Tag: Ben Norby

This may have been touched on before, but I haven’t found anything by searching.

How do you guys handle crews that are running high on stress and don’t have many resources left to handle that stress? Trauma is the obvious answer, but it seems like it may have been inevitable in this case. I like my players to have options, even if they’re all crappy options.

The Lilies have been run ragged lately, as they’ve gotten pulled into war with the Wraiths while also attracting the notice of Setarra, who is leveraging their situation (and the Whisper’s connection to Scurlock) to compel the crew to steal various artifacts for her. This has led to some high-stress scores, and with only one down-time action while they’re at war, the crew has wound up going into the last couple scores with 5 or 6 stress each. Two of them finally trauma’d out last session, but the Whisper is still sitting on 7 stress or so. If she rolls well this downtime, they might be okay.

In hindsight though, I’m wondering if there should have been an opportunity for them to take another round of downtime actions instead of taking a score? Or would that have just been implied by burning Rep for more downtime actions? If they’re low on both Rep and Coin, it seems like managing stress while at war can be an impossible feat.

It’s really a situation of their own making, so I don’t exactly feel bad about how it’s gone. But I want to make sure I’m offering appropriate suggestions for them to manage some of that stress if they want to.

Lockport, anyone?

I could definitely see these “pea soupers” being a thing there, as the Leviathan blood refining process outputs noxious smoke that can sometimes settle over the streets.

Also love the mention of Linklighters, which were boys or men who would carry candles for people and guide them through the fog… but sometimes they’d lead you into an alley to be mugged. Seems very Blades!

https://nyti.ms/1OtGwzd

Continuing my flurry of posts as my group and I get more and more invested…

Reviewing my housekeeping notes for tonight’s game, I just remembered that we’ve been struggling with Effect.

Setting Position is pretty straightforward. We’ve found it to be pretty clear when something is Desperate, versus Risky, versus Controlled. And setting Effect is usually similarly simple — This guy is heavily armored, so you only have limited effect stabbing him. On a limited effect success, we make a clock — You manage to wound him, but he’s still up.

We’ve run into a few actions where effect feels muddier though. The big one last session involved picking a lock, beyond which was a storeroom full of valuables — the target of the score. The target was a couple tiers higher than them, and it made sense that the lock would be better quality because of the valuables behind the door. So we set the roll: Risky (due to it being a moderately trafficked hall) Tinker with Limited Effect (even taking his fine lockpicks into account, this lock was at least a tier higher than him in quality).

But then when he rolled a 6, I found myself stumped. He succeeded without complication, but what the heck does limited effect look like when picking a lock? Making a clock to pick a single lock doesn’t seem interesting, and it also doesn’t make much sense that he only “kind of” picked it. Since it was a straight success, I didn’t want to give him a consequence (takes longer, breaks his picks, etc.).

In the end we kind of hand-waved it and let the door swing open, but it felt a little anticlimactic — besides the getaway, that was their last big obstacle in the score, and we all wound up feeling like it was easier than it should have been.

What am I missing? Is this just not a situation we should have applied limited effect to? Or is there an interesting and meaningful way to describe limited effect in what should be a fairly binary action (you pick the lock, or you don’t… right?)

Hey scoundrels! Help me brainstorm a little something for tomorrow’s session?

My group is a crew of shadows (The Lilies), mostly focused on second-story work. Just about everything they’ve done so far has followed a distinct format: sneak in > evade patrols > fill as many sacks as you can carry > run away. And of course, the shit almost always hits the fan somewhere in there.

They’ve decided to do something a little different this week. They’ll be attending the Barristers Ball, an annual event honoring Duskwall’s lawyers, solicitors, magistrates, etc. It’s really just an excuse for the city’s elite to gather together and rub shoulders while showing off to the commoners that gather outside for the festivities. Almost like a red carpet event.

The Lilies have invitations, so it’ll almost certainly start as a social score. They’ll meet some notable NPCs, learn a bit more about the upper classes, etc. They don’t have a specific mark in mind yet (just that there will surely be something worth pinching among all those rich bastards), but I’m thinking their allies in the Hive might approach them. The Hive will want some blackmail planted on someone, or maybe strange listening devices planted in the meeting rooms on the upper floors. That part’s relatively easy to figure out (though of course I’m open to suggestions).

The Lilies have been rubbing the Wraiths the wrong way for a while now ( – 2 status, and on the verge of – 3), and I’m thinking this might be a good opportunity to put them into direct conflict. I figure the Wraiths are also going to hit the Ball, and the Lilies will have to either avoid them while doing their own thing, or confront/interfere with them. The Wraiths have just finished forming an alliance with the Dimmer Sisters, so they have arcane backing now — and I want to use this score to bring that new alliance to the forefront of my players’ attention. Any ideas for what the Wraiths would be after, and how the Dimmer Sisters fit into it?

I have a loose idea that the Dimmer Sisters could help them blow the power to the place, plunging the ball into darkness at some point (probably on an ominous clock at the start of the score)… It seems like that could make for a really interesting scene, as the Lilies then have to maneuver through the panicking guests to complete their score or interfere with the Wraiths. But I want to make sure to have a goal in mind for the Wraiths/Sisters.

Any ideas?

I run a game for a small crew of Shadows — just 3 PCs. They took the Daring reputation, and they’ve been hitting pretty far above their weight-class so far, and just generally getting in over their heads. They’ve been pretty successful overall. Their main exploits so far have included:

– Stealing the “Sevoy Square”, a supernatural painting that allows the Whisper to view people and locations remotely, among other things.

– Robbing a chapel of the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh, stealing 10 coin worth of tithes and killing half a dozen mercenary guards in the process.

– Burgling one of the Crows’ gambling houses while Lyssa was there conducting a meeting — when things went awry and their distraction fire got out of control, Lyssa was caught in the fire and killed, all but finishing off the already weakened Crows.

– Stealing from a pub the Wraiths have been operating out of, taking a bunch of their ill-gotten gains before the Wraiths could get them fenced. During the score, the distraction caused by their Savage and Wild cohort of thugs got out of hand, resulting in several deaths on both sides of the brawl.

The common factor here is inadvertent violence. They always start with a deception or stealth plan, and inevitably some bad rolls will lead to violence. This has led to a TON of heat buildup — averaging probably around 6 heat every score based on the table in the book. They’re now sitting on 2 wanted levels, and rapidly approaching a third…

I’m concerned that maybe I’m being too tough on them with heat, or reading those 1-3 rolls too unfavorably and leading them into violence that spikes their heat even further. Some of it’s on them for not doing anything in downtime to mitigate heat, and they haven’t been resisting consequences as much as they probably should. Even so, this feels like a lot for such a fledgling group of what are supposed to be sneaky burglars.

Have any of you run into this? How have you corrected it, or does it even need correcting?