Just wondering: could you use a flashback to do a downtime action (paying REP or COIN?). Would you allow it?
Just wondering: could you use a flashback to do a downtime action (paying REP or COIN?). Would you allow it?
Just wondering: could you use a flashback to do a downtime action (paying REP or COIN?). Would you allow it?
Page 132: “If a flashback involves a downtime activity, pay 1 coin or 1 rep for it, instead of stress.” (So: yes, and yes.)
Though can I recover stress as a down-time activity in a score?
By a strict reading of the rules, yes. I’ve never had a player ask to do it, though.
Logically, if you start the score at 0 stress, immediately take 7 stress [for example], and want to flash back to downtime to clear that stress, you should–logically–be flashing back to a point in time where you had 0 stress (and should immediately overindulge for the effort). And logistically, keeping track of what stress level everyone starts the score at is obnoxious. Though I’m not sure if the stress mechanic is meant to interact with the flashback mechanic in this way; the game never mentions it, so it’s a grey area, and you could choose to allow it to work a different way.
But gameplay-wise, it doesn’t seem fun. Half the point of stress is managing a finite resource, and if you can just recover it at will, it takes a lot of weight out of the decisions players make. Also, I suspect that letting players clear stress mid-score will trivialize difficult scores (so long as players can start the score with coin or rep on hand, which isn’t difficult to do), so it’s essentially easy-mode.
This precise question has come up a couple times in the group already, so if you search for it, you should be able to find some discussions, to see what other people think, maybe find someone with a different opinion than mine.
Kun X. C
Hmm, my ruling would be you can only recover the stress you had at the beginning of the score.
So if you start the score with two stress, accumulate another four stress during the score (for a total of 6 stress) then the max number of stress you could recover with a flashback would be two.
for somethign like that I might offer it as a devil’s bargain (this is me shooting from the hip i understand) Where it be like okay you can go back to indulge vice but something happens while you’re drinking your whiskey or playing craps. You run into a rival or an unwanted truth is revealed. Yeah maybe that’s too hard ball but stress is THE meter of tension in the game and recovery there shouldn’t come cheaply.
It’s technically possible, but who wants to keep track of how much stress they had in the past? It’s weird and I’d avoid it unless it’s a simple case that’s easy to adjudicate. Don’t make things hard on yourself.