So many Gambits we might as well have been a 90s X-Men comic
In our fortnightly Star Wars Scum & Villainy game the crew of the Porg Chop Express explored sith ruins on Korriban/Moraband.
The Pilot may have been MVP for simply existing. He took “Never Tell Me The Odds” from the Scoundrel playbook and if roll20 keeps giving you sixes, you end up with, well, more Gambits than an X-Men comic.
S&V/Blades in general has a really neat way to mechanize a fall to dark powers too. Dark Side, or demonic possession in vanilla Blades, or what have you. Figure out with the player what they don’t want to happen and set a clock for it. Offer devil’s bargains on everything – here’s this power (+1d) in exchange for these ticks on this clock o’ badness. Then let them resist the ticks, which can cost stress, which leads to traumas, which are all mostly things you see in people consumed by the Dark Side. It works really naturally.
Anyhoo, the Muscle’s balancing act between addiction to wookiee hallucinogens and the pull of the dark side finally tipped in favor of the dark side last night. She went off by herself and became bound up with a sith force ghost. The Mystic will perhaps have to choose whether to stop her or try to save her. We’re headed to some potential intra-party stuff and we’ll need to talk about how inward we want the game to turn going forward.
I love that Dark Side mechanism! What’s the consequence for filling the clock, though? Is it fictional only?
I think it should be discussed when you make the clock. The player should not want that clock to be filled no matter what it does specifically, otherwise there isn’t an incentive to resist the ticks. It’ll be different for each player and character, and I’m not sure yet if you need a clock the player doesn’t want filled or if the character won’t like it filled more.
Nice idea, except for that there is no such thing as Sith-Forceghosts nerd-cough, forceghosts are something Jedi only, sith have to use holochrons or something similiar to achieve “eternal” life and forceghost-like feats.
“Eternal life…”
“The ultimate goal of the Sith, yet they can never achieve it; it comes only through the release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed. Love is the answer to the darkness.”
―Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn
But it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a holochron or similiar at play, when it happened, sith’s are tricky bastards especialy old-ones.
When you run your Star Wars game, you can make it a holocron. There’s no need for “well-actually”-ing anything.
Hey Adam! How are you handling Heat & Wanted levels in your game? I’m thinking about using S&V for our upcoming Star Wars game but I don’t want to map the whole galaxy out like the Procyon Sector in the rulebook (because it would be MASSIVE!). But without the constraints of a small system, how do you make Heat meaningful?
Jack Harrison You could tie Heat to political groups. So, have the factions organized into groups, then assign Heat to them rather than a system. Star Wars has always been about the vast reach of the Empire, so you could make it large in scope (Empire), medium (Moff Doe’s sector), or local (the Empire on Lothal). The same for criminal groups, or Sith, or Rebellion, etc.
Maybe that scope changes as the crew’s quality/rep increases.
I’m really playing heat/wanted lightly in this game. The players cause enough ruckus on their own. 🙂
I’m not doing it by system, though, for precisely the reasons you say Jack Harrison . Really, wanted levels are all just “The Empire”. THEY care about scoundrels breaking their laws. Everyone else is faction status and entanglements.
I figure a wanted level of any kind means you have a bounty. In fact, it might be fun to map wanted level to the bounty’s worth in creds somehow. 🙂
Thanks Adam Schwaninger! Bounty seems like a cool idea too.