Scum & Villainy “playtest” notes
(Not an “official” playtest, but I thought I’d post some notes here in case they’re useful.)
Last night was the first session of our three-week S&V tryout. I ended up with six players, which is more than ideal, but things went well. All the players seemed to enjoy it, and everyone’s keen to continue play next week. We mostly stayed with bog-standard BitD rules, but a couple of observations:
* Players didn’t use any Gambits. They were also wary of spending Stress and gaining extra Heat, and it was the first time playing Blades for all but one person. The reluctance to use Gambits could just be general reticence to spend in-game currency.
* No-one played a Xeno. But that could be me not explaining it well.
* I presume no PC starts with Cred, beyond what may be in some Abilities and the communal 2 Cred in the ship.
* The Stardancer starting situation is rather different in use from the war in Crow’s Foot start, in that Crow’s Foot nudges the group into a tighter situation. With the three significant factions already lined up in Crow’s Foot, the GM can suggest these factions when it comes to crew creation. The suggested jobs also fit into the same situation. The S&V start doesn’t have the same “tightness”, either in terms of suggested Factions or how the sample jobs fit into the situation.
This isn’t a criticism, but an observation.
INteresting… I’m considering trying to get my Tuesday night group to try it out. We generally alternate Blades in the Dark and Edge of Empire so it might be a best of both worlds kinda deal!
Remind them Gambits are “use or lose” because they reset.
Xeno… maybe they only want humans in the game.
PCs start with 0 Cred, the ship starts with up to 2 Cred.
In the YouTube link below, the crew didn’t get paid for their first job, then couldn’t pay upkeep on the ship, or have any Creds to help them get info on their next job.
https://youtu.be/oDcf2t91HU4
Remind them Gambits are “use or lose” because they reset.
Xeno… maybe they only want humans in the game.
PCs start with 0 Cred, the ship starts with up to 2 Cred.
In the YouTube link below, the crew didn’t get paid for their first job, then couldn’t pay upkeep on the ship, or have any Creds to help them get info on their next job.
https://youtu.be/oDcf2t91HU4
Toimu Yes, I’m not worried about the players not using the currency (Gambits, Stress, Heat) in the first session, as they’re already beginning to see that they all come and go very quickly.
They’ve already acquired 4 Debt from overindulging of Vice, so I already expect the Upkeep to be taking some hits!
and another playtest comment: In downtime, we rolled the “cooperation” entanglement. As the crew had no faction relationships at +2 or +3, they skipped it. The players were relieved at this, rather than being disappointed that there wasn’t an opportunity to bring more into the game.
Different player expectations.
We had some preset factions previously (Malklaith, Nightspeakers and the Cult) but we found that most games wanted the factions their crew was interested in to be involved so we changed it up to tell the GM to set it up using the factions on deck.
If you don’t know what else to do, those work out pretty well as starting factions for that book.
The problem with the “war in crows foot” is that you will play in crows foot, with these 3 factions dealing with the PCs. Which is not super flexible (the PCs with a ship travel a bit more than such a scenario) and it can get a bit old if you’ve re-run the scenario a number of times (let me tell you about how many playtests and one-shots I’ve done). This way it’s more table customized and the PCs have a bit of an easier time tapping crew contacts and becoming enmeshed. At least that’s what we’ve seen with the APs and playtests.
Thanks for the writeup! Six players wow ^_^ Hope you guys keep having fun.