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Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

How do alchemist's deal with Shreya given their work is inherently corruptive?

I don't know, how do alchemists deal with Shreya given that their work is inherently corruptive?

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Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
I always thought it wasn't until it went from "corruption" to "blight" that Shreya would notice.

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
So it's constantly mentioned in the book that high threat enemies should work as clocks, but it's never recommended what to set the clock to. I get that the answer might involve how many players are at the table, but since I haven't run the game yet I don't really have a good number to base it on. Do you guys have any recommendations on how high to set clocks for higher threat enemies?

Cassa
Jan 29, 2009
Alright so looking at doing a shortish Copperhead County campaign. Anything i should keep in mind?

Nea
Feb 28, 2014

Funny Little Guy Aficionado.

DarkAvenger211 posted:

So it's constantly mentioned in the book that high threat enemies should work as clocks, but it's never recommended what to set the clock to. I get that the answer might involve how many players are at the table, but since I haven't run the game yet I don't really have a good number to base it on. Do you guys have any recommendations on how high to set clocks for higher threat enemies?

It really is situational, just like any clock. In blades in the dark, clock length (that players are taking action to fill rather than other clocks) adjusts two dials, basically.

1 is how hard you want something to be to deal with, longer clocks requiring on average more resources.

But more importantly, number two: how much screen time do you want this to be? Do you want this person to be dealt with quickly and easily? No clock. Do you want a short duel, conversation, ECT that in normal circumstances might be thirty seconds or a minute in a movie? Four. A six step clock is going to be a decent portion of the scene and get a lot of game focus, so it's a good default for someone who's a big deal. Conversely, an eight step clock is going to keep them on the screen for, at average, assuming no failures, four rolls, which is actually QUITE a lot, use these for antagonists who are the primary challenge and the focus of things players are dealing with for an extended period.

The thing with clocks is there's not much universal advice because blades can be run a billion different ways, so I don't have much beyond this.

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
That's perfect information for setting clock sizes, thank you!

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to run Chosen during a mission? Presumably if they're coming along on a mission then the opposition will need to be just as strong for it to be interesting. The book recommends that the squad is there usually to complete the mission while the Chosen may just be there as a distraction.

Do I roll for Chosen actions using their threat level as a dice pool? It seems odd only because as the GM in this system it's usually only the players making rolls.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
In general, the Chosen is not a playable character - it's a force of nature far outside of the PCs' comprehension that just happens to walk around in a human skin. You should treat it as such, because otherwise you're taking away from the game's focus on the fragile humanity of the PCs in the face of this divine war they happen to be stuck in. In general, the Chosen won't be fighting anything unless there's truly, absolutely no alternative, because if it goes down, the Legion and the entire world are poo poo out of luck.

The book explicitly lists Chosen getting into a fight with an uncertain outcome as an example for fortune rolls using their threat level as the dice pool, on pp.44-45. I would roll it yourself for the reason mentioned above, but if you really don't want to, you could always have the Marshal do it.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Mar 22, 2020

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
It does mean that if you end up with a threat 5 Chosen they are effectively going to be able to go toe to toe with any of the broken and, hopefully if you help out, send their essence right back to the gods.

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
Ah right. I only ask because some special missions mention that the chosen will come with the squad.

I guess the idea would be to roll a fortune roll for each side, and whoever gets the better outcome will work towards each other's clock then.

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
Something else I'm wondering about : Soldiers aren't specialists right? So they don't get 2xp for secondary missions? Just making sure, so that would mean soldiers would need to be played in main missions in order to become specialists

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013


"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)

DarkAvenger211 posted:

Something else I'm wondering about : Soldiers aren't specialists right? So they don't get 2xp for secondary missions? Just making sure, so that would mean soldiers would need to be played in main missions in order to become specialists

Correct, but a full squad of soldiers and specialists gives a +1 to the engagement roll, and given that one roll decides the entire fate of the secondary mission it's often a good idea not to bring them on the primary mission. It's a nice dilemma.

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
Now that I'm looking through some of the enemy descriptions, which enemies can apply corruption? Can they all? None of them explicitly say that they can cause corruption, but plenty of examples mention gut sacks and spitters that can. I've noticed that there's an upgrade for Blighter that just applies a +1 corruption to everything, so it suggests that they can already cause it.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
Like all PbtA/FitD games, Band of Blades is fiction-first. Attacks that "spread the unwholesome essence of undeath" cause corruption. Attacks that don't "spread the unwholesome essence of undeath" don't cause corruption. The Blighter upgrade should be read as "if an enemy attack would cause corruption, it causes +1 corruption."

Can all enemies cause corruption? That's up to you and the table to decide.

Do Gut-Sack attacks cause corruption? Almost certainly, unless the PCs can avoid their poison/acids.

Do Crow attacks cause corruption? Maybe their blades are coated in poison, or they have flasks of spooky evil acid to use as grenades.

Do Render's Knights or Heartless have attacks that cause corruption? :shrug:

e; in practical terms, corruption exists as another stress track that's a lot harder to heal and plays into the horror element more directly, to use when making characters suffer complications, just so you're not reduced to always causing harm (or so you can do both to show a threat is serious, etc.).

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Mar 26, 2020

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
Awesome, that explanation makes total sense. Going to be starting up our game this Tuesday over Roll20 so all these examples really help to figure out how to run this game. Our group is more used to games with a more mechanical focus in nature, but I think I should be able to get them thinking more creatively and with the story in mind over what mechanics they want to use first.

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
So a player in my upcoming game asked if npc squad mates can use their abilities. For example, the ability "Just a kid" grants experience to anyone who "protects" that character.

I can't quite find the answer in the book. I'm pretty sure you don't define rookie abilities until they're actually played by a player in the first place. But this scenario could still happen if the rookie was played in a previous session.

This also brings up another question about soldier promotions. If a rookie is promoted to soldier during a secondary mission, but we haven't defined that character's abilities yet, does that mean that character loses out on the extra rookie ability they would have gotten if they were played by a player first?

Fenarisk
Oct 27, 2005

Just realized it's been 6 months since an update, and almost 5 YEARS since the kickstarter ended. I'm assuming we aren't ever going to get Null Vector or a host of other stretch goals.

Lord_Hambrose
Nov 21, 2008

*a foul hooting fills the air*



Fenarisk posted:

Just realized it's been 6 months since an update, and almost 5 YEARS since the kickstarter ended. I'm assuming we aren't ever going to get Null Vector or a host of other stretch goals.

Kickstarters just be like that sometimes

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

Fenarisk posted:

Just realized it's been 6 months since an update, and almost 5 YEARS since the kickstarter ended. I'm assuming we aren't ever going to get Null Vector or a host of other stretch goals.

Looks like someone asked the same thing 2 hours ago:



DarkAvenger211 posted:

So a player in my upcoming game asked if npc squad mates can use their abilities. For example, the ability "Just a kid" grants experience to anyone who "protects" that character.

I can't quite find the answer in the book. I'm pretty sure you don't define rookie abilities until they're actually played by a player in the first place. But this scenario could still happen if the rookie was played in a previous session.

Any character with a sheet not being currently "piloted" by a player should still keep that sheet, IMO, otherwise you lose the sense that you're playing a bunch of distinct characters. I would argue that means their abilities still work as NPCs, though keep in mind NPCs don't get to roll.

DarkAvenger211 posted:

This also brings up another question about soldier promotions. If a rookie is promoted to soldier during a secondary mission, but we haven't defined that character's abilities yet, does that mean that character loses out on the extra rookie ability they would have gotten if they were played by a player first?

Yes, IMO. The rookie ability is a reward that character gets for being played as a rookie. If they're never played as a rookie, they shouldn't get one, same as the initial specialists.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Mar 30, 2020

Dolash
Oct 23, 2008

aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,


I'm one of the players in Dark Avenger's upcoming game. It's been tricky wrapping my head around the Forged In The Dark system, the fiction-first attitude is commendable but without a strong grasp of the mechanics it feels like it's tough to make informed decisions about the tradeoffs of different decisions.

So far my sense is that at least mechanically, prioritizing resist rolls in character creation by spreading your action ranks as widely as possible gets the best return on investment. Every die you roll while resisting drives down the stress cost of ignoring Harm and other consequences that might otherwise drag on multiple future rolls. By comparison, stacking ranks in the same action gives diminishing returns, since even one die gives you a passable chance at success and you have options like pushes, flashbacks and bargains to get more dice (more of which you can take with good stress management on your resists).

Band of Blades is really interesting as a problem of driving this big, sputtering engine to Skydagger Keep. Figuring out the balance of, say, your rate of food consumption vs. how many locations you'll pass through vs. how much time you'll spend at each one vs. which ones are suitable for supply missions to determine when the optimal moments for stocking up on food are is a real puzzle, especially once you start factoring in the hundred small modifiers like how supply missions get -1d on the Engagement roll after pressure 2. It'd make for an interesting model.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
If you’re making your rolls because you put a lot into each skill, you might not need to resist. Especially if you crit or roll from control.
Everything is a trade-off.

Dolash
Oct 23, 2008

aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,


That's the theory, sure, and a lot of mechanics (like trading position for effect) encourage a high-risk high-reward mindset, but my hunch from reading the rules so far is that it's far more important to avoid a death spiral from over-extending yourself than it is to score big hits. Trading stress over harm or corruption is just about always preferable, since it's so much easier to recover, and while I haven't run the numbers I suspect statistically that adding one more die to your action roll does less to get you a life-preserving crit than one more die to your resist roll does.

The one thing the Legion has to give in abundance is ground. It's a retreat, after all, so you should often be picking your battles to maintain controlled positions. The option to withdraw rather than move to a risky position and start racking up consequences seems like it should be the default option, unless the opportunity being lost is very good - if you're firing from cover at advancing undead, choosing to retreat to the next good firing position rather than lead a counter-charge should be standard, because there'll be a lot more of those on the road.

As an aside, Flashbacks seem interesting, but their mechanical effect seems pretty volatile. In the examples given, a zero-stress Flashback was that the squad had booby-trapped a building - that seems like a pretty useful thing to make retroactively true! That could easily shift their position from Desperate to Risky if they're trying to hold that building from the undead, and cost no stress at all. Pushes, bargains, and trading position for effect all seem much more mechanically grounded, but with no cap on Flashbacks aside from what feels reasonable, the temptation to go full Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure and try to time travel your way out of every problem is pretty real. Even their "don't time travel" example just says they can't have already killed a just-revealed traitor in the past, but they're free to have foreseen his treachery and planned a counter-ambush.

Dolash
Oct 23, 2008

aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,


After-action report: hoo boy, my theory that one or two dice is plenty so long as you max resists for better stress management sure does hinge on you not rolling below-average all night and failing almost all your rolls! Trauma'd out, though thankfully right at the end when we'd already succeeded at blowing the bridge.

Also relying on the squad for assistance is often more trouble than it's worth, since they're giving you one extra die that doesn't help and gives you stress half the time. Meanwhile, on group actions (especially combat) they seem to cause harm to grow exponentially, since now instead of just your own level 2 harm you're also worried about two more rookies who also got hit with level 2 harm that take the whole team of specialists to protect them from. If it wasn't for adding scale against enemy squads you'd be better off leaving them at home.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
My advice is for blades in general.

Lurks With Wolves
Jan 14, 2013

At least I don't dance with them, right?

Dolash posted:

After-action report: hoo boy, my theory that one or two dice is plenty so long as you max resists for better stress management sure does hinge on you not rolling below-average all night and failing almost all your rolls! Trauma'd out, though thankfully right at the end when we'd already succeeded at blowing the bridge.

As someone who's only played base BitD, the early game really teaches you that each die is basically one coin flip to see if you do what you want to do and coin flips are brutal and uncaring. So, your strategy works mathematically, but in play everyone wants to throw themselves into desperate situations and bad deals so they aren't whittled down by bad coinflips until they can actually be good at something. I'm not disagreeing with you or anything, it's just a dynamic I really like.

dex_sda
Oct 11, 2012


I started a game with a new group. My old rpg group, was apprehensive cause it could go a million ways since it's just three players and one is a perennial munchkin, was afraid of a fiction-first approach wrecking him.

He loving loved it. Did the most outrageous poo poo, played his character, the works. Turns out the key to defeating a munchkin is a) make everyone strong from the start, and b) give extra xp for being outrageous.

JohnLovely
Aug 15, 2017

by Athanatos
Grimey Drawer

dex_sda posted:

I started a game with a new group. My old rpg group, was apprehensive cause it could go a million ways since it's just three players and one is a perennial munchkin, was afraid of a fiction-first approach wrecking him.

He loving loved it. Did the most outrageous poo poo, played his character, the works. Turns out the key to defeating a munchkin is a) make everyone strong from the start, and b) give extra xp for being outrageous.

this basically matches my groups' response too. never seen this degree of roleplaying from someone that rules-addicted before

lummawks
Apr 28, 2010
Ran my first game of Blades (after having wanted to play it for like 2 years) and it went pretty well. Just need to tweak some of the obstacles and consequences cause they breezed through their first score almost without a hitch (except for when the tinker left a bomb in the strongbox they had looted because "it's about sending a message"). They loved pushing themselves for extra dice, doing flashbacks and resisting consequences, I don't think anyone ended with less than 6 stress. It was all of ours first time playing Blades (normally we play Pathfinder), and my first time GMing a game since like playing D&D with 2 other friends 20 years ago and that was like "ok heres a bunch of orcs in a room let's fight now". I was happy to see in our group chat the next day 2 of the players wrote "that was super fun when do we play again?!" :3:

Quick question about Downtime activities and contacts, can PCs use friends of other PCs? For example if our Cutter has a physicker as a friend, can the Whisper use that contact to heal up? In the moment I said no probably not cause I couldn't find anything in the rules about it, but I also houseruled that she didn't need a physicker to recover her lvl 1 harm "Drained" and just said you don't need a physicker for that, you just rest up a bit and spend 1 downtime activity recovering.

lummawks fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Apr 18, 2020

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

lummawks posted:

Ran my first game of Blades (after having wanted to play it for like 2 years) and it went pretty well. Just need to tweak some of the obstacles and consequences cause they breezed through their first score almost without a hitch (except for when the tinker left a bomb in the strongbox they had looted because "it's about sending a message"). They loved pushing themselves for extra dice, doing flashbacks and resisting consequences, I don't think anyone ended with less than 6 stress. It was all of ours first time playing Blades (normally we play Pathfinder), and my first time GMing a game since like playing D&D with 2 other friends 20 years ago and that was like "ok heres a bunch of orcs in a room let's fight now". I was happy to see in our group chat the next day 2 of the players wrote "that was super fun when do we play again?!" :3:

Quick question about Downtime activities and contacts, can PCs use friends of other PCs? For example if our Cutter has a physicker as a friend, can the Whisper use that contact to heal up? In the moment I said no probably not cause I couldn't find anything in the rules about it, but I also houseruled that she didn't need a physicker to recover her lvl 1 harm "Drained" and just said you don't need a physicker for that, you just rest up a bit and spend 1 downtime activity recovering.

Contacts are actually for the gang as a whole - PCs just have friends and rivals. A gang contact is willing to work with the gang, but a friend isn't just going to give for free (the contact has the gang's quality, but what's a friend?) - I'd treat it as a bonus to the acquire asset roll, which will secure treatment for everyone during downtime.

Glazius fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Apr 18, 2020

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013


"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)
Easiest way to get around that situation is just to have the physicker require they complete a difficult score for them, then turn the physicker into a cohort as a reward.

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
So having played a few sessions of Band of Blades now I'm getting a better feel for the game

A big thing that I seem to have trouble doing is making sure to pick out players and ask them specifically what they want to do. So much of the action can come down to the entire group being involved but a lot of times that might just end up being the same player making rolls. I'd like to give everyone an opportunity to do something. Is it normal to pick someone in the middle of a conflict and say "And the Heartless takes a massive swing in your direction, what do you do? As opposed to saying to the whole group: "The heartless is about to be upon you, what do you all do?"

It's a lot harder to manage in this case because there's no "initiative" or "turns" to track.

Like for instance last session we had our heavy take on one of Blighter's Lieutenants directly, using his class abilities and setups/pushes they had a real solid risky/extreme roll ready to try and do some damage. Unfortunately he didn't get above a 3 on any of the 4 dice he rolled so he wasn't able to land any solid hits taking a bit of corruption and using his armor to essentially shrug off the rest of the damage. However while this whole thing is going on the squad along with a player Soldier and Sniper were being hounded by rotters.

I didn't quite pick out anyone specifically to "foreshadow" or "telegraph" impending danger aside from stating that the rotters are on them so the Heavy player said he'd disengage from the lieutenant use anchor to try and clear the rotters away from the squad (in order to avoid using the squad itself and potentially taking casualties as a result).

Part of the interaction didn't feel right to me in this case, It really does feel like the players in the squad should have dealt with it especially considering the Heavy was already engaged with the lieutenant, but since there's no real "turn order" or anything anyone is allowed to speak up and decide what to do. In this case we treated it as a single skirmish roll to take on the rotters and disengage, possibly taking consequences from the lieutenant. But would it have been more appropriate to have to disengage first with a maneuver roll maybe? And then deal with the rotters afterwards?

Managing the flow of who has focus and who should act next is quite difficult for me running the game. I realize the answer is most likely subjective and based on your group specifically but it would be nice to know how other people handle it as well!

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

DarkAvenger211 posted:

Is it normal to pick someone in the middle of a conflict and say "And the Heartless takes a massive swing in your direction, what do you do? As opposed to saying to the whole group: "The heartless is about to be upon you, what do you all do?"

Yes. This is how you rotate the spotlight in PbtA/FitD games.

Make sure you switch to a different player each time someone has had a chance to do something and make a roll (or before they resolve the results of their action if it would take some time in the fiction and the camera would logically be cutting away to show someone else doing something else while they pick a lock or set a bomb or line up the perfect shot or whatever).

DarkAvenger211 posted:

I didn't quite pick out anyone specifically to "foreshadow" or "telegraph" impending danger aside from stating that the rotters are on them so the Heavy player said he'd disengage from the lieutenant use anchor to try and clear the rotters away from the squad (in order to avoid using the squad itself and potentially taking casualties as a result).

Part of the interaction didn't feel right to me in this case, It really does feel like the players in the squad should have dealt with it especially considering the Heavy was already engaged with the lieutenant, but since there's no real "turn order" or anything anyone is allowed to speak up and decide what to do. In this case we treated it as a single skirmish roll to take on the rotters and disengage, possibly taking consequences from the lieutenant. But would it have been more appropriate to have to disengage first with a maneuver roll maybe? And then deal with the rotters afterwards?

The correct call would have been to just tell the Heavy player "no, you're busy with the Lieutenant, you can't take your eyes off it for even a split second or it'll almost definitely kill you. Soldier and Sniper, you're on your own here - the Heavy is barely holding his ground against the Lieutenant and the whole squad is about to get overrun if you don't do something fast. What do you do?"

As the GM, it's your job to make sure everyone gets a "turn" to act if your players aren't jumping in to interrupt each other with their next actions (and if they are, it's your job to make them act in whatever order you choose so they each get a turn).

e; "the rotters are on you" is completely fine for announcing future badness as long as the players are then able to avoid harm if they successfully react, incidentally.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Apr 25, 2020

DarkAvenger211
Jun 29, 2011

Damnit Steve, you know I'm a sucker for Back to the Future references.
Good to know!

I hadn't considered holding onto results until after other players make their play simultaneously, might take a bit of book-keeping to remember the position/effects but it would help to illustrate multiple things happening at once.

tanglewood1420
Oct 28, 2010

The importance of this mission cannot be overemphasized
Think of it like an action film and you are cutting between characters. Stay with one character as long as it is exciting (and engaging the rest of the group), but don't forget to check in on everyone else even if it's just dropping in for a shot or two so the audience doesn't forget they are there/wonder why they aren't doing anything.

In an Avengers film we may stay with Captain America for 2 or 3 moves in a row if he is going toe to toe with the Big Bad and it's super dramatic, but we then need to cut around to see Black Widow beat up some henchmen and Thor shoot lighting at some mooks. This can also help up the tension of Captain America's action too. Cut away at a really dramatic moment when the group are on the edge of their seat and let them sweat as to what will be going on when we cut back. Rolled a strong hit and he has the bad guy dangling over a cliff edge - cut away! Rolled a miss and he's suffered level 2 harm and the bad guy is standing right over him about to strike - cut away!

tanglewood1420 fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Apr 22, 2020

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

DarkAvenger211 posted:

I hadn't considered holding onto results until after other players make their play simultaneously, might take a bit of book-keeping to remember the position/effects but it would help to illustrate multiple things happening at once.

You don't make them roll simultaneously, you resolve the narrative consequences of their rolls simultaneously.

As mentioned, think of it as being the writer and director of something like an HBO miniseries or an action film. If the Scout is trying to pick a lock so the squad can get to safety from a bunch of Gaunts currently bearing down on them and they roll a 4, maybe the consequence of that 4 is that the lock takes longer to pick, putting the defending squad in a worse position for the Skirmish roll that is going to happen while the camera cuts away from the Scout picking a lock and shows 10-15 seconds of people exchanging sword blows. Depending on the results of the Skirmish roll, an NPC Rookie might get cut down because the fight is dragging on, or maybe the Soldier rolled a critical and their increased effect lets them rescue the Rookie from an otherwise serious wound.

(Note that you generally want to avoid inflicting harm or consequences on one player for the result of another player's roll - though it's completely fine for it to affect the narrative circumstances and thus modify the position/effect of another player's roll.)

e; I also highly encourage you to use this spotlight switching to make characters act in "real time" - if the spotlight cuts to a character that has very little time to react to something, make the player react fast instead of sitting there and pondering the optimal next action. Similarly, if someone gives you a long series of things they want their character to do, you know that's going to take time in the narrative, so you can interrupt them, make them roll for part of what they want to do, then cut away to another character.

Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Apr 23, 2020

lummawks
Apr 28, 2010
2nd session, my players got more into the swing of doing desperate roles (you get XP!) and even trading position for effect so a risky roll becomes desperate (for XP!) and it was awesome. They (a Tier 0 crew of Shadows) managed to rob an artifact right out of The Dimmer Sisters lair, and then the next score broke into a Bluecoat Watch Station. One of my players intentionally pushed himself to take enough stress to get the crew's first trauma (for more XP!). He picked Vicious due to he was interrogating and torturing a Bluecoat and I was like "of course you pick Vicious"). I love that all the characters pick a rival at character creation cause it gives me a bunch of awesome recurring villains. Tonight the Whisper's rival possessor ghost almost burned her brains out during the Dimmer Sisters job, and our Cutter's ex-lover Marlane showed up outside the Watch station and instantly went "YOU MOTHERFUCKER" and stabbed him. One of the entanglements they rolled with 7 heat was Demonic Notice so I had a demon show up at their lair and demand "5 souls, killed in darkness, drained of blood" and with basically zero hesitation went "Yep sure coming right up". They're already plotting how to get the 5 bodies while also grabbing turf from The Fog Hounds.

One question on Group Actions, can players push themselves to increase the effect? Or push themselves to get an extra die? I couldn't find anything in the rules but I'm thinking pushing yourself for +1d is ok, but to increase the effect for the whole group I'm thinking everyone doing the action should take stress?
Also is it possible to do a flashback for something that requires a Downtime Action? Our Lurk wanted to flashback to say "I brought 2 shadow vials instead of 1" and I ruled that getting an extra shadow vial would require an Acquire Asset, but they had used all their Downtime Actions before the score (and didn't want to spend Coin or Rep for it). Or should it just be a lot of stress to do that?

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

lummawks posted:

Also is it possible to do a flashback for something that requires a Downtime Action? Our Lurk wanted to flashback to say "I brought 2 shadow vials instead of 1" and I ruled that getting an extra shadow vial would require an Acquire Asset, but they had used all their Downtime Actions before the score (and didn't want to spend Coin or Rep for it). Or should it just be a lot of stress to do that?

Yes, you can flashback to a downtime action, but it also retroactively costs you Coin or Rep instead of Stress.

WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013


"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)

lummawks posted:

One question on Group Actions, can players push themselves to increase the effect? Or push themselves to get an extra die? I couldn't find anything in the rules but I'm thinking pushing yourself for +1d is ok, but to increase the effect for the whole group I'm thinking everyone doing the action should take stress?

That's one way of doing it, another is keeping track of individual pos/eff. Which you'll have to do if someone has a level 1 harm anyway. Your choice then is whether you let them choose for instance the 6 on a risky/limited or a 4 on a desperate/great, or whether it's always the highest success is the outcome.

Foglet
Jun 17, 2014

Reality is an illusion.
The universe is a hologram.
Buy gold.
A set of detailed street-by-street maps of Doskvol has been released a few days ago. $8 only, same author as the amazing Dogs in the Bark v0.1 hack.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/307609

Freudian slippers
Jun 23, 2009
US Goon shocked and appalled to find that world is a dirty, unjust place

Cassa posted:

Alright so looking at doing a shortish Copperhead County campaign. Anything i should keep in mind?

A little late to the party, but my advice is to open each session with this song.

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Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009


I'm 90% sure there's a Crypt Quarter in the Lost District entirely so you have an excuse to play The Haunted Cathedral in tabletop form.

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