I’m having trouble designing encounters/scores for my players. They seem to always fail. is this like old school D&D?, in that the first few levels are perilous and then it gets easier. Or are my PC’s just bad at rolling dice?
I’m having trouble designing encounters/scores for my players.
I’m having trouble designing encounters/scores for my players.
Also would this go in Game questions or play reports?
Can these scores be approached and accomplished from a variety of angles/approaches?
What do you consider the failure state on a score?
It might help if you gave a cliff notes version of a score you can remember being especially problematic.
The math will generally make all successes costly or complicated, by design, but many actions should still be able to succeed even if only with a 4-5 result, especially if they are using teamwork (Assist, and Lead an Action).
In general terms, what are the skill levels of your players? (Do they know how to use push mechanics, resistances, assistances, group actions?) Do they pick sensible targets within a tier level of their own?
If you’re looking for ways to make it impromptu easier, you can call for Gather Information fortune rolls and then give them better positions or more effect when they act on those answers. You can also offer devils bargains that aren’t as overtly negative. Instead of +1 heat, or wounding someone, consider fictional bargains like, someone you care about becomes angry or jealous, or an ally takes some blame in aftermath.
Also, as GM you have a lot of control over how screwed the characters are by failure or partial success. Consider this from page 22:
“On a 1-3, it’s up to the GM to decide if the PC’s action has any effect or not, or if it even happens at all. Usually, the action just fails completely, but in some circumstances, it might make sense or be more interesting for the action to have some effect even on a 1-3 result.”
If you feel like the player characters are failing at everything, you might consider soft-balling partial successes and even failures – let them fail forwards, make the consequences long-term (heat and complications) instead of immediate pain (harm and More Enemies Now). Use fewer clocks so that the story can move forwards faster instead of getting hung up on slow-ticking a clock for every little obstacle.
Basically:
– Let the narrative progress on a partial success and even on a fail too; let them fail forwards. I tend to remember this as: the PCs will always move forwards, but failed rolls mean more explosions, bullet-wounds and higher stakes along the way.
– Consider all your options for consequences, and what’s going to mire the action down vs. keeping things moving. You don’t want every failure to feel like they’ve started sinking into mud.
I reviewed the session and I think that the problem might be that they are attacking a gang 2 tier above them. They also gained a lot of stress early by pushing themselves instead of saving to resist harm.
And thanks Tim and John. I hadn’t considered using consequences other than “in your assault on the swordsmen you get stabbed”
Emerald Serpent
The starting situation, War in Crow’s Foot, is a Tier 0 gang meddling in a war of Tier 2 factions, so punching up one or two tiers is expected and manageable (using the games mechanics to their advantage).
If they are blowing all their stress early remind them about devils bargains (or just that they might want to resist consequences later on and need stress to do so)
In addition to the above, it can also take new players time to understand how powerful equipment and armor can be in gaining extra progress and mitigation of consequences.
One of the big things I had issues with when I was first running was finding different consequences other than harm. Let things go from Risky to Desperate, use those fictional consequences (they embarrass allies, they cause collateral damage, they make enemies and influence faction status, etc.), and lower effect levels.
I also like to remind the players about resisting some things and thinking about what is fun rather than what will succeed. They will succeed often enough on their own, the real fun comes from the fallout of success.
Blades has a few ways for the GM to tune difficulty. The main one is deciding the repercussions of 4/5 (and 1-3 rolls). Roughly in order from harshest to least harsh:
1. Harm
2. Other consequence or complication
3. Reduced effect
4. Clock to Harm
5. Clock to other consequence or complication
I rate Harm as harsher than other consequences because it mechanically impacts players’ future die rolls. Other consequences and complications are “softer” because they’re handled in the fiction, but there’s no wiggle room with Harm. Harm also takes a while to recover from, since it (usually) takes at least two downtime actions to stage down. If every roll below 6 does Harm, the game can get pretty deadly for starting characters.
Reduced effect is tricky because if you always choose it, players are going to feel ineffective. Some players will also respond by trying again, which is boring for the fiction.
Clocks are interesting because at first nothing happens, but when the clock fills it all happens at once. If the clock never fills, it can feel anticlimactic.