Stras Acimovic Run two jobs in S&V and loving it. Our Stitch is a young doctor, former child prodigy. The player came up with space Doctors without Borders. They just started a LTP to get their smuggling ship branded as official Doctors without Borders emissaries to give them a great cover reason for going just about anywhere.
But, I have a question. Did you ever run into trouble with the lack of the Survey action in Scum and Villainy during playtests? My session tonight had the PCs trying to sniff out some Cobalt Syndicate thugs tailing their Janus Syndicate contact through the crowds at some swoop races on Warren. We ended up using Study, but felt it didn’t really capture what the PCs were doing (i.e. Surveying the crowd and trying to pick out anyone following their contact). Should the narrative space of Survey from BitD be encompassed under Study in S&V? My only other thought was to maybe use Attune as a general “perceive the scene” action? Perhaps in the world of Scum and Villainy reaching out one’s senses to understand the environment inevitably places one in contact with the Way?
Also, my New Year’s resolution was going to be to stop bugging you about Band of Blades, but…I think I just broke that one 😉
So the gist was, there are some thugs here, but you don’t know where?
Richard – thanks for the great AP and update! Super happy to hear you’re having fun ^_^ I see my fellow S&V designer John LL beat me to the post here but I’ll toss this out:
Generally you can study a situation if need be – so it covers survey stuff for us most of the time. However keep in mind that you only roll when pursuing a goal blocked by an obstacle. While ‘spot’ checks are common in other games – that sort of gather-info situation we usually cover with a fortune roll.
Let me know if that helps.
Oh! Also since you asked. While our focus atm is finishing up S&V (should be an update in the not too distant future with some more examples, info and new ships) there’s been a chunk of Band of Blades progress. Might have an update for folks around the end of the month.
Thanks for the reply. That totally makes sense to use study, and good point about the fortune roll. In this case, we thought it rose to the level of an obstacle because the thugs in question were employing rather sophisticated surveillance techniques…using three thugs that were switching off who was active tail. This also occurred at the swoop races on Warren. We figured criminal types would frequent this type of event, so the guys they were looking for looked much like the average race attendee. In order to find them, the PCs sent a text to their contact to move around, so that the thugs would have to follow, and they could pick out the surveillance box as it closed around him (the contact).
Great to hear about the progress of both S&V and Band of Blades. Very much looking forward to it.
Happy New Year!
Stras has the right of it with Study.
Just as an aside, you could approach that obstacle with a number of actions. In general, I try asking why the fictional approach would not just work. In the case of ‘we search the crowd for the bad guys’ the answer could be:
* you might not find them in time (roll Scramble)
* you might not recognize them when you do encounter them (roll Study, or for the bold, Consort)
*you might spook them with your search (roll Skulk)
*the crowd itself is thick and may be part of the problem (roll Command or perhaps Sway)
Other approaches can work. If your crew wants to use the local camera grid to do the search, then Hack is an option. But Commanding or Swaying the local desk clerk in charge of those cameras to simply show you the feed is as well.
I hadn’t thought of those options. That’s really cool. I will definitely try one of those approaches next time. Thanks!