I'm probably not the only person who has had players scratch their heads & go "HUH?!" and wildly crazy maneuvers/declarations amounting to "GOTO:END" after explaining some of the concepts behind fate to players with a strong background in RPG's... So I figured this would be good both for getting some critique & potentially helping others. PEACH gets used a lot on some other RPG forums and stands for Please Examine And Critique Honestly, it seemed apt to include in the title
. So what do you guys think?
First: the source video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OvaSrikG6Q I've started loosening the training- wheels on my players over the last few weeks, social combat has been going decently well, but they were still having trouble with assessments & declarations in general. I made this to hopefully give them a bit of of grounding on the concepts behind them hoping it would help. I'm still being pretty permissive with them since it's still a bit too early for most of them to be going without the training wheels. This seemed to help them & hopefully it can help others, or help even more with feedback
For those who don’t watch the competence porn show Leverage, The characters:
* Eliott Spencer: Pure mortal beatemup man
** Crazy good at physicaly neutralizing threats with an aversion to guns due to some past trauma that’s unimportant for this. Usually neutralization is nonfatal & involves minimal disturbance or collateral damage. Also great with assessing threats, probably due to a stunt that allows him to use weapons or fiststo assess any type of weapon guns & such.
* Nathan Hall: Criminal mastermind with a robinhood complex
** Tired of spending too many years as an insurance investigator he eventually broke down after the death of his son & decided that he could turn his whitehat inside out and gather a crew cponsisting of the best of the best in their own criminal fields to pull the bag over those who deserve it and help those who were screwed. (troubles & other details unimportant for this example)
* Sophie Devereaux: Social engineering specialist (grifter)
** excels at pickpocketing, NLP, & stunt driving among other things thanks to some stunts. She’s a badass, but not in this situation just like Elliott would be out of his element where she can shine.
*0:00-0:03
**Group broke into & are trying to escape from bigbad’s warehouseafter collecting the macguffin (unimportant for example what). The warejhouse is “loaded with boxes & machinery, dimly lit, & has a concrete floor.
** Group had decided that it would be best to move quickly & that the safest way would be to have badass eliott in front to do what he does best, Nathan behind him just in case he can help a little bit since he’s not great at a fight, but can do more than slap someone. & have sophie in the rear to give her an aspect of “hopefully they don’t see my face” in case she needs to break off & do some social engineering.
*** Since this point is stated why the aspect is setup, the GM is aware of that possible intent in case they didn’t make the connection & can plkan for the possibility in a way that might allow it to be tagged whenever reasonableinstead of just relegating sophie to Hey social mcsocial, go make drinks while we deal with the sweaty dirty stuff” for the same reason her plans often involve the other groupmembers. Everyone is there to have fun.
** The group has stated they will continue this way until they notice something unexpected , are forced to make a choice of some sort, or are otherwise stopped
*** The game is not a tactical simulation & shouldn’t be treated as such. They state their goals, setup how they are going about them, what they expect will make them change from their current path instead of just saying “ok misterGM, what happens next?” since the expect something is likely to happen given that they just broke into the bigbad’s warehouse
* 00:06-00:08
** GM announces that one of the bigbad’s security guys guy in a suit charges around the corner & does a quick initiative check. At this point it doesn’t really need to break down into full out turnbased combat b/c eliott is probably going to neutralize him or he’s going to fire his gun & alert the others
*** Eliott wins the roll & tries to setup a fists based block to disarm him while working towards neutralizing him
*** Nate & Sophie back off and try to setup aspects of giving Elliott room to play.
*** Security guy struggles to escape from the block so he can fire his gun in offense/defense
*** Eliott tags the room to play aspect Nate & Sophie setup & combined with his own fists roll handily wtfpwns securityguy declaring that he knocks him out as the takeout.
* 00:08-00:24
** Eliott states that he’s going to perform a maneuver of kinda pressing himself up against the wall of stuff to setup a “sneakysneaky & covered” aspect before he inches out to listens for sound around the corner & ake a relevant skillcheck
** GM takes an alertness roll & announces that Elliot can hear more people around the corner running around with purpose, but not towards him
** Nate & Sophie admit that Eliott is best for this & let him assess the threat
** Eliott quickly peeks around the corner to scope out what’s there & announces he wants to do it only enough to get a quick glance to avoid being seen.
** GM takes an alertness roll modified by stealth & Eliott tags his sneakysneaky aspect to be sure he gets a nice result.
** GM announces that he sees almost a room of boxes & such with suited thugs hiding behind stuff they can use as cover while some of them are readying their guns & taking defensive stances (stetting yup their own aspects)
* 00:25-00:39
** Nate offers to spend a fate point to tag his criminal mastermind high concept & declare that the group just needs to get through that door on the other side of that room.
** GM accepts the declaration.
** Eliott makes a weapons check modified by weapons & announces that the room is a killbox with too much space to easily get through alive
* 00:39-00:45
** Nate & sophie confirm they are sure that the macguffin is enough to takedown the bigbad
** 00:46-00:52
** Eliott take’s the unconscious mook’s gun & offers to spend a point of refresh trying to work out with the GM to amend his existing stunt to include the usage of guns with the weapons skill under extreme situations if he takes a mental consequence after the adrenaline rush is past.
*** GM agrees & provisionally allows it for this once without spending the refresh just yet, but states he can even tag his trouble while using them in exchange for raising the consequence severity & detriment to the character that the GM will assign after the adrenaline rush.
**** Eliott’s player kinda likes the way he doesn’t use guns and internally cheers while being happy to have an excuse to keep that trouble, so agrees that it’s a great compromise
* 00:53-00:57
** Nate tries to put an “I got your back with this” aspect on Elliot to let him know that he knows what kind of line he’s about to cross & will be there to support him with pulling himself back together.
** Eliot is meanwhile setting up navel gazing aspects of “clips tucked into in the right spot”, “clothes won’t bind or catch” using appropriate skillchecks (weapons &/or maybe athletics/fists)
* 00:59-1:00
*** Eliot charges out shooting to cover himself while moving towards the nearest cover
* He continues his block until 1:09 while,making an assessment for an “I know where everyone is” aspect when some close calls not shown nearly inflict a point of stress if it wasn’t for the cover & he ducks down behind his cover announcing to the Gm that he hopes that if he stays down a little bit they will realize that he’s not going to just pop up & he might have a better chance of doing more than just putting up a block with his gun. (GM knows why & knows the intent now)
* Clip of something that didn’t quite get fully cut in the videosnippet
* 1:33
** Eliot does some navel gazing maneuvers reading & loading his gun to setup “fully loaded” & “cocked & ready” aspects while making sure they are clear o anything that might causer a jam to setup a “my guns are clear” aspect.
* 1:35-1:40
** Eliot pops out tagging aspects like mad to shoot at folks while on his way to the next bit of cover. Because of the aspects & cover he manages to avoid taking any stress while taking out a few of them along the way.
* 1:40-1:51 Eliot spends a fate point to declare that one of the security guys went down near enough to his cover spot to have his gun within reach
** Elliot now has two guns
* 1:46- 1:58ish
** GM announces that the mooks are starting to creep up on him & starting to hit pretty close with their shots.
** Eliot burns a fate point to tag the “I know where everyone is a second time & tries to pop the nearest guys who has the best shot on”
** GM gets a few rolls & explains the competence porn while admitting that there are still a lot of smarter guys left to deal with & gunning for him.
* 1:58-2:04
** Elliot makes an weapons roll modified by athletics as discussed with the GM so he can head for better cover & setup a new aspect of “everyone is in my path” while shooting at them hoping for the best & to keep them from charging.
* 2:04-2:14
** Eliott spends a fate point to declare that one of the mooks is using big barrels of aviation grade lubricant with the intent of using it for conveyance for himself
*** GM likes the idea & goes with it letting Eliot have a quick weapons roll to shoot some holes in it from behind his cover with the last of his clip
* 1:16-2:25
** Eliot makes some quick assessments to search a nearby dead goon for his gun & any clips he might have while dodging & ducking from falling debris thanks to the mook’s gunfire.
* 2:30
** GM announces that the aspect “lubricated floor” has been added to the scene & the mooks have quit shooting pointlessly at his cover
* 2:35-3:08
** Eliot walks out with guns down in nonthreatening position setting up a new “I know where everyone is” aspect, “guns are clear & cocked”, & “the room is in my head” before taking a deep breath & using discipline to setup a “calm & focused” aspect
* 3:12-3:40
** Competence porn as Eliot runs & slides across the floor on his knees taking out mook after mook & tagging his aspects like mad to get through it safely while taking out as many as possible
* 3:40 Eliot spends a fate point to declare that there are some 55gallon drum barrels stamped “danger explosive material that might be close enough to the remaining mooks to do some real damage if given cause to explode GM knows why & what the goal behind the declaration is instead of a possible “and it explodes, but nobody was near it.. oh wait can I do something else instead?” retcon problem since the GM would probably mention that none of the ex-special forces guards are near them & the character recognizes that if it were the case. If you’re making a seemingly harmless declaration & the GM has no idea why or for what goal, he can’t warn you of the flaw in your cunning plan. Exploding some barrels to find out that he just wasted an attack to discover that he’s up against ex-special forces types is probably not high on Eliot’s list of priorities now that his slide came to an end & he’s out in the open.
* 3:46 on. Eliott scopes out the scene & tucks his guns in where they will be “quickly reachable” (aspect) while standing up on a box to get away from the fire & scope out the scene
** Bigbad’s top muscle comes out from some pocket dimension & taunts Eliot at gunpoint before he shoots him dead by tagging the “quickly reachable” aspect to get the jump on him & ditches the guns in disgust while walking off into the metaphorical sunset
* GM announces that the tags to his trouble would have resulted in an extreme consequence of “haunted by past wrongs“, but Nate’s peptalk chipped that down to only a major consequence of “a bit unfocused”
** Everyone had fun watching the carnage play out across the table & Eliot/Nate might be a little closer. It wasn't a one sided snooze fest for everyone but Eliot, just the other bits were chopped out by whoever posted the video & the rest of the 40 minute episode is also hacked out
* This
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMx5FIINH6Y&feature=related is another good example of using a social skill (rapport/deceit, maybe both) to setup aspects for an impending physical combat. Just because something is a social skill or combat skill. doesn’t mean that it can’t be used in place of starting (or during) a fight of the other sort to setup one or more aspects in your favor
* As is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRve_JBoIro&feature=related a perfect example of a more social person working to flip a situation in favor of a more physical one’s favor by setting up some aspects (" They know I’m fake" & a free tag on his relevant aspect due to the coffee spill)! Just because your not the most social of butterflies/physical of bees doesn’t mean that you can’t sometimes contribute to those situations that you don’t excel at. Your aspect counts the same as the king’s aspect does to a fight/scene, it goes one further by doing it without the king having to do anything to set the aspect up
