Segue from Info Gathering into the Score
In a recent session, players decided to deal with an entanglement: an unquiet dead, aka the ghost of Ashlyn Daava.
Ashlyn Daava was an occult collector and the last bounty of the crew’s Hound. In fact, she was the bounty that brought the crew together for the first time. The ghost of Ashlyn has been sighted searching amongst the ship graveyard where the crew has a lair. Sighters say she’s looking for something.
The crew do a little info gathering during downtime and find out that the Sextant in Shadow was stolen from the Hive around when Ashlyn’s her bounty was set. All they know about the Sextant in Shadow is it’s said both the body and the spirit can wield it.
So, the crew decide to handle this entanglement themselves. They haven’t seen her ghost themselves, so they decide to find the Sextant in Shadow first and use it to lure her in.
And this is where we ran into trouble. Almost quagmired.
The way I read it, I thought the approach to a score was to pick a plan and do some info gathering if the crew lacked the detail for the plan. Sort of like info gathering is a step between picking the planning and diving into the score.
But in this situation, in trying to find the Sextant, I think this was the wrong approach.
The book says:
Some investigations are complex and require a longer process of information gathering. In this case, the GM makes a clock (or several) to track the progress of the investigation.
Until the crew were trying to find the Sextant, the implication I hadn’t grokked from reading was that sometimes, when the crew needs a longer process of info gathering, the players may not be able pick a plan first and then info gathering for that plan. They may not have enough info.
Instead, they need to investigate and explore first, gather info from multiple sources maybe, before they pick a plan. This is a very different expectation to what we grokked from reading.
We have finished the hunt for the Sextant in Shadow, so I’ll let you know, but I think this will make the score get us out of the quagmire, make things much easier to run and play.
But was the info-gathering just as fun as the score itself? Or did the quagmire become tedious?
Could you just ‘cut and run’; framing a scene hard to get to the score in media red and dealing with any issues from info gathering via flashbacks instead?
Nathan Roberts, the info gathering was fine and fun. These players enjoy getting more info before they engage. The planning and jumping straight into action works fine too.
It’s the segue between info gathering and planning/action that occasionally has had us floundering. In this case, part of the issue could be was didn’t feel any of the plans worked for a score that was race to find a thing. Another issue was no-one wanted to jump to just finding the Sextant, they wanted to work to find it through play. But we kept thinking we had to switch from info gathering into planning/action when we really hadn’t established enough in the fiction about where this damn thing was or how to go about getting it.
Yeah, I hear you. Its a funny thing where we as players hold onto this linear ‘time moves forward into the next scene’ hangover. I countered this by framing HARD. When the players were spluttering and gesticulating and saying “But But But!’ I placated them by drawing inference to their favourite Tarantino film, and said its fine, you can always, ALWAYS have a flash back scene to establish that stuff, often further elaborated by new, exciting current events in the narrative! All at the measly cost of a few stress 🙂
I’ve found that not finding out what the damn thing is, or how to go about getting it is the golden glow in the briefcase at the end of Pulp Fiction. Maybe we’ll never know.
I have two thoughts here. One is that “heist” is sometimes misleading as a term. I’ve had heists that were basically a few minutes in a room–something quick and dirty, maybe even as primitive as a smash and grab by the time it was all over with. Every job doesn’t have to be “Oceans 11” complexity.
The game remains complex, in total–not every heist has to be. A heist is a layer, and as the layers pile deeper the game takes on its unique texture for each group.
So, basically, I’m saying resist the urge to require a lot of complexity for every job.
The other thought is there can be a cumulative nature to score prep too. When my group is getting ready for a score, unless they’re pressed against a tight schedule, I let each of the characters check out one thing, or make one preparation that we know about ahead of time.
Before each of the characters picks the thing they’ll figure out or set up, I ask about the plan. They usually can’t settle on one before any of the information gathering; there isn’t enough context to have a good idea yet.
But one person finds out where the site is, and details there (like, it’s by the church, so we could sneak in as monks) may lend ideas for the plan. If not, the next person can ask another question, and that can give an idea.
Generally by the time we’re halfway through players, the plan is chosen, and the rest of the players can ask questions or take on tasks that support the plan going in.
So that’s all cool, and it’s up to the engagement roll to see if the plan has a wrinkle before it even gets unfolded. =)
Great advice Andrew! (You should totally collect all your nuggets of wisdom and collate them into a ‘Players Guide for Blades’. I’d buy it!)
Hmmm, food for thought.
I’ve been following the one, or at most two, questions for info gathering, and generally that’s been working fine. Except in this score I don’t think it’s worked. We got to when we’d normally end the questioning and launch the plan, but no one felt they had enough info. I think that was because the score is a discovery. I feel scores of this kind demand more info gathering.
“How do you want to look for the sextant? Do you creep through the ship graveyard in secret so no one notices? A stealth plan, then. Do you rig up lights and a search grid and go in with sledgehammers and dynamite? Assault it is. Do you contact the ghosts of the sailors who died here to lead you to the item? Occult plan.” etc.
That’s what I’d do. Does that sound weird given what happened in your game, Oliver? Maybe I don’t understand the point of friction.
(Those examples are for cases where “we go get the sextant” isn’t trivial, of course. If discovering its precise location is the only obstacle, then the info gathering does it. “I figured out that it’s in the hold of the Aurora.” “Okay, we go get it.” That wouldn’t be a score.)
When they are doing info gathering and it start to become too long, I use the good old “ok, from now on, 1-5 will lead to complications. Are you sure you want more info?”
Last time, things wents downhill from there and the actual heist was “getting out of the trouble we got in and shit we missed our window of opportunity”
Everyone had fun all the same 😉 And now they are more willing to dive into action.
How about just introducing a faction clock “Ghost of Ashlyn finds the artifact”, which gets ticked in every downtime phase.
Instead of handling it as gathering information for a score, the players can create their own downtime clock for a long-term project “find the artifact first”.
And should the ghost finish her clock first… then it becomes a score 🙂
Heng benjamin “From now on, 1-5 will lead to complications” is just another way of saying a situation is risky or desperate. 🙂
Lots of food for thought. I’m still a little vexed but we’re lining up to play tonight so we’ll discuss these ideas and see where we land.