Character Creation and Game Discussion

Yeah, the three way split is why I often don't respond right away - because I need a solid 10 uninterrupted minutes to handle this game :P

No worries. There's definitely a normal ebb/flow to postings, but I also know that RL can throw in some major curves, which can understandably put the brakes on a game. Glad to hear it's just the former. ;)

And kudos for keeping such good track of the three-way split! :D

Going to wait up for Daclish before carrying on, as timelines are getting skewed but the probability of intersection is rising!

Agreed.

I take it me and Hiram are on standby outside waiting to see skulking Dac with someone in toe? Santi is in her room. Dez is doing ninja like stuff yeah? Time's on a few different speeds so I'm unsure. Hope no one else is flipping the bird at the snow.

Yeah sounds right. At this point I'm just waitin on Dac to respond to Dez.

Thumb twiddle

You can go see the new Deadpool movie since we have time...

Sorry guys, was waiting on Daclish (and spaceseeker has noted elsewhere on here that he and his family are sick). I was going to move things forward and assume a response, except I'm now in Costa Rica on vacation. I've been able to keep up my other games, as they are rather straightforward, but this one takes the most work for me to advance (we're going to do a bit of a fast forward when I post --)... I'm going speed things up with a bit of 'plot jump' as I'd like to get us past this 'prologue' of sorts, but there are still two important things left to 'resolve'.

Ah man... eat an empanada for me mang.

I was just going to have Daclish sneak out, but it isn't necessary to play out if you want to jump us forward to when we're figuring out what to do with the notebook info.

So, as a general remark, so far this system intrigues me but some features are frustrating and cumbersome. Specifically, failure is really hard to come by following their rules and guidelines. You have had no problem generating a pool of 5-6 dice which guarantees success (or meaningless failure) against difficulty 1 (which the system recommends most tasks are, and that higher difficulties should be used sparingly).

Secondly, it's hard for me not to 'double count' circumstances. Setting difficulty and modifying dice pool by circumstances are to sides of the same coin, and it's not clear how to manipulate those sliders to get a challenge to be 'right'.

Finally, the constant negotiation in tests is a real slow down for PbF (ironic, as the game states it was designed to support forum play, I think the designers failed in this regard). We haven't had a combat yet, but wait until we do. And, I've been smoothing some details and eliminating some of the negotiation by just analyzing your sheets and telling you your fully modified dice pool.

This isn't to say there aren't things I like. It's a neat system, but I feel like it lacks polish. I'm tempted to a) tweak it to fit PBF needs better (smooth, non-negotiation play) or b) use it as the base for developing a lighter system that still captures the metaphysics of Scadriel. Before I go and do any of this (or we, this would, be done in another thread in this forum and you'd all be welcome to contribute), I want to get feedback on your end about the system so far (knowing that we've sampled about 2/3 having not had a fight yet).

I would agree with the lack of danger and the negotiation slowing things down. As a simple fix, I might suggest increasing the base difficulty of everything to make 2 the default and perhaps just leave it up to the player to apply and subtract circumstances. As always, I'm more than happy to defer to others if anyone has stronger opinions. As long as we can tell a fun story, I'm happy.

Part of the problem may simply be nudges reducing consequences of failure. I'll look back over the tread, we have lots of data now, and see how base difficulty 2, 3 and "nudges mean nothing if you fail" all would have affected the overall chapter.

I would prefer tweaking the system to designing a new one. The graded success and failure is potentially very interesting, kind of like an ffg Star Wars lite system... It's just, failures are so beyond rare they never happen!

D= GM jinxed us.... *burns his digital dice*

And we're off! Here we are now engaged in a planning phase. The first chapter skipped this, or, I did this for you, so that we could get right into the game and feel out the mechanics. Now that we've got that together, everyone can replenish their Standings and Resiliences and we can do a proper 'session'. A session begins by planning a job, heist, caper - whatever you want to call it (the rulebook calls them schemes). Once planned, we move into putting it into action.

I'll start by letting you RP some stuff out, feel free to make up a Noble you want to sack and as you go I'll intervene and guide the planning to ensure you put all the right details together.

You're going to want a Goal, a Method, I'll provide some Obstacles (as you work those things out), an 'in', things to work with, and some things you don't know (or are uncertain about). You don't need to specify this all up front, just start RPing out a 'planning session' and we'll get a scheme whipped up in no time! :)

I'm going to reread through everyone's backstories to come up with a caper or two to throw onto the table. Hopefully I'll get that done and post up tomorrow.

As I said, you don't need a fully complete plan to start the discussion.

Some more setting details: not all nobles live in plantations. Most live in fancy mansions in the city, and often host or attend balls.

As I recall, Dez hadn't named her nemesis yet. So there's a name for you, and some more details :)