This past Saturday was the fifth session of our continuing playtest / beta (fourth and prior sessions here:…

This past Saturday was the fifth session of our continuing playtest / beta (fourth and prior sessions here: https://plus.google.com/109896206941346348750/posts/CwT8My6gbV1). The Blackstone Outfit added a Lurk to their ranks, in addition to the Cutter and Whisper. We used the v4 QS rules for the first time.

Notes:

* I made the most conscious effort to play fiction first this session, out of any of the prior sessions, and really enjoyed the experience! Rather than immediately plonking down progress wheels as soon as the heist was set out, I let the gameplay proceed like a conversation. When an obstacle emerged, I asked what the PCs wanted to do, then set a roll and position as appropriate. Only when I wanted to linger on the scene for more than a beat did I impose a progress clock.

(I know the above is Narrative Roleplaying 101, but it’s still a rhythm that I struggle with! Please include lots of examples of play in the final product to help GMs like me)

* Fiction first is definitely helpful when deciding which of the game’s many mechanics to apply. As an example: the Outfit was trying to disable a hullspider. After the Cutter cracked its metallic exterior, the Lurk said he would pour ball bearings into its insides to jam up the works. The Cutter wanted to help by grabbing the hullspider’s scything legs and pinning it down. We initially thought that might be a group action, but balked since the Cutter and the Lurk were doing two different things. The Whisper, who’s been very diligent about reading the rules, suggested this was better as an assist, and we all agreed.

* This is a high-class problem to have, but I often find myself getting stumped for complications in the climactic final third of a scene. All the PCs are harmed, position is already desperate, and the reinforcements that we set as a countdown clock (in an earlier complication) have already shown up!

* With that said, I found a lot of uses for the Lost an Opportunity complication in this past session. The Whisper’s failed attempt to cut an armed guard (Skirmish) meant the guard pinned his arms against the wall (lost the opportunity to further Skirmish). And I was able to slow down the Cutter’s murderous rampage when the Whisper threw a bottled ghost at him.

* Another vote for the beauty of progress clocks as an all-purpose mechanic. The crew’s job was to raid the Bluecoats’ evidence locker. They snuck past the guards up front with no bloodshed or suspicion – a first for them – so I put them in the evidence room with a progress clock called Loot. Every wedge they filled would be 2 Coin worth of goods hauled off. The obstacle was the chaotic disorganization of the room: no clear system to the shelves, no obvious labels for what was valuable. Potential complications included added load (if they looted something valuable but heavy) and wasted time (someone has to come down to enter some evidence eventually).

* I made explicit the house rule that effect lives between Limited and Great – in other words, a successful roll will never fill less than 1 wedge or more than 3. This is mostly to save me the math and discourage PCs from spending too much time hunting for bonuses (which can slow down play).

* UPDATE: forgot to add: this was the first session I felt engagement rolls or fortune rolls were interesting enough to merit use! So that’s a big improvement for v4!

As for the session itself: the Blackstone Outfit snuck into the Bluecoats’ station via an abandoned dock ramp. Disguised as coppers themselves, they bluffed their way down to the evidence room – a large cell in the abandoned dungeon beneath the station, guarded by a hullspider. They smashed the hullspider and cracked the cell lock, only to be baffled by the disorganized shelves. They took a decent haul, but had to fight their way past several Bluecoats and a police Whisper. With further reinforcements bearing down, the Outfit opened a ghost door to an unknown location …