Lurker (pun intended) from the kickstarter, first time poster…
One of the things I love in the game is the flashback mechanic, that matches perfectly with the “heist” feeling of the game.
I’m wondering…how do you people manage the flashbacks in the game? Do you allow other PCs to get involved, or just the chareacter calling the flashbacks? How do you avoid contradictions with known “facts” of the game? (for example, the PC gettting hurt “retroactively” during the flashback)
Sub.
But I might also add that consequences from a Flashback should happen during the present, not during the Flashback.
Flashbacking the crafting of a bomb could result in problems with the bomb now, rather than back then.
Am I making sense or should I wait for a more experienced player to answer here?
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I’d make it a quick fix with worse consequences in the future if wounded. E.g they make a bad deal to a black market necromancer to temporarily fix the wound for the present but makes it worse after and they will owe a favour.
One of the tenets of the game is to hold the fiction lightly and rewrite when necessary. If a flashback has the PCs wounded, then they become wounded in the present. If that bothers you, then when rolls in the past fail give the players consequences other than wounds. The PCs flashback to when they wanted to take out a specific enemy so he cannot show up during a crucial fight. If they fail the roll, perhaps they won the fight without injury, but their enemy get revenge by sending even more dangerous adversaries in his place.
There is a threshold for flashback in my opinion: when they have to invalidate (not change, but erase) established fiction with the events in a flashback, they have to take a devil’s bargain and get no extra die – or back out of the action and still take the initial stress with no benefit. Example: “Sure, you can get shot in your flashback, but to get fixed up for this job you had to visit a street physicker who took payment with a handshake. Accept, or your flashback ends as with you fleeing to avoid being hurt.”
Also, I limit it to simple actions that I can move forward on using a one or two actions; complex obstacles requiring clocks (including fights to the death) are out. This, to avoid things like “I was unharmed when we began the operation, but now I am badly hurt and need help because the spirits I banished in my flashback nearly drove me insane in the process”.