Heist the Colours (OOC)

It has been a while, though. So I will kick this along tomorrow.

Sorry, for delay, last week wa very busy. This week is holiday week in my country, But here I am - breaking my rule to not play at weekends, just to minimize this delay impact:)

About "friendliness towards Craig" - you are right: "friendly" is too strong word:) But I think this is not the first time that Raf is "making some deals, keeping his negotiation partner at the gun point" :) So its rather "mutual understanding of the situation and some respect for working man" - that he is among for. And the fact that you keep someone at gun point doesn't mean that he is your mortal enemy - at least in Raf's world of "smuggling, fighting with corrupted government and looking for some freedom on the edges of known universe" :)
Me? I'm not important here;) But it is what Raf thinks. Can be not true. But for that are the stories - to surprise us sometimes. So IMHO we don't have to establish everything beforehand.
Yes, Raf will let him do that. As I said before it could make discussion with Craig easier and have additional benefit of showing Craig position to others from my group + maybe showing boss girl that he is "occupied by Raf", what shouldn't be a good news for her.
Maybe:) But mainly saying how Raf thinks about the situation, could turn up as... not very accurate:)
Added a roll in the post. It's 5 - so before adding RP I would like to know if I got to know anything new by this roll? Probably not? :)
Hope so! :)

To find it easier - copy from the previous post:
"Yes, Raf will let him do that. As I said before it could make discussion with Craig easier and have additional benefit of showing Craig position to others from my group + maybe showing boss girl that he is "occupied by Raf", what shouldn't be a good news for her."

Hmmm... After reading RP again it looks that Raf started the deeper conversation(not free action?) but Craig has higher Initiative then Raf, so he should act first? Waiting for his actions for now, and will act accordingly to what will happen. Or should I state it beforehand?

BTW: is there a way in Traveller to exchange with someone(or enemy by some actions) or rise your Initiative like in i.e. some of the Year Zero Engine systems?

no worries.
Is it still 'weekend'? Do you consider 'holidays' as 'weekend'? If you are also not wanting to post this week we can skip you for now. Just let us know.
I was talking to Raf, "address the characters not the players" and all that. Obviously the players can see what all the other players are doing, but I was asking if Raf knew what was going on on the other side of the bushes. The scenes might not be as separated as I thought they were. If you can see them, they can see you.
'Mutual' might be a too strong a word. You are assuming he feels the same way about having a gun pointed at him.

Given that you got a 5, maybe you continue to work under that assumption, but he does not feel the same way? You good with that?
Sure. But there is a large gulf between being a 'mortal enemy' and any sort of 'friendless' that would make him not shoot you when threatened.
That 5 you rolled points that way, yes. :)

I can't remember how Year Zero does it. But I think the only mechanic around that is Delay.

We need to work out the details of how we use those Delays. I am tempted to have it shift your number down to wherever you decide to act for the rest of the encounter. (This isn't 7th sea, so we don't really care about the actual number, only the order, so if a few hit the bottom of the ladder, we just need to keep the order.) I don't think we care about who in the party acts first on the same number (those 8s), not until we do care, and then we can work it out and probably just bump the numbers or order around as appropriate.

We will see how it plays out.

There may be a way to force NPCs to Delay and end up after you. This would depend on the fiction. If it comes up we can work out the details.

Lio will try to aim and shoot the guy on the rooftop.
He will inform the team first. Maybe he is missing information that could change his mind about opening fire.

I'd like to use my turn to have bob cause a distraction to make the other's actions easier. Is that possible? Like could it give everyone a +1 or something?

In fact... when I started writing that post it was still Saturday... but managed to end only on Monday:/ No, normally holidays would be me completely off-line for me, but it was "holidays in my country" until 3rd of May - and I knew that I will be less at computer then usual, but no "normal holidays" for me. I know: complicated;) What's important: I'm back and will try to make up for my lower attendance.
In my mind the scenes were separated as long as Raf and Craig were talking in bushes:) As they stood up, I think they are quite easily visible to the rest of the group like no more then 15-30 m. That's how I have seen it. But if it is different - just say:)
Yeah, of course. Every assumption is risky:)
Completely true. But it was also a statement where Raf would like to go with this "relation" with Craig. Probably he never will be able to get there, but... it is always good to have some aim:) (no pun intended ;) )
Interesting approach. So you are interpreting my roll, not as much if Raf "managed to get to know something about Raf", but rather "how good my. assumptions about him were" ? Of course, I don't have a slightest problem with that(in either way) - just asking as "GM wannabe":)

AFAIK in Y0E you also establish turn/initiative order at the beginning of the fight, only once - by dealing cards numbered 1-10. But... you always can exchange your order/card when it is your turn with PC or friendly NPC - for worse(of course) - and then you stay with it for the rest of the battle. But... in some of it versions: if you have really good rolls(additional successes) with your melee attack or ranged attack, you can spend those additional successes to exchange your initiative with your enemy too. I think it is quite thematic, especially in same fencing scenerio and so. And I like it.

I was just curious if I missed something here as it seems a little "artificial" that initiative order is rigid/the same for the whole fight, but... for now I don't feel the need to exchange anything here:) Let's see how it will be working. But I'm not against any changes if GM find them useful also:)

That's a cool idea. I may steal that for at-the-table games. :D
Same. I think it can get confusing in PbP. I already had to scroll up 2 pages to find the current initiative values. I imagine it would be more confusing if people start changing things.

About new round - waiting for what @WhtKnt,@TheGenerator - Ronny and Cat will do and if Craig will do something more in this round, until stating how to continue our delicate "conversation" with Craig.
Reposting initiative table, to be able to find it easier too:)

Aiming is a Minor Action (page 75). You can spend your 1 Minor Action to Aim and then your 1 Significant Action to Shoot this Round.

You can spend up to 6 Minor Actions in a row to gain up to +6 to your Attack, though that will mean three Rounds till you Attack. You could spend all 3 Minor Actions this round and 1 the next Round and then Attack with +4 as your Significant Action that Round.

Mechanically someone doing something to aid a future action roll could be a Task Chain (page 63). But I don't know what the roll would be or who would roll it. Chained Tasks only affect one roll, so that would not benefit everyone.

The other option would be that Bob's action provides a Boon (page 61), that could affect everyone (and is much better than a +1, which this game does not really have:).

However, you would need to back that up in the fiction. What is Bob doing that will cause this result? This is a city, someone honking their horn outside the park is not going to distract combatants very much. Establish it in the fiction and we can see what effect it has?

And no, Bob can not bring the van into the park... or not without much risk that you would need to convince him to take.

Just let us know, so we can avoid waiting for you unnecessarily.
Cool. So they know you are both there. Him standing did not change that.
Sure, but stating it does not make it so. You will have to provide a reason for Craig to feel the same. Currently he is as likely to shoot you as to trust you (which is not bad odds). You can change that, but it won't be easy and will depend on what you want from him. Tuning him into a 'friend' may be pushing it, do what you can.
Yeah. Good rolls mean these assumptions are true, bad ones mean they are not true (but the characters don't learn that), middling one means we can't be sure yet.

This is only one way to rule such things. It depends on a lot of factors, the primary one probably being how much agency the players get. This puts me in mind of an article that you might like: https://lumpley.games/2022/03/14/otherkind-dice/, and you might want to look at Psi*Run if you can get it.
I might be more inclined to have this done at the time Initiative is 'rolled', but we can implement such a thing here if we want. No problem. Always proposed and motivated by the player whose number is going downwards?
There is no such mechanic here, but you could try use the fiction to do such a thing.
Yes. We can end the sentence there. Initiative and its forced order are completely artificial. I am not a fan.
If we don't remove the system complete we may implement a system for exchanges. At a minimum I think that Delaying should change one's Initiative Number to the point where they act, so a Delay is permanent, the rules don't say that, but they also don't say anything, so this is within the rules.

We can work on ways to make it easier to find. The unpredictable way pages break (actually it is every 20 posts, but who's counting) makes it hard to pin the table to the top of the page, and putting it in the First post seems to give it inappropriate importance.

I know people who record Initiative in their character sheet (they are likely to be looking at the sheet when they care). The GM can also make a sheet that appears at the bottom of the page with such notes, I may look into that.

Maybe let us know what you intend? Waiting for others to post when they don't directly affect our actions just slows things down needlessly. The Raf/Craig scene is sorta its own thing, though that might change once shooting starts.
Craig has just acted and is waiting for you. If need be, he is Delaying till he knows what you are going to do to him.

Can I assume that everything I tell Bob is also heard by my team members? Otherwise, the distraction would distract both parties.
That boon thing seems interesting.

I'm guessing I'd have to roll something for that too. I think it would probably be leadership (Which Ronny is not good at) to get Bob to do what I ask, or maybe Streetwise to know what kind of noise/action would be distracting enough in this environment?

Should I just do the fiction first and then you make the call?

We can assume that it can be heard by your team. If they are busy they might not be listening, but I think everyone is attentive at this moment, so it won't be a surprise to them.
Depends what you are doing. It might be possible to get a Boon from it without needing a roll, though, again, it will depend on the fiction.
Maybe such a roll to establish if your understanding is good enough for what you propose in the fiction to work. So far I am not seeing any real way to do this, though.
We can talk about it after the fiction, yes. But think about how it would work in the real world, and about if Bob or a team on the other side might have other value before you commit?

If we need to add elements to the scene to make it work, we can do that, maybe with an appropriate roll to put in the right place.
That is always a tricky part of random character generation. Sometimes we want our characters to do things they would not do, they are historically bad at some things for a reason, no? If you are interested in picking up this Skill then, rolling it justifies that in the story. If you fail at it, that may be a message... either one telling you that you should not do this sort of thing, or the one that tells you that you need to start working on learning it.

(Off-topic: I am (vaguely) working on creating a system where 'leveling up' is purely an in-fiction thing, so that idea is slightly on my mind.)

Cat is going to delay until the shooting starts, at which point she goes prone. She doesn't have a gun and doesn't particularly want to get shot.