GRIFTERS

Artists of Deception
You are professional cons, and you deal in deception. While others may not understand it,
you are the aristocracy of crime, for who else has their victims rob themselves?
When you play grifters, you earn XP when you execute a con or deception.
What’s your big score, the one you can retire after?

Starting Upgrades Contacts

✦ Training: Resolve
✦ Cohort: Rooks
Hunting Grounds
Choose a favored operation type:
✦ Mysticism: The presence of real ghosts and
demons is no reason not to make money off
fake seances, exorcisms, charms and wards.
✦ Tourism: You like to think that these
hopeless bumpkins leave the city with a
story and perhaps a little more wisdom.
✦ Counterfeiting: There is good business to
be had in fake art and relics.
✦ Gambling: Look, somebody is going to make
money off it, why shouldn’t it be you?
✦ Karinna, a cleaner. All that she asks is that you
ask nothing, but can you hold up your end of the
deal?
✦ Zelda, a chemist. Her concoctions look and
smell convincing enough for the rubes, but do you
believe her when she assures you that “the good
stuff ” is legit?
✦ Sinclair, an ambitious youngest scion of
nobility. Is it entirely clear who is taking advantage
of who here?
✦ Mavia, an antiquarian. No one is quite sure how
long her shop has been in business, but there’s no one
better at making junk look like treasure and finding
treasure in junk.
✦ Erz, a mathematician (and card counter).
They say they’re just doing this to pay for school, but
they’ve been “in school” for as long as anyone can
remember, so where are all their winnings going?

Grifter Upgrades
✦ Quick Change: Each member of the crew can carry one additional one load item from
another crew member’s list for zero load (though this will not convey any expertise with
it)
✦ Friendly Relations: So long as you are not at war with anyone, you may pay one fewer
coin when you pay a tithe (minimum 1) and you may take +1d to incarceration rolls.
✦ Elite Rooks: All of you cohorts with the Rooks type get +1d to quality rolls for Rooks
related action.
✦ Play to Win: All members of the crew may pursue gambling to clear stress (in addition
to their own vice). Any time two or more members of the crew take this downtime
together, add one coin to the crew stash (plus 1 per crew member after the second).
Pick what faction is running the game, and take -1 to that relationship.
✦ Composed: Each PC gets +1 stress box. This costs 3 upgrades to unlock, not just one.

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 Grifter Claims
Turf Fine Tailor Gambling Den Excellent
Public House Negotiators

Extensive Friends on
Turf Lair Turf
Contacts the Force

All Night Legitimate Finishing Listening

Party Turf
Business School Post
people

GAMBLING DEN: During downtime, roll dice
equal to your Tier. You earn coin equal to
the highest result, minus your heat.
I am shocked, shocked!
FINISHING SCHOOL: Your Rook cohorts get
+1 scale for Rook activities.
We breed a better class of criminal here.
FRIENDS ON THE FORCE: You get +1d to
reduce heat.
It helps to know the routes and patterns of the local
constabulary, but it helps more to have a complete
list of birthdays, favorite beverages and family
situations.
FINE TAILOR: You get +1d to the
engagement roll for deception and social
plans.
Oh, no no no, that hat will never do with those
cuffs!
LISTENING POST: Gain +1d to gather
information on a score.
It’s an unpleasant, dank closet, but it’s an
unpleasant, dank closet that’s illicitly hooked into
every telegraph wire in the city.
LEGITIMATE BUSINESS: You get -2 Heat per
score.
‘Do you think it was a bit much that we named it
“Etam Itigel and sons?”’
PUBLIC HOUSE: +1d to Consort and Sway
rolls onsite.
Sometimes you want to go where you know
everybody’s name (and where you already know all
the exits).
EXTENSIVE CONTACTS: You get +1 die to
acquire asset rolls to acquire a cohort or a
service.
Even if you don’t know someone, you know someone
who knows someone.
EXPERT NEGOTIATORS: You lose one less
faction status (so -1 rather than -2 in most
cases) when you seize a claim.
“I am confident that we can come to a mutually
beneficial arrangement.”
ALL NIGHT PARTY PEOPLE: Your crew and
cohorts do not draw attention when
traveling through or taking gather
information actions in any part of the city.
You always have a place to go, and more
importantly always look like it’s where you should be
going.

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Grifter Special Abilities
ARISTOCRATS OF CRIME
Each PC may add +1 action rating to Sway, Consort or Study (up to a max rating of 3).
Each player may choose the action they prefer (you don’t all have to choose the same one). If you take this
ability during initial character and crew creation, it supersedes the normal starting limit for action ratings.
SPECTRAL SHILLS
You may recruit ghosts as part of a con, usually to serve as bit players or shills.
They contribute like any other NPC, and your Crew and other members of the con do not suffer from
detrimental effects of their presence (like fear).
PATRON
When you advance your Tier, it costs half the coin it normally would.
Who is your patron? Why do they help you?
WORKING EXACTLY AS PLANNED
When you make a resistance roll, you may immediately call for a flashback. The stress cost
of the flashback is reduced by the amount of stress spent on the resistance (minimum 0).
When things take a bad turn, this is an opportunity to reveal that the bad thing had been planned for from
the beginning, and was in fact necessary for the NEXT step of the plan.
ROLE PLAYERS
Each member of the crew has an additional Fine Cover Identity as a zero load item.
Additionally, the Lair is considered to have Workshop for purposes of forgery.
Sometimes you need to REALLY get into the role.
CHEATERS
The crew may ignore scale for purposes of fixing games of chance and similar sorts of
cheating, and receive +1 die on all fortune rolls based on luck.
Luck is for amateurs.
CONVERSATIONAL FUGUE
Members of the crew may communicate openly without being overheard.
A combination of hand signs, code words and signifiers allows a secret second level of conversation to be had
behind entirely innocuous talk, or even polite silence.

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 1
Grifter Opportunities
A visiting Iruvian noble is willing to pay any price to speak to the ghost of his dead
grandmother, and it would be tragic if no one could help him.
2 The Altberg Nude has been stolen! No one is sure who stole it, but there are potential buyers
aplenty, and it’s not like they’d be able to compare a copy to the real thing.
3 The chief enforcer of a rival gang fancies himself a financier of some sophistication, and it
would be a terrible shame if that were to get him into something out of his depth.
4 It turns out there’s a lot of money available in Charterhall if you can write a “grant”.
5 Getting the deed to a barely functional train car would not be worth much, but it’s insured for
several times what it cost.
6 You’ve acquired some old leviathan auguries and charts. While the information on them is out
of date, they almost certainly offer the material necessary to make a really good fake.
1 Lady Coddington is very curious to know why you are at her party.
2 The recently promoted captain of the Porphyria is rich with cash but desperate for social
recognition.
3 The revelation of some prominent forgeries has prominent collectors examining their
collections, and certainly they could use some expertise.
4 You know what’s really popular right now? Eel teeth charms! You know what look a lot like eel
teeth? Rat teeth!
5 The famed soprano Annalese very famously had refused to have her voice recorded. Collectors
are willing to pay outrageous sums for a convincing wax spindle.
6 Every morning, 30 minutes before the blood market opens, the Imperial Bid is submitted,
dictating how much refined plasm the empire will be buying and at what price. Transmitted via
encoded telegraph, then hand delivered, this well protected secret is greatly sought by
speculators. Guess who has next week’s codebook?
1 There are few things more valuable than seeds, but historically the only way to profit on them
was with (shudder) work. But it turns out some clever folk have started buying and selling
them, sometimes before they are even harvested.
2 Uncomfortable Movement has been a sure thing to win in the upcoming Diluvian Cup, but with the
disappearance of it’s jockey, all bets are are off. Or more precisely, they’re on.
3 The wreck of the Indomitable, a cargo ship from before the rail was extended north, has been
discovered, and salvage operations are underway, if financing can be arranged. It could be
profitable, but then again, it might be possible to profit without ever touching the water.
4 Someone has been buying up properties in an utterly undesirable neighborhood. No doubt,
there is money to be made, and deep business scheming afoot, but much more problematically
this is going to close down the city’s best noodle shop and that cannot stand!
5 Old Gringleguts always used to say that the secret of the Mizzlemere fortune would go the the
grave with him. Literally, always. With heavy emphasis on “the grave”. He was not as smart as
he thought he was, and he just kicked the bucket, so it may be time to acquire a corpse.
6 The Smiggins laundromat has gotten a contract for all the bluecoat uniforms in the district for
the annual tidying. All those uniforms in one place is no doubt likely to attract opportunists -
best find a way to secure them before a bad element were to take advantage of the situation.

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Other Crews - a grufterʼs take
ASSASSINS are almost as professional in their pursuits as us, which is good and bad. Dealers in
death are best treated with respect and kept at arm’s reach. Killing has little place in a con,
and there is no negotiating with death. This suits assassin’s well, as few of them are well
suited to the extended public contact that a con requires.
Some would expect us to turn up our nose at BRAVOS, but they are highly complementary to
the profession. While it is true that violence is rarely needed in a well run con, the threat of
violence is often of critical importance, and at this, they excel. While they cannot usually be
relied on for work with great subtlety, their very obviousness can be a persuasive tool.
Members of a CULT require handling with some care. As True Believers, they often have
more in common with the mark than the grifter. But there is a certain something - a fervor -
that a real cultist brings to a role that is very difficult to emulate, and can be very persuasive
when applied in the right way. Most critically, marks frequently take sincerity of belief as an
indication of sincerity in all things, an oversight that can be exploited.
HAWKERS like to think themselves our peers, and the fact that they see no difference
between their petty scams and a long con reveals the preposterousness of that thought.
However, it is worth humoring their hubris, as they are often quite skilled at the short con
and can be very versatile players with a little guidance. Some may even have the potential to
rise to a better class of crime someday.
SHADOWS are rarely useful in the con itself, but can be an excellent resource in support of
the con. They especially excel at gathering information, and a skilled shadow can get you
insights which “no one could possibly know”, which are almost always invaluable as levers as
the mark is forced to reach a well-shaped conclusion about who must have betrayed him.
SMUGGLERS are situationally useful. Some are sufficiently skilled at deception to be useful in
the game, and those who have learned to blend into many places can be an excellent asset.
Additionally, smugglers usually have the kind of logistical expertise that may be necessary for
a particularly complicated (or fast) blow off.

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 New Engagement Types
The following engagements are refinements on the deception engagement, and we’ll
collectively refer to them as “Cons”.

Convince someone to give up something of value without realizing

Swindle they’ve been had. Detail: the blow off

Sell or exchange something of value which is actually fraudulent. Detail:

Fraud the counterfeit item

Arrange to steal or acquire something in such a way that no one knows

Heist (or can admit) it’s gone. Detail: The twist

Running these engagements

A classic con can be a long, elaborate affair with numerous moving parts, which can be a bit
at odds with the Blades no-planning methodology. Thankfully, the gap can largely be
covered with a small shift in perspective.
In Blades, an opportunity usually consists of a target, a location and a situation, with other
potential details (Check out the GM Actions section of the main book for more explanation).
This list works pretty well, but it’s worth calling out that situation is a bit of a catch-all.
The details of situation for a smuggling opportunity are shaped a little differently than those
for a smash and grab.
The same applies to cons. Specifically, part of the con is the deception - what is the lie that
holds the job together? Is it a fake identity? A fraudulent business? A forged masterpiece?
This is a key part of any con.
At first glance, it may seem like that pulling off that deception should be the main activity of
the con, but it is not. Instead, the con is what the deception enables.
This may seem counterintuitive at first, but a good comparison can be had with smugglers.
Piloting a vehicle is an essential activity for most smuggling jobs, but for the bulk of the job,
it’s assumed that this is something the crew can do as part of their expertise, and it is only
tested when its particularly interesting. Similarly, a grifter crew can be assumed to establish a
con with ease - the real test comes in pulling it off.

The Detail
For the swindle, the blow-off is the means by which the crew will escape without getting
caught. Performing a swindle is fairly easy, but doing it in a way that does not immediately
turn to a violent (or legal) confrontation is the trick.
For the fraud, it will probably be worth the crews time to create the counterfeit as an asset,
but depending on the plan that may not be necessary.
For the heist, the twist is similar to the blow off - it’s the extra piece of information that
may make this the perfect job. Perhaps it’s a swap. Perhaps its a complicated web of lies
which keeps anyone from admitting the job happen.

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 New Rules
A few extra rules to help enable grifter play.

Asset Type: Roles

A role is a new asset type, which is not quite a full fake identity or disguise so much as a
general presentation that conforms to a type. Roles can be created for individuals or for
small groups and use the create asset rules as normal, usually with sway (for behavior) or
tinker (for costuming). For an individual, the role includes a name and enough details to
comfortably pass as the role under most circumstances. For a group, roles are nameless, but
fulfill a type.
So long as someone plays to the role, it’s persuasive under casual inspection. It won’t hold
up under close investigation or contrary evidence, but it works exceptionally well as window
dressing. Practically, this allows a lot of fiddly bits of planning to be folded into a single
action. The main advantage of a role is that so long as the role is played to, there’s no
need to call for rolls to see how persuasive or deceptive it is.
Lynch needs to convince the mark that he’s meeting in a secret trading room floor. His cover is solid enough,
but he needs a lot of traders to pull off the illusion. During downtime, he creates a “shady bankers” role for
his crews rooks, training them in how to dress and act for their part. When the deal goes down, the rooks
play their part. The mark still needs to be fooled, but Lynch can focus on that, since he doesn’t need to worry
about the mark spotting that these aren’t really bankers (unless, of course, something else goes wrong).

New Abilities
These abilities may be acquired as veteran moves by any character. If these abilities have a
playbook in brackets after their description, they may be taken by new characters as part of
that playbook.
ELABORATE PLOTTER - If your plan for engagement is overly complex or contingent on
many factors, you may gain +1d on the engagement roll rather than taking -1d. [Spider]
CRAFTER OF SECRETS - You can craft elaborate lies to obscure your crews activities.
When you remove heat, you may remove twice as much as normal, but the GM creates
a clock with a 6 wedge clock representing how well that secret is kept. If the clock is
ever completed, all of the heat is re-applied to the crew immediately. [Slide]

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 Playing Grifters
If you are looking to play a crew of grifters, you probably have some ideas of how to go
about it, and that’s what you should do! However, here are a few tips that might help out.

The Guts of a Con

If you are ever hard up for ideas for how to construct a con, there’s a solid formula to
follow:
1. Find someone who has what you want
2. Find out what they want
A. If you cannot find it, then create a need.
3. Figure out how to pretend to have it
4. Figure out how to get them to think they can take it from you, ideally at the cost of the
thing you want.
5. Figure out how you’ll avoid getting blamed for it
There are any number of variations on this formula, but at its heart, most cons follow this
cadence.

Assume Success
There is a certain arrogance to grifting - what else can you expect from criminals who rob
other criminals? This is something you’ll want to embrace in play - make audacious plans.
Engage jobs from an assumption that you are genuinely awesome enough to pull this off.
What that means in practice is that you generally do not want to start a con at the beginning,
but rather at the end. Rather than work your way through establishing an identity, layering
on the lies and working towards the payoff, start at the payoff. Backfill anything you need
with flashbacks. Lay down your foundation of lies, then busily try to keep them from falling
apart before the job ends.

Everybody Grifts
There is sometimes a temptation to think of grifting as a job solely for the Slides of the
world, and that the only way to have a team of grifters if if everyone spikes sway and
consort. There is a logic to this, but it a a very BORING logic, and best to have nothing to
do with it.
The most important thing to bear in mind is that any grift is a complicated, shifting machine
of deceptions. You are creating a temporary fictional world for the mark, and that requires
conspirators and coordination, which are not activities limited to the silver tongued. Every
area of specialty (and by extension, every crew member) can help shape that fictional world
with their expertise.
Mechanically, the role asset is created to help smooth this over a bit. The biggest advantage
of a role is that if your cutter looks like a big scary soldier, you can give them a role that
matches with that (bodyguard! enforcer! soldier!) and it just works without needing to bust
out the dice.

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Everybody Wants Something
A con will always hinge on the mark wanting something enough to take action. Finding out
what that thing is will prove incredibly valuable to a crew, but it can be tricky. Thankfully,
humans follow a number of predictable patterns, and you can usually sink your hooks into
one of the following motivations.
Loss Aversion - What horrible fate can you save them from?
Fear of Missing Out - How can they keep up with those around them?
Damaged Self Image - How can you help them feel like they should?
Pride - How can you help the world see them as they see themself?
Hatred - How can you help them hurt their enemy?
There are other motives too, but be careful with them. Fear, for example, is very motivating,
but also unpredictable. Greed can be a motivator for some, but for valuable marks, that
greed is usually in service of something else.

Flashbacks
Of course you can call flashbacks within flashbacks. This is a con. It’s a time honored
tradition. Players are even welcome to flash back to the same moment more than once to
explain what was actually going on then, if that suits their cunning plan.

“You Canʼt Con An Honest Citizen”

Just a brief aside about this old canard. It’s mostly true (though good luck finding an honest
citizen in Duskvol to test it on) but it’s important to know why that is. Most cons, especially
short cons, rely on the mark’s willingness to seize an opportunity for themself. A person of
virtue is hard to manipulate that way. For example, a con based on splitting found money
isn’t going to work with someone who will insist on finding the rightful owner.
If you find yourself in the position of needing to con some paragon of virtue, just
remember that the real goal is finding a way to motivate the mark. If a dishonest motivation
won’t move them, it’s just a matter of finding which honest motivation you can apply. The
mark who would never consider taking a bribe may go to great lengths to help save an
orphanage, and now all you need is an orphanage to put in peril.

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Terms
The Mark - The person being conned.
The Roper - The person who pulls the mark into the con.
The Face - The person who will be interacting with the mark the most, and who has the
greatest responsibility to pull off the con. While this person might be the roper, more often
the face ends up “revealing” that the roper is scamming the mark in order to more quickly
cement trust.
Shill - A shill is a crew member whose job it is to validate the con. They may appear to be
someone who has benefitted from the con, a victim for a different con to be run against, an
angry person railing against the con in an unconvincing way or the like. It is not uncommon
for a con to have more than one shill.
The False Mark - A specialized sort of shill - one good trick for hooking a suspicious mark
is to bring him in on a con run against someone else.
Bit Players - Supporting crew members brought in to add authenticity to a scene.
The Fixer - An active member of the crew who is not a visible part of the con. Instead,
their role is something of a combination of ass kicker, cat wrangler and stage producer,
responsible for making sure all the parts of the con remain on track.
The Outside Player - A member of the crew who does not come in until the last moment,
usually as part of the blow off. The imperial auditor who shows up at the end and seizes
everyone’s winning? That’s the outside player. Hopefully.
Long Con/Short Con - Most cons are short cons - a little bit of flimflam, some
misdirection, and one party leaves with fuller pockets. Any crew worth their salt can pull off
a short con. The long con is bigger, more elaborate, and far higher stakes. Coordinating all
the parts of a long con is complicated for the best of crews, and much of the pride of a
crew of grifters comes from their ability to pull this off.
The Rope - The initial point of contact with the mark. This will often be a contrived
situation that lays the groundwork for the con. At this point in things, the mark should be
wary, so the crew’s goal at this point is to get the mark bought in - the actual con can wait
until later.
The Hook - This is the point at which the mark truly buys into the con, usually because
they have been convinced that it’s their own idea.
The Blow Off - The blow off is what separates the pros from the amateurs. At the end of
the con, the mark has lost something valuable and they are probably going to be really pissed
about it. The blow off is a last minute twist which absolved the crew (usually in the form of
the face) of wrongdoing. Faking your death is a classic way to do this, but it lacks panache.
More traditional is the arrival of a third party (like the coppers) to the detriment of both
parties. Done right, the blowoff leaves the mark feeling grateful to the face.
Burned - once a member of the crew has been seen by the mark, they have been “burned”
because they cannot play another role in the the con. This is important because the number
of available faces is one of the biggest limiters on a crew’s capabilities. Also referred to as
“getting made”.

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How to Plan a Con
Every score has a keystone action and supporting actions. The keystone actions is the
purpose of the score. In a theft, it’s stealing the item. In an assassination, it’s the murder. In a
smuggling run, it’s the delivery of the goods. Supporting actions are all the actions required
to get to the keystone, and possibly to get back out. We get this pretty intuitively for things
like guards to be evaded, locks picked, alarms disarmed, escape routes secured and so on.
Where we run into problems applying the model to cons is, I think, I misunderstanding of
what the keystone action of a con is. Most commonly, we think the keystone action of a con
is tricking someone, but that falls a little short.
Instead, the keystone action of a con is this: You make someone do something.
It’s possible that sounds too simple, so let me unpack a little bit. “Do something” can be
incredibly varied, though it’s usually “give me something valuable” (like money or a secret
journal or the like) or something one step removed from that (like entering a password in a
compromised system). Other good somethings include “do something incriminating”,
“attack the wrong person” or “insult someone powerful” but it can be really anything.
Just as with theft, this keystone action is tied to the crew’s goal, and just as with theft, you
can build the whole score around it. But there’s a twist (it’s a con – there’s always a twist) in
that the purpose of the con usually serves another purpose. That is, if our crew knows we
want to steal from Karl Snaggletooth, that is not enough information – we need to decide
what action we want someone to take. And it might be as simple as “Karl hands us 100
Coin” but it’s usually a little bit more complicated or specific. This is why, in fiction, one part
of the score is figuring out what the con is going to be.
That process is fun for some, not for others, so for purposes of Blades, we’ll want to skip
over the process of figuring it out, and assume that the crew know what the goal of the con
is. From there, is it a matter of working backwards by cycling through two questions,
applying knowledge rolls as needed:
✦ Under what circumstances would that happen?
✦ How do we emulate those circumstances?
Now, the simplest possible con is the sob story. I want you to give me money, you would do
that if you think I deserve it, so I tell you a convincing sad story and voila, I walk away with
your money in my pocket. This is to a con what shoplifting is to a theft – the simplest
example of the form.
But as with a theft, simplest doesn’t cut it for fun play. A more entertaining con is built upon
a sequence of deceptions to create a specific effect.
Things to consider when you plan a con:
✦ Cons are better done in teams, partly because it is easy to be suspicious of one person,
but harder to be suspicious of multiple people, especially when they are “strangers”.
✦ One of the tension points/things that can go wrong during a con is a shortage in the
roster. If a member of the crew gets burned, then they can’t also play a role in the con,
which can be a problem if the role is necessary for the plan. Forcing characters into
unfamiliar roles, or relying on NPCs to fill gaps are great consequences and
complications.
✦ While it is not strictly true that you can’t con an honest man, it is definitely a lot harder
to do so for substantial amounts of cash. A con depends on the mark’s motivations, and
self-interest and greed are much more controllable motivations than charity or goodwill
towards man.

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✦ Specifically, almost every good con hinges on convincing the mark that they are getting
away with something and profiting from it. Exactly how that convincing is done
depends on the mark, but if they’ve got something worth stealing, then odds are good
they probably think they deserve more, and are confident they’re smarter than those
who have less. That’s the hook.
✦ It is easy to focus on all the film flam that leads up to the con, but don’t be distracted –
the thing that separates the amateurs from the pros is the blow off. The blow off is how
the con ends and it needs to serve multiple purposes.
▪ It needs to make sure that the prize is in the crew’s hands without appearing to be
▪ It needs to leave the mark with no reason to follow up, come back to or re-examine
what happened. Ideally, the mark feels indebted to the crew.
✦ That second point is critical – at the end of a good con, the mark might be upset about
things that went wrong, but he should bear no ill will towards the crew. Either he should
think warmly of them, or he should never think of them again (perhaps because he
thinks they’re all dead).
▪ In game terms, a really good blow off should be able to drastically reduce potential
heat (but not eliminate it entirely).
▪ In Duskvol specifically, you want a friendly blow off. The city is not so big that you
can be guaranteed to avoid the mark forever, and you don’t have a lot of other
places to go to avoid them.
✦ Greed will kill you. At some point the mark will test to see if he’s being conned, and
he’ll probably do this by creating an opportunity for fast profit, on the idea that
criminals would take it. And dumb ones will. If a golden opportunity presents itself,
consider the possibility that it’s you who are getting played.

The Heart of Play

The core action of a con should be inaction. That is, the con is really ready to start at the
point where, if everything goes well, it will all play out according to plan. If you are excited
to play up to that point, and then expect things to work out, then Grifters may not be the
approach you’re looking for. For Grifters, that is the start of play because that is where
everything starts to go wrong, and the fun is in trying to keep it together.
This can seem paradoxical - the assumption of success up to that point is very generous, but
the certainty that something will go wrong more than counteracts that. That the most
proactive thing to be done is to reactively get ahead of problem. It’s important to accept that
these extremes belong together in what is a very twisty genre.
A key to accepting that is this: You are not trying to outsmart your GM.
This is not to say you need to telegraph everything, or there is no room for surprise and
delight. Rather, it is easy to think that the “victory conditions” of playing a con are to run a
con in real life, and trick your GM as part of tricking the NPCs. That is simply not how it
works in Blades - the GM is your co-conspirator in this. She will respect your character and
give you opportunities to shine, even if those opportunities may look like a hurled brick.
Because, and I’ll let you in on a little secret here: The GM is also not trying to outsmart you.
She’s just trying to make your game awesome. You should help.

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 Running the Con
As a GM, cons can seem a little bit daunting at first. For most other jobs, the progression of
action is largely geographic, and moving players through that is a familiar experience. There
can be an instinct to try to run a con the same way, progressing from beginning to end.
Don’t do this.
Instead, think of a con as a beautiful, ornately architected engineering marvel which is - ever
so slowly - beginning to topple.
In practical terms, that means being very generous with your players in letting them establish
the details of the con, and then pushing on those details to see if they can hold weight. The
primary activity that crewmembers should be pursuing during a con is best described as
“desperately scrambling to keep things together until the ball gets into the end zone”.
To this end, your best allies will be your NPCs - the mark and any genuine allies they may
possess. Unlike on many other jobs, they are not there to threaten the crew, but rather they
are there to challenge them. Use your NPCs to ask the questions that the crew doesn’t want
asked. Give your mark reasons to do something unexpected. The crew will succeed by
keeping the situation under control, and that control is what you will want to push against.
If the con blows up? Well, then it’s back to knives out.

Con Clocks
A very useful pair of clocks to keep running on a con are the mark’s suspicion and their buy
in. While these can be set up in opposition, it’s much more entertaining to race them.

Heat
Heat can seem odd for cons since it seems like a good con should generate zero heat,
especially if the mark isn’t going to pursue any revenge. However, it’s important to
remember that a con is a box tied tight with secrets - Heat also represents the risk that
someone is going to let something slip. As such, while Cons might end up on the low end
of average for heat, there is no need to be too conservative in doling it out.

The Ubiquity of Harm

Remember, harm has a specific meaning in the game, and don’t try to get fancy with abstract
forms of harm for things like social failures where it’s not necessary. It is totally reasonable
for you to apply negative consequences as part of the fiction and have them impact actions
appropriately without invoking harm.
Lynch blows a roll and makes an ass out of himself at a party. The GM is about to lay a level
1 “laughingstock” harm on him when she remembers this paragraph. Instead, she just remarks
that everyone at the party is talking about him (in a bad way) and his position on subsequent rolls
at the party is that much worse as a result.
It feels tidier to use harm, because it creates a mechanical thing that we can point to, but that
cheapens harm, and frequently makes consequences more costly than they need to be.

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 Inspirational Material
Ok, so here’s the challenge: start watching and reading these and see if you get better at
spotting the con. Almost every movie or book (and sometimes TV episode) with a con
element includes at least one con on the audience, and part of the thrill of consuming this
media is starting to spot it.
Couple caveats; First, very little of this source material is anything like period appropriate.
Don’t sweat it - at heart a con relies on people to work, and that doesn’t really change with
the trappings. Second, I have left a LOT of sources out here, even very well loved ones like
LEVERAGE or THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA because those are more properly resources for
any Blades game, and I’m trying to stick to a theme.

Movies
THE STING - The greatest. Skip everything else and watch this 7 or 8 times, and you’ll be
fine.
OCEAN’S 11 - Confession: I’ve never seen the Sinatra version, but I’ve seen the Clooney/Pitt
version probably a dozen times. With the exception of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I am not
sure I can think of another fun movie that just keeps holding up. Oh, and the con/heist is,
of course, magnificent.
THE GRIFTERS - Look at that cast. Look at that screenwriter. Done.
NOW YOU SEE Me - The overlap between stage magic and confidence games is pretty wide,
and this film (and its sequel) turn that up to 11. I’m a little torn on this one - I think it
cheats a little bit on the cons by handwaving the magic, but it’s a great example of a
particularly bombastic style.
CATCH ME IF You Can - Based on the book of the same name, I especially endorse it after
reading the book so you get a sense of what’s going on.
THE BROTHER’S BLOOM - If you have not heard of one movie on this list, it’s probably this
one, and that is an outright tragedy.
MATCHSTICK MEN - Because Sean insisted, and enough people love it that I’m probably the
grinch here. Great performances, but the con itself didn’t grab me.

Books
THE BIG CON, David Maurer - iconic. This is the book about cons that everyone else on
this list read first. (Of course, Maurer was also a con, but his book is such a long established
con that it has earned some pride of place).
EASILY FOOLED, Bob Fellows - if you can find it, this pamphlet-sized booklet is the most
succinct summary of manipulation techniques I have found. If you can’t find it, consider
Lovell’s HOW TO CHEAT AT EVERYTHING.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, Frank Abagnale - Source for the movie of the same name.
THE MARK INSIDE, Amy Reading - This is the one I’m currently reading, and it’s marvelous.
WHAT EVERY BODY IS SAYING, Joe Navarro - big caveats here - I think that beyond basic
active listening skills, “Reading body language” is mostly flimflam. HOWEVER, this is very
useful for the fiction of social interaction, because the various “tells” provide things for the
GM to narrate or to otherwise insert into play. Grab this (or any book on body language)
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and treat it like you would watching a cool fight scene in a movie - as a source to take things
from and apply to your game.
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY, Eric Berne - This is one of those very good books that has been
seminal to so much that has followed it that it can seem a little old hat, but if you’re really
looking to deep dive on human interaction, this is a foundational (and reasonably short)
read.
ALL MARKETERS ARE LIARS OR THIS IS MARKETING, Seth Godin - The inclusion of a
marketing book on this list may seem nonsensical (or it may seem entirely apt) but it serves a
specific purpose. Godin does a great job at talking about marketing in terms of storytelling
with specific emphasis on the stories we tell ourselves, and how to speak to those. This is
relevant because that is exactly what a con depends on - determining the story the mark tells
themself, and making your story work with that.
This list could be MUCH longer, since you can draw from books about networking, reading
the room, marketing, behavioral economics or psychology to find useful gems about cons.
With that in mind, I generally recommend looking to those books rather than “books about
cons”, since most of them are either repackaging Maurer or are cons themselves.

TV
WHITE COLLAR - While I heartily recommend shows like Hustle and Leverage for any
Blades game, White Collar is a treasure for the con enthusiast, since that’s the primary focus
of stories which must be kept tight enough to fit in a single episode. If you want to just
mainline con ideas, this may be the best single source.
BURN NOTICE - This is technically a spy show, but I include it as a useful reference about
cons because they are an essential part of how things play out. The main character does not
have James Bond gadgets or infinite Kung fu, but rather he outthinks and manipulates his
targets, and talks the audience through the process in a very satisfying way. In a similar vein,
if you can catch old episodes of The Rockford Files, it scratches a similar itch.
BRAIN GAMES - Particularly season 1. The show is about various bits of weirdness in the
human brain, which is to say it’s chock full of the things that con men exploit. Fun and
educational, with occasional appearances by Apollo Robbins.
THE SIMPSONS: THE Great Money Caper (s12 e7) - Really, it’s that good.
AMERICAN GODS - Putting this under TV rather than books because the cons stand out a bit
more on TV. I had not originally considered mentioning this, but Drew Stevens described it
as a Grifter/Cult crossover, and I really can’t argue with that.

Really Interesting People

I did not originally have this category in mind, but as I captured ideas, a number of names
bubbled to the surface over and over again. These are people who write, talk and perform a
LOT of deception focused work, and rather than point to that work, I want to call out their
names because a lot of their treasures are going to be found in the bowels of YouTube or
on other corners of the internet.
RICKY JAY was a magician who, among other things, made a name for himself debunking
psychics and other charlatans performing “impossible” feats. He wrote and spoke about all
manner of weird topics, was a master of card-throwing, and appeared in a number of
movies (especially those of David Mamet) as a flag that things were about to get hard core
deceptive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Jay

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DERREN BROWN is another fellow who publicly dissects a lot of scams, misdirection and
manipulation tactics. I discovered him through a secondhand copy of his book Tricks of
the Mind and have subsequently enjoyed his assorted TV specials. https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Derren_Brown
APOLLO ROBBINS has the interesting distinction of being the world’s most famous
pickpocket. That would seem to merit his mention in another kind of supplement, but as it
turns out, there is a lot of misdirection involved in pickpocketing, and Robbins excels at
explaining it, to the point where “Pickpocket with a TED talk” is a sentence that someone
can say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Robbins
JOHN ROGERS: Ok, I’m incepting so hard that I can hear the MWAH here, but if you don’t
know, John was the showrunner on the aforementioned Leverage and has been the brains
behind ton of awesome stuff on your screen. He’s also written RPG stuff, including the
amazing Crime World which deserves a nod of its own. All those things would be enough,
but his social media feed is a constant source of grafts and grift-related information. https:/
twitter.com/jonrog1 (Hi John)

Games
CRYPTOMANCER - Elves, wizards and expected fantasy trappings except all through the lens
of modern information security. http://cryptorpg.com/
CRIMEWORLD - By the aforementioned John Rogers, this is technically for Fate, but really it’s
usable for any game. https://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-worlds-volume-two-worlds-in-
shadow/
SKULLDUGGERY - by Robin Laws, this is the generic version of the system used in the Dying
Earth RPG, and it’s a treasure for a certain flavor of shenanigans.
Also, the LEVERAGE RPG is really good, if you can find a copy, but I am biased that way.

Wikipedia Ratholes
THE AFFAIR OF the Queen’s Necklace - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Affair_of_the_Diamond_Necklace
CASSIE CHADWICK - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassie_Chadwick
GREGOR MACGREGOR - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_MacGregor
CONFIDENCE TRICK - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick (This adds a few
more bits of terminology like The Hurrah for those who dig such things)
LIST OF CONFIDENCE Tricks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks

Podcasts
THE GRIFT - http://thegriftpodcast.com/
HEIST PODCAST - https://heistpodcast.podomatic.com/

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 Appendix: What Is A Con?
There are a ton of ways to answer this, but for our purposes,
a con is a crime which is enabled by misdirections, and which This essay was something of the
relies upon misdirection for a clean resolution. starting point for this
Great, but what does that mean? supplement. Some of it is
redundant with things you’ve
The first part is pretty self explanatory - the crime relies on read already, but I wanted to
some sort of misdirection. This could be a lie, a distraction, make sure it was still included,
fraudulent item, or some combination thereof. No doubt, if only as an appendix.
your crews have taken advantages of deception in their
scores - forged invitations, planted rumors and counterfeit
goods are all things that any crew might deal in.
But that alone is not a con. At best, it might be fraud, and there’s money to be had in that,
but the next part is what makes it a con: it has a clean resolution. That is to say, a successful
con brings no direct repercussions on the crew as a part of the con. There are a number of
ways to do this that usually either make the crew look blameless or put the target in a
position where retribution would be too costly to pursue. This part of the con is the blow
off and it’s what separates true grifters from run of the mill criminals.

The Anatomy of the Con

Cons take an almost infinite number of forms, but they have a few common elements that
assemble into the aristocrat of crimes.
First and foremost, there is a mark. The mark is the person who is going to be conned.
They may be a member of an organization, or have some external context, but a con is a
very personal crime, and the mark is that person.
Next, and almost as important, is the score. This is the target of the con. It may be a
specific item (probably something valuable, of course), or a giant pile of cash, but it could
just as easily be something more exotic or abstract. The net result of a con is always that the
mark does something (the something usually being handing you something valuable) but the
range of possibilities is vast.
Naturally, you need a crew - only the simplest of cons can be pulled off by an individual. A
well constructed con requires multiple people in multiple roles. If you have a crew of
grifters, then you have a reliable stable of talent, but it’s equally possible to pull together
talent on a job by job basis.
Finally, you need an angle - some way that you are going to be able to approach and sink
your hooks into the mark. This is often the hardest part to acquire, since it requires knowing
details about the mark that they may be protective of. Often, the initiating element of a con
is the discovery of some piece of information that can serve as an angle.
If you have these four things, then you have the foundation for a solid con.

The Long and the Short of it

Cons are largely sorted into “long” and “short” cons, and when we talk about cons here, we
are usually talking about the long con. However, it’s useful to understand the distinction
between the two.

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The short con is a con that requires minimal prep and supplies, and is resolved quickly -
often within a single conversation. It still helps to have supplies and compatriots, but
anything will do in a pinch. A short con usually has a small but specific payoff - bilk the
mark out of a little bit of money, talk your way past a doorman, send the bluecoats off in
the wrong direction - stuff like that. A short con also tends to have no time for research or
prep, so the angle tends to be generic - the grifter relies on some sort of general human
behavior (greed and ego are the big ones, but respect for authority, boredom and sex can
work too) as the angle. This can be a little bit risky if it turns out the mark has unexpected
proclivities, so most short cons are set up in such a way that the grifter can safely bail if it
goes well.
In gameplay, a short con is usually reflected as a single action and possible die roll. Running
a short con is often complementary to another action - a distraction or misdirection may
make some other task easier, so it’s also a valid form of helping. A long con may well
contain many short cons, so the two ideas interact well.
Any grifter worth their salt is decent at the short con, but it’s definitely considered the lesser
art compared to the long con. There are plenty of con artists and flim-flammers who make
their nut on the short con, but the long con is what makes a true grifter.
Where the short con may be an action, the long con is a job - maybe even more than one. It
requires time, resources and planning. So much so that to its practitioners it’s an art form of
its own.

The Cast
In every con, there are a number of roles that need to be filled. Sometimes one grifter may
fill multiple roles, but the more faces you have in play, the better. The biggest danger with
this is that you cannot have someone show up twice in the con without risking the whole
game. If a crewmember shows up as a shill (say, pretending to be a bluecoat) early on, you
can’t have them show up later as a prospective investor and hope the mark won’t notice.
When someone has been seen, they are considered to be “burned” and need to be careful
that if they’re seen again it’s consistent with past appearances.
With that in mind, the most common roles in a con are:
The MARK, as noted, is the person being conned
The FACE is the person running the con. If they’re running the con on their own, they pick
up all necessary roles. Ideally, they should not be the first point of contact with the Mark –
that’s the job of the roper.
The ROPER is the person who pulls the mark into the con in the first place, usually by making
the mark the “winner” of a smaller scam. A rookie mistake is to expect the roper to be the
one who runs the con, but in a good con, the roper is the one who introduces the mark to
the face (often over their apparent objection) and at some point the mark will throw the
roper under the bus (metaphorically, we hope) in order to get closer to the true con.
A SHILL exists to validate the con. They may be someone else trying to get the same thing, or
an apparent enemy of the face. A con my have multiple shills, and they reinforce the idea
that the con (and its associated urgency) is real. Despite the name, the shill very rarely
provides direct support of the con, but rather provides implicit reinforcement.
The FALSE MARK is a specific flavor of shill and is a useful role for snagging a certain kind of
Mark, particularly the kind who think themselves very smart (which is most of them). The
false mark is the target of fake con which the real mark is getting drawn into.

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BIT PLAYERS fill out a scene. In a good con, there are no random strangers or opportunities
for contact that are outside of the control of the crew, and there’s an entire category of
criminals/actors who fill out these scenes.
The FIXER has no role in the con itself, but is instead something more of a stage manager for
it. They keep track of what’s going on, oversee communication and – critically – step in
when things go wrong.
The OUTSIDE PLAYER has no role in the con until the very end, where they enter as part of
the blowoff. The royal agents whose investigations scuttle the whole thing? Hopefully that’s
the outside player.
There are a lot more terms, but that should be enough for you to figure out things for your
players to do.

The Playʼs the Thing

A con has four acts. Some of them may repeat, but these four steps are what make a con.

THE ROPE
The ROPE is the means by which the mark is drawn into the con. In a short con you might
be able to walk up to someone with your fake goods, but a savvy mark (the only valuable
kind) expects deception, and will range from unapproachable to merely incredibly leery of
the pitch.
It is because the mark is going to be most skeptical of any initial contact that we separate the
role of the roper from the face, so the roper can take the fall in a way that reinforces the
face’s stance.
The exact approach for the rope is usually connected to the angle, but it’s not the angle itself
- that is necessary for the con. Instead it tends to rely on old fashioned research of the
mark’s interests and habits to make sure that coincidence favors the con.
A good roper delivered multi-layered deception - they need to be a good enough deceiver to
be able to appear much less capable than they are. The ideal roper seems a bit sketchy and
confident that they are smarter than the mark, but has also overlooked some opportunity
that someone smarter (that is, the mark). The roper can’t be so obnoxious that the mark
avoids them entirely, but obnoxious enough that the face and the mark can bond over what
an idiot they are.
The point of the rope is, effectively, to start the conversation. It engages the mark and lays
the groundwork for the rest of the con while giving the mark a convenient place to point
their skepticism
Example: If you have a second person in a short con, then one of you is usually going to be the roper.
Consider a simple con, like trying to sell a “winning” lottery ticket. If Alice approaches Bob and says “I
have this ticket that’s worth $400, but the guy running the lottery is going to break my legs if he sees me. If
you buy it off me for $200, then you can cash it in and we both profit!” then that is not likely to convince
Bob, who will rightly be suspicious of this stranger. However, suppose Carol “overhears” the conversation
and steps in, accusing Alice of fraud and demanding to see the ticket. Upon seeing the ticket she announces
that these are bogus numbers, tears up the ticket and threatens violence upon Alice, who runs off. While it
may look like Alice was the con, really she was just the Roper, setting up Carol.

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THE HOOK
Once the mark is roped, the next step is the hook. This is where the grifter’s get the mark to
really buy into whatever fiction the con depends on.
The thing that separates the amateurs from the pros here is one simple truth - the job here is
not to fool the mark, but rather to convince the mark to fool themself. The simple truth is
that no matter how convincing an argument you make, the mark is going to be suspicious
and mistrustful. But when they reach conclusions on their own, they will be invested in
those.
As such, the best hook usually takes the form of making an opportunity visible to the mark,
but then trying to stop them from seizing it. Trying and failing to hide it. Raising objections
for why it can’t be done. Being stymied by challenges that the mark can overcome.
The challenges in particular are important, because the solution to one of the challenges is
usually the payoff for the con, and there is huge value in never asking for, or even
mentioning, the prospective payoff. If someone else brings it up, the mark has every reason
to suspect they’re going to get screwed, but if they are the one to bring it up, well, who could
have predicted that?
Example: When Carol tore up the ticket, she actually merely pantomimed doing so, and surreptitiously
pocketed it. While Alice clearly “didn’t notice”, Bob does, and he confronts Carol about it. She objects that
she did no such thing, but Bob presses the matter until she confesses.
Carol’s exact tactic is going to depend a bit on Bob. The failed deception has Bob feeling
smart and capable, but he also needs to feel like he has leverage in this matter, so Carol
needs to resist in a way that plays to Bob’s strengths. If Bob is a big strapping guy, she’ll
bluster, but back down when threatened with violence. If he’s a dapper gent, she’ll clumsily
try to blow him off until he threatens to call the nearby bluecoat. If they have some obvious
commonality (like nationality) she may throw him a wink as she pockets the ticket and frame
it as pulling one over on a shared enemy. In a long con, Carol will have had time to study
Bob and plan accordingly, but in a short con she will rely on her quick read of the situation.

THE SCORE
Once the hooks are far enough in, the mark should be enthusiastically trying to pay the
grifter, and that moment of truth is the score, when the deed is finally done. Money changes
hands, secrets are revealed and everything wraps up.
Importantly, no matter how well the con has been run, this is when the mark is going to be
the most suspicious (and dangerous) but if the con is well prepared, this is one more
advantage to be leveraged, by providing what the mark expects.
This is often the most convoluted part of things, so let’s back up a bit here. At this point, the
mark hands over the macguffin, whatever it may be. The mark is almost certainly expecting
something in return, and they’re absolutely not going to do anything overtly stupid like trust
that they’ll get paid back without some serious security. Unfortunately, since this is a con,
that payback isn’t coming, so how is this handled?
First, this must feel like a victory for the mark. If it’s just a transaction, then they are less
likely to make mistakes. This needs to be offering them a payoff that they’re invested in,
achieved only because they are so smart/cunning/tough/awesome. Small stakes are fine for
setups and small cons, but for the final score, there needs to be some real emotional
substance in play.
Second, the crew should make sure something goes wrong. Specifically, something that the
mark would expect will go wrong. If the mark expects betrayal, then there should be
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betrayal. If he expects attack, there should be an attack. This reinforces the rightness of
things to the mark while at the same time introducing complications which may force the
mark to be less careful than he might otherwise be. The “problem” should force things to
be done faster, or require that security precautions be taken. Or (depending on the blow off)
it may keep the transaction from happening at all.
The trick is, the score is only half the equation - without the blow off, it’s guaranteed to fail,
so the details of the score depend on the blow off.
Example: Carol’s score is pretty boring. She offers to pay Bob off for a quarter of the value of the ticket
(it’s all the money she has on her!) but Bob, cunning guy that he is, won’t be ripped off, and instead will pay
her some amount (probably a third to a half). Money changes hands and they go their separate ways.
Instead, let’s look at David, who is about to hand over a briefcase full of money for a priceless artifact.
Edna has a fake artifact which will pass cursory inspection, but it will absolutely not pass the more rigorous
tests that David’s personal expert will subject it to. This means that Edna needs to do one of three things.
1. Get the money away from David before things change hands.
2. Get the money but keep the test from happening
3. Screw up the test in some way
How should we approach it? Well, let’s look at the Blow Off to decide.

THE BLOW OFF

This is the make or break moment for the con. The trick is not to make off with the score -
that would be simple robbery - but rather to make off with the score in a way that won’t
blow back on the crew. This is a sophisticated move that is the payoff of a lot of planning,
and there are a few ways to ensure this.
Delayed Blow Offs: These blow offs depend on arranging things (usually through forgery
or substitution) so the mark won’t know they’ve been conned until the crew is elsewhere.
The problem is the mark now knows everyone’s faces, and will be likely to be in a pretty bad
mood about it, so that creates an obvious danger to the crew. The main ways to mitigate
that danger are:
✦ Luck: This is the worst option, but the most common for short cons. The idea is
simple: The city is very big, and the crew will probably never see the mark again. And
that might be true, especially if the mark is just a dock worker who got cheated at cards,
but “probably” will not always suffice.
✦ Distance: A slightly better option is to be far enough away that there’s no chance of
the mark catching up (like, in the next town). This is the standard option for many
traveling cons, but travel is hard enough that this is not a consistently reliable option,
and tends to attract unwelcome attention from hard folk like the Railjacks, or require
changing headquarters a lot.
✦ Obscurity: This is a rare one, but if you can pull it off, more power to you. If, through
a combination of misdirection, disguise or the like, the mark never actually sees any of
the crew, then they may well get away free and clear.
✦ Deception: Sometimes the deception will continue to hold up, even after further
inspection, such as in the case of a VERY good forgery, or a situation where the mark
cannot further confirm the provenance of their payoff without compromising themself.
✦ Leverage: It is possible the nature of the exchange will make it impossible for the mark
to act, even after discovering the deception. For example, if the mark stole the money
they used in the exchange and will be exposed if they complain, they may be at an
impasse. This may not explicitly be blackmail, but it’s often quite similar. This can be a
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 VERY dangerous game, especially if the mark has other allies or resources. They may
not be able to act directly now, but you can be confident that revenge is on their agenda.
Immediate Blow Offs: While harder to orchestrate, these blow offs have the advantage of
involving the mark in the blow in a way that invests them in the outcome, and frequently
leaves them feeling obliged to the crew. A few ways to do this include:
✦ Mutual Loss: Through circumstances beyond anyone’s control, everything is destroyed.
Importantly, both the score and the thing the mark was there for both need to be “lost”
in this fashion, so that both side leave “dissatisfied”. There are two main complicating
factors to this. First, unless it’s very well framed, the mark may (utterly irrationally!)
blame the crew for the loss. Second, if the score was in any way unique, there is a good
chance the mark will realize something is fishy if shows up again.
✦ Alliance: Often paired with mutual loss, this amplifies the situation to create an
apparent threat to both mark and crew, which they will narrowly escape (often, the face
will be the one to ‘rescue’ the mark). This is the classic “bluecoat raid” conclusion to a
con. The problem, of course, is that it’s such a classic that any reasonably smart mark
will suspect it, so a little bit of extra creativity may be called for.
✦ Sacrifice: The mark expects betrayal, so why not give it to them? Find someone in the
Mark’s circle - ideally someone with a high level of access and trust - and arrange it to
look like they were going to con the mark out of the payoff. This cements the value of
the payoff in the Mark’s mind (or provides a scapegoat if it’s “losts”) and provides a
convenient excuse for any anomalies the mark may have noticed.
Example: Carol’s blow off is simple: the city is big and she will probably never see Bob again. This is the
usual blow off for a short con, and that’s fine. Even if Bob were to spot her, he’s not someone important or
powerful enough to make a real problem, so he can probably be dealt with.
Edna is not so lucky. David is rich, powerful and vindictive. He will have her killed without hesitation if
he suspects betrayal, so her blow off cannot leave anything to chance. So let’s look at her options again:
1. Get the money away from David before things change hands.
2. Get the money but keep the test from happening
3. Screw up the test in some way
#1 might theoretically be possible - have the crew rob him in transit, then cancel the whole deal when he
shows up without the money. If the crew is particularly good at robbery and certain that they’ll leave no trace
(and that there’s no circumstantial evidence, like only Edna knowing he was in transit with the cash) then it
might be worth a shot, but even if David doesn’t catch onto the con, he is going to be VERY
INVESTED in finding out who robbed him and getting payback, so it’s definitely not to be pursued lightly.
#2 would require either making the tester unavailable or arranging an interruption. The interruption is
probably easier (it’s not very different than an alliance blow off) but it would depend on Edna really selling
that she *doesn’t* want to make the trade under these circumstances. Doing so could trick David into
insisting on making the trade without a test. This is probably a bad play, though, because there’s no
guarantee David won’t test it as soon as he gets home, then it’s game over for Edna. In fact, that’s the
problem with almost all of the #2 solutions - unless the delay is just to buy time to get out of town (which
might be worth it) or there’s some reason David wouldn’t be able to test it later (possible depending on
circumstances) it’s too risky to pursue.
It does introduce the possibility of stealing the payoff after payment, but that introduces similar risks as #1.
That leaves #3. There are a number of ways to approach this. For one, the forgery could be good enough to
pass the test, in which case life is probably good. Sadly, life is rarely that easy.
Compromising the tester in some way is also an option, but as with #2, that very much depends on how hard
it will be for David to re-test. If it’s very hard, or this is the only expert, then having compromised him

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beforehand is an option. The only catch to that is that David is scary, and convincing a civilian to betray
him may be a bridge to far.
Of course, if the tester can’t be compromised, they might make a good sacrifice. If you set things up so it
looks like the tester is trying to con David, then that could obscure a multitude of sins. Of course, I hope
the crew doesn’t like the Tester, since this is going to end poorly for him (and particularly hardened crews may
ensure it does).
Or, of course, the whole thing could go to hell when David’s enemies attack. David’s pretty sharp, so the
crew would need to lay enough groundwork to make this a likely outcome, but if they can pull it off, then it
may well get the payoff clear.
Note, that’s a lot of “maybes”, depending on the specifics. Thankfully, the specifics can be a bit variable
based on the situation. What this illustrates is that in play the blow off is less about the specific solution so
much as the type of solution. Going into play with only one blow off in mind can be focusing, but it’s not
terribly flexible. Several ideas that might work will prove more robust than one “sure fire” thing.

Example: To tie it all together, Let’s use the classic example, familiar to fans of The Sting – the wire
scam. The con is to convince the mark to hand over a giant pile of money by convincing him to bet on a game
that he thinks is secretly rigged (the angle is the mark’s greed). Note that we now have an answer to wonder
what circumstances the mark would give up money, so now we come to the question of how to emulate that.
Well, we need to get him into our fixed betting parlor of course, and we need him to believe that the fix is
legit.
Now we have action. We need to set up the fake parlor, we need to rope him into it, and we need him to
believe it’s a sure thing. Some of that we can do right away, but how do we get him into our gambling parlor?
Well, that’s another con. A smaller one. We find someone who owes him money (or maybe borrow some
money then wait till the threats come) and then suddenly pay back all debts and interest. Our mark’s a clever
man – the payback is fine, but he’s going to be really interested in how this guy (our roper) suddenly has
money. He’s going to find out about this betting parlor, and he won’t take no for an answer.
Notice something here: The mark is operating under a sense of false proactivity. If we sent in the roper to
tell him about the gambling parlor, he’d be suspicious as hell. But since we sent the roper in to not tell him
about it, he is going to trust any data he extracts because it comes from him.
Once we’ve got the hook in, the roper introduces him to grifter, who doesn’t want another partner, so the mark
is going to have to force the grifter to accept him (further reinforcing the mark’s belief that he is in control).
Once that happens, the mark sees some wins, but they’re small – frustratingly so. The opportunity for a huge
score is obvious, but small timer’s like the roper don’t see it.
But the big score requires a big bet, so the mark needs to put up some money to match the (bogus) amount the
grifter is putting forward. Everything is going great until the bluecoats raid the place and take everything. The
mark is nearly arrested, but escapes thanks to the help of the grifter. In the end, both have lost it all, but the
mark is grateful, and they go their separate ways.
But, of course, that was the blowoff. The bluecoats were fake, lead by the outside player, and the mark’s
money is safely in the hands of the crew, while the mark is going on his way convinced that the grifter is a
stand up citizen.

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