Three questions from my first AP one-shot with 5 players: First: I ended up playing Blades more AW-style. Instead staying fixed on a “who’s on point”, as a GM, I’ve cut scenes and shifted spotlights quickly between characters (“ok, while A is dealing with the vault, a ghost seems to want to hug you, B, what do you do?”). Given the compressed one-shot framework, people enjoyed that. Still, what am I missing? What could I approach differently?
Second: As a GM, do you really lay out all obstacles (clocks) in the beginning of the mission openly (assuming they have researched thoroughly) or do you have “hidden clocks”? Do you go through them step-by-step or leave a couple ticks open for surprises later?
Third: In a devil’s bargain, how much stress is considered fair? It seemed people got away too easily with offering couple stress ticks.
I have laid all the clocks bare. Its fun, cause I’m using a stamp and filling them in on index cards, so the players have this artifact on the table. It allows them to delight in ‘audience’ mode 🙂
I have only offered stress for a DB once. I treated it like a danger and the player had to roll….
Open BUT you can always name the clock “Something’s coming.”
Nathan Roberts: I like the idea to let them roll.
Duamn Figueroa: Actually, I did something like that saying “something ghosty” is coming
Nathan Roberts ouch! So they could roll rubbish and end up taking 4 stress. So mean. Sounds wonderful!
Then again: what’s actually the point of rolling to avoid a roll hmm… Isn’t the idea of Devil’s Bargain that I trade “safety now for trouble later”?