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How often do you enforce laws in your games?
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<blockquote data-quote="GrahamWills" data-source="post: 8241276" data-attributes="member: 75787"><p>Just a quick note on the <strong>Heat</strong> mechanic. This is essentially a value that can be assigned to a specific area that measures how much the PCs have come to the notice of the authorities. The more heat you have, the harder a lot of actions become, especially those involving avoiding notice. It’s an easy mechanic to incorporate into any system — in a PbtA system you might use clocks to represent heat, for example. Reasons why you might want to use this or a similar mechanic:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It is non-binary. Rather than have the GM act on the spot and have to decide if each party action requires a consequence, it slowly escalates, so it’s much less stressful to GM. Fewer discussions about exactly how the Berlin police would respond to a murder ... it’s clearly going to increase heat.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Having heat vary by geo makes the game feel realistic. Players at my NBA game would regularly say things like “we can’t just actually go back to Prague, we have huge heat there. Let’s try our contact in the south of France first”. It drove story in ways I had not expected and felt very in-genre.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It enhances player agency. The players decide what to do, how much heat to bring on in return for a desired outcome. In my game, plays4d regularly discussed options, most memorably whether to go after and try and stop an out-of-control express train, or let it crash — stopping it would be tricky and could get them seriously injured, but the resulting crash would make international news and increase the heat level across most of Europe ....</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It’s dirt simple to implement. My default was simply to add to the difficultly of most rolls based on the heat. </li> </ul><p>My players ended up with a +5 penalty due to heat in Romania, where the finale was situated. Since rolls in Gumshoe are d6’s this meant that even completely trivial tasks, like checking into a hotel, required spending resources and planning to go smoothly. It worked as a fun way to “up level“ basic opposition and absolutely made people feel hunted.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="GrahamWills, post: 8241276, member: 75787"] Just a quick note on the [B]Heat[/B] mechanic. This is essentially a value that can be assigned to a specific area that measures how much the PCs have come to the notice of the authorities. The more heat you have, the harder a lot of actions become, especially those involving avoiding notice. It’s an easy mechanic to incorporate into any system — in a PbtA system you might use clocks to represent heat, for example. Reasons why you might want to use this or a similar mechanic: [LIST] [*]It is non-binary. Rather than have the GM act on the spot and have to decide if each party action requires a consequence, it slowly escalates, so it’s much less stressful to GM. Fewer discussions about exactly how the Berlin police would respond to a murder ... it’s clearly going to increase heat. [*]Having heat vary by geo makes the game feel realistic. Players at my NBA game would regularly say things like “we can’t just actually go back to Prague, we have huge heat there. Let’s try our contact in the south of France first”. It drove story in ways I had not expected and felt very in-genre. [*]It enhances player agency. The players decide what to do, how much heat to bring on in return for a desired outcome. In my game, plays4d regularly discussed options, most memorably whether to go after and try and stop an out-of-control express train, or let it crash — stopping it would be tricky and could get them seriously injured, but the resulting crash would make international news and increase the heat level across most of Europe .... [*]It’s dirt simple to implement. My default was simply to add to the difficultly of most rolls based on the heat. [/LIST] My players ended up with a +5 penalty due to heat in Romania, where the finale was situated. Since rolls in Gumshoe are d6’s this meant that even completely trivial tasks, like checking into a hotel, required spending resources and planning to go smoothly. It worked as a fun way to “up level“ basic opposition and absolutely made people feel hunted. [/QUOTE]
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