Just finished running my first session with the quick start!

Just finished running my first session with the quick start!

Just finished running my first session with the quick start!

Character creation was a breeze. Wound up with: Xoan the Slide, a former advisor to a demon lord; Carmen the Cutter, a Tycheroi stevedore with a forked tongue; and Asher the Lurk, a wreck diver from the Dagger Isles.

They called themselves The Other Hand.

The Other Hand wound up immediately siding with Baz and agreeing to go raid the Red Sashes’ vault. The first roll of the game was Asher’s player Gathering Information for the heist with Discern. With a result of 4, they asked “What does Baz want us to do with the money we get?” which is kind of a weird question, maybe? Anyway, I said he wanted them to bring him all of it, and then he’d pay them from it. They were like “Yeah, right”.

So they then started to plan, and I was like “This game doesn’t want you to do any pre-planning except deciding which of these five plan types you’re doing”. So they chose the Infiltration plan, with a tended garden stream as the entry point, and Asher took point. The first obstacle was a locked grate where the stream flowed out of the monastery proper. Their player immediately called for a flashback scene and used Supply to get some keys off of their good friend Frake. They got a 1-3, so they knew the Red Sashes were planning an ambush behind the door.

The fiction got a little confusing here. Asher decided to abandon this line of attack, but instead sneak into the building and leave some doors unlocked in order to divert the attention of any Red Sashes on guard. So it seemed like they were acting as though the Red Sashes were planning on ambushing them, even though they wound up abandoning the angle of attack? I basically treated it like they upgraded to a risky move.

Once the heist got rolling, the teamwork moves worked like a charm. The players passed point around like nobody’s business. I was unclear whether players not on point could make rolls other than backup rolls, and in what situation that might happen.

Anyway, Carmen and Asher raided the vault while Xoan wound up embroiled (due to devil’s bargains) in a theological debate with a Servant of the Ecstasy of the Flesh in the Red Sashes’ courtyard. Carmen tried to set a fire to help Xoan escape, rolled poorly, and left him to deal with the result. Asher stayed behind and used climbing gear to get Xoan out.

So here I think I made a mistake. I was thinking “No planning during a score!” and immediately cut to them attempting to bilk Baz out of the contents of the vault. I was thinking of it as an extension of the same score, but I think it should have been a separate score, using the Deception Plan. Anyway, Xoan took point, and immediately decided to take the desperate action of saying “Sorry, we didn’t get anything” and using a flashback to declare that their elite gang of shadows was hiding the loot.

I said the danger was Baz figured out their plan and had sent goons to intercept their haul. Of course, when they got a 5 on the roll, that became a problem, as the danger (they lose the money) and the effect (they get the money) directly contradicted. So I changed the effect to “Sloane (the leader of the shadows) dies fighting off the Lampblack goons”. Which Xoan soaked.

So yeah they got away with stuff, and wound up with only 1 heat to show for it.

Suggestions/Wrinkles

People were confused by the Effect rules; they were giving themselves the stress AND filling segments when rolling effect, instead of just filling segments. Maybe an “or” between the two would make it clearer that you don’t do both options?

I’m assuming Renown/Wanted actually have mechanical effect in the full game, so not worried about that.

Heavy armor lets you avoid the effects of 3 separate physical attacks, yeah?

One player filled stress and ticked a Trauma during the first session. Is that normal? Also,  I’m reading it right that you can have your stress gauge entirely filled. It’s just when you take more than that that you have to take Trauma, right?

25 thoughts on “Just finished running my first session with the quick start!”

  2. Adam, you’re the first to post AP from the Quick Start! Awesome. Thanks so much. I’m on my phone now… I’ll post some answers when I get home (if no one has by then).

  3. This is awesomely helpful. It raises most of the questions I’ve had, from running through a solo scenario in my head 🙂 Thanks for posting this!

  4. my monday morning group’s game ended last week, and we were going to meet anyway to decide what to play next. and then this came out sunday and it suddenly wasn’t really a choice

  6. I was a little confused also by segments and stress, and which to apply when.

    It occurred to me that both might sometimes apply, depending on the situation and the danger present. For example, fighting off six goons could be a a six segment clock you have to clear. These guys are dangerous and swinging machetes, so there’s a real danger of getting cut up in the process. So then say you get a partial success – you would clear two segments but also take two stress in the process.

    John Harper, does that sound right?

  10. Adam McConnaughey Some answers for ya:

    For effect, the segments are how much progress you make, and the stress is how much you need to take to avoid the danger.

    So, in a knife fight, I roll 1-3 on Force. I do 1 segment toward finishing the fight, and I need to take 4 stress to avoid whatever my enemy is doing to me.

    —-

    Yep, Renown has a use in the full game. But it works like a normal effect roll. Think of it like Influence effect, but for your crew’s reputation.

    —-

    Heavy armor is +2 armor boxes, for a total of 3, yeah. But playtesting is making me reconsider that. I think it will be +1 armor instead.

    —-

    Marking trauma in the first session is a thing that’s happened in my game group, too. Some people are just crazy like that.

    Check p. 7 for Trauma rules: “When a PC marks their 8th and final stress box, they suffer a level of Trauma. ” So you take it when you mark your last box, not after.

  12. I suppose there may be cases where the resisting effect may be different from the effect you used in attack. Eg. Your attacking a psychic with Force but you need to resist with Will, so it makes logical sense that’d be a separate roll…

  14. Adam McConnaughey Rolling twice is fine, too. We usually do two rolls in my group. As Dan says, it’s not always the same effect for attack as it is for defense.

  18. Cool.

    Oh, and I agree that the grift against Bazso should have been a new plan. But, it’s no big deal. Still worked out fine.

    Great effect idea when you threatened to kill their crew mate. That’s how it’s done!

  22. Re: ticking Trauma during the first session, it might have been a side effect of their infiltration plan continuing straight into the talk with Bazso.

    If talking to Bazso was resolved as a new plan, they’d have downtime between the two. During downtime the player would have the option of clearing some of the stress by indulging in vice, and potentially avoid Trauma in this way.

  23. I think you’re probably right, but if I remember correctly, the trauma was ticked during the first score.

    Also, halfway through the session, the players complained that they were receiving stress too fast, and, well, it turned out they were; I had been giving them stress AND segments for each effect roll. I tried to backtrack and remove the extra stress I’d given them, but it’s possible I missed some.

    It’s also possible that Xoan just stressed himself out and we calculated everything right ;). He did roll a 3 when the danger was losing a hand.

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