Failed Scores
Does anyone have any experience with Scores that failed? I’m interested in stories about how the group handled a Score that went south and which the PCs simply abandoned without achieving the Score’s stated Goal.
How did the group decide to abandon the Score? How were Downtime procedures handled? Was there any Downtime at all?
We (a tier zero bravos crew) tried to rush a tier 3 hollow faction claim to get barracks. We didn’t roll any 6s and just started getting destroyed with trauma and harm during the fight and had to bail out. We made some rolls to escape and finally got the 6 we needed to get out alive. No coin no rep. Did heat like normal. Rolled entanglement. Did downtime actions like normal, just with less resources available due to a lack of coin and substantially more harm and injury.
Early in my BitD game, the crew tried a run at a higher Tier target. I didn’t think it was that tough, but things were just tough enough that they kept pushing themselves, and ran out of Stress before they got to the macguffin. They gave up and went home. Downtime was normal, (they still had the experience, if you will) but without Coin for them to get extra actions.
This was a complete disaster of a score:
plus.google.com – Nathan Roberts – Google+
That’s quite a Fiasco, Nathan Roberts. I hadn’t considered the fact that Ghost playbooks are one way to move forward after a true disaster like that. 🙂
My Hound character Rose was leader of the smuggling crew Onyx Shades who’ve been scoring together on a fortnightly basis since Jan/Feb. From the outset our mission statement said: “anything goes except human trafficking!”
The defining score for our crew was while still tier 0, when our brazen Whisper decided to sidle up to Lord Scurlock in an attempt to curry favour and gain some good coin. Needless to say the roll went terrible and Scurlock asked us to retrieve his human vassals from local gaol where they’d been banged up for creating a ruckus. Rose took some convincing but was informed they were empty vessels and shouldn’t really be considered human, in any event they’d come along willingly…
All was going swimmingly for us as the Spider spent most of the mission quietly finess-ing the gaol cell lock (clock). Rose was getting increasingly spooked as the empty vessels turned out to be young teens who very clearly didn’t want rescuing much less returning anywhere back near resident vamp Scurlock.
It all went south when the Whisper, in an attempt to subdue the panicked kids and show them who was boss, summoned the tortured spirit of an ex-prisoner. Said spirit turned out to be particularly malevolent and didn’t like being summoned, going berserk and scaring everyone shitless. As soon as the lock was sprung the largest kid attacked the Spider while Rose got a piss pot around the head for her troubles, courtesy of a second terrified kid.
Speaking of piss, this tipped her over the edge from quietly pissed (that the Whisper had pulled another of his sprit stunts, in addition to the fact that the kids were most definitely not willing vessels) to positively seething. She slammed the cell door shut, resetting the lock, with all but one of the kids on the wrong side.
With kids screaming blue hell and Blue Coats now on full alert, Whisper and Spider seen their much desired chance for loot slipping away over some selfish whim. They reacted by slipping away themselves, deliberately leaving Rose in the gaol struggling with the biggest teen outside the cell while they made a bolt for the side exit, which they made sure was firmly shut and bolted behind them. This meant Rose had to work out a new escape plan, working her way up to the main level and out through barracks via a couple of very lucky dice rolls.
Suffice to say back at the lair tensions boiled over: the Whisper parted ways refusing to work with Rose, leaving the Spider to usurp her leadership. Our Slide who’d only missed that one session came back to a very changed landscape for the next.
In terms of character relationships, Rose and the Spider haven’t really recovered since. We players, however, consistently run the most dysfunctional team of miscreants you’re ever likely to meet: have now successfully imprisoned, killed, maimed or sold out at least one character in every single system played from Mouse Guard to Dogs in the Vineyard to the Sprawl to Blades…
It just so happens it’s always my character on the receiving end!
What’s interesting so far (it’s a small sample size!) is that everyone has progressed to Downtime after a failed Score. There’s no provision for a type of failed Score that doesn’t allow Downtime to immediately follow, e.g. a crew of Shadows gets captured by a nobleman’s house guard.
If that happen in one of my games i’d probably ask their plan to escape. Do they bum rush the jailer or try to negotiate. then engagement roll and keep playing until you get to downtime.
I agree with the first part of Aaron Berger​’s where I’d just ask the players what they want to do, but I probably wouldn’t do a separate engagement roll. If they’re arrested/captured then fictionally their position should be fairly apparent. Engagement rolls are mostly just to offset the PC prep advantages, here the pcs don’t have as many if any so they’re probably just forced to start risky or desperate depending on how serious their captors and situation are.
Yeah i use it more like a fortune roll to cut to the action and keep planning crisp. (don’t want them starting a bullet list for negotiations) Also maybe they go with assault and they get a 3 on the roll. That’s when they find out the nobles are conducting a ritual on the estate and that its gone horribly wrong as a spirit well forms.
So a roll as an excuse to cut into the action hard and fast.
Rules wise, see page 133.
But yeah, if you actually fail and get caught (as opposed to bailing out) then no downtime for you! You gotta deal with the situation as it stands.
Blades is not a game about the steady, continuous development of the PCs. They can get smashed and lose everything. That’s on the line.
Silver Samurai I find it interesting that you are already calling Song the Spider, technically she’s still a Lurk (though she’s leaning towards Spider these days). Anyway, I was going to write down the same story, perhaps from a slightly different perspective :).
Silver Samurai I don’t know if I should find that awesome or disturbing!