Spots

Spots are a key concept of Notorious Style, and in graffiti culture too.
Spots are required for your character to do graffiti.

Here is how spots are introduced in the book

Spots are where you write graffiti or do street art.
The best spots are stolen spaces, spaces that you self-appropriate.

Spaces repurposed for your own personal expression, denied of their original purpose.
This zine provides you with a table of spots to use in the game.
Alternatively, go for a walk and look for graffiti (make a note of where they are!).

A misleading example in Example Play

A keen-eyed reader did highlight that the examples on page 26 to 29 are somewhat misleading (or downright confusing, depending on how you look at it). 

Despite a lot of proofreading, changes in the book were not updated in the Example Play.
This post is there to provide guidance, and hopefully clear things up until the PDF is updated.

What to / How do we track Spots ?

In Notorious Style, we care about spots in 3 way:

• Spot: a name, a reference, what will make us remember what this spot is about, maybe where it is like a street name.
• Hostility: How hostile it the environment to you? We have 3 levels of hostility: Chill/Hot/Alright.
• Accessibility: How easy will be for you to do graffiti there? We have 3 levels of Accessibility: Easy/Hard/Limited

We write this info in a keyring thing like the one bellow (typo included):

Where to keep track of Spots ?

There are digital and analog options :

• Write them directly into the physical zine on page 6.
• Make photocopies of page 6 and use that instead.
• Print the Character, NPC and Spots Sheet as many time as you need.
• Save a new copy of the Character, NPC and Spots Sheet on your device for each new game: the PDF is writable.
• Use a note taking app like Obsidian MD, LogSe, or a text file, or a piece of paper, as long as you have the 3 key info.

Note: Initially, the PDF version was fully writable, but the play experience was less than ideal.
We settled for a separate sheet that can both serve as a printable character/NPC/Spot sheet and play in PDF sheet.

Why Do we keep track of Spots?

The combination of "Hostility" and "Accessibility" influence the results of a Paint Move roll (page 15).
An easy and chill spot will be easier to paint than one that is hot and hard.

You can skip the "Spot Modifier" on your first play as it adds complexity.
It does provide a lot of nuance for game play as you become more familiar with the mechanics.

Procedure to create a spot

The process to create a spot is explain on page 6

1. Choose a spot name/description.
2. Choose how hostile it would be for you to do graffiti there based on your idea of the spot. It should be one of Chill/Hot/Alright.
3. Choose how accessible the spot is to your character. It should be one of Easy/Hard/Limited
4. Write it down

Note: Starting the game with 3 spots is a useful to have a variety of spots for the story, yet not spend too long on creating the settings.

Example of Spot generation

Here is an example of me generating a spot

1. I use an online dice rolling app to roll 2D5, and get 1 and 4.
2. Looking at the table on page 7, this gives me a "vacant lot" (is will be a "Bus Stop" in version printed after 13th of June 2024") .
3. I try to think what the "vacant lot" could be. In my "Spot" field, I write "Vacant lot, destroyed estate". In my story, there once was an estate/project that got tore down and left vacant.
4. As for hostility, I think this would be a pretty chill spot, there is no one there beside kids with nothing better to do than explore the neighborhood. In the "Hostility" field I write "Chill".
5. The "vacant lot" is boarded up, it is full of dangerous construction (destruction?) material, broken glass and worse. In the "Accessibility" field I write "Hard".

Example of Spot usage in the game

I'm going to do a "Block letter" move from the veteran.

1. I'm not going to do a sketch in my journal, so no drawing bonus.
2. I'm playing The Veteran playbook, with a Physique of 2.
3. The Vacant lot is "Chill" but "Hard", giving me a Spot modifier of 0
4. I roll 4 + 5 on an online dice roller for a total of 9.
5. I add my roll of 9, to my Physique of 2, to my Spot modifier of 0, for a result of 11: a Weak Hit

Spots as a Storytelling device

We seen spots have a use in the mechanics with the "Spot Modifier", making it easier or harder to roll a Miss on a paint move, but that's not all.
You can use the Spots information to influence the story of your character.
Finding why in the story line this spot came to be important is a lot of fun.

Is this spot close to the character's home?
Is it on their way to school or work?
Is is impossible to get to, is it a challenge?

Conclusion

Hopefully this has been helpful to understand a bit more about Spots in Notorious Style.
A new version of the PDF should be created soon with erratas on page 6 and 26.