So – I’m going to be running a game on Saturday – It went from 3 people to 5 – which gives me a little bit of anxiety as I haven’t run it before, but this is how you grow as a person, right? Anyway – I’m wondering what an appropriate challenge level should be for a job – one clock per player? X segments per player, spread evenly or unevenly over a series of clocks – I searched a bit and didn’t see anything like this tackled, but if there’s a discussion and or answer already, let me know. Thanks!
So – I’m going to be running a game on Saturday – It went from 3 people to 5 – which gives me a little bit of…
So – I’m going to be running a game on Saturday – It went from 3 people to 5 – which gives me a little bit of…
Five players may be tough your first time out. Heck, I’m running two Blades game now and I don’t think I’d be that brave. Three players seems to work well for me.
So, new to the game + inexperienced PCs? (low numbers of Effect dice) However you divide any clocks/obstacles, I’d recommend four segments per player per score and see how that goes. Definitely not more. I assume you’ll want to demo the Heat and Downtime stuff too? That can take awhile too depending on how much you want to play those rolls out.
For five I might actually recommend only 16 total segments. If it looks like that’s going to be too little, you can add an additional complication as a result of a danger that results. Like something goes wrong and rather than threaten a lasting effect, the danger results in a new 4 segment clock that has to be overcome before the score is complete.
I struggled with the question of prep–then realized something foundational. The system is reactive, not proactive. The preparation is in thinking through what sort of places they might go, how the defenses might be organized–no system. Just a sense of quality and quantity and type of defenses.
Then when the characters show up, attach clocks to what they actually try to do.
I’d still handle clocks the normal way, but consider making the heist longer with more obstacles, if spotlight time is an issue.
Anyway, that’s just my reflection. I plan to run my first game next Monday! So I don’t have any experience with this game at the table to share.
That’s a good point, Andrew Shields.
I was trying to get at that a bit in my recommendations, but that’s a great insight on your part.
Under-prepare clocks and obstacles, if anything, and see where the story leads. There will be obstacles you can prep in a very general fashion ahead of time based on the information they’ve gathered about the target (as in the Dimmer Sister manor example of play in the QS). Some scores will get bigger as they go (unravel!) and others may turn out to be a snap. The scoundrels get what they earn and it’s on to the next score!
This is great feedback, thank you!
Great feedback here, especially Andrew Shields’s point of making clocks based on what the PCs do and only if they don’t feasibly complete it in one go.
Keep in mind that you don’t actually need to use completion clocks or effect rolls at all right away, and I would actually strongly advise not to on your first session. I would instead shoot for fitting 2 scores in a session (with downtime between) and expect them both to be quick, based more on giving each character one or two spotlight opportunities rather than based on clocks or segments. Encouraging flashbacks for these spotlights is great early on so players realize reactive planning (or rather discovering the plan the PCs made) is how this game works.
[I also would not try to use the teamwork actions with 5 new players. Allow Backup actions (assisting and taking an effect for another) but not the Point actions. You can add them in later sessions when the basics are covered.]
To prepare then, I would consider some loosely connected cool obstacles/dangers that could come up that appeal to each playbook. Once every player gets a solid contribution overcoming a challenge with an action roll, then that’s good enough for the first score. They get a taste of development/earnings/heat/entanglements, faction status changes, downtime, and then can take some of their own initiative for the second score to try to hit any of their crew xp triggers the first score didn’t allow.
The first score should start in the middle of action, like right when they get what they’re there for (making them start out feeling like pretty competent scoundrels), and depending on your party makeup, right when things went haywire or are about to. Then they get to feel that while they’re competent, they’re also on the bottom rung, while they’re trying to extricate themselves from the mess. This is where any friends they chose among the other factions can come into play and help them realize that they won’t make it far without playing the intrigue game of working the faction allies and enemies. Starting with a mess is of course is best with a cutter and more aggressive whisper/hound, but with any group it may let your players dive out of an explosion or burning building into the relative safety of the canal waters that are only haunted by the drowned. (Needless to say, my players have a flair for the cinematic, and have thus found it prudent to become fast best pals with the gondoliers).
Try to keep the second score similarly spotlight-balanced more than segment-balanced and it will be quick also. Unless they go for a faction boss right away, I’d make challenges more challenging with more worrisome dangers and more desperate positions rather than more clock segments.
If anything, I would use a countdown clock rather than a completion clock. Something like a 6 segment clock that signifies something final happening that they don’t want, or that their score depends on. Whenever you’re at a loss for a decent danger for a roll, say the danger is the clock ticks ahead one segment. Sometimes you can even say, “whichever direction you choose, your action here ticks the clock ahead one.” In my Monday game, they were trying to find and save Cross the Gondoliers union spokesman. He’d been abducted by the Lampblacks and was being tortured into giving away the location of a mystical treasure buried underwater in some canal. I made a 4-segment clock for the number of limbs he still had attached and whenever the players failed rolls to overcome challenges en route to him or succeeded but faced the danger, I’d check one off. Once when they also sat outside the door where he was obviously being tortured and dithered about the plan details, disguises to use, what to say, etc. I eventually just said he screams from the room and I checked of another segment. In the end, they saved him with 1 left, one arm. Ironically someone tried to stitch him up: the goal was re-attach his limbs and the danger was he would die. The result was “You succeed and face the danger” which, given some spectral weirdness that was already going on ended up meaning he now exists as a frankensteinian dead husk (still missing one arm) hosting both Cross’s spirit and another rogue spirit somehow keeping Cross’s intact.
So if you use any clocks for a first and second score, I would use countdown clocks that provide tangible pressure and an easy mechanical danger more than completion clocks. At first, completion clocks only make things take longer or cause players to feel that their contribution wasn’t good enough and either someone has to pick up their slack to finish it off, or they have to try again, which is fine later on, but isn’t a fun flow right away.
This is, of course, all my opinion.