On the summary page “Action, Effect, & Resistance Rolls” under “Desperate” under “4/5:” it states:
Things go badly. The danger manifests. You must abandon this approach OR try again by taking a bigger risk and rolling a DESPERATE move.”
So, the bigger risk is in the fiction only, right? There is no level more desperate than “Desperate.” This is not only abstract, it’s damn punishing.
My group would prefer pulling from the “Controlled” consequences, and letting the character do it, but the danger manifests, and they are -1 success level on Effect rolls. That makes more intuitive sense, doesn’t it?
I don’t think it’s abstract, or rather: they have to tell you how they keep trying, and one very solid way you as a GM make it more concrete is telling them what is the new, even riskier Danger.
About the punishing… Yeah, it totally is! You’re suffering the consequences of a desperate action, right? I believe it’s a design choice…
Making the danger harder to resist is another legitimate direction that doesn’t require an escalation; when it’s already desperate, it’s hard to escalate without killing the target.
If we want to escalate, then let’s put in “dire.”
Why not put death on the line, though?
Alberto Muti That can be done at any level, that’s not a function of the “controlled, risky, desperate” spectrum. You can try to disarm a poison needle as a controlled circumstance, and risk death if you fail.
If you were desperate, trying to disarm the poison needle, then as written there should be an even bigger desperate risk to take. I propose instead, the danger is already clear and present. Your ability to resist the poison effect would be dampened instead, -1 effect.
If you are trying to disarm a poison needle, and roll a 5-6, I don’t want to require the GM to figure out how that can be even more desperate. I feel there is already a mechanic in place that does the job of punishing the player for rolling less than a 6, and does it better.
During a chase that was going badly, things escalated to Desperate. At that point, the Red Sashes were chasing them, and called out the Dockers to help, and they were getting cornered. As the complications and escalations piled up, one of my players sourly observed that the next complication would be they ran past the zoo and lions joined the chase.
Did the players know they could abandon their goal rather than escalate ?
Sometimes, it’s better to face the current danger and change the approach, rather than to insistate.
Here they could have fight their pursuers or try to hide.
Your player’s remark made me think of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He clearly didn’t change his course of action and made a lots of desperate moves.
Tom Z Well, they were not in a situation where they could just walk away. They were being chased, the GOAL was to get away.
So, abandoning goals took a different shape. If they were on the street, that wasn’t going to work, and they were forced up on to the rooftops; from Slip to Prowl. Or, if they were on the rooftops, they were forced down to the street where there was more pursuit.
They were still in a difficult situation, which ever way they turned. I guess they could have surrendered.
Could they try to hide or fight some of their pursuers ? They would have abandoned their goal (for a time), maybe gained the possibility of a risky move and if they succeeded, could try again to get away in a less desperate situation.
I can see this kind of scene, where the heroes have no way to run, but find a hidding spot and wait with fear, whereas their pursuers seek them without success.
Tom Z I gave each of them two clocks; one was “Escape” and the other was “Pursuit.” The idea was, they had to get off the third floor and out of the fenced block, and they also had to shake off their pursuers.
Both of them decided to fill the “Escape” clock first. So now we were dealing with the “Pursuit” clock.
If they had attempted to hide, I would have given them another “Escape” clock, to see if they could get out of sight. And at that point in the evening, they would have thrown their shoes at me.
Tom Z Also, the Hound got fed up with being chased and desperate, so she pivoted and fired at a pursuing Red Sash, killing him. I had her deal with a 4 segment clock to intimidate through killing, she nailed it with her Murder and Will, and so I de-escalated the pursuit from “Desperate” to “Controlled” as her pursuers sought cover and were more cautious.
But she still had to fill her “Escape” clock.
Hi Andrew: I just ran a game for the first time on thursday, and it seems my experience was completely the opposite of yours. I’d like see what we did differently. As you said, talking it through might be a good exercise for improving our games. So, questions:
1) You said “I gave EACH of them two clocks: escape and pursuit.” You meant 2 clocks for the entire team, right?
2) Could it be that the team is dealing with too many clocks? they filled the escape clock, and then they worked on the pursuit. The Hound turned to fire on the pursuers, and that opened up a new clock? Should perhaps her shot have contributed to the Escape clock, instead of opening up a new Intimidate clock?
3) Escalation of circumstances for the action rolls is something that I’m trying to understand too. If the situation becomes desperate because of a 1-3 on a Risky roll, I’d say that changing the approach (by passing the lead, and using a different skill for the action roll) may result in a risky situation, rather than automatically escalating to Desperate…
Or did they just keep pushing it past Desperate, to the point of Abandon this Goal?
Eloy Cintron They each got two clocks because they split up. He had the loot and the ability to use magical supplies to vanish, and she was going to draw the pursuit away. (And she figured all along she might have to shoot somebody.) If they had been moving together, one of them would have taken the lead.
Giving them the option to work on escape or pursuit basically let them know they had options; they had two pressing problems, and the way they dealt with one could render the other irrelevant or delay engaging it. They ended up pursued and trapped because an alarm clock (triggered by the magical bear trap) ticked down to 0 before they got away. Two challenges resulted, and they could choose to hide and escape after things died down, or escape and shake pursuit off the drug den grounds.
The reason I made the shot its own clock is because the goal was to de-escalate from Desperate down to Controlled, a major advantage for changing the context and making it easier to finish off the pursuit clock. If I had made it so the shot could finish off the pursuit clock, then shooting one person would mean the whole neighborhood in an uproar just decided to stop pursuing, or shooting moved her through the neighborhood. That made less sense to me.
Switching leads was not an option because by this point they were separated, each making a getaway.
Okay, I think I see… but if they split up, with the intent of him vanishing, and her drawing away pursuit, then doesn’t that mean that each is dealing with 1 clock? if she fills the pursuit clock, then no one is pursuing him. And if he deals with the escape clock, then they both get away? It’s kind of abstract, I realize, but their intent seemed to be more like still acting as a team. I draw pursuit, you get away with the loot… this game doesn’t strike me as being very simulationist (where each would have to roll separately to escape and to avoid pursuit). Also, the system kind of encourages a team approach, so facing lots of clocks by yourself might be overwhelming in itself.
As for the shooting upsetting the neighborhood… well, that seems like one’s own interpretation. I’d have seen it as: You shoot one of the pursuers, the others hesitate, and that gives you the chance to slip away… do the neighbors care? It’s a bad place of town, so probably no. People shut their doors and windows. It’s none of their business. I guess the effect here is very subjective, so YMMV.
Then again, I might be interpreting it wrong. I’m no expert by any means 🙂
P.S. don’t mean to antagonize or criticize, just want to keep the discussion going.
Eloy Cintron Sure, no worries. Yeah there are a lot of ways to apply the clocks and it is very abstract. As the quick start says, it is like a guitar, with lots of ways to play and still use the base guitar.
There can be guidelines for setting clocks, but ultimately the situation is flexible and decided on the spot. Also, the level of abstraction is high. You could have a whole adventure handled in a single roll, like the quick start example of murdering the woman where she sleeps.
There was a momentum of previous complications where the Red Sashes were alerting the Dockers, who were streaming out to help. That made it feel different than an isolated incident, which would indeed likely be ignored in these neighborhoods.
I could have given each of them one of the clocks to work out.
I think something to note is that clocks, and all rolls in general, really are the pacing mechanism of the game. Given the limited amount of stress, there’s only so many rolls you can expect players to pass.
This also means that even for important things you might really want to use just a binary check, because in the greater scene (that probably already has a clock, as in your chase) they are just not important enough to warrant more segments.
Another aspect is that this is not D&D and capture of player characters shouldn’t necessarily mean the death of the characters in question. So why not explicit bring that in as a possible complication? There’s probably more complications to bring up rather than just death.
Capture was definitely on the table. But before we got to that, the complication was that their faces would be seen; that’s what they were spending stress to avoid.
My escalation was first bringing out more people to chase them, second cornering them, third their faces being seen, and then we’d see about capture or death depending on how they reacted to being cornered and how hard they hit back.
It didn’t come to that, before they escaped.
From that it definitely sounds like you were offering plenty of acceptable complications. I guess you have very perfectionist players :).
Personally I love getting my characters into complicated situations. It’s only recently in a very gritty FATE spy game set in 1947 Berlin that I’ve had to revise this strategy a bit, because this GM really liked not pulling his punches. The game was awesome, though.
Well, I care very much about game design. My players just care about fun. When I get lost in game design, I bring them things, and they tell me what was fun. I’ve been running games (rather than playing) so long that sometimes I need that check, for them to tell me that just because it looked shiny to me on paper doesn’t mean it is shiny for them as players.
I think they treated this road test like they treat the road test of games I design and bring to the table.
Yeah, they are a tough crowd to please.
I meant more in the sense of not accepting anything but a full success.
When the 6s dry up, it’s nothing but complications and escalation. You can’t make 6s happen.
If you’re trying to do a heist and things are constantly going awry with complications and escalations, then it feels less like accepting partial success, and more like inability to get any success.
Some complications and escalations are expected. When you get to the point where you don’t think you can get away with anything, that may not be entirely perfectionism.
If we were playing pirates or barbarians, then sure; revel in the ensuing mayhem. They didn’t like it for sneakthieves.
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