We’ve played three sessions now at MK RPG, and here’s a few bits of feedback.
* The skill names get a bit of getting used to. The one-verb format is neat, but I have to keep the chargen summary in front of me when I’m running the game, to make sure that I use the correct skill for each task.
* I think downtime may need tuning for the number of players. I have six players in my game, which is probably more than usual. So far, the gang hasn’t really had to worry about Heat, as there are plenty of downtime actions to reduce Heat. At the same time, Coin might be spread a bit thin around the PCs. Also, the downtime phase takes a while, just going round the table twice and attending to everyone’s actions.
* Healing is brutal! One PC took two medium wounds dealing with the vampire Scurlock last session, and that’s 16 progress clock ticks to remove. I can’t see them going away in the five sessions we have remaining. Given the lack of Coin to share out, that PC may not be able to buy many additional downtime turns for the additional healing.
* The players are interested in the spirits and alchemy sides of the game, but there’s very little in the quickstart that covers them. Something to address in the full rules.
People are really enjoying the game! The first two scores (assassinating Baszo Baz and stealing turf off the Red Sashes) went very smoothly. The third (kicking Scurlock out of the boxing gym he ran) very much didn’t. As soon as they finished that, the Red Sashes acted on the previously-rolled “War” entanglement and kidnapped a couple of the PCs’ contacts. The gang now have to deal with that without having downtime to recover from the last score and with limited opportunity to call for flashbacks.
This could be brutal, and quite fun to play!
My PCs also find healing to be quite brutal, but sometimes those wounds force them outside of their comfort zone which is nice. Still 16 tics for 2 harm? Perhaps use smaller clocks. I usually use 4-6 tics for medium harm, which still leaves some PCs wounded more often than not on a mission.
I wouldn’t limit the players ability to call for flashbacks just because they’re going right from one mission to the next. The PCs are smart and resourceful! Perhaps they knew war with the red sashes was inevitable and made preparations days or weeks ago for when it happened. Or if the red sashes completely blindsided them, maybe the PCs have just-in-case preparations. Basically if your PCs are wounded and tired, now is not the time to take away one of the coolest and most useful game systems. Let your players be awesome and creative, and show off just how dangerous their PCs are.
The “Recover” move starts long-term projects for removing injuries, and long-term projects have 8 segments each. Yes, it’s brutal. I’m not sure how deliberate that is.
I think you’re right about the flashbacks. Not having flashbacks won’t make the game more fun for anyone, and throwing more complications in from the flashback action rolls will increase the fun. So, no restrictions on flashbacks beyond the normal.
I guess you’re right that the rules are fairly explicit that a basic LTP clock is 8 segments, and that’s what recovery is said to be. If you watch John DM a game on his youtube channel however, I don’t believe he does that. You are of course welcome to make them whatever size you wish. I tend towards the smaller, and even then it still feels harsh.
Two things to remember re: healing. First, you have to roll pretty badly to only fill one clock segment on a downtime action. You get 1 tic on 1-3, 2 on 4-5, 3 on 6 and 4 on a crit. Second, you can also spend REP for more downtime actions, not just coin.
Injuries definitely hurt though. A badly wounded character may want to consider losing themselves in vice for a while.
Mike Pureka I would add two more things to that. Low level characters probably don’t get to roll many dice when recovering, since you’re supposed to roll the quality of the care you’re receiving. If you have a friend who could potentially heal you (for instance the Hound has Melvir the Physicker), you’re rolling 2 dice, otherwise 1 is pretty likely. This means you can expect to be healing 1 tick pretty often in the beginning.
Second, can you even lose yourself in your vice in the newest rules? Maybe I missed it, but I thought that is gone now.
One die still gives you an average of more than 1 tick of recovery per roll. It’s not awful.
And yes, page 19 of Version 4b says: “Alternately, you may choose to release your character to be “lost in their vice” for a session, allowing them to indulge off-camera while you play a different PC.”
Mike Pureka An average of 1.3 per roll, which would take 6 actions to clear a single 8 tick clock (assuming you don’t spend coin). If you do spend coin on every roll, that’s 2.6 ticks per roll, which still takes 3 actions (and 3 coin). For me, that’s too much, which is why a usually do smaller clocks.
Mark Griffin That’s really a matter of opinion. 🙂
Also, as pointed out, you can spend rep instead of coin. And you should always spend the coin on another downtime action, since getting the extra chance of more than one is better than only getting an extra 1 for that coin (if you upgrade the effect).
Mike Pureka Well you can spend Rep for extra actions (and my players frequently do that, and still go into their missions injured), but you can’t spend Rep to bump your success level. Not by the current rules anyway.
I can’t see the players wanting to spend Rep for extra actions, as it’s hard enough to come by anyway (1, maybe 2 Rep per Score). And with 6 PCs, spending Coin on extra actions is likely to be unpopular as there’s not much to go around anyway.
Sounds to me like the crew just bit off more than they could chew. Life is tough out on the streets. 😉
No, you can’t spend rep for improving success, but my point here is that for recovery, it’s always BETTER to buy another action anyway. Also, to be honest, rep isn’t all that USEFUL. If you go up in tier a few of your rolls get better…and that’s basically it. My crew has earned like 10 rep by now and they’re sitting pretty going “Nope, being tier zero nobodies is good by us.”
Coin shouldn’t be any more scarce if you have lots of players – unless they’re all getting themselves injured, in which case you have bigger problems, I think. I guess there is less coin per person to spend improving downtime actions, but you have more downtime actions, so it is, as you mentioned earlier, pretty trivial to keep the heat off.
All my players get injured pretty frequently, but they love to skirmish and don’t roll great. They really wanna go up tier though because they want to fight Lord Scurlock. Fighting a tier 3 at tier 0 is basically a death wish because they’ll almost always have 0 or limited effect.
AH FOUND IT. It’s expanded upon in earlier rules that a long term project for level 2 harm is a 6-piece clock. I can’t think of how the changes to the rules since then would’ve negated that. They probably just got squished out to make text fit on a page.
I’ll also remind you of the fiction-first-ness of this game. If the progress clock seems unrealistic, you must follow your GM agenda of Conveying the World Honestly and change it to make it better fit the situation.
Hope anything I said helped!
Mark Griffin
I’m gonna be honest – I don’t really apply tier as a “general purpose” modifier. It seems weird. Just because a cult is an important and influential organization (Tier 3) doesn’t mean its members are super well trained in combat or equipped with the finest equipment.
I apply limited effect etc based on the fiction, not on tier.
Mike Pureka I agree with you mostly. In our campaign however, Lord Scurlock doesn’t have any minions. He’s an ancient vampire so powerful that he’s considered a tier 3 Gang all by himself. They fought him once and discovered they simply weren’t powerful enough to harm him. So now their goal is to go up tier to attain more money and power in order to gain the arcane knowledge and powerful equipment needed to kill him.
Life is hard on the streets. Getting injured is terrible. Don’t get into fights unless the thing you’re fighting for is worth paying that price.
Taelor Mcclurg
Sorry, but that’s not a good answer for me. I’ve never been a fan of “Now your game experience is going to suck because of a decision you made in the fiction.”
Fortunately, the game does support a temporary character retirement option, which mitigates this problem.
Edit to add: I should also point out that the idea that injuries only come from fights and that the players control when those happen is unfair. The biggest injury in my game so far came from a trap.
Taelor Mcclurg Yeah, my games just aren’t that gritty. Fortunately even the quickstart makes it clear there are a bunch of ways to make a game more or less punishing. Including, but not limited to, making injuries easier to resist and heal.
Whoops! This is my fault. The wording for Recover wasn’t clear enough. When you recover, you create a single long-term project clock (“Recovery”) which heals all of your harm. You don’t make a separate clock for each injury.
So, it’s one 8-segment clock. When that’s filled, you remove all of your level 2 and level 3 harm.
Maybe I’ll add a Recovery clock to the character sheet so this is even more clear.
Here’s the clarified text, which will be in the next update:
Remove all level 1 harm. You may also begin to heal your level 2 and/or level 3 harm, if you have access to proper treatment. Untrained or risky treatments may call for action rolls. Successful treatment creates a long term project clock to heal all of your level 2 and level 3 harm. If you take further harm before you finish healing, you must once again Recover before you can continue healing.
John Harper Thanks for that. But it raises a question. Say I have a level 2 and a level 3 harm, and have ticked off seven segments to heal them. I then take an additional level 2 harm. I do a recover action to start healing. What state is the recovery clock now?
* One segment remaining to heal all harm?
* Reset to an empty clock with all harm remaining?
* One segment left to heal the first two harms, then another eight segments to heal the most recent?
I think you mean the first, but I’d like to be clear. Ta!
John Harper Thanks for clarifying John, but I’m not sure I understand the point of the last sentence. Extra damage or not, don’t you always need to take the recover action to continue healing? Does the recover action only create the clock and not actually add any ticks to it?
Neil Smith Yep, it’s the first.
Mark Griffin Right, the Recovery action doesn’t add ticks. You take a Long Term Project action to do that. Basically, the Recover action is treatment of your harm which allows it to heal.
That probably needs to be qualified in the Long Term Project section then, because I totally would have gotten that wrong also.
To what are you referring, Mike? I want to make sure I clarify it correctly.
John Harper Rereading the recover action, I can see now that it only says create a clock. However I guess I thought that adding ticks was implied in that creation. When you take a Long Term Project action and you create a new clock (because you’re starting a new project) you also add some ticks to it, right?
Mark Griffin Yeah, that’s right. I can see how that’s a bit confusing. I’m writing the Healing section right now, so I’ll make sure to clarify it.
Basically what Mark Griffin said. Namely, that it’s “Recover” to start a healing clock, and “Long term project” to work on it.
Gotcha. Thanks!