Excellent fourth session.
Some discussion about whether going to Ulf Ironborn to negotiate a deal between him and the gang could be considered a score. Ultimately we decided yes and ran it as such under a social plan (interestingly led to one of the PCs killing their friend and suffering a terrible gunshot wound in a flashback gone wrong and eventually being sent to Ironhook as part of the entanglement).
I was happy with the outcome, but I wonder if others might have interpreted the act of negotiating an agreements with another faction differently, using downtime rules perhaps? One player suggested it could be a long term project.
Two players played different characters during each of the scores they ran in this session. How does that work with downtime and XP? We ruled 2 moves per player per downtime. At the end of the game the playbook checklist is fine to do for each character separately, but how about the ticks for Resolve etc. Should only one character get them? Who decides? How?
Otherwise, no issues. Very happy with v3 Quick Start rules.
Sounds like you handled it well Pete. I love the idea of a flashback for a social plan – awesome!
There are often lots of twists and turns that emerge between a mission briefing, prep for the mission, and the mission itself. I think it is totally fine to have a negotiation with someone be a heist in itself; we did that in our last session of the Unrecommendables.
https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/blades-in-the-dark-unrecommendables/
My players also pulled a bait and switch on me. They started checking into the background for one heist, got it done, then abruptly veered off to the side to do another heist! Uh–okay. So, they got the intro for that and background for it and pulled it off. But we have that dangling heist prep in the background we need to get back to. The question is, do I let them have another round of prep for it? I’m a big softie, so probably yes. =) At the end of the day, the material in the downtime cycle and the heist cycle are tools to apply to figure out how successful the players are and what reactions they provoke, so there’s some flexibility.
As for experience, I think you’re right to treat each character as though they had a separate player. Let them each get the resolve, let them each get whatever they earned for desperate rolls and playbook actions. =)
The flashback was the hound asking a friend to join the crew and help with the score — a back up man with a rifle in case negotiations turned ugly. The friend refused to take a job targeting Ironborn, urged, and then insisted the hound not do so. The argument escalated to a Mexican standoff and they shot each other. The hound barely survived. Her friend bled out.
I had a flashback where a character shadowed a Red Sash duelist to find out more about the defenses of one of their hideouts. She was spotted, and the duelist figured she was after a challenge. The character agreed, and they fought, and the character got skewered (and hurt the Red Sash.)
The player used her character’s armor to absorb the hit, so she wasn’t injured, but when the flashback was over, her armor was already expended for the heist.
The good news on that one was the duelist was injured, so she was soaking up wine and drugs instead of keeping everyone alert. =) It affected the stance of the target.