• He/Him

Hi its me Flux! I mostly talk here about Tabletop RPG's, Actual plays that I like, and other media I enjoy (Like video games!)


My favorite TTRPG's, at the moment include:
-Mothership
-Armor Astir Advent
-HEART: The City Beneath
-Songs for the Dusk
-Tendencies: Spirit and Glamour
-Beam Saber
-Songbirds 3e
-His Majesty The Worm


soleilraine
@soleilraine

I understand what FitD games are going for but I do gotta ask earnestly and genuinely. Does anyone here find it fun to like. Sit down and have to tick faction clocks and relationships and shit by yourself for an hour every time you end a session. It’s gotta be fun to someone otherwise it wouldn’t be here right but I gotta ask because it makes me personally want to die


soleilraine
@soleilraine

Honestly all downtime bookkeeping tbh. It’s very funny, during CalazCon, keep an ear out for when I tune the fuck out at the start of every downtime while everyone figures out status and payout, because I’m the type of person who has had to re-read this page 8 times to process it and even then I still don’t understand it really at all, because I just chronically do not care about the bookkeeping at all and just want to get to the actual fun parts of downtime. Why are Status, Trust, and Relationship 3 different mechanics I’m sure it’s for something but I just want to cut loose already


TheFlux
@TheFlux

Truth be told this is sort of why I've taken out a faction game/Group playbook status mechanics in my own personal FitD hack in favour of general "World Clocks." I like to design around what I personally as a GM would find fun, and I tend to have friction with a lot of post-mission number crunching.


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in reply to @soleilraine's post:

I know a few people who love this but I definitely prefer a more dynamic or collaborative way to handle factions. Still trying to figure out what the game design solution there is haha. At least the game doesn't break really if you just wing faction stuff in most games

I enjoyed it when I ran Blades, but I don't think I ever did it for factions that weren't directly involved in the action and, even then, I followed the old advice of "only roll if you're not sure what happens." I usually ticked faction clocks based on the outcome of jobs (or decisions on what jobs to take). So, like. The Bluecoats only make progress on securing military hardware when the gang pulls off a really messy heist. The Lampblacks and Red Sashes are in a stalemate until the gang pitches in (or, like, the Sashes are winning and tick their clocks every downtime unless the gang gets involved).

I also usually did the upkeep the morning of a session, so all the recent developments would be fresh in my head rather than a week or two stale.

in reply to @soleilraine's post:

Yeah I find the accounting of factions way too overwhelming for something that produces consequences that feel like the come out of nowhere because it mediates the cause and effect of player choices.

Either I missed that section in S&V / Blades or this is purely a Beam Sabre design choice that is really about playing up the specific fiction of 'being a squad in a larger army' rather than 'acting as independent self interested actors' that FitD games typically allow for. I often leave this (admittedly shorter) process to the next day or at the start of Downtime as players assess their own situation with Scum & Villainy.

I absolutely love it in Blades. After focusing on the PC crew, I find it fun and rewarding to roll dice, see what other crews got up to, and use that to inspire/flesh out the world.

In Beam Saber I find it interminable, confusing, and a gigantic pain in the ass, tbh. I understand what a lot of the Beam Saber mechanics are angling for, but they never click for me as a whole.

my commentary is that a. the point of faction clocks isn't to be another reflection of player agency - quite the contrary, they're designed to put pressure on players to address upcoming conflicts that will impact them and b. you don't, afaik, have to put out any faction clocks you think aren't fun or interesting. not sure if that's RAW but i think it's a pretty clear RAI

also i don't think it should ever take more than like 15 minutes to do that maintenance, throw the roll, mark the marks, move on. you can decide what it all means later