Cops got it rough in Bedlam—no two ways about it. Seems even the good ones go bad eventually. You could say the turn is a matter of time, or opportunity, or maybe it’s just the product of exhaustion. You can’t swim against a torrent of shit forever. Hell, some cops dive under immediately. Sad truth is there’s good money doing that. And respect. And power. That’s how promotions are earned, how you get a seat next to the Mayor at the annual banquet. Other cops fight the good fight, as long as they can, until they see they’re going nowhere and buckle. All it takes is a gentle nudge sometimes. Still, some cops unwittingly step into servitude. Maybe they make a mistake that needs covered up by someone in power or get into the kind of trouble only a person of means can correct. Debt is one of the worst things in Bedlam. The badge is not a shield against all attackers.

Some cops though, they stick to the straight and narrow. Change the system from within? That’s not how a door gets knocked down. You put on your big boots and you kick that wood until it splinters. You do that, you best be careful. You never know whose door you’re cracking open there or what you might see on the other side. Carrying a badge in Bedlam means you have to make some hard choices. First one: How honest can you afford to be?

The criminals in Bedlam don’t talk to nobody. Except you. You’ve got ins with the major families, the syndicates, even a couple with the white-collar crooks. You’ve got a mainline to the dirt other people need, and those other people? They pay you well for what you know. But you’re aiming a gun with two barrels, pal. All that intel you’re scrounging is a bullseye on a bulletproof vest, you understand. That’s why you only move in circles that protect you, talk to people you trust.

The criminals in Bedlam don’t talk to nobody. But you, you don’t talk to nobody. What you know is your ticket to better things. Those connections you’ve made are worth more than gold. Well, wait, how much gold we talking about? It’ll have to be a lot because the names you’ve heard, the faces you’ve scanned, the deals you’ve seen go down, are worth good money. And if a potential buyer isn’t willing or able to pony up your asking price, you’ll find somebody who will. Cuz, pal, on these streets, there’s always someone willing to pay more.

Sometimes, in Bedlam, the only people who talk are the ones you wish would just shut up. And the people you want to talk are locked up tight with no signs of budging. That’s when you have to bust out the tools and get to work. Time to interrogate.

You have two options when it comes to persuasive extraction: break the subject’s spirit or break his body. With the former, it’s about getting into his head, weakening him emotionally, and finding out what strings you need to snip to get him to sing. With the latter, it’s about pain. Deep-down and to the bone. The kind of pain that scars your soul. A good interrogator knows which is a subject’s weakness and goes right for it. Others have to dig around a while or try them both.

While Streets of Bedlam introduces some new systems to Savage Worlds, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel if I didn’t have to. I knew I wanted to spotlight investigation and interrogation in the rules so I looked for systems already in Savage Worlds that might handle those. In a film, when some guy is strapped to a chair, duct tape over his eyes, sweating under a bare-bulb lamp while some heavy hovers over a car battery with a sadistic grin on his face, that’s a pretty dramatic moment. So to replicate those types of moments in Streets of Bedlam, I decided to use a system Savage Worlds already had: Dramatic Tasks. But I wanted to tailor it a bit, so instead of needing five successes in five rounds, the interrogator needs a number of successes equal to or greater than the subject’s Spirit (if the interrogator is playing mind games) or his Vigor (if the interrogator is going the physical route). If successful, information comes out. If he’s very successful, it may even be the right information.

Thing is, the subject is dealt in as well so while the interrogator is looking for weaknesses, the subject’s probably planning something of his own. What matters here is not who succeeds best but who succeeds first.

(Please note that the rules above are currently in playtest and subject to change. Full, final rules will appear in the Streets of Bedlam corebook, due out April 2012.)

Trouble. You’re either in it or causing it. It’s not that you necessarily mean to. Half the time, it finds you. At least, that’s your take on it. Trouble comes in ages young and old, sizes big and small, male and female alike. How it shakes down is folks are attracted to you, your looks, your style, that hint of innocence on your face. Some people just aren’t alive unless they’re saving somebody. You’re not a pretty princess, some damsel-in-distress, but you’ll play the role. For a moment, you give their life purpose, you fill some hole in their sad existence. Sometimes you’re the center of their universe and sometimes you’re their dirty little secret. Sometimes you’re both. All that is fine by you.

You focus on yourself because you’re the only one who really cares about you. The adoration others heap on you is nice but it’s fleeting. Either you’ll get bored or they’ll get distracted. Sure, you’re in the prime spot now, but every time you wake, you’re one day older. You know you’ll have to use what you have while you can to get what you need. You’re not into tying yourself down though you’ll take the benefits while they’re offered. Every relationship is an affair, every friendship is fleeting, and every connection you make will ultimately end in heartbreak. You’re just making sure it’s you who delivers the bad news. Nobody’s breaking your heart, that’s for sure.

* The TROUBLE character option is one of the two Kickstarter-exclusive Archetypes given to backers who pledge $60 or more as a special thank-you for their support!

People want to be controlled. They need it. Left to their own devices, people will seek someone to tell them what to do. Sure, they’ll run around like headless chicks for a while, grinding and sweating and giving themselves over to their base impulses, but once the fun of freedom fades, they will look around at their meaningless existence and cry out, “What should I do?” That is, after all, how gods were invented.

In Bedlam, that’s what regents are: gods. Gods of commerce, gods of industry, gods of the people. Those who give and those who take away. Regents made Bedford just like regents broke Lamrose. Those who excel within the boundaries you draw are rewarded. Those who reach beyond their pens must be put into place. The question for regents isn’t “How should I use my power?” It’s “Who will stop me from doing what I want?” As someone who wields the power, you have to decide the devil you serve. You can fall in line with those who cannot see beyond the ivory towers or change the beast from within. When you’re a regent, very few can or will call you out for your decisions. But beware, oh beware, those who do.

Crime is an everyday part of Streets of Bedlam. The city is filled with folks who commit it, those who are victims of it, and bystanders who look the other way. Of course, there are also people who have to stick their heads right into the lion’s mouth—which is probably what you’ll end up doing when you play it. Some of these people are professionals, Badges for instance, but anybody can get dragged into an investigation, especially when something personal is involved somehow.

Instead of making investigations a simple roll in Streets of Bedlam, I wanted to give important crime scenes and criminal trails some heft, to make the process of figuring out a crime as engaging, and with as much dramatic back and forth, as combat. In books and movies, a well-done investigation adds emotional heft to the story. Through it, we learn about the criminal, the victim, the investigator, and how they all fit together.

Using the Savage Worlds system as the core, I wanted to give players new options so they can adjust the granularity of the game for their group, to tweak the focus to better fit the types of stories you might tell with Streets of Bedlam. While an investigation could be resolved by a single die roll, some investigations are more important, and have more to say, than a simple “I know who did it.” That’s where Streets of Bedlam‘s Investigation rules come into play.

When it comes to a crime scene, especially the scene of a murder, two sides come into conflict: the criminal and the investigator. Those two are the forces butting heads and this is where the good drama comes from.

As with combat encounters, crime scenes in Streets of Bedlam are set up beforehand by the game master*. The GM determines the criminals Intent, constructs a list of important clues, a list of secondary clues, and then rolls to see how successful the criminal was at fulfilling his Intent. Success and failure on this roll modifies the difficulty for whoever later comes along to investigate. These details are recorded on a brief Crime Sheet.

A criminal’s Intent is either to leave Zero Evidence or Set a Stage. When the criminal is attempting to leave Zero Evidence, he is trying to remove anything that could implicate him. When a criminal tries to Set a Stage, he is delivering a message which may be trying to point the finger at someone else (a frame job) or tell a story (as is often the case with serial killers). So the GM notes the criminal’s Intent and marks the level of success on the Crime Sheet.

(If the GM desires an even more granular level of investigation, she can roll for Intent for every major clue or “stage setting” as well.)

Throughout the examination of the crime scene, the investigator’s actions will be helped or hindered by the success of the criminal. Clues will be revealed through this back-and-forth where the player characters will have to butt heads with actions that took place minutes, hours, days, possible years beforehand. Time, area, and weather are among the other modifiers that could come into play—either against the investigator or against the perpetrator. A rainy day could wash away key evidence but it could also provide a nice wet patch to capture the criminal’s bootprint.

Failing to find the clues doesn’t dead end the investigation though. Instead, it may end up leading you somewhere else, along the wrong trail, but, hey, sometimes it’s not important that the person responsible is taken down—just that someone is.

This system will be detailed completely** in the Streets of Bedlam corebook but I wanted to give you all a look into the thought process behind the game. I hope this preview piqued your interest for what’s in store. Come back next week for a look at the game’s take on information extraction with a breakdown of the new Interrogation rules.

*Also as with combat encounters, the corebook will include sample crime scenes for impromptu investigations.

**As it’s still in playtest, some details may also change prior to release.

Vice is gonna flow in Bedlam and nobody can stop it. Someone may as well as make some money off it. Maybe you can flip that cash into something good, y’know? Help the homeless, feed the hungry, right? Turn the bad into good, maybe? It’s not that you’re into exploiting misfortune. Hey, look at it this way: If it’s not you governing the stream then someone else will, and then your customers are at the mercy of some unscrupulous backdoor chemist putting who knows what into the mix. Sure, you may cut powder with the occasional baby laxative—gotta stretch out resources when supply is tight—but you’re not stirring industrial cleaner into the spike.

Folks ask what your career plan is. Where do you go from here? Your plan is simple: buy, sell, retire. At least get enough cash to get the hell out of this town. What, go into politics? Yeah, that’s much more honest work. The church? The cops? Please. What kind of world is it where a supposed criminal like you has stronger moral fiber than the folks who swear to protect people? You may be “part of the problem” but at least you have standards.

Evil lives in Bedlam, infecting the spirits of the citizenry and darkening the skies in its wake. The people of Bedlam are not lost—not permanently—though they are horribly misguided. Redemption is possible even if the means to such get a little extreme now and then. You have taken up the challenge of saving those who seek salvation and sometimes those who actively resist it. You often put yourself directly between evil and its victims, beating back abusers, pushers, and other villains in order to protect a lamb from slaughter.

You shepherd back to the fold those who wander, whether into the arms of the Lord or simply away from the perils of vice. Catholicism rules Bedlam, there’s no debating that, but not all Samaritans are members of the Big Church. Many are of other faiths, a lot are non-denominational. Samaritans can be social workers, youth center volunteers, or anyone trying to staunch the flow of crime. No matter how their methods, they all have the calling to do Good and help their fellow men and women however they can.

Lots of streets in Bedlam are unsafe but the cracked red veins of Bricktown doubly so. When the cops stopped patrolling the area, the crooks moved in, and the boys and girls who made their trade on the district’s corners were at the mercy of unkind and unscrupulous men who doped their “workers” to keep them complacent, treated them like unwanted pets, and traded them on whims for whatever the highest bidder was willing to pay. A decade went by and Bricktown descended further. That’s when Queenie and her girls took it upon themselves to rid the area of the pushers and pimps who had taken over their town.

The Valkyries began as a response to a bad situation but soon became so much more. Once the dealers and slappers were pushed out, the Valkyries went about clearing out the rest of the unwanteds, turning Bricktown into a place professionals could entice clients without fear. As long as the workers pay into the protection pool, that is.

Bricktown was the root but the Valkyries have expanded well beyond, becoming vigilantes dedicated to keeping all the streets free of rapists, muggers, murderers, junkies, and all manner of eternal loser. Hail, hail your guardian angels, Bedlam.

Violence is your stock in trade. It’s how you get by and how you settle scores. You don’t make friends easily but you’re dog-loyal to those few you have. Those that cross them will have to answer to you. You’re a protector of the weak but you’re no hero. Hell, sometimes you’re just the biggest thing in the room. When you do have to tussle, you get the job done—the quicker, the better. It’s the big enemies, the rare trophies, the ones that make it personal, that you take your time with—make the pain last nice and long. Teach them sons of bitches the true meaning of retribution.

Some folks call you a monster—and maybe that’s just what you are—but you’re the closest thing to a savior these streets’ll ever see. Because you know the truth. You can smell the stench of bullshit under all the flowery talk, and you know the system is just as crooked as that busted nose on your mug. You don’t buy into the spin or hollow promises—you know what makes Bedlam tick. And you know that one day, that tick is gonna go boom.