Any thoughts on if you can push yourself or take devils bargains on incarceration rolls?

Apparently I have many thoughts!

Both of those mechanics are part of the Action Roll rules, which is not what an Incarceration Roll is. It’s pretty brutal by a strict reading, unless you’ve got some special abilities or claims already set up. It’s a lot safer to frame someone or get someone else to take the fall! Or you might have to push someone to take jailbird, wait to Tier up to at least 1, and hope for the best from those 2 dice.

Let’s think though some options and consequences, though. When this is looming at your table, I would take the time to talk and think through how much time you want to focus on prison and what’s fun for your group.

Pushing yourself might fit by the fiction, coming out of prison stressed out and wrecked; you might even get a second trauma if you go in at the edge.

Devil’s Bargains are great story fodder, but you’d probably need to be harder and more narrative-complication-y since the easy ones like heat or coin or harm aren’t as appropriate.

The Incarceration roll takes place with downtime, but I don’t think it’s meant to be a downtime activity, so I don’t think getting a friend’s help or buying up the result with coin are meant to be applicable. (Personally, I like bringing friends on screen and giving coin sinks, so I might apply them. I do that for just about anything outside of scores, though, as long as it’s fictionally appropriate. I have a small group, so it helps spread the spotlight, even out the stress since there’s less help available, and fill out my cast.)

If you allow all of that, a Tier 0 crew starts with 0d, but adds 1 for the bargain, a second for pushing, and might be able to buy up the result like a downtime activity. That’s a decent dicepool with relatively little effort, time, or specialization. As you rise in tier, pile up friends or assets, and get abilities like Jailbird, that only gets safer.

In this instance, the teeth and fear of incarceration aren’t much there. That might be more fun for your table and there are lots of other places in the setting for drama. This is relatively quick: you can have one scene where someone messes with your incarcerated PC and get back to running scores. Personally, even if you don’t want to deal with the horrors of prison and institutional injustice, I think you need to put some likelihood of consequence to jail or it’s going to be boring. Wanted Level’s a big deal to drop. Wanted Level 0 is very easy-going compared to Wanted 2+. Getting more than one entanglement every score strains the purse. The incarcerated character should at least be out of commission for a while or there’s no tension to the choice to go into jail.

Speaking of that, do you want to keep up with incarcerated characters in jail or make alternative characters? If you’re following along, are you going to do the Incarceration Roll before or after their time’s served and can they effect it, maybe like a fortune roll with advantages/disadvantages? Will they have more rolls to make in jail, and the possibility of more stress/trauma? Are there going to be a whole cast of in-prison characters? If you’re answering a lot of these in the affirmative, you could scrap the abstraction of the Incarceration Roll and play out their time outright. Are you ok splitting focus and spotlight like that?

Personally, I’m not sure it makes much sense to trade 2 stress for a bonus die since the Incarceration Roll’s an abstraction of a series of actions (I would allow pushing if the player was going to play out their time in Ironhook on screen, but I’m fairly lukewarm on that). If there were a juicy Devil’s Bargain, something that counterbalanced the severity of a one-roll trauma risk, maybe I would consider that on an Abstraction Roll. I’d also let players trade on contacts and friends, which is an extension of how I generally run downtime as I mentioned above. I like the idea of a scene where the PCs have to talk a friend into voluntarily going to jail, or maybe having a second PC sacrifice their freedom to support another if they’re getting arrested unexpectedly. Also, I think I wouldn’t allow spending coin on effect level, but I would if they acquired the Smuggling claim (or acquired temporary use as an asset) just because the prison claim sheet is fun. I don’t want to spend whole sessions in Ironhook, though, so I wouldn’t have a lot of use for Smuggling besides that. Maybe I’d change it to 1 coin per claim, so it wasn’t possible to buy a hard fail to a critical (on the other hand I might like the notion that Doskvol is just that corrupt). I like the abstraction of the Incarceration Roll and would lean towards the player making an alternative character for the duration of the incarceration. I also have a small group, though. With more players, the rules as written become more attractive to me since it helps push more folks into trauma. With my small group, they’re generally close enough just from trying to help each other out.

4 thoughts on “Any thoughts on if you can push yourself or take devils bargains on incarceration rolls?”

Jason Lee says:

March 15, 2017 at 1:59 am

I’d allow Devils’ Bargains, I reckon. How, in fiction, a player would be pushing themselves is the main question I’d have in whether I allowed them to do it, but if they could make a case for it, maybe. They could also probably spend some COIN to improve things, right?
Seth Weinberg says:

March 15, 2017 at 5:05 am

The way my GM and I agreed on was that the devil’s bargain would need to be significant. Since the incarceration roll abstracts out a potentially large amount of time we decided there would need to be something to justify affecting that whole block of time.

What we ended up going with, for example, was I (an Iruvian) would have to rely on the Red Sashes in Ironhook and would be indebted to them. As my character had no love for the Red Sashes managing her, ‘owing’ them and needing to rely on them was a big deal.
John Dornberger says:

March 15, 2017 at 5:11 am

Apparently I have many thoughts!

Both of those mechanics are part of the Action Roll rules, which is not what an Incarceration Roll is. It’s pretty brutal by a strict reading, unless you’ve got some special abilities or claims already set up. It’s a lot safer to frame someone or get someone else to take the fall! Or you might have to push someone to take jailbird, wait to Tier up to at least 1, and hope for the best from those 2 dice.

Let’s think though some options and consequences, though. When this is looming at your table, I would take the time to talk and think through how much time you want to focus on prison and what’s fun for your group.

Pushing yourself might fit by the fiction, coming out of prison stressed out and wrecked; you might even get a second trauma if you go in at the edge.

Devil’s Bargains are great story fodder, but you’d probably need to be harder and more narrative-complication-y since the easy ones like heat or coin or harm aren’t as appropriate.

The Incarceration roll takes place with downtime, but I don’t think it’s meant to be a downtime activity, so I don’t think getting a friend’s help or buying up the result with coin are meant to be applicable. (Personally, I like bringing friends on screen and giving coin sinks, so I might apply them. I do that for just about anything outside of scores, though, as long as it’s fictionally appropriate. I have a small group, so it helps spread the spotlight, even out the stress since there’s less help available, and fill out my cast.)

If you allow all of that, a Tier 0 crew starts with 0d, but adds 1 for the bargain, a second for pushing, and might be able to buy up the result like a downtime activity. That’s a decent dicepool with relatively little effort, time, or specialization. As you rise in tier, pile up friends or assets, and get abilities like Jailbird, that only gets safer.

In this instance, the teeth and fear of incarceration aren’t much there. That might be more fun for your table and there are lots of other places in the setting for drama. This is relatively quick: you can have one scene where someone messes with your incarcerated PC and get back to running scores. Personally, even if you don’t want to deal with the horrors of prison and institutional injustice, I think you need to put some likelihood of consequence to jail or it’s going to be boring. Wanted Level’s a big deal to drop. Wanted Level 0 is very easy-going compared to Wanted 2+. Getting more than one entanglement every score strains the purse. The incarcerated character should at least be out of commission for a while or there’s no tension to the choice to go into jail.

Speaking of that, do you want to keep up with incarcerated characters in jail or make alternative characters? If you’re following along, are you going to do the Incarceration Roll before or after their time’s served and can they effect it, maybe like a fortune roll with advantages/disadvantages? Will they have more rolls to make in jail, and the possibility of more stress/trauma? Are there going to be a whole cast of in-prison characters? If you’re answering a lot of these in the affirmative, you could scrap the abstraction of the Incarceration Roll and play out their time outright. Are you ok splitting focus and spotlight like that?

Personally, I’m not sure it makes much sense to trade 2 stress for a bonus die since the Incarceration Roll’s an abstraction of a series of actions (I would allow pushing if the player was going to play out their time in Ironhook on screen, but I’m fairly lukewarm on that). If there were a juicy Devil’s Bargain, something that counterbalanced the severity of a one-roll trauma risk, maybe I would consider that on an Abstraction Roll. I’d also let players trade on contacts and friends, which is an extension of how I generally run downtime as I mentioned above. I like the idea of a scene where the PCs have to talk a friend into voluntarily going to jail, or maybe having a second PC sacrifice their freedom to support another if they’re getting arrested unexpectedly. Also, I think I wouldn’t allow spending coin on effect level, but I would if they acquired the Smuggling claim (or acquired temporary use as an asset) just because the prison claim sheet is fun. I don’t want to spend whole sessions in Ironhook, though, so I wouldn’t have a lot of use for Smuggling besides that. Maybe I’d change it to 1 coin per claim, so it wasn’t possible to buy a hard fail to a critical (on the other hand I might like the notion that Doskvol is just that corrupt). I like the abstraction of the Incarceration Roll and would lean towards the player making an alternative character for the duration of the incarceration. I also have a small group, though. With more players, the rules as written become more attractive to me since it helps push more folks into trauma. With my small group, they’re generally close enough just from trying to help each other out.
Stefan Struck (monkeyEcho) says:

March 15, 2017 at 8:15 am

As a GM I’m a sucker for a good story. Good story often come from Devil’s Bargains, ergo I would allow it if it’s significant (like stated by Seth Weinberg). Plus, I want to hear the story first ideally proposed by a player and not by me/GM.

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