Failing in Flashbacks.
Hi, how do you handle a fail in a flashback?
One of the examples in the book is:
“You sneak into their warehouse when suddenly the lights go on and a wagon drives in. They are getting a delivery right now and will soo be at your position.”
“In the flashback I consort with my friend who told me when the delivery would come”
What happens if he fails?
Since there is no difference between flashback and in the moment I play it like this:
Your consequence is a worst position: You owe the dude money/a favor.
He consorts again, fails again. The consequence is: you lose the opportunity.
So the player just paid 1 stress to owe some dude money. that sucks.
Do you make the fails really soft with minimal consequences or do your players have flashbacks to really bad memories?^^
Do you let them have another flashback (“Ok, I also asked this other dude” or “I overheard them at the tavern”)?
Still pays the stress, yes. But maybe his source was wrong, or was getting him back for something, or reported him.
A more difficult example in a game I ran was a character had a flashback where she took out the guard for the facility in a duel! And she lost the duel (but cut her foe). So we come back to the present, where she’s remembering that incident and pressing at her stitches, but the head guard is also taking it easy and staying drunk to ease the pain, so security is overall laxer. =) I’ve also had armor levels stripped out during flashbacks.
And sometimes we flash back to trying to bribe or persuade someone and failing, and being grouchy about it now that it would have been useful.
Man, I had a player Trauma out during a flashback. That one was weird, but at least it wasn’t from combat or anything. We just kind of wrapped up the flashback action and dealt with the emotional toll in the current timeline when we flashed forward.
I’d probably just avoid going with ‘lose the opportunity’ in a flashback, since yeah it doesn’t move the story forward at all. I’d probably have gone with worse position again, say that he tells the PCs the wrong time on purpose, so it’s not that the target will be on them soon – they are here now! Desperate position!
“Oh, what if you Consorted with your docker friends yesterday and they blabbed about this delivery, so we rigged it with a bomb.”
“Oh man, that’s hilarious. But kind of nuts. I guess 2 stress for that?”
“Sounds good. But let’s make that Consort roll and see if your docker friends made any demands or complicated anything for you. Then we need to find out how well this bomb works. Who was in charge of that?”
“I did it. I’ll roll Tinker to set the fuse just right. Hopefully.”
So, you flashed back to the consort and rolled a 1. The risk which was broadcast by the GM is “they might make demands or complicate things for you”. So on a fail, they might have told you the wrong info and its now a trap to catch you! Or maybe they want a coin payment (which would boost the result or something). Maybe the information was bad and you got the wrong delivery, perhaps this would make the later Tinker roll desperate somehow.
When it gets to the point where the bomb goes, the other player rolls Tinker to see if planting the bomb went well. Will it blow up? Is it delayed? Was it found before the transport? Is it on the wrong delivery?
Flashbacks arent always a positive thing, just like how pushing yourself for a bonus die isn’t guarenteed to get you a 6 😛
A failed flashback doesn’t necessarily mean that the action in the past has failed, it could instead mean that it didn’t have the desired outcome in the present.
For example, if an attempt to kill someone in a flashback fails, it could be interpreted as that the murder worked but the person was replaced and everyone is more cautious now.
Or if a bribe fails, maybe the guard doesn’t let on to it right away but instead attempts to arrest the offenders anyway in the present.
One useful thing to remember is that the flashback can be mechanized all sorts of ways. That makes it a flexible tool.
It can be a simple transaction of stress for an outcome. It can be reduced to a simple roll. It can have a cost. Maybe the people at the table play through the flashback. It can have a devil’s bargain involved. Whatever works for the story and players! So there’s a lot of flexibility, and always a reliance on the fiction.
I have them roll flashbacks as fortune rolls using their appropriate action rating. That way there’s some effect, even if poor. You can still have a poop engagement roll only semi-fixed by a poop flashback.
To add (sorry, I was in a bit of a rush), I’m not a fan of full action rolls in a flashback because they can pull the fiction too far into the past. If they go terribly wrong it can break the present fiction, not mold it. For example, in a flashback, Sapphire sneaks into a barracks to give the moonlighting soldiers they weren’t expecting food poisoning. It goes terribly and she’s driven off, half-stressed and badly harmed. Flash forward and she’s on the score, beaten and tired, now in a state that probably would’ve kept her from going on the score in the first place.
If my crew (or a member of) screwed a flashback that badly, I’d probably call the score off.
What’s really great about Blades is doing it to either extreme is in the design. This goes for almost all of the game, which is a brilliant thing.
The result you described (pay a stress, but fail and return to the present with a debt) sounds right to me. You declared the risks, and they took them: no one forced them to take this action, or to pay stress for this chance to fail.
I don’t think you should soften up on them for a flashback. If you start avoiding inflicting the likely risks simply because it’s a flashback you are in danger of slipping into artificial-feeling consequences. Charge them another stress to improve their positioning (keep it simple, so you can get back to the present).
The part that did strike me as odd is when you said they consorted again upon failure – after the first 1-3 result, I would have offered a resist, or simply returned to the current fiction as usual. That’s the price they pay for taking a risk in this game, same as in the present. Also, multiple action rolls in flashbacks seem to break the intent of the mechanic from my reading. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the words “unlikely opportunity” or “requiring special opportunities” in the cost refer to any fiction needed to get into position to do it, and then a single action roll tells us how it went down (or maybe it just happens, and so there is an effect roll, or no roll).
Mark Cleveland Massengale An example in the rulebook actually uses a 2 roll flashback (the one where they plant the bomb; a consort and a tinker by 2 seperate people). This alludes that a flashback is a description of what you did in the past like “Consorting with dockworkers to plant a bomb”, followed by any action rolls that apply (consorting with dockworkers, tinkering to plant the bomb). It also implies that whilst one person can call for a flashback, other people who didn’t pay for it can also act in the flashback.
The rest of what you said I agree with though 🙂
Antimatter Well, maybe that example is saying that. I don’t think so though – imo that seems to illustrate the power of flashbacks in fiction first play; and how one cost can set the fictional situation up for multiple PCs. Once the cost was paid to establish the fiction, the other player just got a free tinkering flashback out of fictional necessity. or it was a teamwork action. or it was fictionally reasonable anyways, so no cost.
Not vitally important though; I am not even saying “only roll one dice pool EVER per flashback cost paid” (that would be crazy of me: teamwork actions are obviously a thing). My point was more the things I 🙂 suppose you agreed with.