Skyscrapers & ... Groundscrapers? (OOC)

Let's see what Fiona is doing, but we will probably need a roll for this (Insight, seems right, but I am open to other suggestions). You still present a fairly scary visage, so, as it stands you will have limited effectiveness.

I'll make the roll here in case it's needed next post in RP.

Once we roll we are bound by the results based on the fiction that came before.

In the future let's keep all RP rolls in the RP thread.

Adding a roll to a RP post does not violate Don't Edit, it does not change the content of the post (in fact, the site does not even consider the post 'edited'), just be sure to drop a note in the OOC so we know it happened. It can speed things along to mention the number at the same time, that way we don't first need to load the (sometimes slow) RP page and seek for the post in question.

Easiest is usually to add a new post anyway. That way any addition fiction can be dealt with.

If we want to abandon the woman to the care of her goblinised friends [ref], and don't want to deal with this scene anymore, we can have her faint, or something, and give you a free-pass to skip it.

I'm OK with that. @Tibbius, I would rather not have Fiona making all of the decisions. Can we collaborate on those going forward? Thanks.

As noted in the Help! thread in Fiction First and Don't placeholder and the rules of all PbtA games: We need to deal with the fiction first before we deal with dice rolls. Dice rolls are fiction driving events, but need to be based in the fiction, it is a cycle. Without the fiction of what you are actually doing we can not adjudicate any but the most simple actions, and then we might as well be playing DnD ... or Zork (`Hit troll with axe.`:).

Once you have rolled, we are bound by the results, and you don't get to shape the fiction to your advantage anymore.
I guess a 4 now means it can not understand you at all.
A 13 is pretty conclusive, but a Partial Success when you did not know the potential outcomes could have been messy and something you would prefer to have avoided.

I am curious to what extent the players or DM can frame the risks for a partial success / disaster. I was tempted for Option 1 to write,
Would that have been ok?

By the rules PbtA still follows the standard RPG mantra: The players say what their characters are doing and the GM says what the world does in response and calls for rolls if needed.

How much say you have over dice outcomes varies greatly from table to table. Some GMs, like myself, are very collaborative, some prefer an stronger divide between GM authority and player input. Speak to your GM before you start defining what could go wrong. Unless otherwise stated, it is probably best to assume you only have authority over your own character and wait till the GM asks you to "Describe how that goes" after a roll (or establishes that as a pattern).

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Using your example in the OOC post above, and picking it apart in a picky way, for illustration:

You are assuming, there, that the enemy will attack instead of trying to flee, and that it will attack directly. This defines the nature of the beast in a way that may not be what the GM planned (or was not what module said), maybe it has ranged attacks and does not pounce (it looked like it was going to pounce, but the team did not spend time studying it so they don't know), this can often lead to lowest-common-denominator fights, or to zaniness if the player describes the NPCs doing things that are out of character for what is happening. Personally I have very few 'plans' so I can easily pivot to incorporate what the players say, so we end up with the 'people turning into goblins', and now that is what is happening in this break, but that may distress other GMs.

You also described it 'poised to chomp'. In PbtA the NPCs don't roll dice, and an 'attack action' is a give and take: On a Miss they hurt you (as established in the fiction†); on a Success you hurt them; and on a Partial Success you both hurt each other. In the case of a 12+ (think 'critical') we did not bother to roll for damage and you did enough to drop it ... In truth I forgot this game had damage rolls, most PbtA games don't, but I probably would not have called for one here, as that would be anti-climactic, damage numbers are boring, damage effects are fun.

It can not 'chomp' you till you make a Move (or give the GM a 'golden opportunity' to make a GM Move), so that could be considered a bit weaselly, giving you another chance to act before it does anything, though the fiction of being pinned definitely adds to the drama, so I like it. I would hope such an act tells us something about the nature of the beast, that it might not want to hurt you (just yet?) and wants to restrain you, but that would depend on the fiction and the nature of the characters.

You describe 'its next move would be aggressive', that takes away the option that its next move would be to flee. Even monsters won't fight to the death if they don't have to‡.

Footnotes
• † PbtA (or at least Apocalypse World (the OG)) uses the term 'harm as established'. The GM does not get to just deal harm, the players need to know before they take an action what to expect. This is a conversation, before the dice hit the table. 'Established' does not mean you know the numbers, but you were warned it would be on the scale of 'crocodile'. If you fight it, that is what you should be expecting. The salamander and frog hints, and the explicit mention of a long tongue also suggest some ranged capabilities.
But your Techie is reckless so you will only learn these things after they are used rather than through pre-fight study. :)

• ‡ I have taken these examples from Apocalypse World (the OG), so the numbers are based on that game's 'hit points' and 'damage' figures (small weapon 2-Harm, really big weapon 4-Harm plus extras).
So, if an enemy is likely to fear pain they may not want to keep fighting after you have hurt them or killed their companions, or whatever. They may be angry enough to fight to the death, but, logically, most things won't, right?

Breakers has a lot more HP than AW, but you don't need to plow though all those HP before anything happens. Many fights can end when you have make it clear how it will go.

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This is slipping towards a 'directorial' style of play, which is out of tone with the rest of the gameplay so far. Some groups don't like that, some groups don't view that style as 'RP'. Based on what has gone before that sounds like an OOC conversation and not an in-character description of what Arthur does. Words like 'tries to shoot it' feel very different to anything that came before, right? 'Arthur shoots it', or 'shoots at it' or something more in-universe-descriptive would be more in keeping with the tone, but this is getting unnecessarily nitpicky.

I take responsibility for this, given how I left it [ref]. I was giving you an opportunity to do something before a fight started, and Arthur trying (unsuccessfully) to negotiate peace with it was a good example of that, but dice were rolled to attack, and, once the dice are rolled we are committed.

The problem with the 'Option 2: The lizard understands Arthur and he might be able to befriend it. +Insight' roll is that you can't roll to negotiate with it if it can't understand language. To do it you have to do it in the fiction, before you can roll it you have to actually trigger the move for what you are rolling. Breakers only has one Move ('Defy Danger' on Dungeon World parlance, 'Act Under Fire' in AW), but whatever you are rolling for still needs to be possible in the fiction. The rolls show us how well you do, not whether you can even do it. (... well that's complicated, and I take a 4 like this, in a case like this, to mean these things can not talk or are not sentient). If, for instance, you find a tank, or space-ship, or whatever in the break, you can not roll to attack it with your pistol, no matter how well you roll it will go badly for you. Once you roll, though, we are bound by the dice result, with a 12+ being 'as good as you could expect', which, if facing a tank with a pistol is 'not very good for you'. The fiction comes first.

This also means rolling for many things at once, when they might depend on each other can get messy. I know this is meant to speed up gameplay, but, especially in more complex games (like Blades in the Dark) it tends to slow things down. In a simpler game (like DnD), where our actions are simple binaries, this works. But in fiction first games we want to see the fiction before we see the roll, else we need to speculate about all the possible branching realities that could come from the combinatoric explosion of dice outcomes and possible NPC reactions.

Rather than trying to anticipate all the outcomes in one post, post with what your character is doing, up to the point it could fail, then, if a roll is called for (which may be obvious in some cases, like an attack) roll the dice, then, if the outcome is clear (usually a full Success) narrate how it goes, in as much as you can. Maybe you narrate Arthur's flawless (12+) shot in terms of his stance and confidence and character, and possible include something extra (for the 12+) he wants to get from it or just the bullseye (eye of newt?) accuracy (implying extra Harm). The GM, who knows the HP involved should probably describe things like 'wounded', else you assume it had enough HP to withstand your shot and rob yourself of finding they only have large size, not large HP, for instance. It is a balancing act.

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If you want to read more PbtA, you can get Apocalypse World 1e for free from the authors website [link] (2e clarified the language a bit, and added some nifty rules for vehicle combat, but 1e is still a solid game, and well worth the read (if you can't get 2e, which is often given away for free on itch.io [link])), and I am a fan of Impulse Drive (for Sci-Fi and Star Wars and such) and it has a pay what you want version that includes all the rules but with less refined layout and art work (I actually usually use the free version since I prefer the simpler layout) [link].

That was a lot. We can discuss in further detail if you want.

This can work. Though experimentation takes time (though forgetting that fact seems in character for Fiona, no?).

If Arthur agrees, you can shoot the poor thing again (and again) and see what happens. Make a roll (which is almost definitely Insight (awareness, understanding, smarts), right?).
On a -6 you misunderstand the principle behind this and it leads you astray in your future endeavours or in what you scrounge.
On a 7-9 you realise what is going on, but it takes time and we tick the clock for the Cloud of Woe.
On a 10+ your experiments are quick and efficient and you can push for more valuable data, or avoid advancing the Cloud of Woe, your choice.
On a 12+ either both extra benefits from the 10+ or one of them and something else you think may be interesting.

No matter what, the salamander will be pissed.

Oh yes. She forgets to eat when she is doing research; she has to set an alarm to remind herself, or else she passes out. That sort of thing.

I figured. :)

Agreed. (For now... ;)
While your gun may run out of bang, your knife should never run out of stab. You have other options.

Running low on ammo at a time like this would be mainly fictional, we only care when it makes the game more interesting, so this may lead to ammo problems later in the game when you realise you wasted a lot here and needed it for fighting. As you say, rummaging in your pack (an action that may call for a roll to do quickly) should resolve that if it comes up.

I am all caught up now and I believe that in time our inhumanity to this frogagator thing is going to be a ridiculous, shameful entry in our diaries. ... speaking as the ghost of breakers-past.

Might be.

Do you want to bring your character in in time to part of this, or afterwards? We can also see if it will take long (in real-world-time) and decide based on that, too.

Not necessary to radically retcon me in. Just being smarmy and demonstrating that I am caught up.

We can (and often do) 'retcon' characters always having been there or never having been there. This is a game for new players, and such players come and go and we have an open door policy, having to explain why and how can get complicated, so we often just ignore the continuity and continue as though nothing happened.

In this case, so close to the start, we can just easily just call the characters back to the portal or to the building so you can join up.

The question is if we do that before the (curtailed) experiments, or after.

But we can also, just as easily, say that Herman was with the group from the beginning.

OK. You have your second shooting. Do your thing ... and probably roll your dice, based on what you describe.

After is fine - that way they can explain it to me ;-)

I would assume your Tech Kit —as 'Specialized tools for technical work'— includes most of what you need. Maybe call these 'Samples' and note what they are labelled as. You can add more 'samples' to this, and eventually, when it seems reasonable, you may need to tick another checkbox of weight.
@tibbius: What is Arthur doing during this, time-consuming, process [ref]?