Yesterday was session 6 of our ongoing playtest / beta (prior sessions here https://plus.google.com/109896206941346348750/posts/ByfLkp84uDB and onward). In this session, the Blackstone Outfit (a Cutter, a Lurk, and a Whisper) tried to appease the abbess of the Weeping Lady who’s been letting them hide out in the church belfry.
Play notes:
* Going easy on the players can stretch out a heist or a session longer than might be interesting. The players failed or earned consequences on several desperate rolls this session, and I realized afterward that I gave them normal harm (level 2) more often than severe harm (level 3). After staging this down with resistance or armor, this most often left them at level 1 or nothing. They weren’t able to make any progress against the core mission clock, but they weren’t really compelled to withdraw, either. Really it’s my own damn fault for not being cruel enough.
* Said this before, but again I found myself at a loss for consequences as a mission stretched into later rounds. Since almost every roll requires a consequence (1-5), please provide extensive lists of examples in the final product! (I probably don’t need to overthink this as much as I do, but I get tired of saying “the goon bashes you” as a consequence)
* We had our first trauma this session! Scooped up for interrogation (Entanglement), our Lurk botched his resistance roll and took enough stress to push him over the edge. He emerged from the jail obsessed with taking the Bluecoats down for the indignities they visited on him.
* Our players really like the new stress and Vice rules. Now they have dueling incentives to take some stress but not too much, keeping it in a sensitive range.
* Question: do harm penalties apply to rolls to recover from harm? Or to any downtime rolls? I ruled “no” to the former and punted on the latter, but could use an official ruling.
* Also a question: the new recovery rules suggest a roll to recover from harm is optional (if justified in the fiction) but not necessary. I adjudicated this by giving the PCs a 4-wedge clock to recover from their normal harms. After they narrated how they were treating their harms – the Cutter visiting a barber to get a bullet removed; the Whisper treating his head wound with leviathan blood – I offered them either a standard 2 wedges on the recovery clock, or the chance to roll for an “experimental treatment.” The Whisper rolled and got the same 2 wedges anyway; the Cutter opted to play it safe.
* I find myself getting confused on gang Quality. In the initial QS, Quality was the number of dice your gang rolled. However, for every other asset, Quality impacts effect, not available dice, and for every other Crew trait, Tier is the number of dice you roll. It would help me keep it straight if this were standardized, or explained in a way I could remember.
* Maybe it was hunger or fatigue, but at the end of the session, I found myself a little confused with all the rules to keep in mind. It’s likely a function of the PCs having enough XP to unlock more Thief and Crew special abilities. This led to a lot of questions – “how do engagement rolls work again? Is getting a bonus on engagement rolls worth more than Fine Building Plans?” – that I was stumped on.
I know that, for a fiction-first game, I should only be using the mechanics that make sense. However, when a player takes a special ability that uses a mechanic I employ rarely or never (engagement rolls, hunting grounds, gather information), I have to either (A) warn them off, (B) start incorporating that mechanic just to give them the bonus, or (C) let them waste the slot. Those are descending order of preference, by the way.
I’m sure this will be addressed in the final release, where the rules are organized and full of useful examples. But last night was the closest I came to saying, “Okay, we’re doing the same setting, but using Fate Accelerated. New character sheets next time!”
* Still a fan!
As for the session itself:
The Blackstone Outfit was perilously close (3/4) to being kicked out of their secret hideout, the belfry of the Church of the Weeping Lady in Crow’s Foot. They persuaded the Abbess to throw a fete, while secretly planning to summon a ghost that would emerge from the Weeping Lady statue outside the church at the height of the festivities. This “miracle,” they hoped, would get asses in the pews.
However, the Outfit’s cohort of touts and barkers (the Crow’s Foot Penny Show) had zero luck in flyering the neighborhood. The players decided that the date of the festival conflicted with the Feast of the Mortification, a big celebration for the Cult of the Ecstasy of the Flesh. Unwilling to abandon their sunk costs, the Outfit decided to wreck the Cult’s feast instead.
Highlights:
* The Lurk tried to plant a bomb in the hand-cranked tumbler that Cult loyalists drew from to get their rite for the day (sometimes you’re the dom; sometimes you’re the sub). He lost the bomb, unfortunately, and drew the lot for psychedelic herbal fumigation. A smoking pot was thrust under his gaping jaw and he passed out for a bit.
* The Whisper compelled their summoned ghost to manifest when the Lord and Lady of the Ecstatic Rites were about to be announced, so that everyone was watching the stage. This worked, but drew the attention of the Cult’s own plasmic sensitives: the Exultants, shirtless flagellants who wore iron halo vests screwed into their skulls and collarbones. The Whisper fled, but not before he was pasted with a viscous gel that numbed his attuned senses.
* The Abbess had insisted that the Cutter take a novitiate along with them, so the two of them were haranguing orgy participants from a street corner. The Cutter fought off some Cult enforcers.
* The Outfit finally kicked the Feast from a riot to a full-blown rout when they arranged for every Cult icon hanging in the square to ignite simultaneously (Flashback to their cohort rigging some fuses).
Great stuff!