinary eff ort to earn
it, it won’t usually be more than +1 dough.
One important way for dough to change hands is when you argue the
toss: the MC usually sets a value for goods or services which is not favourable to you, so you can make the move to get a better deal, but you can’t
stray too far from the price the MC has set, e.g. if they’ve set the value
of what you’re off ering at 1dough, you might get 2 or even 3 dough for it,
but not 4 dough or even more. It’s a dynamic economy though and what
has a value of 1 dough today to one person might have a value of 3 dough
tomorrow to someone else, giving you a much better chance to make a deal;
in order to really profi t, take some time to make your services even more
valuable. When people are desperate, they’ll pay just about anything at any
price: there’s time for buyer’s remorse later, but what goes around, comes
around, and further down the line, someone’s going to screw you out of
your last buck.
Another way to get dough is to carry out a job: pull off a big heist or hustle
and make a killing quickly. Jobs need careful planning and the assistance of
others:
○ Heist: a big robbery, targeting a place (bank, bookies, supermarket, etc) or the van that takes money between them; well suited to
the Heavy, Ice, Merchant, Mover and Thief.
○ Hustle: a big con, targeting a person (investor, politician, executive, etc) or the organisation they represent; well suited to the Blur,
Go-Between, Lever, Schemer and Shark.
○ Help for either of the above might be required from the Bastion
and the Fallen, or they might just muscle in on the deal uninvited.
There’s no fi xed way to pull off a job, but it starts by looking around for an
opportunity you can exploit, then getting more details from the MC; using
those details, you can start to plan out what your characters are going to
do and how they’re going to do it. Some of this will require you to make a
move, particularly asking around for more information or for the services of
a specialist like a safe-cracker; some things will open you up to moves by the
MC, like taking heat or threatening your livelihood.
For example, some of the characters decide to heist the security van that
delivers money to the cashpoint at the local supermarket. What follows
is a conversation between the players and the MC: the MC suggests or
demands things they must do, like fi nding out when the money is going
to be delivered and getting their hands on some guns to stage the heist.
Along the way, the MC will state how much dough they’re likely to get for
this, say 9 or 10 dough in total: getting that dough depends on pulling off
the job and getting away with it, with a high likelihood that it will generate
heat at any stage.
Dough also provides leverage: enough money can buy just about anything,
so a PC with the dough for it can pay cash. This move lets you buy a 10+
result for any move, including a unique move from any playbook, but
without any negative consequence, e.g. you choose none on most moves,
you can take -2 heat when you lie low without having to mark anyone for
payback and so on. Anytime you pay cash, mark experience.
If the PCs want to form a proper gang, then it is dough which holds them
together; the gang leader invests an amount of their own dough equal to
the number of PCs in their gang (not including themselves.) This dough is
not spent, merely held; each PC then changes their Loot statement to read
“You’re getting by as long as the boss of your gang is.” The gang boss keeps
their existing Loot statement, so the whole gang now exists to serve the
boss’ purpose. If at any time the gang boss has less dough than the number
of PCs in their gang, they have to let some of them go; a PC can also leave
the gang voluntarily, if they can negotiate it with the boss. When a PC leaves
a gang for any reason, their livelihood is threatened. A gang member can
also end up short in the usual ways, e.g. by having to pay a large amount of
money; the gang boss should be involved in any attempt to restore their
livelihood.
HOT PROPERTY
Where as some of the things owned by the characters are of an ordinary,
legitimate nature, a number of things aren’t. Ordinary items are bought
in shops for cash, but unless they’re buying something really expensive or
splurging out a lot of money at once, this won’t cost them any dough or
threaten their livelihood. There’s no need to list all the ordinary, everyday
items your character owns and nor should you worry about having to haggle
over buying them: as long as you’re not short, you can buy pretty much
anything that is available on the high-street, though the quality will be a
refl ection of how much dough you have:
○ Short: don’t even think about buying anything; if you’re short for
too long, you won’t even end up owning the things you had.
○ 0 dough: everything you own is second-hand, old, outdated,
forged, stolen, fake or a pirate copy; even when you buy new, it’s the
cheapest and nastiest there is, i.e. burgers that are only 10% beef,
shoes whose soles wear out within a month and so on.
○ 1 or 2 dough: it’s ok, y’know, not great but not terrible; you buy
cheap but not dirt cheap, just bargain cheap. Some of this is probably
still fake or pirated, but it’ll pass muster on the street.
○ 3 or 4 dough: we’re into proper middle-class territory now; you
can aff ord to shop at places that aren’t on every high street, you can
take a holiday abroad without having to save for years and if your TV
or game console breaks down, you can buy a new one the same day.
○ 5 or 6 dough: luxury items are part of your everyday life; they
might not be in good taste, but they are expensive. Membership at
an exclusive gym, the complete premium channels package legally on
your TV and private health insurance are all amongst the assets your
dough can represent.
○ 7 dough or more: if you regularly have this much money, why
are you even still in the ‘hood? You own property, you and your partner each have new cars, as do your children when they’re old enough
to drive, oh, and their college education? Paid for.
You can assume your character is capable of doing the things represented by
the above wealth bands without breaking a sweat; when you want to push
outside your wealth band, however, that’s when you actually need to spend
some of that dough. This won’t magically downgrade everything else you
own, so your top-of-the-range 42” plasma screen TV isn’t going to turn into
a 14” black-&-white cathode screen overnight just because you needed to
buy some new wheels, but if it hasn’t come up before, you can no longer
assume you have the former, as it’s more likely to be the latter, and over
time, you’ll have to let go of your nicer stuff as you can’t aff ord the payments
anymore.
For example, Guard Dog has done well as the Bastion for his ‘hood and
now has 4 dough burning a hole in his expensive, designer jean pockets,
but then his ma gets taken ill; the waiting lists aren’t good for someone
of her age with no health insurance, so he drops the 2 dough it takes to
get her treatment bumped all the way up to ‘right now.’ That also drops
Guard Dog a wealth band, so from now on, when he brings his possessions into the fi ction, they’re more likely to be cheap than nice; if he stays
at 2 dough for a while, then he’s also going to lose most of the stuff he
had when he was better off as he replaces it with cheaper models to save
money.
If you badly need something, but can’t aff ord it, because you don’t have the
dough or because you’re short, you can go on the black-market to get what
you need. When you ask around, you can acquire pretty much anything for
a token amount of cash but everything on the black-market has the hot tag:
each hot item in your possession adds +1 to your heat, but you cannot lose
or shift this heat. As soon as you get rid of the item in question, the +1 heat
goes with it.
For example, Slippery Des, the local Go-Between in the ‘hood, needs a
car for a deal he is brokering, but he doesn’t have the money for a clean
one, so he asks around for a dodgy motor. His result is 8, so he has to
pick two options: combining the last two, he has to repossess the motor
from someone who’s not paid their outstanding debt on it, making an enemy of that NPC. He can then use the motor for his deal, driving it back
to the guy he’s repossessed it for afterwards: once he acquires it, he takes
+1 heat, but he can’t take the heat off , as he is stuck with that heat for
as long as the motor is in his possession. When he delivers the car to its
fi nal destination, he loses the +1 heat associated with it.
The two main things to be bought on the black-market are weapons and
vehicles: weapons always have the edge or lead tag, ranging from +1 to +3.
○ 1edge/lead: small and easily concealable, no-one will know you’ve
got this on you unless they search you or have a very good eye.
○ 2edge/lead: larger and more powerful, these weapons create a
distinctive bulge in your clothing that others in your line of business,
or anyone in the business of law-enforcement, will notice.
○ 3edge/lead: too big and bulky to be concealed by any ordinary
clothing, these must be either carried in a bag or hidden under the
type of long, fl owing clothing that itself will attract attention.
Weapons with 1edge can be bought anywhere for a negligible amount, so
they don’t cost dough or threaten your livelihood; anything larger and you’re
going to have to look on the black-market. The situation with guns depends
on the law of the country the ‘hood is in: in the UK, anything with 1lead
or greater is essentially only available on the black-market and is therefore
always hot. In the USA, there is more legitimate access to weapons, but
there is often a delay in acquiring them, not to mention that such guns are
more easily traceable, so if you’re in a hurry, you’ll probably be looking to
the black-market again.
Vehicles are a little diff erent, as they have a range of tags that can be applied
to them: there are good tags, which add +1 dough to the price of the vehicle, and bad tags, which take -1 dough from the price. No vehicle can ever
have a price below 0 dough or have tags which have opposite eff ects, e.g. a
car cannot be both fast and slow. The starting price for all vehicles is 3dough,
which is then modifi ed by the number of good and bad tags they have.
GOOD TAGS
○ Fast: this vehicle can easily catch up with or leave behind any
other vehicle which is not fast or faster on the straight. For +1 dough,
this can be upgraded to faster, in which case it has this advantage
against any other vehicle which is not faster.
○ Tough: this vehicle can drive away from any one collision, but it
will need repairs before it can do this again.
○ Roomy: there is space in here for several extra passengers and
their baggage.
○ Agile: this vehicle can make tight turns, enabling it to shake off or
pursue any vehicle which is not agile in the city.
BAD TAGS
○ Hot: this is a stolen vehicle or one which has a history of involvement in traffi c off ences or criminal acts.
○ Slow: this vehicle can easily be caught or left behind by any other
vehicle which is not slow on the straight.
○ Weak: this vehicle is a write-off after any collision; it cannot be
driven off or repaired.
○ Tiny: there’s no room in this vehicle for passengers or baggage.
○ Stiff : this vehicle manoeuvres badly, meaning it can’t shake off or
pursue any vehicle which is not stiff in the city.
CAREER CRIMINALS
Living in the ‘hood teaches you how to survive, but it changes you too; over
time, your character will develop and gain new moves that expand their
range of options. Mark experience when:
○ You restore your livelihood.
○ You pay cash.
○ Your debt reaches more than +3 with another PC (see below)
Some unique moves also let you mark experience; see the playbooks for
more details.
When your debt with another PC rises to more than +3, reset it to zero and
choose one:
○ Mark experience.
○ Choose a move from that PC’s playbook.
○ Move an NPC from your payback box to theirs.
○ Swap all of your heat for all of theirs.
○ Make a deal with that PC: they must do what you want, but they
can argue the toss over the precise terms.
Whenever experience+heat reaches 5, reset experience to zero and choose
one:
○ Choose a move from your playbook.
○ Take +1 in any stat (max:+2)
○ Advance a basic move.
○ Advance a move from your playbook.