At the Intersection of Skilled Play, System Intricacy, Prep, and Story Now

[pemerton]

it doesn't seem like the rules really come out against a player trying to invoke a circles check out in the field

Agreed. This came up in my second session: a player wanted to Circles while still in the Adventure Phase, and I insisted on waiting until Town Phase.

A complexity I haven't resolved yet is that you get visit a Town Friend at-will during Town Phase, but the rules are much less clear on how Adventurer Friends are meant to work. Given that, as per PC gen, Fea-bella had last seen her Ranger friend Glothfindell in a northern forest, and the PCs were in Stoink well south of there, Fea-bella's player didn't object to needing to Circles him up; but I am thinking about how to provide some sort of reward/benefit for the friendship in the next session that helps reflect its place as a component of build.

There's other stuff I'm still making sense of, where I would like the rules to be a bit more explicit. Eg as far as I can tell, the function of the Cartographer role in a journey isn't to make Cartography easier or harder per se (although that is what actual language in the LMM tends to suggest) but rather to permit a Cartographer test to be made during the Adventure Phase (in exchange for paying some toll) - ie it is not about how easy or hard the test is, but about manipulating the action economy. Thor, I'd love you to have just come out and told us!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agreed. This came up in my second session: a player wanted to Circles while still in the Adventure Phase, and insisted on waiting until Town Phase.

A complexity I haven't resolved yet is that you get visit a Town Friend at-will during Town Phase, but the rules are much less clear on how Adventurer Friends are meant to work. Given that, as per PC gen, Fea-bella had last seen her Ranger friend Glothfindell in a northern forest, and the PCs were in Stoink well south of there, Fea-bella's player didn't object to needing to Circles him up; but I am thinking about how to provide some sort of reward/benefit for the friendship in the next session that helps reflect its place as a component of build.

Yeah, my current character in @Manbearcat's game, Awanye, has a 'Friend: Redband the Wizard' on my sheet (I picked that name, but not with any specific reasoning in mind). Given that the NPC is designated as a 'wizard' I am treating it as an adventuring friend. Given that my character is an elf ranger, and the elves have been MIA for like 100 years, I don't even actually know how it is POSSIBLE to have a 'Wizard' as a friend, but I guess I'll find out... lol. None of us has really messed with Circles, yet!

There's other stuff I'm still making sense of, where I would like the rules to be a bit more explicit. Eg as far as I can tell, the function of the Cartographer role in a journey isn't to make Cartography easier or harder per se (although that is what actual language in the LMM tends to suggest) but rather to permit a Cartographer test to be made during the Adventure Phase (in exchange for paying some toll) - ie it is not about how easy or hard the test is, but about manipulating the action economy. Thor, I'd love you to have just come out and told us!

Hmmmm, so we have been using Cartographer, Jasper has it, and the process has simply been for each leg that we tick off a grind and he checks to see if he made an accurate map of that leg. The theory being we can obviate any checks/toll on the way back. It seems like a kind of logical process, we're adding to the grind now in order to make our later return trip safer (since we presume we will have to drag our half dead arses back the way we came).

 

[niklinna]

There's other stuff I'm still making sense of, where I would like the rules to be a bit more explicit. Eg as far as I can tell, the function of the Cartographer role in a journey isn't to make Cartography easier or harder per se (although that is what actual language in the LMM tends to suggest) but rather to permit a Cartographer test to be made during the Adventure Phase (in exchange for paying some toll) - ie it is not about how easy or hard the test is, but about manipulating the action economy. Thor, I'd love you to have just come out and told us!

This is how @Manbearcat is handling Cartographer for our group. Basically after every significant test that ticks the Grind, we have the option to map that bit of the journey. It keeps the Obstacle level low, since I'm always mapping just the last little bit, but mapping every stage would advance the Grind twice as fast as normal on the way to the adventure destination—yet another tradeoff! So we have to decide if it's worth streamlining our exit path, and that's also assuming we'll be going out the way we went in.

edit: scooped!