On playing scenes you're not looking forward to.
I finally played through the mass battle that I'd cornered my solo SWN character into. He'd partnered up with some mercs to attack a den of smugglers who were sabotaging off-world weapon shipments to squeeze out competition and keep prices high.
I think I'd been dreading it for over a month as I tried to find satisfying ways to consolidate the die rolling to squads and have more interesting objectives than both sides firing volleys until one tapped out. I cobbled in some Blades in the Dark style clocks in hopes that I could make a tense fight over a weapons cache, and made my squads of smugglers and mercs into single characters with abnormally high HP totals.
I didn't like how it went.
The hero and his mercenary allies were winning so easily by the end of the second round of combat that I rolled to see if the bad guys had some kind of contingency to amp up the challenge. Even after I granted the smugglers a random idea roll that generated a Pretech "confusion grenade", they got trounced and surrendered a few attacks later.
But the good news is, that scene is OVER. It was sloppy and unsatisfying from a mechanical standpoint, but it's canon to my adventure now. I have a little better idea of how strong SWN 'Heroic' variant PCs are, and if there's another mass battle, I'm not handcuffed to the mechanics that didn't work out.
Best of all, now I can get back to the story I really want to advance, which is my character trying to network his way to contacts who can get him off of his Tech Level 2 homeworld and into some more futuristic sci-fi adventure.
TL;DR - The perfect is the enemy of the good. If you're struggling to find the 'perfect' way to process a scene, remind yourself that it's just one scene among many. The sooner you pick a method and resolve the scene, the sooner you can get back to driving your solo sessions forward to new experiences.
A BitD style clock is what I would have used also.
ReplyDeleteHere is a short write up on how to loosely plan a 3 act heist for BitD. It might have helped if you thought of it like a crew of Bravos doing a Smash-and-grab.
http://games.nightstaff.net/2018/04/24/prepping-scores-for-blades-in-the-dark/
I much prefer the character creation of SWN 2e over 1e. I made a few Heroic Adventurer characters for an Other Dust solo game, but never played them. I would like to hear which character(s) you are using for solo play.
I've painted myself into a similar corner before. You get to a point in the story and just lose steam. Any more tricks out there? Would scripting it out instead of die rolling be a viable option? Scene jumping and maybe coming back to it as a flash back?
ReplyDeleteWhen I start to dread a scene, I usually put the game aside and play somehting else until it either seems like it might be fun, or I've had a better idea how to handle it. If it's really in danger of making the game no fun any more, I might even rewind to before things were ineluctably headed in the direction of the dreaded scene (though I never rewind so far that a dead PC would come back to life or a major disater to the party be mitigated).
ReplyDeleteToimu Running 2E here. My character is an Adventurer (Full Warrior, Partial Psychic) focused on Teleportation and melee weapons. I took the Ironhide focus, which has helped a lot on the survivability front.
ReplyDeleteMy only major points to take home are as follows:
1. At low levels, having a total +2 modifier to something is pretty rare. especially if you rolled skills randomly rather than maximizing. There's still plenty of chance for failure at a target number of 6, and throwing lots of TN 8s at the party can quickly lead to feelings of PC incompetence.
2. Avoid using foes with ACs above 14 unless you want low level fights to feel like they're between blind-firing Star Wars stormtroopers. Attack bonus is strongly gated by level, whereas armor class is strongly gated by money, so if you offer a big cash reward early, expect the PCs to take very few hits. (Though because HP totals are low, the ones that get through can easily be lethal with TL4 weapons.)
Todd Zircher No new tips for getting through tough scenes at the moment, but I daydream a lot about making a mechanic for multi-objective scene level resolution to fast forward those sorts of scenes. Will post if I come up with something inspired.
ReplyDeleteRobert Wiesehan BitD NPC & faction downtime might be helpful for creating that "mechanic for multi-objetice scene level resolution".
ReplyDeletebladesinthedark.com - Downtime Activities in Play | Blades in the Dark RPG
Heroic characters shouldn't weight much in a mass battle. Their power is diluted by the numbers of allies and enemies. I guess that in a large enough battle heroes become substantially irrelevant. I would be curious to know more of why the game mechanisms failed in this case....
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is that heroes can account for a disproportionate amount. They inspire and lead, they rally, and sometimes they fall. They are the bloody point of the spear that breaks the line, kills the enemy champion, and brings eldritch forces to bear, etc.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite heroes-as-catalyst-in-a-large-batte is the end of the Starspawn of Volturnus adventure for Star Frontiers. The PCs get to participate in a number of battle situations depending on how many of the alien races they were able unite to fight of the evil invaders. For each race united / battle scene played they get a certain number of points, and additional points if they win the encounter, so their previous action in the adventure + their performance in the climax both contribute to their possible victory. But it isn't all about the PCs: the total points earned are rolled as a percentage to see if the good guys are ultimately victorious -- even after winning every enocunter and uniting all the aliens, there is still a chance, albeit a small one, that you can lose.
ReplyDeleteAnd actually, the suggested scenarios for what happens should the battle be lost were so cool I could see the GM fudging the roll just to be able to play them out.
Evandro Novel The thing that made the biggest dent was the Fray Die. When each side was only landing about 40% of attacks, that my hero could be relied on for consistent damage 87.5% of the time, and then make a regular attack on top was exceptionally powerful.
ReplyDeleteThough as Todd Zircher notes, maybe that's the point of the Heroic Characters rules to begin with.
As for the game mechanisms failing, I wouldn't blame the game since my quickly hacked-up squad rules boosted enemy durability without boosting accuracy or damage. Bonus accuracy and damage would have made sense considering the volleys of fire that each attack roll was meant to represent.
Robert Wiesehan I see fray dice and similar rules as a tool to run with a single hero an adventure designed for a party. I tend to use role-gaming mechanisms to build a story around skirmish battles and I love the idea of a mass battle as a climax! I also love when the outcome of a scene is uncertain: I typically use simple systems, so it's easy to tell if things are balanced or not, but even with more complex games, experience is a great teacher. I am sure you will be more satisfied with your next mass battle!
ReplyDeleteRobert Wiesehan
ReplyDelete" a mechanic for multi-objective scene level resolution"
This makes me think of the "Conduct an Operation" move from The Sprawl. It basically takes what would have been a side mission w/ several scenes and boils it down to one roll.
It's also atypical for a move because it has a template of tasks & complications that might come into play for each type of side missions (which are heavily Cyberpunk themed).
Omari Brooks Sounds nice. Haven't read The Sprawl yet. Will watch for a sale.
ReplyDeleteThese type of scenes might be good candidates for Mythic’s In Between mechanic.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the system a good technique to run mass battles is also described in the Star Wars d6 2nd Edition rulebook:
ReplyDeleteThe mass battle basically is just the backdrop, the scene dressing if you will. The action still focuses on the player character(s) who have to overcome a few encounters also on the personal or squad level. Depending on the outcome of the encounters the battle can take different paths.
Example:
The scene set-up describes the mercs advancing on the smuggler base using cover fire as you see a small group of smugglers setting up a tripod mounted repeating blaster. That is your first encounter: Your PC vs. three smugglers setting up the gun. If you stop the smugglers you have an advantage, if you fail, the gun is set-up and the smugglers now have severe firepower on their side. The next scene describes the merc assault coming to a halt as they take heavy casualties. Then the next encounter is set-up...and so the battle progresses. After two to three encounters you either win or lose, depending how you did in the encounters.
What about for scenes you didn't want to play out you just convert it into a single die roll or opposed die roll. Work out some reasonable numbers and then see how it all turns out.
ReplyDeleteZoser Games' Solo Traveller (spelling?) product has a decent mechanic that you could steal for scenes that you aren't eager to play through.
ReplyDeleteIf memory serves, they call it the "action in the middle" rule. You write out a plan, assign a difficulty based on the opposition to some sort of success roll, and roll against that difficulty. It's probably a 2d6 mechanic, like all of traveller. I think partial success starts around a 7 out of 12, with 10+ being some sort of resounding success.
Carsten Rossner I like this! You basically see the mass battle through the eyes of you characters (who of course will only see a tiny bit of it). I guess this could be chaotic and surprising, with unexpected things happening scene after scene, also depending on the (unknown) events in other battle areas...
ReplyDeleteCarsten Rossner That's brilliant. Thanks for sharing it! I'll give it a go in my next mass battle situation to see how it feels.
ReplyDeleteRobert Wiesehan You're welcome but I can't take credit for it. It's right out of the Star Wars d6 rulebook.
ReplyDeleteCarsten Rossner Right, But your heroic action got the idea to me, which was the pivotal turning point in the fight against mass battle boredom.
ReplyDeleteBasically, just like the game mechanic you shared. 😀😀