13 thoughts on “So. Long-Term Projects.”

  1. Nope and nope.

    If there’s a danger in getting to a position where you can attempt the project, then you make action rolls to get there. But the project rolls are safe.

  3. So. For instance.

    If you need a sawbones to patch up your bullet-riddled Slide, and the Bluecoats are patrolling the streets, you need to do some action rolls to get the doctor to get safely to the hideout and patch him up?

    We had a few rolls in regards to and it just fell a bit flat when it was solely a LTP-roll that gave a Success, even on a 1.

  4. Huh. I would have thought a personal project might be subject to the same pressures as other downtime clocks; like, they might lose a segment to defensive action or passage of time. I would not have guessed they were safe, so that’s good to know.

  5. Well, it depends on the fiction, like everything else. If they’re not safe, then they’re not safe, and you use an action roll as normal. If they’re safe, then you use the roll as indicated in the downtime section, which is essentially a fortune roll.

    Downtime actions take a long time by default, which is why they’re presented differently. You can of course work on a project any time you want, but outside of downtime, it’s almost certainly an action roll, due to the pressures that Andrew mentions. During a long stretch of downtime, not so much.

    Don’t think mechanistically. Use the mechanic indicated by the fiction.

  6. (I recognize that the QS doesn’t go out of its way to teach fiction-first play, so those coming to it without prior experience may not immediately jump to that conclusion. That’s a problem for the book to solve.)

  7. It makes sense.

    My biggest gripe however must be Recovery and the lack of danger with it, as even with a 1 as someone digs out the bullet with a blade, that is still a progression without any form of complication?

    To get shot in Duskwall seems…okay as long as you don’t take Deadly Harm?

    This session, my players just threw extra downtime actions at the issue until it vanished, but I suppose that without fictional constraints, that is perfectly viable?

    —-

    New Question:

    The staple of this genre is the bleeding and dying guy. 

    A important character dying when they return to the hideout, the characters rushing into the streets to gather the supplies and medical knowledge to save him.

    How would you do that?

    Is festering wounds just not something that should be a part of the game?

    Should it be a way to desperately counter a case of Deadly Harm?

  10. Søren Hjorth Yeah, again, that’s a case of “fiction-first” stepping in. You can’t choose Recovery unless you have the means to recover. If you have a level 3 “gut-shot” wound, and you want to recover during downtime, okay… but how do you do that?

    You dig around in their guts with your blade to pry the bullet out? Okay. That’s an action roll to see if you do more harm or if you give them a chance to recover. You do? Cool, they can choose the Recovery downtime action.

    Same goes for Vice, for example. If your vice purveyor gets killed or something, you can’t just “choose vice” and heal your stress. You need the means in the fiction, first.

    If it’s not during downtime, but instead is a fatal wound that you just took as you fled the scene of the crime, then now what? You’re gonna die unless someone can do something about it. (This is Tim Roth in the back seat in Reservoir Dogs. That car ride is not downtime. 🙂

  12. I just revised Recovery to say this:

    “Remove all level 1 harm. You may also begin to heal your level 2 and/or level 3 harm, if you have access to proper treatment. Untrained or risky treatments may call for action rolls. Successful treatment creates a long term project clock to heal that harm. Unsuccessful treatments may make matters worse.”

    I’ve also written up the gut-shot example in the Downtime section, to illustrate the general point about fiction-first applying to all downtime actions.

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