|
So currently my main two games that I'm in are Band of Blades and me DMing Wicked Ones (the latter is basically Dungeon Keeper, but using the bitd system). First of all, this is the first taste that I've had of using clocks in the system and I really love it. I struggled with them at first but once I saw them in action in the BoB game they immediately clicked for me and I made good use of them in my own Wicked Ones game. In terms of differences, I think I largely prefer the system within BoB: once you ratchet up the lethality of a mission, it really captures the essence of the game quite well, and the PCs will ratchet up a lot of stress to deal with the mission. As for Wicked Ones, the damage that you can do to the PCs feel a lot less permanent, and the recovery phase in that game really seems to set things back to normal. This seems intentional, since its' the dungeon itself that needs to get repaired and can have permanent damage, but I still like the character management system in BoB more. Overall though I've enjoyed both systems now that I've begun to understand how the systems for them intertwine, and although I was a bit worried about the consequence system, once you get a handle on it you can really help propel the story forward, especially if you have interesting clocks happening that tie in with the story. For example, in my last raid in Wicked Ones, I created one clock called "Reinforcements" that was basically how much time the PCs had to conduct the raid. Another clock was Defences, which represented both the morale and fighting forces of the current defenders of the place they were raiding. Finally, there was a clock called "Gate" which represented the gate of the palisade they were attacking becoming close. This allowed me to have the PCs make the decision of trying to wittle down the defenders themselves, or prevent the gate from closing, and the mechanical effect of the rolls was apparent to all.
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2021 22:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 16:40 |
|
|
I mean, the FitD system is meant to explicitly be able to cope with players just choosing the ability with most dice. You are meant to dynamically change position and effect to make situations more difficult/dangerous if the players choose something that doesn't fit as well as another attribute.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2024 20:14
|
|
|
Then the GM should make a choice and tell the player which one would be better or not, by stating what position and effect one action would have compared to another. The rules explicitly allow you to back down from the roll once you know the position and effect. But there has to be a narrative reason for everything. If someone just says "I pick the lock using Finesse", the GM should outright say "Sorry, finesse doesn't allow you to do that." The conversation doesn't have to stop there, though, you aren't denying the use of Finesse to solve the locked door problem. An example would be the player saying they see an open window, and want to steal the key using a stick. Then the GM could allow that, but say that the position would be Desperate because you are more likely to get spotted than picking the lock. Or either the GM or the player could propose a flashback where they steal the key. Or any other example. If you are just allowing or disallowing stat substitutions without working through the narrative, then you are going to struggle with the system. I remember when I first GMed Wicked Ones, which was my first FitD, my initial scores were run badly because I was using the system for purely mechanical resolution, and wasn't making full use of the position/effect/flashback/clocks.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2024 00:33
|
|
|
One addendum to the above is that I did forget that the descriptions themselves in the rules have the “but it might be better” thing going on. But even then you can play with positions and effect even when taking that into consideration. How is picking with tinker better than with finesse? The same lock is normal effect for tinker and reduced for finesse. The narrative reason is that someone using finesse is less trained than someone using tinker.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2024 00:48
|
|
|
From my own experience of GMing a FitD game for the first time, one of the pitfalls I fell into was not using clocks enough, which meant that I was struggling to come up with interesting consequences for my players, since I didn't want to just wound them every time and I was struggling with coming up with narrative consequences for their actions. Clocks help to alleviate this problem because they give meaningful feedback to the players in terms of much they hosed up and how close they are to bad things happening. It's also important to use clocks in inventive ways: although you can have clocks that are basic "bad things happen when it fills" or "good things happen/you complete your objective", you can use clocks in a less absolute, more progressive way as well: they can be used to track the level of response, for example, or, in one memorable negotiation my character took part in, they can be used to track seperate parts of an agreement (we had three clocks for the negotation: percentage cut of sales, how much our "stuff" would get cut, and the price point for the stuff, for example). See-saw clocks are also great, and can be used to represent stuff like battles/etc. Basically, use clocks as much as possible. Another thing that's good to remind the players is that any consequence can be resisted, no matter what, even narrative ones, as long as it makes sense in the fiction. Did a roll fail and some guards were alerted? Resisting that might be that the character throws down some boxes to block the guards, for example. Resistance rolls can almost be thought as "extra actions" by the players, since they allow characters to immediately react to new threats. Sometimes players will think of resistance rolls too much in the context of "I shrug off that wound" rather than an extra bit of narrative that adds and elaborates on the scene.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 10:50
|
|
|
I think one of more memorable moments when I ran Wicked Ones was the PCs facing a proper higher tier adventurer for the first time. Since the adventurer was one tier higher than them, it meant that they were less effective against it and it took some smart play from them to bring the adventurer down: it was a real struggle and showed the PCs that they had to be more careful going forward since there were plenty of forces that could kick their rear end if they weren't careful/didn't run away at opportune moments. Overall I think the part of Wicked Ones I liked the most was the way that adventurers were structured: the health/moves/passive system means that you can create some truly memorable encounters without much prep: especially effective was a berserker I created that became more effective (and thus harder to kill) the less health they had. The combat was truly a highlight of that campaign, where usually I find combat in most games not at all that interesting.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 16:44
|
|
|
Just be careful because if you just set everything as risky/standard you will struggle a lot as you keep playing. The game only shines when you use position/effect effectively and games in which you make use of both of them will feel much more tactical and engaging when the narrative that the players weave has an actual effect on the resolution of the rolls. FITD does not work very well IMO if you don’t fully use the mechanisms the way they are meant to be used so although it’s not a big deal ignoring it in the first session, you absolutely need to start getting used to making them be the first thing that gets set during an action and once you and your players get used to them momentum will come on its own. Try to get into the habit early so both you and your players don’t learn bad habits. Also remember that position/effect determination is more of a narrative concept than a purely mechanical one: you as the GM will have to make judgment calls on how the narrative that the players weave affects position/effect.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2024 15:35
|
|
|
If you have zero dots, you can still roll it but you roll two takes lowest.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2024 14:57
|
|
|
There are some levers that as the GM you need to make use in order to allow the players to more fully immerse themselves in the character and the world. I've been playing in a regular game of BitD and my GM has used the following: - Using the contacts, both of the characters and of the gang as a whole to build drama: my character, for example, has a troubled relationship with one of my contacts, a local pharmacist, and my character has had a focus during free play to get back into her good graces. Create fiction between the players and their contacts, so that they become actual characters, rather than people you lean towards to get something specific. - Using the entanglements to create new characters, problems and potential scores: we kept getting issues with the spirit of a person that we killed, so we did a score for a local whisper to infiltrate a police station in order to get something for him. This also tied in with my point above, because we robbed the police station of chemicals as well, which I then gave to the pharmacist as a "gift" (which is obviously gonna bite me in the rear end later on). - Show how the vice of your character impacts the wider world. Although vices already have a mechanical framework, you can still work on them in terms of other characters. For example, one of our PCs has a debt (and an associated debt clock), but tends to go spend his money on his vice, and is highly visible during this. Joining those two aspects together has worked well. - Create clocks that represent issues that the gang might have. Our gang is Hawkers, selling drugs: if we don't regulalrly find a supply of raw materials for them, we start to get into trouble. - Lean on the relationship that the gang has to other entities/gangs in the world. - Encourage the players to explore more of Duskvold. They might be interested in exploring another area of the city that normally your gang doesn't deal with. - Create (some) inter-group drama. I would be very careful about this one, however, you do not want to create a situation where you end up PvPing, because the system does not cater for PvP and the BitD absolutely does not work in a PvP setting. However, some inter-group friction can lead to interesting roleplay, and I have been trying to plan my character to be somewhat antagonistic to other PCs, with the understanding that I'm fully willing to lose my character if the narrative makes sense for it to happen.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2024 11:32
|
|
|
Also, some of the best advice I ever got as a player of narrative-forward games is "treat your character like a stolen car". You should be reckless, you should be daring, you should go full speed and not worry about the consequences and if you crash and burn, there's always another character that you can play, so don't worry about it (and creating characters in BitD is super easy). Create a narrative for your character and make sure your players understand that it should be more rewarding to weave an interesting storyline where your character does mistakes and creates their own problems instead of attempting to be super-careful in order to make sure you don't lose your character, which unfortunately is the focus of a lot of the more traditional RPGs. BitD itself directly rewards you for being reckless: make sure your players understand that the best XP generators in the game are both tied to having bad things happen to your character. Getting a trauma and acting on that trauma is a great generator of XP, to the extent that some players will deliberately trauma-out in their first score so that they can use it to generate XP. As well as that, a position of Desperate immediately gives you an XP for that group of actions, and you can easily make a position Desperate by trading position for effect (as long as you give a narrative reason for it, of course). There is a risk/reward formula there in the game beyond just the story-creation aspect of it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2024 11:46
|
|
|
I don't generally like messing around with the stress economy of the game, because it is so central to making the players go down a spiral and be more likely to trauma-out early, which is when things can get interesting for the character, in my opinion. Like there is nothing really stopping you from having the PCs hang out together to indulge their vice in terms of narrative, without having a mechanical effect. Also it's not really that difficult to get to a point where you have two dots in every quality. BitD encourages you to spread early because of both resistance rolls and indulging vice. I don't think I would ever consider starting a character that doesn't have at least one dot in every quality, since it just turbo-fucks your stress economy (both due to resistance rolls and indulging vice rolls).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2024 09:08
|
|
|
Stress expenditure is only controlled by the players. In the end you can do what you want but being stressed by stress and making it an heightened cost is a design decision intended to reach specific scenarios, regardless of if BitD is mechanically tight or not. It’s not aomething that I would suggest new groups do, when there are so many other levers that allow players to interact during downtime and you can still make them interact even without mechanical advantages.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2024 11:56
|
|
|
I like push-pull clocks personally. The obvious use of them is in a fight, since they can represent the ebb and flow of battle, with either the clock being fully filled to represent your side winning, or fully empty to reprent the other side winning. I think I gave an earlier example where we did a negotation that had like 3 push-pull clocks, which were all targeting different parts of the negotation, which lead to incredible give and take and made the negotation much more interesting than a simple "get them on your side" clock.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2024 23:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 16:40 |
|
|
Downtime actions and Gathering Information rolls do not use position/effect/pushing/etc, but they also don't have consequences beyond not ticking a clock/getting less information (at least in base BitD). You still use an appropriate stat for an action. If something came up that potentially could harm a PC I would still do a normal action roll even if its during downtime.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2024 21:05
|
|