After consulting with Mike Curry, here are answers to your questions.
Can you please clarify how Wounds now work as a Consequence? The explanation seems clear in the rules, and the adventure Risk box seems to have been adjusted to reflect Wounds as a group consequence, but then the walk through of how the risk works immediately after is confusing because it references the Hero taking two wounds if they haven’t spent raises.
The walkthrough is an artifact of the earlier version of the Quick Start. Use the explanation in the rules portion.
Also, under taking wounds for another hero, it says a hero who wants to take wounds for someone else must have spent a raise. Does that mean must have spent a raise in the Risk to show that they were a part of it, or must have spent a raise specifically to allow them to take those wounds, or must spend a raise to take each wound as it had been previously? (The last option isn’t economical)
If you want to take Wounds for another Hero, you spend one Raise. You can take any number of Wounds that Hero would have taken. You don’t spend 1 Raise per Wound (that’d be silly, as you should then just use your Raise to cancel the Wounds as a Consequence instead) but your Raise otherwise doesn’t do anything. Effectively, you spend a Raise and say “I’ll shield the Prince with my body.”
Would you ever require players to spend more than once raise to accomplish their intent if it’s particularly difficult?
Probably not. Use the Danger Point rule for increasing the cost of Raises, rather than requiring additional Raises to be spent for Intent.
During an action sequence when a player has already completed his intent (and ignored or resisted the consequences), what does he do with any remaining raises? If he had a bounty of raises, can he complete another intent? He can create opportunities for other players, which seem kind of like intents. If he knocks the gun out of the guards hand (as in your example), can he also pick it up, or must that be another PC?
He does whatever he wants with his Raises, within the context of the Scene. If it makes sense to you, as the GM, for them to be able to accomplish another Intent, that’s your call. My advice would be that as long as it makes sense, a player can spend a Raise to do it.
As for your question about Opportunities, it would need to be another PC. You can’t create an Opportunity for yourself. Think about them sort of like a “combo move.” You don’t need to spend a Raise to knock the gun out of the guard’s hand, then another Raise to pick it up. You just spend a Raise and say “I take the guard’s gun away from him.” An Opportunity is if you want to give the gun to another PC who couldn’t get it on their own—for example, if the guard is out of their reach because they’re locked inside a jail cell.
A PC can never achieve another PC’s intent. When a group tries to escape a burning building, and one PC #1 fails to generate any raises, what do you say to PC #2 who wants to use extra raises to carry out PC #1?
I would probably let them spend a Raise to carry them out, but I’d saddle PC #1 with some pretty hefty drawbacks for failing to make their Intent. Maybe they’re Helpless for a scene, or they drop something as they’re being carried out and their friend doesn’t notice it. PC #2 should not be penalized for helping their friend, but PC #1 should pay a price for not making Intent.
In the QS on page 7 under “Wounds as Consequences” you say that the consequences are resisted as a group and any remaining wounds hit all players at the end of the round. On page 10 under “Using Multiple Raises For a Single Action” you say that have to commit any raises to resisting a consequence as a single action, and afterwards can’t negate any more wounds. I’m having trouble reconciling those two passages. Could you clarify?
Basically, this means that if you want to Do A Thing, you need to decide how many Raises you want to devote to it at the time. You can’t spend 1 Raise to reduce a Wound Consequence by 1… and then do it again on your next Action, and again on your next Action, and again on your next Action. You have one Action that you can use to reduce a particular Consequence, and you can spend as many Raises as you want on that Action, but you can’t piece them out one by one.
If there are multiple Consequences, they are addressed with individual Actions. For example, if the ceiling is going to collapse (5 Wounds) and a bomb is about to explode (10 Wounds) you can take separate Actions to devote Raises to each. But you can’t spend 1 Raise to reduce the bomb Consequence, then on your next Action spend an additional Raise to reduce the bomb Consequence, then again, and again. You say “I’m going to deal with the bomb. I’ll spend 3 Raises.” Then on your next Action, you say “I’m going to deal with the collapsing roof. I’ll spend 2 Raises.”
Imagine I have 2 resolve and find myself on three wounds. I take three more wounds. Which of the following situations is true: A. I fill up the next three available boxes, including the starburst dramatic wound box, leaving me with one box of the second track filled. B. As soon as the fourth and final box in the first track is filled, I also fill the dramatic wound box. The remaining two wounds are applied to the next track. C. Taking the fourth wound triggers the dramatic wound, and all other wounds from that source are ignored. D. Filling the dramatic wound with the second wound applied stops any more damage from being applied from that source.
If I understand your question correctly, A is true.
When Villains use influence to “buy” things (Like other villains etc.) is that influence “tied up” in the process? Or is is spent and lost forever? E.x. If I have my BBEG buy a strength 5 villain for 2 influence points. Does he loose those 2 points from his influence score? Or, does he still have those points – but they’re just “tied up” in the villain so they aren’t available to be used for anything else? If they are “tied up” what happens if the players kill the hireling? Are the points then lost? Or does the villain then get to reinvest those points?
That Influence is effectively “invested” in his new hireling. If his hireling is lost (the heroes defeat and exile him, throw him in prison, convince him to turn against his boss, etc) then the Influence spent on him is lost. If the hireling returns to his boss after a failed mission and his boss executes him for incompetence (as is all-too-common with Villains whose underlings fail them), he gets his Influence back. Basically, hirelings are Influence piggybanks.
What determines whether a “scheme” is successful? I get it if the players directly oppose a scheme—but I think the idea seems to be that the players might know about the schemes, but won’t necessarily be able to stop them all. Do unopposed schemes automatically succeed? Is there a roll that the villain needs to make behind the scenes?
A scheme is successful if the Heroes don’t stop it. After all, you’re the HEROES. If you don’t stop the Villain… who will?
Finally – how would you handle the players “finding out” about the schemes?
The same ways you handle them finding out about plots from any other RPG. Informants, gossip at local watering holes, secret letters that they intercept, an underling having a crisis of conscience. As Areo Hotah said, “Someone talked. Someone always talks.”
Special Brute Squads. Is there any way to counter the theft or kidnapping effects that certain special brute squads have. Such as the ‘Thieves’ and ‘Pirates’. Say a group of Hero’s are trying to protect something/someone or if they want to prevent the action can they spend a raise? Or would they have to spend a Hero Point? Or does it just happen?
In general, it just happens. It’s important to remember, however, that as the GM you should be using these things to further the story rather than annoy or punish your players. If you have the thieves steal a player’s sword, the one he inherited from his grandfather, it should be because you plan to have him go get it back.
Can I swim with Athletics, Profession (pearl diver) or Sailing?
Yes, yes (probably), and yes.
Can the Consequences come by packs of Wounds? E.g. Falling to a river “2 damage from the fall”, “5 damage by pirannas”
I don’t see why not. 🙂
Villainous influence: does influence spent on sending henchmen (lesser villains and brutes), producing betrayals and getting data for villain’s Scheme count as influence invested in a scheme?
No. A Villain invests Influence to launch a Scheme, and then sends his underlings to make sure that Scheme succeeds.
You’ve mentioned that there’s potential plans to remove the Duelling rules entirely as Action Sequences cover it well enough. I agree with that in principle, but the dueling rules do provide some unique abilities – such as generating Hero Points or preventing wounds while doing damage with a Riposte – that are not covered (I don’t think) by the standard Action Sequence rules. Is it intended that these abilities will become unavailable to characters/swordsmen with the removal of these rules?
This is something of a miscommunication. The dueling subsystem is being removed, in favor of moving much of that instead to ways that Duelists can spend their Raises in Action Scenes even outside of a formal duel. The new way that the system works wasn’t ready in time for the Quick Start revision, but you can think of it more along the lines of the Maneuvers listed in the Quick Start Dueling rules being used anytime.
Similarly, the changes to the Swordsman’s School technique for Ambrogia technically give the Swordsman School less interesting abilities than in the previous QS rules. Is this going to be the extent of Swordsman’s Schools – one minor ability – or will their be other abilities, or even tiered abilities as in 1st Edition in the full rules?
There is some amount of progression with Duelist Schools, but we are focusing less on a linear progression (Apprentice, Journeyman, Master) and more on a Duelist’s personal journey and crafting their own unique style by studying others. It’s not the easiest thing to explain without the full ruleset being available, but instead of being an Ambrogia Journeyman, you know Ambrogia. You also know Aldana. You also know Eisenfaust. And you switch fluidly from style to style, based on what you’re doing and what the situation calls for.
There are plans for “Style Mastery” to denote a difference between someone who “just knows” a Style and someone who has devoted themselves to true Mastery, but it’s still in the early stages of development.
I take it we won’t have weapon stats in the full game, or is their absence just for the QS? No worries either way but just curious.
Hey folks, ran the Quickstart last night (the latest version), and we did a post-game debrief to talk about it, so I thought I’d share our thoughts here, as per John’s instructions.
The Intent-Risk-Consequences-Opportunities system and the idea of using raises to interact with those things worked really well. In fact, as a core resolution system, it did a nice job of creating cinematic moments of excitement, and really empowered the players. As the GM, it was nice to be able to just set Consequences and create Opportunities when players said they wanted to do something, then let the player mitigate those consequences with a good roll. So, at its core, the basic task resolution was successful for us. We also really liked the “+1 die each time you use a new skill” thing, and the “+1 die for a good description” was OK, though it kind of became a bit automatic. Kudos!
In fact, it worked a little TOO well, because when we got to an Action Scene it felt like the game ground to a halt. Introducing the initiative system, and then taking turns based on dice spent, really felt like a drastic slowdown of the pace of play. It was very challenging for us to grasp, because it was similar to basic risk resolution, but different in just enough ways to cause confusion. It also produced a TON of questions (for example, with opposed intent, you run into situations where rolling a lot of raises puts you in a situation where you simply look at your opponent’s raises and spend one more raise than they can possibly spend to automatically succeed; is that right? The explanation made it seem more like a bidding process, but since you can’t increase the raises you’ve spent on a previous turn…) Also, the idea of taking multiple actions, and the difference between an Action in an Action Scene and an intent when resolving a risk did not make a lot of sense to us. We couldn’t wrap our heads around why, for combat, we were using what seemed like a whole different action resolution method, when the risks were doing a good job of that in other scenes.
If I were to run this again, I would probably just treat Action Scenes as multi-round risks, dispense with the idea of taking turns and spending raises across multiple actions entirely, and just treat brute squads as Consequences that can be permanently reduced by dealing wounds to them, and have each brute squad be, in effect, a different “instance” of consequences. So, for example, if there are 3 Strength 6 brute squads, basically they become three consequences of 6 wounds, though you could probably still include the caveat of each brute squad consequence can only damage 1 hero. For turn order, I’d probably just say, “Villains act first, then heroes in whatever turn order they choose.”
Villain wounds were another point of confusion for us. So the Villain can take [Strength] wounds before taking a Dramatic Wound, and taking a dramatic wounds is really taking X dramatic wounds, where X is the current round number. Does the Villain then get [Strength] more wounds before taking X dramatic wounds again? Or, does the villain effectively get [Strength] wounds and [Strength] dramatic wounds, total? We really liked the link between the round number and the number of wounds taken, but the dramatic wounds thing was very confusing. Also, do villains gain the benefits of dramatic wounds the same way that heroes do? I think I would be perfectly happy with “every raise you spend to wound a villain deals wounds equal to the round number” and then saying “A Villain can take [Strength x 4] wounds before being defeated” and be done with it, or something like that.
Speaking of Villains, I would like to see some kind of high-level rule that basically insulates villains from being ganged up on; when all the brute squads are dead, I don’t love the idea of the remaining heroes standing in a circle and whacking on the villain all at once. Feng Shui 2 has a rule that basically increases the villain’s defense against attacks for every hero that attacks the villain beyond the first, so something like an increasing cost of raises for each hero who attacks beyond the first, something to drive the players more toward duels than dogpiles.
Additionally, there was one negative side to the roll-and-make-raises system: the fact that the GM buys unused dice to form the danger pool. This meant that every time my players roll, they want to do this complex math problem of “be as efficient as possible in making raises, until you get to the last raise, and then be as inefficient as possible to reduce the number of leftover dice.” That really turned us off, and made me not want to use the danger pool. Love the idea of the danger pool, and the mechanics of use danger points, but acquiring them was not good for the speed of the game.
Lastly, we felt like the player characters were a bit overloaded with complex, exceptions-based abilities. While it was nice to have those narrative-bending moments (for example, our Aleksy used the leadership ability to turn a bunch of the Sabat guards to their side after an exceptionally good Panache-Diplomacy roll), it kind of felt like there were two or three too many of them on the character sheet for a supposedly starting character. Between six abilities, plus all of the background and personality abilities, it was a lot to take in. For a game that is so description-and-skill driven, it seemed a little bit unnecessary. Some of them also seemed mechanized in a way that was unnecessary, and could have just been rolled up into suggestions for how that player could spend raises/hero points in play.
Anyways, we had fun, and are planning on running a second session, but I thought I’d share our playtest experience. We all felt like the risk-consequences-opportunity task resolution was a really strong foundation of the game, and would like to see more of the game focused on that core resolution system to keep the pace of play consistently fast, no matter what is happening.
Thanks!
Rodney
Thank you so much for all of these answers.
In the current Quick Start adventure the first two action scenes propose a Risk and the Complications say 8 Wounds. When each of the Heroes have to roll the guide says they only need 3 Raises ( 1 to accomplish the Risk and, 2 to negate each of the wounds). I would assume this is a group wound risk but there are 5 heroes and 8 wounds. Am I misunderstanding how the complications for this risk work, or is the math wrong? Thanks!