Grinding gears - linked tests and Circles whiffs

Burning Empires General Questions
41

Actually, the three players I’ve gamed with before are all fairly keen on the concept of cool failures, and the new member is throwing herself into appalling situations with commendable eagerness: She took a connection die from a GM FoN – the new Inquisitor, no less – in her first scene, for example. That said, I think the fact that there is a strategic win-lose binary at the Infection level threw them, at least at first, and made them more cautious.

The problem, I think, was that my players are fine with failure that’s interesting, but I hadn’t mastered the system well enough to come up with interesting failures. The “poison pill” suggestions you all have made in this thread give me a much better idea of how to use the Emnity Clause.

But, darn it, I’m still fuzzy on duration. Luke, for your company of very scary Vaylen stormtroopers, how many Circles rolls were involved to bring them into play? I get the impression that it just took one failed Circles roll, after which you invoked the Emnity Clause, and then every subsequent scene those stormtroopers showed up, it was either you introducing them as GM characters or you “saying yes” to a player who wanted to use stormtroopers?
If the former, what did the Emnity Clause give you that your own ability to introduce characters didn’t? [EDIT: I think you’d have had to make a successful Circles roll of your own to introduce a bunch of Vaylen stormtroopers in the player-character’s camp, and at fairly high obstacle penalties too, so maybe I get this one…]
If the latter, why didn’t the player just Circle up some different stormtroopers?

42

Wow, Thor, that really clarifies some of my thinking on this issue. Now I can imagine people really groaning and moaning when they fail some of those critical/high ob Circles tests. They went looking for some help and they found a whole lotta trouble. Cool!

43

You’ve already gotten the answer several times: the duration is wedded to the intent. You never Circle someone up without an intent, right? Or is the problem that you were Circling up NPCs just to have them, without actually giving them something specific to do?

In our current game, I had a player who wanted to Circle up a merc squad. I asked him, “Okay, what are your plans for this bunch of guys?” He just wanted them because he wanted them; he didn’t have a specific application for them right this minute. Of course, the question of duration can’t be answered when the INTENT isn’t explicit.

p.

44

One Circles roll.

They couldn’t Circles up other stormtroopers who had the captured families hostage. They had dispatched these troopers on a mission, they had accomplished the mission and held the results. If they wanted the results, they had to deal with the Vaylen stormtroopers. That’s what made them so potent – not the mere fact that they were Vaylen.

Also, Syd, I don’t know where the disconnect happened, but I don’t think this particular snarl had to do with rules mastery.

-L

45

Luke, I think I got it now: One Circles roll with Emnity was all it took to establish that these stormtroopers were not only in the good guys’ camp, but in control of the hostages. If the Circles roll had succeeded, for you as GM to say “Hey, those stormtroopers with the hostages? I actually control them!” would have been possible, but you’d have had to make a Circles roll of your own at ghastly Obstacles (+2 Ob uncommon occupation = stormtrooper, probably +1 Ob for lower rank, +3 Ob specific outlook = turncoat, +2 Ob specific knowledge = I know where the hostages are, 'cause Him holding them). The player’s failed roll gave you those guys for free.

the duration is wedded to the intent. You never Circle someone up without an intent, right? Or is the problem that you were Circling up NPCs just to have them, without actually giving them something specific to do?

Paul, I see your point, but you can make Resources rolls with no more intent besides “I want this thing so I can have it,” and the default duration is forever. In our game, for what it’s worth, most of the Circles rolls were for a specific intent – but if there’s no cost for saying, “I want these guys to help me forever and ever,” surely that’d be the sensible intent every time?

It also seems that a successful Resources roll gets a lot more mechanical bang for the buck than a successful Circles roll, if you include Character Burning in the equation:

Resources Obstacle 5 gets you +2D to the skill of your choosing indefinitely, for multiple conflicts, and both the PCs and I had at least one character with resources in the 12+ range, nearly guaranteed to make that roll every time.

Circles Obstacle 4 gets you a character with expert skill who’s favorably inclined towards you, which is +2D helping dice, but it’s not clear how many conflicts that applies towards (my duration pet peeve again), and a Circles score of 8+ seemed fairly hard to get in our game.

Trying a straight, fast path:
Lifepaths: 1. Born to Rule (+1 Circles), 2. Bastard (+1 Circles), 3. Cotar (+2 Circles), 4. Dregus (+2 C), 5. Archcotare (+2 C), 6. Cotar Antistes (+2 Circles), 7. Cotar Arderes (+2 C). Total Circles points = 12, divide by three – assuming you spend only NO points on relationships or affiliations or reputations – gets you +4 to base circles; assume Will is 6, the maximum for a starting character, dividing by 2 gets you three… a Circles score of 7. Which is still quite not enough to make that Ob 4 Circles roll a slam-dunk, and you’re talking about the damn Space Pope here!

Of course the Space Pope would have a bunch of relevant free affiliations most of the time, but it still seems hard to stack up a Circles monster compared to a Resources monster. The standard Born to Rule > Anvil Lord paths rack up those Resources points a lot faster than they do Circles points: 1. Born to Rule (+2 Resources, +1 Circles), 2. Coeptir (+1 R, +0 C), 3. Armiger (+1 R, +0 C), 4. Lord-Pilot Anvil (+1 R, +1 C), 5. Anvil Lord (+3 R, +1 C), 6. Forged Lord (+3 R, +2 C), 7. Anvil Captain (+2 R, +2 C) – yes, I’m assuming the guy has a noble rank trait to make this set of paths work – gets you a starting Resources of 13, let’s say 12 after you pay for Iron, but only 7 Circles points, which if you spend as much as you can on upping your Circles score and have a 6 Will, still gets you Circles of 5.

46

From a pure mechanical standpoint, maybe. But people that sacrifice their Circles for Resources are going to be constantly running into trouble trying to find information, build allies, etc. I mean, who needs enemy FoN when your group is constantly failing Circles rolls and invoking the enmity cause?

“How are you going to find someone who is going to help you forever?” I’d ask my players, “Are you Circling up a slave?”

I think they’d be a big difference between intending to find someone to make you a single, incredible high-tech rifle and someone to make thousands of those rifles. The more help they’re expected to give, the higher the obstacle.

47

Resources can’t tell you where the smugglers are hiding or produce a Vaylen patsy to go down for you. Circles obstacles are almost always lower than Resources obstacles. Circles don’t deplete like Resources. A bad Circles roll can be turned using social skills. A bad Resources roll has to be turned using technical skills. Resources and Circles both have their uses, but Resources is not just simply better or more economical than Circles.

And I don’t know about you, but my Primarch has 9 Circles (3 Base, 3 Rep, 3 Aff) dice plus Imperious Demeanor (c/o Circles) to get what ever the hell he wants, whenever the hell he wants. Your players spent the premium to up the base Circles? 'Cause that’s a major trade off. You trade super high dice for broader applicability.

And you know what’s common to my Primarch’s Circles? All of the people under him save, maybe, the Metropolitans. That’s the other cool thing about Circles. They’re relative. A soldier could have exactly the same number of dice as his captain and not get the same benefit from them. A captain can call up other captains in a snap. A soldier is stuck with other soldiers.

Who cares about 2 helping dice. An Ob 3 Circles test will buy me an informant who can tell me precisely where your daughter will be tomorrow so I can kidnap her. Or hell, Ob 3 will get me someone who’s overheard your traitorous, slanderous talk so I can begin blackmailing you. Etc, and so on.

-L

48

Resources tests are the glitch in the overarching conflict resolution scheme of the game. I was thinking about that when I was writing up my last post. They’re the one time, ever, that you actually end up with an explicit thing that’s going to be variably useful throughout the life of the game.

I would absolutely allow a player to Circle up someone who would help him forever and ever but it’d cost them either a higher Circle Ob due to increased Loyalty, or a Resources test to pay them for their services (as I’ve said a couple other times upthread). Sure! Why not?

There are also hopefully obvious in-game differences between technology and characters:
[ul]
[li]Characters can go off and do things independent of the PCs[/li][li]Characters can oppose the PCs’ goals[/li][li]Characters can know things[/li][li]Characters can, mechanically speaking, give you easier access to a package of skills than a Resources test can provide to you (skill automation + dice = a potentially very high Resources Ob, and that’s just for one skill).[/li][li]Characters can generate in-game effects that equipment cannot. Shot opportunities, for example, in the case of a squad of mercs. (Although I s’pose you can use the Tech Burner to produce any effect at all if the GM is feeling generous.)[/li][li]Characters can fall into the hands of the enemy, resulting in far different consequences than when equipment falls into the hands of the enemy.[/li][li]Characters can have in-game relationships with Figures of Note that are far more important than the FON’s piece of tech.[/ul]So, yeah, I’d definitely grill players who are trying to create in-game effects on whether they’re better off with gear or an NPC. Gear doesn’t need to have an intent attached to it and obviously it’ll last 'til it’s destroyed or stolen, but it’s also both narratively and mechanically different.[/li]
p.

49

In Burning Nautilus Prima, one of the PCs has circled up a character who basically amounts to a ‘friend’. This friend is Fleet Captain Carlos Assisi, the commander of the government’s space fleet. Jason, the player, wanted his character to have someone he could rely on in the slave revolt or civil war he sees coming. Jason also wanted to pre-empt a situation where the fleet would be his enemy. So for this first circles test we played out the scene of Janus and Assisi getting together–they’re old friends. Jason is prepared to conduct future Circles tests in order to establish a relationship with Assisi. But in addition, to reflect Assisi’s intent to honor his friendship with Janus, we made a Persuasion test for Janus, the results of which will serve as the obstacle for Assisi to take an action he knows will be harmful to his friend, Janus. So, we have circled up an NPC that could help Janus–or at least not hinder him–‘forever’.
As an aside, the best part for me is that since Jason has signaled an interest–perhaps even fear–in the fleet’s role, I now know I should bring the fleet much more into play as a threat or a foil. Having created Fleet Captain Assisi as a friend, I want to make sure Jason gets his money’s worth!
Mel

50

And to riff off of Mel’s example: Jason can’t simply call on Assisi whenever he wants. Sometimes his friend’s duties will call him away and he’ll be unable to help. Hence, the Circles test. And Jason framed the initial test neatly – obviating the need for Enmity Clause later on down the line.