I’ve been focusing on an older version of the rules, because my players asked for less change in the sands beneath…

I’ve been focusing on an older version of the rules, because my players asked for less change in the sands beneath…

I’ve been focusing on an older version of the rules, because my players asked for less change in the sands beneath their feet as the game went on. Therefore I haven’t really looked at the new draft until today. Would you believe I have thoughts?

I really don’t like changing desperate, risky, controlled, to desperate, daring, dominant. Alliteration is a really horrible thing to do to new people who are trying to figure out how things work. The words sound alike. It takes the brain an extra push to process where it falls. And it feels precious to me. My two cents? Desperate, risky, controlled communicates WAY better.

This is so tiny it is minute, but… on page 11, under “Choose your action” the text says the choice of action will usually be obvious, but explain it anyway. I really dislike the use of the word “obvious” in rules and in role playing games generally, because “obvious” is so rarely unquestionably clear to everyone. Different people find different things obvious. So when you note in an offhand way that OF COURSE this is clear, then for those who do not find it to be, they are on defensive ground. Easier to omit it. That goes for anywhere it appears in game books, in my opinion!

PLEASE standardize either “segment” or “tick.” Same with standardizing language for “limited, standard, or great” in the action outcome descriptions, with effect, and everywhere else it appears.

It may help to be explicit that all Factors work the same way and swim in the same waters, it is an interconnected subsystem. Quality, scale, and potency are three ways to add or subtract it. That idea is there if you ponder, but to make that explicit would help. It has helped me in explaining it to players. (I still have reservations about how it works, but that’s my own hangup and I’ve aired it sufficiently.)

For Engagement, I miss the potential consequences and how many apply. The new idea that “the defenders are in control” is vague and unhelpful to me (but not unworkable.) Also, getting an advantage on the first roll is much less useful than getting an advantage to bank for some useful point in the heist. The first roll is pretty much never the most important. Just an opinion.

The Teamwork section talks about “moves on point.” We talk actions everywhere else. Do we really need to go Apocalypse World here?

I still don’t like that for a team action everyone rolls and the team keeps the best roll, not the roll of the person on point. (I only air it again because I’m looking for changes and that’s one I hoped to find.)

I think it would be useful to be explicit that doing a backup:assist also means that the person spending a stress doesn’t have to roll, and therefore takes a stress but is guaranteed not to add stress to the leader. This has been significant in games I’ve played.

We give experience to reward behavior. Why are we giving experience to cause problems because of your character’s personal issues and needs? Is that behavior we want to encourage? I get that there is tremendous excitement in the community about how wonderful it is to fail, but I also suggest this is a cooperative game, and having someone rewarded for increasing the difficulty for others is counter to how I enjoy other players.

I think it is interesting that spending a Coin increases the bracket of the roll by one in down time. There it is in the system–and as far as I know, this is the ONLY way it appears in the system. So better tools can’t reduce the risk of failure–but spending money can make failure impossible.

It might be more useful to the game’s storytelling to note that you can keep up to 4 Coin ambiguously, but if you keep more, you must specify where, and it may be vulnerable to being stolen. “You can’t keep more money” is a strange abstraction.

I feel like the game is going the right direction raising the ceiling from 2 to 3 on action ratings. What if that idea were to go by the wayside as being needlessly restrictive, and in its place, you would have to use your crew to get access to additional special abilities? You still control training for some sweet powerful stuff, but instead of +1d, it is abilities others aren’t going to have unless they are similarly trained. You could build training entities (individuals or groups) around their factional special abilities that can’t be acquired with “Veteran” (unless  a rogue teacher shares them) or a playbook.

I still feel Vice is upside-down, but that’s a broken record and I’m content to move on. I still don’t like the unfettered good of Vice as an asset. I still think it’s a bizarre abstract to get better and better at clearing stress until you just retire, bam, non-negotiable. If anyone wants to talk about that we can elsewhere, I’ve got my own ideas on that front.

Actions! I really like Hunt, Study, Survey, and Wreck. Personally I feel Attune should be about connecting to the supernatural; demons are present in the setting but left out of this. Maybe note it could be used to operate enchanted equipment (something everyone might try to do.)

Command. I feel the word almost hits the mark, but not quite. Really, it’s more “Delegate” isn’t it? The main force of the action is on helping gangs plan how to do what you assign them to do, or any NPC you give a job to. You could use Sway for intimidation for those not your underlings, but for your underlings it’s about helping them succeed (especially when you are not present!)

Tinker still bothers me, but we can note that one as sufficiently aired and move on. =)

I am pleased to see the game advises playbooks are not unique. Hooray!

I think there are other interesting ways heritage and background can be used, but they are pretty harmless as they are, so that’s fine. It doesn’t detract from the game to use them to inform a couple action points.

I like the addition of a rival.

I will make special abilities a separate post.

Again, I really offer this in the spirit of trying to be helpful. The game is not broken, my opinions are not always what is best for the game, and I don’t want to rule the world. =) On the other hand, I do have perspectives and reasons for opinions, and even if the game doesn’t change in my direction, it can often be helpful to reflect on reasons and to see things from another point of view. Thank you for considering my viewpoint, and good luck as the game continues on!

20 thoughts on “I’ve been focusing on an older version of the rules, because my players asked for less change in the sands beneath…”

  1. Wow, a very indeep comment. I agree to most of what you say, but see less problems with tinker and vices.

    I suggest you have 4 dice of Vice and loose one for each trauma, therefore you must indulge in vice more to handle the stress.

  3. So when you say ‘I still don’t like that for a team action everyone rolls and the team keeps the best roll, not the roll of the person on point.’, you’re saying you kind of want the character on point to kind of shepherd the rest of the group through the skill check? Moreso, I suppose? Would the other characters still roll to see how terribly they do, so the person on point can take more stress?

    I think fictionally, using a non-on-point character to pass a check, would be like someone in the group noticing how badly the on-point character is doing, and basically elbowing to the front and doing the work that the on-point character was supposed to do. But if that doesn’t sit well with you, that’s fine.

  4. Charlie Vick My main objection is then it makes sense to take someone who is terrible at a task, but can take stress, and put them on point. There is no reason to put an expert in charge of the group action; the expert can function without being in charge, and lend full expertise with no threat of stress. “Being on point” means “soaking stress” not “leading the group.” It doesn’t feel right to me.

  6. Oh, and yes; everyone still rolls, to see how much the person on point must do to cover for their failures. Because the person on point is the expert, compensating for the others. That rationale weakens when the person on point is not expected to be an expert. (In my eyes, anyway.)

  7. Very nice, detailed stuff.  I appreciate the wording related stuff a lot in particular, but I’m going to nitpick a couple of points:

    First, you said:

    I think it would be useful to be explicit that doing a backup:assist also means that the person spending a stress doesn’t have to roll, and therefore takes a stress but is guaranteed not to add stress to the leader. This has been significant in games I’ve played.

    Where are you getting this from? I don’t see anything that indicates that making an assist somehow allows you to ‘opt out’ of rolling when someone else leads a group action. These are two separate things, and using one does not change the other.

    Second, you said:

    Why are we giving experience to cause problems because of your character’s personal issues and needs? Is that behavior we want to encourage?

    Because it is awesome, and YES.   If this is supposed to be a game about daring scoundrels with dangerous vices who sometimes make bad decisions, then it is EXTRA IMPORTANT to reward making bad decisions.  Note that this isn’t about ‘failure’ as you seem to imply.  It’s about making TROUBLE.  Which is pretty much what the game runs on.

  8. Mike Pureka Either taking a stress and adding a die is a free action, or it replaces the action of rolling. I’ve interpreted it. If that interpretation is not right, then it would be useful to have an explicit note one way or the other.

    For me, the game is about daring heists, empire building, and coping with various challenges internal and external. To use an analogy, I want to swim in swim trunks and it seems to me you want to swim fully dressed with boots on.

    The decisions the players show their characters making are key to the game. If the game is too easy without the players botching it as much as they can by doing stupid things, then that’s the GM’s fault.

    In my experience, players don’t need experience incentives to act against their own interests from time to time, and take on risky behavior. You like it, you are enthusiastic about rewarding players for screwing over the party, and that’s fine. That’s just not what I enjoy.

  9. I’m just going by what the game says the characters are and do.  It’s also clearly a game that is designed to be driven by the players, and players creating trouble is part of that. But whatever.  Different preferences, etc.

    I’m still super confused about this though:

    Either taking a stress and adding a die is a free action, or it replaces the action of rolling. I’ve interpreted it. If that interpretation is not right, then it would be useful to have an explicit note one way or the other.

    I don’t see any basis for it “replacing a roll” and here’s why: What happens when you assist someone who is doing something OTHER than Leading a group action?   Heck, you don’t even have to be assisting the leader.  You can’t replace your own roll in these situations, because there’s no roll to replace.  The only mentions of “rolls” at all in the Backup: Assist section refer to the roll being assisted.  The rules just say “You can do X”.  Not “You can do X in place of Y”, so I don’t know why you would assume that it would be done in place of Y?

  10. If you are assisting someone and you are not involved in a group action, then I assume you are busy with assisting them and cannot simultaneously do something else. So, assisting them is an action. That’s what I’m thinking.

  11. Andrew Shields

    By that reading, you shouldn’t be able to participate in a group action at all if you assist with it, because you’re busy doing something else?

  12. Mike Pureka Unless your action is an assist action, and therefore implicitly covered by the leader’s act.

    Fictionally you can spin it however you want, I could promote every side of that and sound convincing. What is more interesting to me is mechanically how it is represented and how it affects speed of play and overall coherence.

    If you can assist but also must roll, then you can take 1 stress to grant 1 die and also cost the leader 1 stress. That is a legit way to go.

    If you can take a stress and give the leader +1d, then that can suggest that you’ve already taken stress to not be a screw-up and you’re helping the party instead of adding risk to it.

    Either one works. I guess it is not as clear for me which is intended.

  13. I’m still not sure why an ‘assist action’ would be ‘implicitly covered by the leaders’ roll’.  That’s where I think this gets weird.

    The Lead A Group Action section states: “If you don’t roll, your character doesn’t get the effects of the action.”  I think it’s easiest to play that literally.  No “implicit” anything.  Just “Roll, or you don’t get the benefits”.

    Similarly, the Backup: Assist action doesn’t say “roll” anywhere. There’s no roll ‘implied’ in this action.

    From a “speed at the table” perspective, I think it’s negligible – the only difference is how many people are picking up dice for a simultaneous die roll.  Unless there are a real lot of you, or someone doesn’t have their own dice, I don’t think there’s any speed of play change between the two versions at all.

    From a ‘coherence’ point of view, I’d lean towards the more literal interpretation as well, instead of introducing an exception for “Hey, one person in the Lead action doesn’t have to roll if they assist”.  What if you’re assisting someone else?   What if you’ve got an expert you’d like to assist who isn’t on point for whatever reason?  What if you’d rather spend 1 stress to assist the person who otherwise would have a Worst-of-two-dice roll in order to try to save your leader the stress?  Do you still get to opt out of rolling now?  Fewer exceptions is better coherence, and from my perspective, not having to make a roll when normally you would have to make a roll is an exception.

  15. Thanks for all the feedback, Andrew!

    Mike is right about assisting and group actions. Specifically:

    I don’t see anything that indicates that making an assist somehow allows you to ‘opt out’ of rolling when someone else leads a group action. These are two separate things, and using one does not change the other.

    You can assist during a group action, but you do still have to roll if you want the benefit of the action. Assist and group actions are separate things. If there were restrictions or dependencies, they’d be stated in the rules.

    As far as the point person goes, it’s a leadership position, not an expertise position. The captain doesn’t have to be the best shot in order to lead the musketeers in firing a volley. The leader of the group action deals with the stress of coordinating the team. This successful coordination means that the best performance in the group is the one that’s applied — and the bad performances are halted or otherwise handled so they don’t interfere, resulting in stress for the leader.

  16. Also, fyi: Vice is on my list of things to mess with. The current version is okay, but it needs to regain some of the teeth it had in the original version of the game (early playtest days). It used to be more of a burden (a pretty crippling one, actually, which is why it was revised). Anyway, expect some tweaks in that area in a future draft.

  17. One reason it helps ME to offer feedback is I can sometimes get other points of view I had not thought of, or stuff in the rules pointed out, to help me run the game. Which is very good. =)

  18. Regarding the effect terms in the action rolls and effect levels:

    They’re different because the terms in the action rolls are modifiers.

    When an action result says “increased effect”, that means +1 effect level. “Reduced effect” means -1 effect level. So, if your action was initially Dominant / Limited, then a critical result would give you Standard effect level.

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