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Constellation of Complications
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8382457" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>In thinking on this, something doesn't sit particularly straight with me, and that the claim that the players aren't bound by the fiction because they can always just flashback their way out. There's some truth to this, the flashback mechanic can be very powerful, but that's not at all something that I've really encountered with it. It's a very useful tool for helping get out a sticky situation, but it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card, either. And, I think that the difference from your description (and the longer one in PM) is that the GM is softballing a bit. By this, I mean the GM isn't playing things as hard as they should and has let off the gas. As we discussed in the PM thread, the stress costs of the flashbacks is around 5 stress or so, being somewhat generous (I still think flashbacking a solve of a major component of the plan is one of those rare occasions I'd be pushing 3 or 4 stress on a flashback as a GM). That you could freely burn 5 stress means that you weren't terribly concerned with stress in the mission, and that suggests that it wasn't being taxed hard, and that suggests the GM was softballing a bit. That you say you continually felt like it was trivial to just whistle up a flashback in other sessions, and also that it's a done deal to recover the ship leads to that same conclusion. A GM who is pushing hard, who holds the players up to their actions, will create a situation where the fiction isn't just binding on the GM, but binding on the players as well. I mean, pretty much every session we have a character do something that ends up binding others into having to deal with it as part of their action declarations. </p><p></p><p>To relate an example 2 sessions ago the party was infiltrating the temple of a cult that was causing us some problems (they wanted what we had and our crew reputations meant we were going to take that unkindly-like). The plan was to sneak in, steal/destroy some materials the cult was using for some rituals, and get out. Of course, it was chaotic, but, at one point, we were searching the nave and rolled rather poorly in a fraught situation (risky). The GM described how some of the hymnals started fluttering, opening and turning pages and whispering softly. My character tried to deal with this, and ended up botching that, causing the whispering to become talking and alerting someone upstairs who came to investigate. At the time, the third in our party, who was supposed to be causing a distraction next door, wandered into the front doors of the temple with two acolytes she had met and, ahem, "charmed" in tow (there are so many puns in here, but I am not going to explain them). So, we had a three way problem. The acolytes were discovering that this wasn't just their "lucky" night (god, the puns!), I was being possessed by some creepy hymnals, and our other member was the only one positioned to do anything at all about the guy coming down the stairs. Two of these problems are not accessible by flashback. Established fiction blocked any flashback with the two acolytes, because a whole scene had already played out, and there wasn't any real way to establish a flashback with the hymnals because awareness of them as a threat would also have been precluded because of the limited information gathering we had done prior to the mission. A flashback might have established that the guy coming down the stairs was in our pocket, but that would have been a flashback to deal with a desperate threat and so would have been costly in stress and had knockon effects due to the required roll that may not have helped at all. Besides, we run hot on stress already, and there was a chance to get out of that problem without spending stress with some clever maneuvering on the actions (the skulk managed to get a setup hide off well and delivered an increased effect sapping to deal with that).</p><p></p><p>So, yeah, the fiction absolutely constrained our solution space. Sometimes it's more open, but usually there's some pretty strong constraints as we play. This was the same when I ran Blades -- the space for play was constrained by what came before. And, largely, I think the major impact is actually the GM pushing hard on the PCs. Without that, yes, I very much see that things could be much less well connected to the fiction.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8382457, member: 16814"] In thinking on this, something doesn't sit particularly straight with me, and that the claim that the players aren't bound by the fiction because they can always just flashback their way out. There's some truth to this, the flashback mechanic can be very powerful, but that's not at all something that I've really encountered with it. It's a very useful tool for helping get out a sticky situation, but it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card, either. And, I think that the difference from your description (and the longer one in PM) is that the GM is softballing a bit. By this, I mean the GM isn't playing things as hard as they should and has let off the gas. As we discussed in the PM thread, the stress costs of the flashbacks is around 5 stress or so, being somewhat generous (I still think flashbacking a solve of a major component of the plan is one of those rare occasions I'd be pushing 3 or 4 stress on a flashback as a GM). That you could freely burn 5 stress means that you weren't terribly concerned with stress in the mission, and that suggests that it wasn't being taxed hard, and that suggests the GM was softballing a bit. That you say you continually felt like it was trivial to just whistle up a flashback in other sessions, and also that it's a done deal to recover the ship leads to that same conclusion. A GM who is pushing hard, who holds the players up to their actions, will create a situation where the fiction isn't just binding on the GM, but binding on the players as well. I mean, pretty much every session we have a character do something that ends up binding others into having to deal with it as part of their action declarations. To relate an example 2 sessions ago the party was infiltrating the temple of a cult that was causing us some problems (they wanted what we had and our crew reputations meant we were going to take that unkindly-like). The plan was to sneak in, steal/destroy some materials the cult was using for some rituals, and get out. Of course, it was chaotic, but, at one point, we were searching the nave and rolled rather poorly in a fraught situation (risky). The GM described how some of the hymnals started fluttering, opening and turning pages and whispering softly. My character tried to deal with this, and ended up botching that, causing the whispering to become talking and alerting someone upstairs who came to investigate. At the time, the third in our party, who was supposed to be causing a distraction next door, wandered into the front doors of the temple with two acolytes she had met and, ahem, "charmed" in tow (there are so many puns in here, but I am not going to explain them). So, we had a three way problem. The acolytes were discovering that this wasn't just their "lucky" night (god, the puns!), I was being possessed by some creepy hymnals, and our other member was the only one positioned to do anything at all about the guy coming down the stairs. Two of these problems are not accessible by flashback. Established fiction blocked any flashback with the two acolytes, because a whole scene had already played out, and there wasn't any real way to establish a flashback with the hymnals because awareness of them as a threat would also have been precluded because of the limited information gathering we had done prior to the mission. A flashback might have established that the guy coming down the stairs was in our pocket, but that would have been a flashback to deal with a desperate threat and so would have been costly in stress and had knockon effects due to the required roll that may not have helped at all. Besides, we run hot on stress already, and there was a chance to get out of that problem without spending stress with some clever maneuvering on the actions (the skulk managed to get a setup hide off well and delivered an increased effect sapping to deal with that). So, yeah, the fiction absolutely constrained our solution space. Sometimes it's more open, but usually there's some pretty strong constraints as we play. This was the same when I ran Blades -- the space for play was constrained by what came before. And, largely, I think the major impact is actually the GM pushing hard on the PCs. Without that, yes, I very much see that things could be much less well connected to the fiction. [/QUOTE]
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