Game starts in 30 minutes and I have a question: Page 21 of the quick start; NPC Downtime. It says to advance the project clocks of the factions you’re interested it. By how much, and how many clocks? All clocks related to a faction advance one tick, or choose one per faction?
Game starts in 30 minutes and I have a question: Page 21 of the quick start; NPC Downtime.
Game starts in 30 minutes and I have a question: Page 21 of the quick start; NPC Downtime.
How much you advance a faction clock represents how effective they are in pursuing their goals. If things are going well then an advance sounds right. If things are great then maybe multiple advances. If things aren’t good then maybe they don’t advance.
It seems like they should have some sort of development roll based on how the PC’s or other factions interfere. I’m going to just roll their tier in dice on the effect table to see how many segments they may distribute among their clocks. This will be modified by events in the fiction of course.
I tend to spend 1 downtime to set, and another to “execute” the move, meaning that I advance 1 segment every 2 Downtimes.
If these moves affect directly the characters you should have the crew test to find out what happens/defend from it, intercept, help or something like that.
But this is something that we are just starting to see in our group.
Your thinking is very system heavy. The faction clocks are supposed to create plot points that will effect the environment of duskwall. What your doing is fine, but it feels less narrative to make it random when they pop. My biggest concern is that if a faction rolls well, it’s goal could pop really quickly, and that might not be interesting when faction goals are big. Remember that the faction goals in the quick start for 2 of the factions is the destruction of another faction, and that’s huge.
To give an example of what I use to do:
#theMalkavs steal the heirloom sword from the Red Sashes for the Lampblacks, 1 segment to the ‘blacks that downtime.
The Red Sashes try to find out who stole the sword, but the Malkavs were too cautious, no advancement this Downtime.
The ‘sashes go and plan a hit on the Lampblacks. No advancement this Downtime.
One of the ‘sashes executes Baz’s nephew. 1 advancement this Downtime. Lampblacks plan to retaliate. The Malkavs find out that Frost, one of the duelists made the finishing blow.
The Lampblacks try to sabotage an spice delivery for the ‘sashes. The Malkavs refuse in taking part of it, opting for another gig. Lampblacks fail, 1 segment for the Red Sashes this Downtime.
The Malkavs inform Baz about his nephew’s murderer and the Slide marks Frost for them, three lampblacks off him on the spot. 1 segment for the ‘blacks this Downtime.
Those intrigues sound awesome Duamn Figueroa.
I also do clockadvancement only by narrative, sonetimes if Players dont react to an event, an “off-screen” Click get ticked but they hear rumors.
My first game yesterday, the crew have a patron Organisation, Lady Arachne’s Brothel and its drug-cartell underneath the surface. First thing happened when they go to Arachne’s to ask for jobs, Vampire tries to kill her, while her chemist and our Cutter realised that the raw BlackLotus delivery was contaminated by spirit fungi and also infected a 2months production of the drugs, which now must be destroyed.
For me the game started with 2 heavy blows at direction of the players ally. And now invisible clocks are ticking forwards Till the true culprits can be found and more Scores finished. In the meanwhile I let other factions progress on their own against each other, creating a living feel for the world. So pnaxers can decide, of they want to approach one of the others or not at all.
This is a very fruitful discussion. i’m digging it.
Really like James Dudli ‘s idea of using Tier as an effect to roll for advancement on faction projects. I think a similar test to determine any gain/loss of hold (and possibly tier) may be in order, as factions will have their own wars & battles independent of player interaction.
Interpreting project advancement and hold/tier gain and loss will provide the GM with a impetus to come up with the rumors of what’s going on during down time, and may open the way for scores, especially as factions get desperate, or overly confident.
I also like the idea of a faction the crew is friendly or hostile with having a change of fortunes. Over the course of a few down times, our buddies the Eels have started really getting lucky. maybe we should do some scores to curry their favor? Or maybe work in secret to sabotage them, to keep our current friendship but keep them in check?
Duamn Figueroa ‘s examples are likewise inspiring. those are the bits of rumor and news tied to downtime events that could really bring the setting to life for a campaign.
Josephe Vandel do you have a system in place for the faction vs. faction progress behind the scenes?
Andrew Fish I do create a sheet with the faction and the Name of its event/project, than I asign different conditions to tick the clock forward by 1, 2 or more Ticks.
Example: An demonic cult gets a tick after each player score. So the longer the game goes the faster they get their Ritual done, but loose Ticks if demons gets killed.
Thats a simple one.
Another:
A drugdealing buisness gets a 10 clock for dominating the market. Either one Click for each score the Players do for them, for each they do themselfs by narratives, or they gain 4 ticks if they can defeat an enemy rival and take over their buisness, with or without the players help.
Some clocks get boosted if other connected clocks getting full. Its becomming a complex web of intrigiue
And I have interconnected all 36 factions on my game each with at least 4-6 unique campaign scores and some random ones.
After seeing faction clocks and downtime in play Monday, I have come to some conclusions.
Without having 4 or 5 clocks to distribute ticks on for each faction, they can get a lot done after a couple scores when using my tier effect roll idea. I’m dropping that and ticking one on each clock I have for a faction… if it makes sense. If we don’t even discuss a faction in a game, I don’t advance any clocks.
Josephe Vandel that sounds like a clockwork of mayhem. i like it!
I really like having the players directly, if inadvertently, ticking clock segments for another faction. Would be neat to let them know, and see if they would want to tick a few segments, then take a score to try and sabotage the clock….
I’ll be running my second session in a couple days, and am sitting down to do some planning tonight, and this will help me organize my ideas. thanks!
The next thing I need to do is make relationship webs for factions like Josephe Vandel has, and determine friends and enemies.
Use a green, yellow and red pen, thats easy to understand and quick to look up.
But Josephe Vandel, those colors may change so fast!
Would you mind sharing some ideas of agenda clocks you use for each faction? I know the full game will have an agenda each, but I’m curious how others do it.
I keep digital files. And print out as needed. It was just a suggestion for initial set ups. From there on feel free to go wild.
I’ve started using a faction’s tier in dice as an analogue to effect rolls as well. I’d been intending to post the sub-system in this group once I’d tested it a bit more. Pretty cool to see some convergent evolution happen!
I feel like there’s still plenty of room for narrative control in deciding how big the clocks should be, where each faction decides to spend their dice, and how many factions get involved. I’m letting the Player crew roll as a faction as well, on the clock they know about. And of course actions that are done by the players during jobs can affect the clocks as well as appropriate.
I was just thinking of that last night. I was thinking of using faction tier as effect dice for filling up clocks. I thought player actions might raise or lower the outcome by one level? Or give or take an extra die possibly? Players roll as a faction as well? That confuses me. Characters get projects, right? So, essentially, the PC crew gets to work on a project too? Not just have it be worked on by individual PCs during their downtime? I guess that makes sense, the gangs and what not would be doing stuff too, right?
I’m not sure what was intended by the players roll as well either.
Clock size as narrative control: I think that could work, although the recommended longterm project clock is 6 to 10 segments, they might need to be a bit larger on average when rolling faction tier.
Ah to clarify, how I’m currently doing it is that there exist faction projects, they aren’t necessarily tied to a particular faction. Each faction gets dice equal to their tier during each downtime, to increase or decrease the progress of these clocks. If the players are aware of these project clocks, they can roll on the tier level as well since they are a faction in their own right. Stuff that happens during a score can affect clocks as well as is narratively appropriate. The faction dice the crew has represents something similar to individual character downtime projects but on a larger scale, so the sort of stuff that the entire crew, including all the npcs that the PCs have at their beck and call have been dedicating most of their efforts to over the past chunk of time.
And yeah, you might want larger clocks, as you think works for how long you think the projects should take, for example I Have a 12 segment clock titled “Press the sailors into Navy service”
While we’re at it, any thoughts on making hold within a tier a little more fluid? Maybe clocks can be determined to either raise or lower hold when completed? Or both when finished and when at half way? Or something like that? I just have a hard time with the thought that the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes have been at war and are working on clocks to kill each other, are almost done with their clocks but haven’t yet changed their hold even a little.
hari capra In the sub-system that I developed for my personal use that’s actually one of the options for factions. They can choose to spend their tier dice either on project clocks, or on attacking other factions, in which case its a matter of gaining 1/2/4/6 hold, and the target of the attack loses half of that rounded down, and probably make enemies of that faction. (its half so that the factions just don’t constantly kill each other)