A DIMMER AGENT
“When the Sisters have accepted you into their fold, they are yours and you are theirs. Whenever a supernatural threat arises during a score, flashbacks to handle that threat involving the Dimmer Sisters cost 0 stress. Whatever stress it would normally cost instead becomes ticks on an 8-segment clock. When the clock fills, the next time you see the Sisters, no one else will ever see you again afterwards.”
A player in my group is very obviously interested in the Dimmer Sisters, and while it isn’t likely to take this route, it inspired me to write a little “special permission” involving them. Rune’s fascination from the Last Word may have also contributed.
EDIT: See Andrew Shields’ suggestion below for getting the most out of this.
This tickles the devil’s glee inside my skull. Quite the bargain this is, quite the bargain.
…oh DEAR.
Oh man, that’s gorgeous!
I like it! One way to keep it from guaranteeing a character goes out of play after a few heists is to add a second entanglement roll with things the Dimmer Sisters want. If you go after their peculiar requests, that can take segments off the clock.
Things like bringing them the live pet of a Councilwoman, or painting a sleeping child with runes–and the child belongs to a powerful rival. Harvesting a certain herb at a precise time in a haunted place.
These missions could be fun straight-up, but it’s also a great format to play around. They have to deliver a paper to a nondescript address; that’s handled in a paragraph. But the actual heist is the lightning-fast assault that hits them later that night–what the hell was on that note?!
Andrew Shields But would the clock still work the same way for Dimmer Sister induced missions or not? Actually, what if completing the Sister engagement mission gives you back the amount of segments you spent to do the mission plus 1-3 ticks?
Yeah, this idea is very cool, but I definitely prefer Andrew Shields version of the consequences. In the current version, your player essentially gets 7 stress worth of free supernatural protection flashbacks, but then is massively disincentivised from finishing the loop, since it means their character is gone for good. With the special entanglements, I’m much more likely to weigh up the pros and cons of completing that clock.
If you wanted to keep the severe consequences, you could have an entanglement similar to Lost from the Overindulgence list except the character doesn’t come back after a while, maybe needing a long term project clock to be filled by the team to locate them and a score to get them back.
You could also have a set of linked clocks of decreasing sizes (e.g. 8,8,6,6,4,4,2 or 10,8,6,4) if you wanted to show that the more they relied on the sisters, the more the sisters required in return.
The one who made a deal with the Dimmer Sisters isn’t the only one who can have flashbacks–but they are the one you’d likely rely on for EXPENSIVE flashbacks. That introduces an incentive to have 3 stress flashbacks (because they’re free) and then work them off (doing really weird missions.)
That combination could put a slant in the game towards oddness, and that’s going to be a lot of fun for groups that are into that sort of thing.
“I just so happen to have an attuned locket from the Rochalia dynasty.”
“Seriously. You just have it.”
“A Dimmer sister gave it to me.” ::checks off segment::
I had one player who was delighted by the Dimmer Sisters and wanted to do nice things for them and get into their good graces (to the point of capturing an Iruvian spirifer and delivering him to the Sisters–in a cake.)
We got a little deeper into how the Dimmer Sisters fit in my version of Doskvol, and it was delightfully weird.
There used to be three of them…
The Dimmer Sisters are also some my my most popular NPCs. I could definitely see using this with Andrew’s changes.
I considered adding text for what Andrew Shields has said, but I was thinking it might be a bit too wordy and “hand-holdy” to explicitly state that this should be a tug-of-war clock that the player/character could do things to clear.
That said, it was in my mind from the beginning, and anyone who uses this as inspiration should definitely let players clear ticks, whether that be through entanglements, scores, downtime actions, or free play!
I am definitely more the wordy and hand-holdy type. I’ve had too many disgruntled players who weren’t on the same page, and needed more clarification up front. It’s a style thing.