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Failure stakes for a travel Skill Challenge
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7565404" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION], obviously you know your table and you know your game's fiction, so I can only offer a couple of general thoughts:</p><p></p><p>* The idea of clarifying intent, if it's not entirely clear, seems worthwhile;</p><p></p><p>* In my Traveller game, part of what makes the subsystems for travel able to fit with a broadly "story now" approach to the game is the background setting, which I'll say more about.</p><p></p><p>The background setting for Traveller is an Imperium, with a somewhat nebulously characterised government, a group of interstellar agencies (the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Marines, the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service), and communication between planets dependent on news being carried by starships. In practical terms, this means that more-or-less any planet the PCs travel to can have as much or as little of the prior backstory catching them up as seems appropriate given what is going on in play. That's not to say that there is nothing partiular to particular worlds - Olyx had the bioweapons research base, Enlil is a backwards world that is the source of the virus and also (possibly) of aliens, Byron has the corrosive atmosphere and (doomed) domed city, Ashar is cold and high-tech and has psionics - but they all sit within and are connected to this background context - for instance, the bioweapons research is being run by a group of breakaway marines, and on Byron the PCs were hired by an Imperial agent to investigate their base on Olyx.</p><p></p><p>If I wanted to run a game in which <em>loved ones</em> were a frequent or significant stake, then I wouldn't use Traveller as the system, because loved ones <em>aren't</em> the sort of background element that can easily be dispersed across many geographic locations in the way that an Imperium and the conspiracies within it can be.</p><p></p><p>So I would tentatively suggest that, when you are thinking about intent and thinking about stakes, you might also think about how these tie into these geographic aspects of background, because that will tie into how you can go about narrating consequences that give the colour you are looking for (eg perhaps getting lost, subject to verisimilitude given the road) but also honour the intent and stakes that you are trying to focus on.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7565404, member: 42582"] [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION], obviously you know your table and you know your game's fiction, so I can only offer a couple of general thoughts: * The idea of clarifying intent, if it's not entirely clear, seems worthwhile; * In my Traveller game, part of what makes the subsystems for travel able to fit with a broadly "story now" approach to the game is the background setting, which I'll say more about. The background setting for Traveller is an Imperium, with a somewhat nebulously characterised government, a group of interstellar agencies (the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Marines, the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service), and communication between planets dependent on news being carried by starships. In practical terms, this means that more-or-less any planet the PCs travel to can have as much or as little of the prior backstory catching them up as seems appropriate given what is going on in play. That's not to say that there is nothing partiular to particular worlds - Olyx had the bioweapons research base, Enlil is a backwards world that is the source of the virus and also (possibly) of aliens, Byron has the corrosive atmosphere and (doomed) domed city, Ashar is cold and high-tech and has psionics - but they all sit within and are connected to this background context - for instance, the bioweapons research is being run by a group of breakaway marines, and on Byron the PCs were hired by an Imperial agent to investigate their base on Olyx. If I wanted to run a game in which [I]loved ones[/I] were a frequent or significant stake, then I wouldn't use Traveller as the system, because loved ones [I]aren't[/I] the sort of background element that can easily be dispersed across many geographic locations in the way that an Imperium and the conspiracies within it can be. So I would tentatively suggest that, when you are thinking about intent and thinking about stakes, you might also think about how these tie into these geographic aspects of background, because that will tie into how you can go about narrating consequences that give the colour you are looking for (eg perhaps getting lost, subject to verisimilitude given the road) but also honour the intent and stakes that you are trying to focus on. [/QUOTE]
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