Whipstitch wrote:In-character time isn't really the problem. Danny Ocean long cons and absurdly prepared conspiracy theorists are both fun and genre appropriate, so it's actually a feature if Sarah Connor can blow her points declaring she knows Mexican gun runners irrespective of the time table. I'd rather see a montage/foreshadow discount where people can each choose a contingency or two at a greatly reduced price since that obviously encourages people to choose that time to grab the pricey stuff. For example, the A-Team always blows their opening credits discount on vehicles and bad disguises then improvise from there.
Isn't that just what Shadowrun is already though? Blow your credits on a plan and then when it goes to shit 5 minutes in you just kick the door down and machine gun everything?
Ocean's 11 is actually not a bad example of the flashback. The GM sends in the SWAT team and the PCs are like "weeeeeeeellllll....." and the flashback starts. The hacker blows a plot point and says "Yeah about that 911 call I intercepted it by hacking into their system a while back, remember when we tapped into their camera system? I got the phones then too, so I could really dispatch our own guys" at which point Basher says "right and like proper villains it's actually the rest of the team dressed head to toe in SWAT gear with masks down that goes down to "get" the rest of our team" and the wheelman blows one of his points and says "yeah, and nobody asks because I got hold of a SWAT van that we showed up in".
At that point the scene plays out with everything rewritten.
Doesn't this run the risk of writing out one of the parts of the game that people enjoy though? Planning something out and having it work gives a certain satisfaction you don't get from spending a point and thinking of a workaround after the fact.
"Achievement: Complete a mission without spending any RetCon points" is still a thing that you could do if you wanted. It'd just require that everyone be on board with sitting down and trying to go through every contingency ahead of time.
By having retcon points, it gives the option to skip over the fiddly planning and only go back to it when it turns out that you really do need that sub-plan.
You can, of course, do both at the same time. Nothing precludes the other. You can detail some specific pre-job set-ups you do, so you have them when problems start to come down, and you only spend RetCon point on things you don't have immediate solutions for. You can even grade RetCon Points spent on a scale of Solutions, in that X number of points is "Has equipment", X+1 of "Has solution" and X+2 at "Totally prepped for this guys, honest, the problem disappears".
Red_Rob wrote:Doesn't this run the risk of writing out one of the parts of the game that people enjoy though? Planning something out and having it work gives a certain satisfaction you don't get from spending a point and thinking of a workaround after the fact.
How often does that happen though?
If you want to encourage decision paralysis like that still, then go ahead and make your retcon points do more in the leadup phase.
Reading in the Feng Shui thread about how ninjas get combat bonuses if they're fighting in a place they've scouted out before, I could see something like that giving extra flashback points to spend on spontaneously generating traps that were 'there all along'.
So the 'legwork phase' is still mechanically important to the game in giving you flashback points to spend.
Applied to combat you can have Kenshiro punch Jagi, and then when Jagi pulls out his gun Kenshiro can then declare that the punch hit the kyusetsu pressure point so now Jagi has his gun pointed at his own face"
Last edited by OgreBattle on Tue May 05, 2015 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Once you got people to accept retroactive narrative it could and should be used a lot. In D&D games I offer players the option to put up to half their skillpoints aside and write them in whenever they choose to in game. I think lots of areas in the playspace could be improved by getting people to grok the idea of doing something and saying "that's the way things always were"
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
Retro-narration goes both ways. One of the main genre conventions is the "hard left turn" where the mission goes to fuck because of a radical element the characters were previously unaware of. That could be the Johnson selling you out, or the secret treasure being nothing but a child's mp3 player, or the target being secretly a vampire. Or whatever.
The MC can introduce these "twists" and it's just like a flashback produced by the player characters save that it makes things harder instead of easier. Shadowrun adventures basically worked like this anyway, where the big reveal would always happen while you were in the middle of things. But if you have flashback systems in place, you can hard code that as being a thing that can happen.
TheFlatline wrote:
Isn't that just what Shadowrun is already though? Blow your credits on a plan and then when it goes to shit 5 minutes in you just kick the door down and machine gun everything?
The flashbacks part of the equation is admittedly the heavy lifter, yes. With that said, Shadowrun planning is interminable in part because it's the sort of game where you do a lot of your shopping back in chargen and the books imply you should care about whether you brought gorilla glue or nano-adhesives. It's accounting heavy and players end up spending a lot of time fretting over how to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. What I'm suggesting is more like allowing people to buy the right to declare some of the scary and obvious shit dealt with or delayed.
FrankTrollman wrote:The MC can introduce these "twists" and it's just like a flashback produced by the player characters save that it makes things harder instead of easier. Shadowrun adventures basically worked like this anyway, where the big reveal would always happen while you were in the middle of things. But if you have flashback systems in place, you can hard code that as being a thing that can happen.
-Username17
That seems clumsy to me. If the player have complication removing pools and the GM has complication creating pools then you've made nothing. If the pools size are the same their net effect is nothing, if the GM's pool is smaller the net effect is the equivalent of giving the players smaller pools and if the GM has more then the players don't actually have the resources you told them they do.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
FrankTrollman wrote:The MC can introduce these "twists" and it's just like a flashback produced by the player characters save that it makes things harder instead of easier. Shadowrun adventures basically worked like this anyway, where the big reveal would always happen while you were in the middle of things. But if you have flashback systems in place, you can hard code that as being a thing that can happen.
-Username17
That seems clumsy to me. If the player have complication removing pools and the GM has complication creating pools then you've made nothing. If the pools size are the same their net effect is nothing, if the GM's pool is smaller the net effect is the equivalent of giving the players smaller pools and if the GM has more then the players don't actually have the resources you told them they do.
First of all, the very nature of the genre means that MC-side big reveals are things that are going to happen. They just are. You go on a mission to steal from a factory but it turns out to secretly be a laboratory doing human experimentation. You take a mission to kidnap a scientist and it turns out that you've been double crossed and you're really in there to act as cover for someone else assassinating that scientist. You take a mission to find a missing person and it turns out that she's now the queen of the vampires or some fucking thing. These are things that are simply going to happen. The classic Shadowrun adventures all have shit like this (Bottled Demon has the object you're fighting over have an evil spirit in it, Total Eclipse has the Johnson who hires you be secretly an evil wizard who tries to kill you once you've brought the band to him, and so on).
The key here is to have these unknown unknowns tie in to the rest of the system. And for that, I'm looking at legwork forcing the MC to commit to spending these points on specific things. And possibly even telling you a bit about how many points there are. So if you do enough (or good enough) legwork you can find out that your employer is betraying you or that the target facility has a shit tonne of guards in it or whatever.
It would be nice to have some mechanic that makes your flashbacks vary in effectiveness with your legwork. Like, if you did enough legwork to know that your employer lied about the value of the mcguffin, then when he betrays you at the handoff, your flashback allows you to call in a whole street gang as backup. However, if you don't find that out, then you just get some body armor when he starts shooting.
TiaC wrote:It would be nice to have some mechanic that makes your flashbacks vary in effectiveness with your legwork. Like, if you did enough legwork to know that your employer lied about the value of the mcguffin, then when he betrays you at the handoff, your flashback allows you to call in a whole street gang as backup. However, if you don't find that out, then you just get some body armor when he starts shooting.
I think that's just called finding out about specific things during legwork and being able to buy the perfect solution for fewer Plot Points, such that "body armour" without the legwork phase discount is about as expensive as "30 guys with various firearms and vehicles" with that discount.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.
I think it'd be best if flashback-points (FPs) had a very well-defined limit for how they can be used. It gets too much into Mother-May-I territory if the use of a FP is simply "bypass an obstacle". Does Leverage or other RPGs have the usage of these points well-defined?
Initial thoughts:
1 FP: character knows some information (a password, shipping manifest contents, guard rotation schedule, etc). Basically this can allow the player to ask the GM one question.
2 FP: character can have one new piece of gear / modify one existing piece of gear (has to have the money to buy it, gear to be more explicitly defined...)
3 FP: character can have a pre-arranged plan with a contact or other (N)PC, subject to their ability to actually enact the plan. This does slightly get into MMI territory, but it's expensive and allows a bit more roleplaying and ingenuity as a tradeoff.
For the Ocean's Eleven example above:
2 FP: The hacker blows a plot point and says "Yeah about that 911 call I intercepted it by hacking into their system a while back, remember when we tapped into their camera system? I got the phones then too, so I could really dispatch our own guys"
3 FP: Basher says "right and like proper villains it's actually the rest of the team dressed head to toe in SWAT gear with masks down that goes down to "get" the rest of our team"
2 FP: wheelman blows one of his points and says "yeah, and nobody asks because I got hold of a SWAT van that we showed up in".
A question would be how many FPs are expected of each PC before a run (factors including legwork time allowed before the run and difficulty of the run). Looks like maybe no more than 3-4 FPs per run would be a good starting point?
Koumei: and if I wanted that, I'd take some mescaline and run into the park after watching a documentary about wasps. PhoneLobster: DM : Mr Monkey doesn't like it. Eldritch : Mr Monkey can do what he is god damn told. MGuy: The point is to normalize 'my' point of view. How the fuck do you think civil rights occurred? You think things got this way because people sat down and fucking waited for public opinion to change?
I think it'd be best if flashback-points (FPs) had a very well-defined limit for how they can be used. It gets too much into Mother-May-I territory if the use of a FP is simply "bypass an obstacle". Does Leverage or other RPGs have the usage of these points well-defined?
From what I've read on here, Leverage's glaring problem is there is no limitation on what skill to use or how many times to use it:
Laertes wrote:My issue with the Leverage system is a little different from PL's. To my reading, it seems to be the case that:
a) Any skill can be used, with a good enough story.
b) There is no limit to the number of times a skill can be used.
c) There is no point at which you have to stop trying to add beats.
Points (a) and (b) combine to mean that there is no sense to ever taking any more than one skill per character. If you can use your Beating People Up skill to solve any problem (for example, buying time) then why bother building a character who has both Beating People Up and Hacking?
Points (b) and (c) combine to mean that you can just keep on making attempts to add beats, which means you will never end the mission until you've got a positive number of beats, therefore the only options are either total success or "it's 3am, we need to go home now."
Something that interacts with the game's skill/resource/background/Contacts/etc. system would be good. Though it'll get trite if flashbacks are used the same way in every encounter and you don't want your PC's to go "it turns out WE'RE the SWAT!" every time SWAT teams arrive.
Now, should there be a chance that the PC's making up Ocean's 11 fail at their flashback sequence? If so, what happens when their SWAT disguise doesn't work? If PC's are fighting each other, or the NPC uses a flashback, there should be a way for PC's flashbacks to counter it.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Tue Feb 23, 2016 11:53 am, edited 3 times in total.
Well I arrive late to the party and I just wanted to add some ideas (Probably ones covered already):
MORE SPACE! With Peak Oil, one could imagine Space mining becoming increasingly profitable. And with magical materials becoming possible, going to the moon to set up automated Hydrogen plants or mining asteroids becomes more and more a possibility. At the "50 years into the future" stage, its still very much a crude system. Unless of course magic works in space and then you could have some more advanced things like Artificial Gravity.
The Digital world should be interesting: The base hacking should be simple, but for the Tron trope it should be something special. What makes Tron neat is that Flynn wasn't just using his hacking skills "But in Cyberspace!" It was a whole new world, where he could magically influence the end result of the programs by talking to them as if as to real people.
Maybe this has been all covered before, but I don't have time to read 40 pages.
Was there a skill list fleshed out for AT? The magic thread mentioned using skills for 'northwest forge magic' like armorer, chemistry, etc. for different categories of magic, but I don't recall seeing a full list of skills.
One, it's a guideline for new MCs to know how much crap they can throw at the players without straight-up murdering them all. Two, if the players can force the MC to set in stone things that would otherwise be sprung on them later, they can plan around that obstacle and be awesome Ocean's 11 dudes without relying on the whole "retroactively pissing in the MC's cheerios" mechanic.
Koumei wrote:...is the dead guy posthumously at fault for his own death and, due to the felony murder law, his own murderer?
hyzmarca wrote:A palace made out of poop is much more impressive than one made out of gold. Stinkier, but more impressive. One is an ostentatious display of wealth. The other is a miraculous engineering feat.
Orion wrote:Why do the GM-side plot twists need any mechanical substance to them at all?
The first reason is to make the MC's job easier. Prompted improv is easier than unprompted inprov. "Tell a story about the Kaleidoscope Gang stealing copper tubing." is more reasonable and more satisfying a demand than "Tell a story." Option paralysis is a thing, and a stalled story needs events to move it forward.
The second is that alarm prevention abilities pretty much have to exist if you're going to do anything heist genre. Imagine that a character had a color changing van or pixelated their face on cameras - abilities that reduce reprisals by hampering investigations. Those sound like good abilities to have! And yet, those only have meaning if there is a game mechanical meaning to the wanted level that you have. For the ability to cover your tracks to be anything more than flavor text, the wanted stars have to be in some sense real. Which necessarily ties the hands of the MC to send or not send attacks at times other than when they feel like it.
Orion wrote:Why do the GM-side plot twists need any mechanical substance to them at all?
The first reason is to make the MC's job easier. Prompted improv is easier than unprompted inprov. "Tell a story about the Kaleidoscope Gang stealing copper tubing." is more reasonable and more satisfying a demand than "Tell a story." Option paralysis is a thing, and a stalled story needs events to move it forward.
The second is that alarm prevention abilities pretty much have to exist if you're going to do anything heist genre. Imagine that a character had a color changing van or pixelated their face on cameras - abilities that reduce reprisals by hampering investigations. Those sound like good abilities to have! And yet, those only have meaning if there is a game mechanical meaning to the wanted level that you have. For the ability to cover your tracks to be anything more than flavor text, the wanted stars have to be in some sense real. Which necessarily ties the hands of the MC to send or not send attacks at times other than when they feel like it.
-Username17
Can't agree with this enough. It really REALLY helps if there is a system in place both for the GM's AND for the players' benefit. I've been tinkering with an idea like this for a while and in practice it works. (even for the silly 3e kludge I work with).
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
