Hi, how much do scores earn your crews? I am having a hard time definding that. My normal rates are (2 Coin for a easy/medium Score) and (4 for complex/dangerous ones)
By the way, we are 8h into gaming, 2 sessions, and the Players still succeed to 1) to not doing an actual score or 2) be more than 10-30 Minutes of the play all together. What they done mostly yet were Splitting up or in pairs to look for informations. And I have about 10 campaign clocks activated by them, involving 8~10 of the other factions. The intrigiue Network is working quiet fine. But i feel a bit strange that we didnt scored at all yet. Any opinion?
It sounds like your not using the games score planning system. According to the quick start, you should give them options for the score, they chose an entry point, and the score starts immediately. Sometimes there will be a need for a quick roll to do some scouting for the entry point, but really, you should be diving right into the action. If a player says they wanted to gather a specific piece of info first, you can just wait till it becomes especially relevant and then run the info gathering in a flashback.
They refused. Simple that.
I got them a flashforward scene at the beginning of session 2, right after a amusing fail to investigate a powerfull Souleating Magic ring, including a flashback how the opiumadicted whisper got it last session, while totally drugged.
So i asked them directly, ok we doing the heist on the Nightchill Sister’s lab now, ok?
No.
We want to steal the dress for Lady Arachne first. And we want to investigate BEFORE.
Thats why it turned out this way. Which wasnt bad, just unexpected.
So it sounds like they chose stealing the dress as the hiest. I think your players might be trying to play a different game, but that doesn’t have to stay that way. There are ways of shocking players out of their habbits. For instance, when they say they want to gather information you can respond with “excellent, what did you find out.” Doing this communicates two things. First it says that the pace of the game is faster than they think and that they can skip some of the trivial stuff to get to the action. Second, it says the players have narrative control outside of what their characters do.
Another option is to make the Intel gathering its own job
Yeah, in my mind the planning move should be triggered quickly after the session starts or whenever it’s not downtime.
If they say they want to steal something, great that’s the score, so use the planning move. And if they want to make the investigation a big deal, then use the planning move. If they don’t, one or less rolls to gather info and then go straight to the planning move for the score.
I agree with David Rothfeder . Perhaps turn the dress into the Heist.
“So, you’re stealing Lady Arachne’s dress? What’s the plan and who’s on point?” Explain that the investigation/info gathering is done with flashbacks… Maybe make the flashback cost 0 stress..
I had a similar situation with my players. They wanted to hit a Lampblack drug lab in the Deathlands outside the city. One of the players said they needed to procure protective gear. I asked if they wanted to make procuring the gear a 1 or 2 roll flashback, or if they wanted to turn that into a full heist.
They decided to make it a full heist and it was a blast. Next session, they’re going for the drug lab, all geared up…
Well, the Information gathering turned into a kind of heist, mostly it was running away.
A Whisper and a slide did sit down in a Tavern next to the tailors workshop in the highttown. The whisper scanned the building by soul-echo-sonar and discovered that there were 3 powerful whispers, in the shop, and next to normal workers, a dozend chained whispers in the cellar. There also was the dress they were looking for, to steal for their patrona Arachne, sewn from threads woven of hundreds of tortured souls, which all started screaming in a terrifiing way when the whisper touched them. The sensation of a massgrave emitted from deep below the ground in the Undercity.
Same time the other, hound&lurk question a guards contact in a tavern, didcovering that the highttown is flooded with the Spirit Warden Inquisition Special forces.
The three whispers confront the slide and the whisper in highttown, telling them to keep out and to stay in their own turf, tjan they abruptly flee. Puzzled the Players stayed in the tavern Till the Inquisition stormed the building.
They flee, and only land in the closed backyard, tjan go down into the canalisation.
Whisper asked, whats a ghostkey? Can I use it?
Sure, you enter the Ghost Echo of the Undercity, and walks its memory of a time long past.
There they encountered a giant flesh/corpse golem, which nearly killed the slide, as the whisper needed to destroy the spiritlinks of the creature before she could open a new gateway. Well i didnt told them yet, but the monster was the spirit manifestation of the dress and the whisper has trapped it into her soulcatcher Ring.
Hmmmm so i could count tjis as heist, i guess.
Oh its no bad thing that they like to take tjings slow. Or ignoring the heist system. Its a testing for me how i can run tjis game fine for my group.