Second session co-GMing the Quick Start scenario with our crew The Twelve.
Last session ended with the Whisper creating a diversion to allow the Lurk and Hound to infiltrate the Red Sashes HQ and empty the treasury. The Whisper challenged the school to produce a champion to duel. He made enough of a commotion to allow his crewmates to infiltrate with little resistance.
The Whisper’s player ran this sessio as GM more or less. I think they had too much fun.
My Lurk’s vice is betting on boxing matches and other fights where men bloody each other viciously. So Bird had to resist the effect of lingering too long watching instead of get to the infiltrating already. Unfortunately, she took 4 stress resisting. An auspicious start. I guess she really enjoys watching men hurt each other. O, and making bets.
My Lurk had “previously” borrowed a partial blueprint of the HQ from a city clerk friend. The map was out-of-date, partly because of the recent renovations upgrading the vault. This flowed from my big mistake for this session: accepting a Devil’s Bargain at this point which made the treasury lock harder to overcome. Not just a regular Ice Turn Ball lock, it was a custom Grated Ice Turn Ball lock. A 4-segment became a 8-segment clock. No problems I thought.
NEVER TAKE A DEVIL’S BARGAIN MAKING THE MISSION GOAL HARDER. O. MY. GANDALF.
Anyway, finding our way through the HQ was easy enough with a Lead a Group action. Here sprung Question 1, which I ask below. The Hound and I smartly overcame the clock and quickly found our way to the vault, although some servants were silenced along the way, unfortunately. So far so good.
The antechamber to the vault was full of alchemical experiments. The Hound got into some chicanery with the Elderly Alchemist and a moonlighting bluecoat, who he had “previously” bribed to fall.
Meanwhile, my Lurk ignored all that commotion and got to work cracking open the treasury vault and, you know, getting a mission successful badge. Five segments boom! (4 + 1 for Scout).
That would have done it. End game, treasure zonk, hand shakes all round! Not quite ghosts but clean for a rookie crew. Except. EXCEPT. That Devil’s Bargain.
Trauma: I overloaded my stress and got trauma on the 1–3 the Risky Action roll trying to crack the safe, while the Hound kicked the snot out of the elderly Alchemist with his Steel Capped Boots. This mean I got no closer to unlocking the vault. At least I dodged the sticky blue chemical dye that sprayed out from the trapped vault, which would have marked me as the vault cracker to the 20-odd incoming master swords. Unfortunately the dye reacted poorly with some chemicals strewn about, starting a fire.
Burnt: I ignored the spreading fire and re-rolled, getting a 4–5 on the Desperate Action roll. So still no closer to unlocking. I probably should have taken the stress, but I really didn’t want to get two trauma on my first mission. Here sprung Question 2, asked below. O, and I will never again try to crack another Ice Turn Ball lock, custom or not. Too traumatic.
Trapped: I finally got a 6 when I re-rolled. Which I unlocked the vault, easily. Unfortunately the antechamber collapsed into an burning inferno, cutting off my escape route. At least the Red Sashes weren’t going to stab me just yet. O, and something I was wearing was on fire. Bloody Uncle Aldo, getting me stung by my own Devil’s Bargain.
After that I actually escaped, carrying a treasury of alchemical warfare, with the help of some Elite Shadows I had arranged earlier for just such a situation. And the Hound just hobbled out, masquerading as a Bluecoat, next to the moonlighting Bluecoat he’d bribed.
We’re going to do the Downtime and advancement stuff next week when all four players are at the table. I think the Red Sashes will like us less. Interestingly, they’ve got a passionate personal vendetta against the Whisper, thanks to a Devil’s Bargain. The eight-segment clock that came with that Bargain seemed plenty until we killed their servants, stole their alchemical armoury, and burnt their HQ down. Some people are just “sensitive” to shit like that.
Fun times! Cheers for the excellent game.
Question 1 Can a Backup Assist the Point in Lead a Group Action if the Backup is involved and rolling in that Group action? We said no but I couldn’t see any direct contradiction in the rules.
Question 2 Can I choose to take the effect after making the Effect roll and seeing how much stress I would have to take? Some of your examples suggest yes but it felt a little like cheating and wasn’t super clear.
Sounds fun. Escalation at its best. Fun times with Devil’s Bargains.
I’m curious about your questions too.
I’ll answer the other questions in a bit, but first, I have a question for you:
When you make an Effect roll for a PC to tick segments on a progress clock, are you taking stress to do so?
John Harper I can see why effect roll results might be confusing, but we only gave stress if the PC was resisting an Effect. If the PC doesn’t face the danger, for example, then we just rolled effect to determine scope and knock down some segments; they’d take no stress.
In this score, I think the stress wracked up particularly fast because there was only two of us, which limited how much we could spread it around. I didn’t mention it but both the Lurk and the Hound marked trauma in quick succession. So we spread the stress fairly well, but having one more PC would have made a big difference; giving us another place to sink eight stress. It would almost certainly have prevented us both taking trauma.
Justin Wightbred interesting. That’s not the message I took from John’s “Don’t roll twice for the same thing”.
I don’t think we were mistaken to re-roll our Action rolls. In each of these situations, when we hadn’t fully filled a clock, that meant the obstacle or danger was still present. And if there’s an obstacle or danger to a PCs action then it’s appropriate to make an Action roll.
Justin Wightbred I felt similar to your second paragraph about pacing.
Justin Wightbred, I agree with you. I think his new diceless effect approach might fix this.
Wonderful AP Ollie! Gripping to the end! How would it have felt if you had known how much effect you would have had on the lock (with the new rules concept)? More tense? Less?
Thanks Noofy.
I think the tense was all in the action rolls. That was where I made the major decisions. Do I abandon my approach or take a bigger risk? If I abandon picking the lock, how else are we going to get into the vault and complete the mission.
I think it would have been more certain that I would have overloaded my stress and got trauma, given the Hound was the only backup I had and they were also perilously close to overload too. But that would have just fed into the pressure of the main decision, probably take one for the team or abandon the mission and everyone’s suffering was for nothing.
The effect rolls were a decision box on the flowchart, but the important choice felt to be at the action roll. Obviously taking the effect or the stress will have long-term consequences so its still an interesting decision. But having only played two sessions, the immediate effect of failing the score seemed the priority. It will be interesting in a few scores time if failing the score seems more palatable, after racking up more trauma, enemies, development rolls and coin.
With the diceless approach, I think we would have paid more attention to what the dangers were, which is a good thing because articulating them explicitly before rolling action is something we had to work at remembering to do. I think we would have paid more attention because given the stress would have been at least 4, I would almost certainly have taken more lasting effects, just to avoid tripping over to trauma.
I entirely forgot to mention the most intense moment of the whole session.
I rerolled from a risky action to a desperate action, and then rerolled again for an even riskier desperate action. We all agreed that if I got a 1-3 result, where the danger of being trapped in a burning inferno got worse, then that had to mean my Lurk died.
Man, rolling three dice and actually getting a 6 was amazing. The Hound even took his final stress to overload to trauma for this reroll because my character’s life was on the line and I forged on nonetheless.
Very satisfying.
And again, I think the pressure was all on the action roll. The effect roll was just tracking consequences to help build the pressure to that climatic roll.
Yeah, we had similar. I think the diceless effect, but rolled resistance is the way to go.
We also had a lot of ‘I’ll step in and be your back-up’, to take the stress by another character. This in and of itself was a wonderful tension as stress became a rather quantifiable and valuable ‘group resource’.