This past Saturday, I hosted and ran the third session of the game I’ve recapped previously (1st session: https://plus.google.com/109896206941346348750/posts/11JSxdSVw26; 2nd session: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109896206941346348750/posts/d2CCb1YQVh9). Our notes and reactions on this session below:
– We really need more numerous and more varied Entanglement results. Twice this past session, they rolled “Demonic Notice” for an Entanglement. The first time, I re-skinned it as a vampire, as they had a vampire contact who had reason to pester them. The third time, I substituted my own Entanglement. Considering they’d already rolled Demonic Notice last session, this feels too frequent. (Unless Demons are supposed to be this ubiquitous in the setting?)
– Having progress clocks as a universal metric opens up a lot of possibilities. Example: there was an NPC project clock for the Red Sashes to find the crew’s secret hideout that was 6/8 full. The crew staged a ghost-laden terror raid to break the Sashes’ morale. I created clocks for the Sashes’ security and other complications, but just borrowed the existing 6/8 NPC project clock as the “centerpiece” of the job. I explained that the crew’s efforts would erase wedges in this clock, rather than creating a new “Red Sashes’ Morale Broken” clock. If they got the NPC project clock to 0, the Red Sashes would give up.
– I need to get better at encouraging PCs to resist consequences. It’s easy for a player to understand rolling against stress to resist harm (“the ghost leers in your face; roll Resolve or take standard harm”). It’s harder to narrate how a player can roll against stress to resist other consequences, like a countdown clock being filled (“the rival crew gets a step closer to the MacGuffin, unless you roll … um …”). I found a few ways to work it in last session, but I’m still flexing it.
– A properly built Cutter just can’t be threatened in combat, can they? Brutal grants potency on all attacks; Not To Be Trifled With lets them ignore scale; and if they’re toting a fine heavy weapon armor’s not an issue.
– Will the final rules have more articulation on what a devil’s bargain constitutes? This session, I realized that my prior devil’s bargains had been a little soft: hinting at future trouble, rather than establishing immediate, concrete trouble.
– We all like the blend of distinct moves and creative narration. The PCs frequently get in trouble and rarely have lasting success, but since every danger or devil’s bargain enmeshes them further in the world, they don’t mind. I described the rules structure as rigidly defined channels leading to wide-open rooms, and they seemed to agree on that take.
As for the session itself:
As alluded to above, the Blackstone Outfit dissuaded the Red Sashes from hunting them by summoning the ghost of their murdered fencing master and siccing him on the school. The resulting terror, aided by the Cutter laying into the fleeing students, broke the gang’s morale.
To get the Inspectors off their tail, the Blackstone Outfit invented a larger, fictitious threat that would occupy their time: a nativist gang called the “Green Masks” who would terrorize a Duskwall Council gala hosting the Iruvian delegation. The plan was to smash the guards, graffito the gala ballroom, and steal the ceremonial neckpieces that every highborn Iruvian wears. Unfortunately, a mysterious rival crew showed up to steal the neckpieces as well! The “Green Masks” caused sufficient chaos to merit every Inspector being reassigned to track them down, taking the pressure off the Blackstone Outfit for the moment.
During downtime, the Whisper’s patron, Lord Skurlock the vampire, asked him to supply a source of fresh corpses. The Whisper conned his way into a hospital and spirited off some bodies before the Crematorium could get their hands on them. Meanwhile, the Cutter learned that the Red Sashes, unwilling to confront the Blackstone Outfit directly, had tattled to their mutual masters, the Crows …
When things recur on random charts, I take that as a chance to weave together something specific about a campaign. Like, if demonic entanglements keep coming up, maybe there’s one demon that just won’t leave them alone. Or two, who are competing. Why? Well, let’s take a look into that!
I like the idea of using a raid to reduce segments in a foe’s clock. =)
I only let my players resist conditions, not resist any poor result on the dice. So, if a guard spots them, they can’t resist that, or if a segment is added to a foe’s clock, they can’t resist that.
I don’t have trouble threatening cutters. For one, just, you know, shoot at them. “You get shot for lethal damage, would you like to resist to reduce the damage to medium harm?” “No, I’ll take it on my armor.” They can do that usually twice before they are in real danger. I decide how bad the shot is based on the fiction, whether they’re shot dead where they stand (resist to reduce the shot to injury) or they are shot for harm they can dodge altogether. (Volleys of shot, tough guy foes, and issues of range all come into play.)
Plus, in a fight involving a clock, every round it goes on and the clock is not filled, I inflict a condition of getting all stabbed up, which of the 3 levels depends on how dangerous their foes are. It generally takes 2-3 rounds to fill some clocks for a big fight, so there’s risk there.
There are other stakes, too, besides injury. Can you take them out fast enough that they don’t raise the alarm or turn this into a footchase? Can you hurl yourself in front of an attack that would kill a friend? Can you keep your balance while fighting in the rafters of the burned out building? Those are some ideas.
Devil’s bargains are a great way to shape the tone, mood, and style of the campaign. Their harshness, immediacy, and subject matter reveals the world and the genre in useful ways. I expect as a matter of course their general tone and scope will change from table to table, and that’s not all bad.
Great write-up!
Nice review!
I agree on wanting more varied entanglements, or giving the existing ones some clear branching options for flavor.
Universal use of clocks is tremendous and one of the reasons the game feels so easy to GM for me. I once used a clock that represented how many limbs a hostage still had while the PCs tried to find and rescue him.
A properly built cutter, especially one with heavy armor and battleborn can take a hefty beating for sure, but they aren’t impervious. They get potency and scale and quality, sure, but a big prominent gang or supernatural means could probably field even more potency, scale, and quality to neutralize and then bring those factors into disadvantage for the cutter. He’ll fare a heck of a lot better than any other PC, but as I understand it, you can always be overpowered.
My players have often come up with the best devil’s bargains actually. We think of them as “when you roll bad things might happen, but when you take a devil’s bargain something else bad happens no matter how the roll goes.”
Andrew Shields I may be overstating my case slightly. I’ve certainly found ways to threaten the Cutter even within combat. In the last heist, for instance, he wanted to soften up the Iruvian delegation without necessarily murdering them. I let him take light harm as a devil’s bargain – the Cutter had to take a few on the chin as he pulled his punches.
I could be more detailed in narrating the fiction and forcing them to think creatively to bring their talents to bear. There’s a tendency for things to happen in amorphous “rooms”, but a little clever narration on my part could stifle the Cutter. E.g., “guards file into the catwalk that rings the room, unshouldering their rifles. What do you do?”
FYI, based on a discussion with John Harper a while ago, you can resist consequences. Period. Resistance isn’t a “soak roll” but more of a “How hard do I have to push myself to do this properly” roll.
Mike Pureka : good to know. How have you been phrasing that for more abstract, or less immediate, consequences?
Can you give me an example? I’m not sure what you’re specifically asking for.
But the gist is that this is not how the game is supposed to work:
Make a roll
Get a negative result
Character performs poorly in the fiction
The character takes consequences in the fiction
Make a resistance roll
Spend Stress
The character mitigates the consequences in the fiction.
This is how the game is supposed to work:
Make a roll
Get a negative result
Determine potential consequences
Make a resistance roll
Spend Stress
The character performs well in the fiction
There are no consequences because the character performed well. (Though probably ‘just barely well enough’)
Basically, what you are resisting with the resistance roll is less the “consequences” and more “screwing up” – for example, on a Prowl roll, the character isn’t somehow preventing the alarm from being sounded as a result of his being detected, he is crushing himself into a tiny corner, making a heroic, silent leap to grab the roof and pull himself up out of sight, or otherwise just barely avoiding being detected by the narrowest of stressful margins.
That said, John Harper also indicated that if there’s no way a character could resist a situation in this way, then they don’t get to roll. But the distinction is that when the do get to roll, it’s more like a retroactive “push yourself” than some sort of “taking damage”. Stress is not hitpoints, remember. 🙂
The way you phrased it makes more sense (“this is how the game is supposed to work”). I need to get better at negotiating outcomes with my players, rather than declaring them.
That said, if the action summary tables for Dominant / Daring / Desperate were phrased just a bit differently – “You do it, but there may be a consequence [x, y, or z] unless you risk stress to resist it” – I might have read it that way sooner.
Yeah, I’m not sure how clear it is from the rules either. =/
The other twist in this conversation is that consequences that aren’t harm are usually still interesting and good for advancing the story, but without obvious mechanical impact. A good story needs conflict, so maybe while players could resist being seen or captured or spurning a lover or whatever, I’ve found they often don’t want to. The twist/consequence is more enjoyable than taking stress (which limits future freedom of action).
Adam Minnie
Well, the other reason they won’t want to is, honestly, resistance rolls are brutal. You’ve only got 8 stress, and a resistance roll, on average, consumes 3 of that. You really need to pick your battles there.
As the gang in the hangout game are often fond of saying:
‘Ahhh, can I just say NOPE to that?!’
So bumping this up, because reading the rules on page 27 of the Version 5 Quickstart, my earlier post about how resistance is, actually, a sort of “retroactive push yourself” doesn’t seem to be correct. The example has a character being forced off the roof as a consequence of a duel – and says that the player can roll to resist the harm from the fall, but not the consequence of being forced off the roof.
This seems contradictory to both what I asserted above (which could easily just be me being wrong), but also to the rules for Resistance on page 11.
Actually, the example on page 27 seems a little awkward to me in general. The consequence is being forced off the roof… but it seems like even on a failed resistance roll, there should be another roll to catch yourself or tumble to avoid harm? Falling AND taking damage seems like double jeopardy. Though I guess that’s also a legit reading of page 11.
I guess this is flexible. But it makes it harder to explain what resistance really represents.
Uh. And John Harper