I’d love some advice on dealing with heat with simultaneous sessions (dual GMs).
I’m running more two-table sessions tomorrow and Wednesday. One issue is that the crew suffers heat from two scores at once – this makes it very easy to gain a wanted level.
Any suggestions for mitigating this? Should I allow a single downtime action (or two) for folks between assigning heat from the second score?
I wouldn’t worry about the crew getting a wanted level. It seems like a feature of the double GM setup, rather than a bug. Wanted level leads to more interesting things for the crew to do, like doing score to pin the crew’s crimes on some patsy. Because someone takes the fall then the crew’s wanted level goes down. Or if their’s a Spider on the crew, they may want to be on the inside to make some connections on the inside, establish some prison claims, etc.
It makes sense in the fiction that if the same crew were pulling multiple jobs at the same time that more heat would come down on them at once. It’s much too flashy an operation. If they don’t want the heat they’re gonna have to be quieter more controlled criminals.
I do like wanted levels going up, for me it’s a question of pacing. If the level goes up each session, that probably out-paces the crew’s ability to clear wanted levels (adequately setting up a patsy takes a few downtime actions and I don’t want to force the crew to keep sending characters to jail).
I agree about simultaneous jobs pulling down more heat but it doesn’t need to be immediate. I read Heat as not happening all at once but partly coming from rumors spreading and detailed crime scene investigation – to me that creates a window for heat to be reduced a little.
As a meta-point, they crew isn’t choosing to have a double-GM session because of urgency in the fiction, it’s just convenient for our schedules.
Chris McDonald, exactly. Just follow the GM’s principle of everything flows from the fiction. The additional heat and wanted level is just a consequence of the PC’s action.
The window is downtime though. Even single game groups if things go badly enough can hit a single heat threshold in one bad or big session. You can control your reputation after rumors have already circulated (downtime) or control the narrative during the job (don’t do big heat scores) but once the job is done there are immediate ramifications you never have control over.
How exactly mechanically is this simultaneously run downtime phase happening. Are both tables pooling and dumping heat from both jobs at the same time before either gets to have a chance to reduce heat? If so then just stagger them. If they’re already staggered and it’s just more heat than the players are reducing in downtime then it’s on them. It may just be a mechanic that doesn’t work simultaneously.
Chris McDonald That’s the question I’m asking – I’m leaning toward staggering the downtime phases to account for this exact problem but was wondering if there are other options.
Randy Lubin I’d alternate groups weekly. Week 1 group A assigns heat rolls entanglements and offer them the chance to do an immediate downtime to reduce heat then hold the rest of downtime for them. Do heat entanglements and offer the same heat downtime. Once that’s handled then I’d go back to let them do freeplay and general downtime that don’t affect heat. Then for week 2 start with group B.
That’s I guess what I would suggest trying.
Chris McDonald we’re definitely doing the simultaneous session though – having the larger group choose the scores and self-organize is part of the fun. The first time we did this we presented three urgent opportunities / problems and the broader group could only choose two – it worked really well.
In general, though, we deal with payoff, heat, and entanglements at the end of a session and downtime actions over email or before the next session.
Randy Lubin that’s fine, I think staggering the downtime is probably important though . Part of downtime is allowing players the chance to “clean up” some of the messes from scores. And two groups at once are probably going to make too much of a mess to not need a chance to clean up before things are combined. And you’ll find groups won’t necessarily clean up all of their mess but it’s important to give them the opportunity to do it. I also think it’s probably nice to keep the groups heat ambiguous from each other until it’s added. One group could ignore heat reduction and get lucky because the other group kept it quiet. Or get really punished because the other group blew up a neighborhood and racked up 13 heat.
Chris McDonald Yeah – agreed on the opportunity to clean things up. I love the idea of keeping heat ambiguous until the groups merge.
In this case, does it make sense to roll two entanglements?
Randy Lubin sure. Twice the scores twice the fall out.
We used the staggered resolve and it worked perfectly! One score resolved by the following dawn, the other took a few days. The characters from the first score could use one of their actions to reduce heat before the other score finished, and they did.
Another thing we brought up was the ability to use characters across groups for flashbacks. We’re also going to play with players switching groups mid-score.