Leads
Roll d66 (two dice, first as tens and second as units, 11 to 66) when a scene resolves and the Crew needs a reason to keep moving. Each lead is the thread that pulls them to the next beat. Many point at a fresh Facility; others send the Crew after a Face, an item in the Stash, or a job to do first.
This is the glue of the loop. Roll a Lead, roll What Goes Down when the Crew arrives, resolve it, then roll a new Lead and go again, as many times as the night wants, until the scenario's own ending is in reach. The intro and the finale are yours to set; the middle rolls itself.
| d66 | Lead |
|---|---|
| 11 | The Ice Cream Cone. A kid on a scooter shoves a half-melted ice cream into the nearest Hero's hands, yells that "the man said you'd pay for it," and pedals off before anyone can argue. Frozen in the middle of the scoop, wrapped in cling film, is a folded address and a small brass key. It's pistachio, which somebody in the Crew has strong and immediate feelings about. Roll a new Facility: the key opens something waiting there, and the melt is a timer, because whoever sent this wanted the Crew moving before it started to drip. |
| 12 | The Chalk Outline. A breakdancer mid-battle in the square suddenly stops spinning, goes grey, and chalks a single name across the concrete before his crew hauls him off swearing it's just a cramp. The name means nothing yet, but the whole plaza watched him write it and then try to scuff it out with his own shoe, which only smeared it bigger. Roll on Faces: that person is the next thread, and now half the neighbourhood is asking the exact question the Crew is. |
| 13 | The Edited Tag. One of the Crew's own pieces, three sectors over, has been vandalised overnight. Not buffed, edited. Someone added a tidy little shopping list in the corner in handwriting nobody recognises, one item circled twice in red. It is insulting, it is precise, and it is a message only the Crew would ever go and find. Roll on What's in the Stash for the circled item: somebody wants it fetched, and they knew exactly which wall the Crew checks first thing every night. |
| 14 | The Backwards Song. The Underground Radio plays a track the DJ swears blind they never queued, and when Static runs it backwards it's a string of directions read out in a dead man's voice. Everybody heard it. Nobody else knows to reverse it yet, but they will by dawn. The last line, forwards or backwards, is just wet, delighted laughing. Roll a new Facility: the voice is walking the Crew there one turn at a time, and it sounds genuinely thrilled they showed up. |
| 15 | The Loyal Dog. A Talos unit the Crew dropped earlier tonight has powered back up wrong. It follows them now at a polite distance, chrome dented, one arm permanently raised and pointing, like a very expensive compass that only knows one direction. It will not attack. It will not lower the arm. It hums, faintly, a little louder the closer they get. Roll a new Facility: the broken Dog is aiming the Crew at whatever's left rattling around in its head, and it would very much like them to follow. |
| 16 | The Mural They Didn't Paint. Overnight, a wall in the neighbourhood grew a mural of the Crew: photo-perfect, in a style none of them use, showing all of them standing somewhere specific and staring up at something just out of frame. Nobody saw the artist. The paint is still soft enough to smudge. Whoever did this either worships the Crew or is quietly measuring them for a box. Roll a new Facility: it's the exact place in the picture, the Crew is clearly expected, and the thing they're looking up at isn't painted in yet. |
| 21 | Yiayia's Casserole. A grandmother nobody in the Crew has ever met climbs all the way up to HQ with a foil-covered dish, sets it down, says "he told me you'd know," and leaves before anyone can ask who "he" is. Under the pastitsio, sealed in a freezer bag so it doesn't get sauce on it, is a photograph of a face and an address written on the back in the same looping hand as the recipe card taped to the lid. Roll on Faces: the man in the photo is the next lead, and the casserole is, genuinely, extraordinary, so eat first. |
| 22 | The Debt Repaid, Loudly. A face the Crew once helped comes screeching up on a stolen milk float at four in the morning, blasting the Crew's name over its little jingle speaker, to hand the favour back with interest: a location, a time, and a warning, all delivered at maximum volume in front of the whole sleeping block. Windows are opening. Somebody's yiayia is already shouting. Roll on Faces: the old friend has the lead and means well, and has also just personally torched any hope of the Crew arriving anywhere unnoticed tonight. |
| 23 | The Missing, Vacuum-Sealed. Somebody the Crew needs has vanished, and the only trace is a Vivid-branded vacuum bag left on their bed, the kind used to store winter coats, sucked flat and empty except for the ghostly imprint of a body and a single sneaker still inside. It smells faintly of the Memory Ward's antiseptic. Roll a new Facility: they're in there somewhere, flattened into the system, and every hour that passes the seal on whatever's left of them pulls a little tighter. |
| 24 | The Wrong Hands, Livestreamed. What the Crew was chasing just got lifted by someone else, and that someone is not the subtle type: they're already livestreaming it, holding the prize up to a phone, narrating exactly how easy the Crew made it, to an audience of thousands who are absolutely loving the beef. Pixel could find the stream in a heartbeat. Roll on Faces, or pick a rival crew: the thief is out there gloating in real time, geotagging themselves without meaning to, and every single viewer is a witness the Crew can flip. |
| 25 | The Screen That Knows Your Name. A public Vivid ad-screen glitches as the Crew rides past and, for one full second, drops the yoghurt commercial to show their crew name, a set of coordinates, and a shrinking countdown, then snaps back to selling yoghurt like nothing happened. It does it again at the next screen. And the next. The whole street is starting to notice the yoghurt ads are stalking these particular kids. Roll a new Facility: the coordinates are real, the countdown is real, and something trapped inside the machine is screaming for help in the only language it has left. |
| 26 | Do the Thing First. There's no address yet, because the person with the address is currently upside down in a wheelie bin two blocks away, wedged there by a rival crew as a joke, and refusing to say one useful word until they're out and their dignity has been fully restored. Getting them out is easy. Getting them out without a crowd gathering to film it is the actual problem. Do the job first, rescue the poor furious idiot, and the door to the next place opens, along with a very long lecture about respect. |
| 31 | The Rival's Poisoned Gift. A rival crew leaves a gift-wrapped box on the HQ step, ribbon and all, holding a perfect scale model of a building made entirely from crushed spray cans, with one tiny window painted gold. There's no note, because the rivals are hoping the Crew walks straight into whatever waits behind that gold window and eats it, since the tip burns someone the rivals hate even more than the Crew. Roll a new Facility: the model is the map. Trust it at the Crew's own risk, and take a second to admire it, because it is honestly beautiful work. |
| 32 | Overheard Through the Floor. In a taverna bathroom, the Crew catches an entire plan bleeding up through the tiles from the flat below: a time, a place, and a job, laid out by two people who think the extractor fan covers them. It does not. It amplifies. Every word comes up the pipe clear as a confession booth, right down to one of them slurping a frappe. Roll a new Facility and set a rough deadline, because whatever they're describing is happening soon, and the two geniuses downstairs have no idea the ceiling has been taking notes. |
| 33 | The Package That Coos. A crate turns up at HQ addressed in careful child's handwriting, breathing holes punched in the top, cooing softly to itself. Inside is a racing pigeon wearing a tiny hand-knitted Vivid-security vest, and tucked into the vest, a memory chip still warm from the bird. The pigeon has a name tag reading "Detective" and a great deal of attitude. Roll on What's in the Stash for what's on the chip, and let the Crew keep the pigeon, because Detective has clearly been through something and is not leaving now. |
| 34 | Family Business, Escalating. A cousin, an aunt, an ex, someone a Hero has been dodging for months, blows up every phone in the Crew at once with the identical message: come home, now, it's about the thing, you know the thing. Nobody knows the thing. The whole block is lighting up with relatives who have all independently decided tonight is the night. It's personal, it's a summons, and there is a genuine chance it is also just a surprise birthday party with excellent food. Roll a Hero's home turf, because home is not safe right now, whatever "the thing" turns out to be. |
| 35 | The Trail of Wet Paint. Someone is leaving a deliberate trail of tags for the Crew, fresh ones, still dripping, each arrow pointing to the next, all in a colour that shouldn't exist and smells faintly of burnt sugar. It could be a friend guiding them home. It could be bait on a very long line. The paint is warm to the touch and hums under a fingertip, and following it feels less like tracking someone and more like being slowly reeled in. Roll a new Facility at the end of the trail and find out which, because the last tag is always just an arrow, right up until it isn't. |
| 36 | Cut the Cord. The enemy runs on one specific supply, and the Crew just learned where it lives: a lab, a stash, a cold little room humming away behind a door the other side is certain nobody knows about. Hitting it doesn't only teach the Crew something, it hurts the other side exactly where they feel it, and they will know precisely who did it the second the humming stops. Roll a new Facility. Bring enough paint to sign the work, because the whole point of this one is that the message gets received, framed, and remembered. |
| 41 | The Auction of Small Humiliations. What the Crew needs is going under the hammer at a private sale where Vivid's worst people bid absurd Cash on other people's stolen lives, and the catalogue is printed on real paper, which alone tells you how much money is in that room. Buy it, steal it, or ruin the sale so completely it becomes a story people tell for a year. Roll a new Facility for the venue. The dress code is enforced at the door, which is its own particular problem for a crew that smells permanently of spray solvent and fried dough. |
| 42 | The Insider Who Blinks in Morse. A voice from inside the enemy makes contact, but they can't speak, they're watched too closely, so they feed the Crew the next move through the one channel nobody monitors: the blinking cursor on a public departures screen, spelling it out in Morse one agonising letter at a time while pretending to squint at train times. Roll on Faces for who they turn out to be, and decide fast whether this careful, terrified, blinking person is a gift or a leash, because they are risking absolutely everything to stand there and flicker at the Crew. |
| 43 | The Clock Made of Candles. The lead comes with a deadline, and the deadline is physical: a row of hand-rolled red Easter candles the Candle Woman has lit and lined up along a ledge, each one an hour, all of them already burning. She won't say what happens when the last flame gutters out. She just settles onto something rusted, watches the Crew, watches the wax, and waits. Roll a new Facility: the place is known, the pressure is melting in front of everyone, and every scene from here runs against a clock the Crew can literally see getting shorter. |
| 44 | Retrace, But It Moved. The answer was somewhere the Crew has already been, and they walked right past it, and now going back is worse, because the place has changed since: new guards, new tenants, a fresh coat of Vivid grey over the exact wall that mattered. Somebody worked out what the Crew missed and got there first to bury it deeper. Send them back to an earlier Facility, now watched, now hostile, now personal, because being made to walk back into a room you thought you'd finished is its own special kind of insult. |
| 45 | The Bigger Fish. Mid-scene it becomes horribly clear the Crew has been chasing a minnow: the real target is bigger, meaner, far better defended, and has been aware of the Crew for considerably longer than is comfortable. The little lead was a snack it left out on purpose to see who'd take it. Roll a new Facility and raise the stakes, because the job just grew a second head, and the second head has been watching the whole time, chin in hand, mildly and horribly entertained. |
| 46 | A Favour, With Bees. The Crew needs something only one person can provide, and that person is Baba Yorgos, sixty floors up a derelict tower tending his hives, who will not discuss a single thing until the Crew has helped him move a swarm by hand, in the dark, along a route that would give a goat second thoughts. No favour, no lead, no exceptions, and yes, the bees can absolutely tell when you're nervous. Roll on Faces: the meeting is the price, the swarm is the toll, and the honey he pours afterward is, by every account, worth the whole ordeal. |
| 51 | Half a Map, Tattooed. The Crew holds one half of something, a map, a code, a plan, and learns the other half exists as a tattoo sprawled across the back of a person who very much does not enjoy taking their shirt off in front of strangers. The two halves only make sense pressed together, and the tattooed half will not stop sneezing, which makes the whole reading process a moving target. Roll a new Facility for where that itchy, reluctant person is holed up, and pray nobody with a camera and worse manners got a look at their back first. |
| 52 | The Trap With the Welcome Mat. The next move is a trap, and everyone knows it's a trap, because the enemy has laid out an actual welcome mat, a fruit basket, and a hand-lettered sign reading "we know you're coming :)" outside the only door in. Walking into it on purpose is the single road forward. Roll a new Facility: the bait is insulting, the little smiley face is somehow worse, and the Crew is going to march in there ready this time and wipe that punctuation clean off the face of the world. |
| 53 | Word on the Street, Sung. The neighbourhood knows something, and tonight it's coming out as a song: a busker under the overpass has worked the Crew's exact question into a mournful rebetiko ballad, verse by verse, and half the market is humming along without realising they're broadcasting a lead. Roll on Faces: somebody local has the next thread and will trade it for a coin, a request, or simply the chance to finish the final verse, which nobody has heard yet, which the busker has been saving, and which names a name. |
| 54 | The Loose End Comes Home. Something from an earlier scene has followed the Crew back: a witness who won't leave, a debt with legs, a mistake now sitting on the HQ steps eating the Crew's souvlaki and flatly refusing to explain itself. It is not optional anymore. Dealing with it is the only way forward, and dealing with it points the way on, because loose ends in this city are never actually loose, they're tied to something heavier, and this one has been quietly dragging that something behind it the entire time. |
| 55 | Straight to the Source. No more middlemen, no more scraps off other people's tables: the Crew has earned a real shot at the place where the answers actually live, and it is one of the bad ones, the kind of address people drop their voice to say out loud. This is not a lead to nibble at the edges of. Roll a new Facility, one of the hard ones, and treat it like it matters, because the city only lets a crew walk up to a door like this once, and it is leaning in to see what they do with the knock. |
| 56 | The Diversion Nobody Forgets. Before the real move, the Crew needs every eye in the sector pointed hard the wrong way, and half-measures won't do it: this has to be loud, public, gorgeous, and completely irrelevant to the actual target, a fireworks-and-nonsense spectacle that hands the whole city something better to gawp at. Roll a new Facility for where they stage it. Make it the kind of distraction that earns its own segment on the Radio, because the best cover of all is a show too good to look away from. |
| 61 | The Turncoat's Perfect Gift. Someone flipped and left the Crew everything, gift-wrapped: a location, a time, a way in, a floor plan, even the guards' coffee rotation, all neatly annotated in a folder with the crew's name spelled correctly on the tab. It is flawless. It is complete. It is exactly the kind of thing that should make a smart crew's neck prickle all the way up. Roll a new Facility: the door is open, the welcome is warm, the folder is immaculate, and somewhere in all that helpfulness is the precise reason it's this easy. |
| 62 | The Trophy on the Wall. The enemy has something that belongs to the scene, crew colours, a legend's board, a cut-out chunk of a dead writer's wall, and they've mounted it like a hunting trophy where people can see it and know it was taken. Getting it back is the lead and the reward folded into one. Roll a new Facility for where it's displayed. The whole neighbourhood knows it's hanging up there, and the whole neighbourhood is quietly waiting to find out if this is the crew that finally walks in and takes it down. |
| 63 | Two Rumours, One Liar. Two leads land at once, pointing opposite directions, and only one is true: a whispered tip from a trembling informant who won't meet anyone's eye, and a too-confident address from someone grinning a little too wide. Both cannot be real. One is a trap wearing the truth's clothes. Roll two Facilities; the Crew has to read the tellers, weigh the wrongness, and choose before committing, because walking into the false one costs a great deal more than time, and the one with the lovely teeth is smiling for a reason. |
| 64 | The Broadcast Has to Be Live. The next beat isn't about learning something, it's about telling everyone: the lead only pays off on air, live, uninterrupted, in front of the whole city at once, which means seizing a signal somewhere and holding it long enough to matter. Roll a new Facility with a mast, a screen, or a transmitter the Crew can hijack. This one is not a secret to keep and carry, it's a truth to shout from the rooftops, and the entire point is that two hundred million people are watching the moment it lands. |
| 65 | One Last Errand. Before the finale, there's a hole in the plan shaped like one specific thing: a tool, a person, a key, a can of a colour that only exists in one place in the whole sprawl. The Crew can't finish without it, and going to fetch it is the last quiet moment they'll get before everything goes loud. Roll on What's in the Stash or Faces for what's missing. Let the Crew savour the errand, because it's the calm, and everyone at the table can feel the storm waiting on the far side of it. |
| 66 | The Door to the End. Every thread the Crew has pulled tonight ends at the same door, and it's standing right there now, no more side streets, no more middlemen, no more clever detours, just the finish: the boss, the reveal, the last wall, whatever the scenario has been quietly building toward all along. Roll the scenario's climax location, or let the DJ simply name it outright. From here there is only forward, and the whole city has stopped pretending it isn't watching to see exactly how this ends. |