Questions over Omac

I finally got to run 1/2 of the Fires Over Omac scenario and I think it went really well. I wasn’t very strict this time around on scene/time management (at least when it came to color) and really let the players go crazy on filling out the world of Omac and the space station. It was a lot of fun.

I think I got the hang of tweaking the players on their color until they moved towards a building scene or a conflict. So it was a lot of “that’s awesome”, “no problem with that”, “keep going, what are you looking for here?” When I saw them begin to hesitate, I colored up a GM scene of hammer ships in orbit and Anvil soldiers arming themselves. I need to get used to the idea of “talking” to myself though…it’s strange framing a scene where NPCs are talking about a PC (but I’m not talking to the PC). I’m going to try some more in the next 1/2 session.

Is it cool for me as a GM to tap the Player’s relationships? Like can I have the 1st mate of the Saucy Lugger chat with the Baron Z and make their own deal (in color)? Or would that be pushing it? (note to my players…I’d have asked this question in play if I had thought of it then…I’m not being sneaky!). I can see that melding into a building scene where I’m attempting to strand Jack so he’ll make a deal with Arnot or something. My love of the format is that it is competitive, so it seems strange (to me) that I can just take control of player assets like their X-Os and 1st Mates…but then again…how am I supposed to hull friends and family if I can’t grab 'em into my scenes?

Another thing I really struggled with was using building scenes as a GM. I think I did a good job of tossing color out there to try and get the players active in the game, but I really didn’t know how to “build” as a GM. I think it’s cause I’m used to just going “By the way, the Lord summons more troops to his aid.”

How does a GM color scene flow into a building scene? Say I knew the players were planning on destroying the prison and I wanted to hull the prisoners (ALL THE PRISONERS) with the Warden. As a GM, I feel like all I had to say was “Cut to the prison, nightmarish scenes of prisoners being dragged into the infirmary…the Warden holding a worm while his assistants hold yet another patient down…etc etc”.

But what if as the GM I wanted to get a hullin’ before the PCs show up? What if I wanted to get General Leaf’s kerrn crew properly hulled in time to be “rescued” by the PCs in order to activate them later? Do I set my own obstacle? Do the players? How does this work? It probably explains all this in detail somewhere in the book, but honestly my reading comprehension skills aren’t the strongest….and the book…the book is large.

Then I read a post that’s all like “GM building scenes are a budget…not associated with any particular toon.” Which leads me to believe that I don’t have to have the Warden Build and the Baron Build and the Kodiak Conflict. I could build with the Warden 3 times if need be. Right?

Also, say the players begin the “color” leading up to their conflict…they’ve got their plan and they’re moving towards the prison to wipe out the vaylen there. Can I then color-into their color my own conflict? In play, that’s exactly what I did (so while the Kerrn Murcs, led by Leaf, moved thru the tunnels towards the prison, I had the Kodiak attack with the intent to slow them down (or destroy them) long enough to isolate Julius for a hulling attempt by the Warden)…but afterwards I thought maybe it was mean cutting off their move towards a conflict with my own. Mental note: learn how to be mean(er) in play.

It’s the way it’d go down in a comic though…exciting race to link up with Anvil support commanded by Julius at the prison…ambush in the mining shaft by mutant death bears! Woot!

Then I’m thinking…wait a second. If I conflict in the mines….how am I going to conflict Julius? Can I ‘build’ a scene in which I capture him (I saw an example from Luke saying a kidnapping could easily be a building scene which shocked me since it seemed like a conflict scene!)? And I still got to weather the conflict scene from the players! Yowza!

Thanks for making a great game. I knew in reading it that I’d like it a lot and it turns out that I did (favorite part? Drawing the Firefight map for the tunnels!). Now I need to go back and reread the rulez. Lots of stuff did not stick before this session (or after). If you’ve got some advice, I’d love to read it. (I read paulB’s essay. good stuff). This turned out to be a livejounral entry…but I’m still buzzing (burning?) from that first 1/2 game. Feel free to tell me TLDR!

Sweet!

Anyone can add color in any scene type. It’s just that the Color scene is a moment that is specifically for adding color and nothing else. The idea is to make sure that the game is always moving forward, and doesn’t get bogged down with the addition of lots of new details that don’t keep things in motion. As long as you didn’t ever feel the forward momentum lagging, you were probably doing it correctly.

Is it cool for me as a GM to tap the Player’s relationships? Like can I have the 1st mate of the Saucy Lugger chat with the Baron Z and make their own deal (in color)? Or would that be pushing it? (note to my players…I’d have asked this question in play if I had thought of it then…I’m not being sneaky!). I can see that melding into a building scene where I’m attempting to strand Jack so he’ll make a deal with Arnot or something. My love of the format is that it is competitive, so it seems strange (to me) that I can just take control of player assets like their X-Os and 1st Mates…but then again…how am I supposed to hull friends and family if I can’t grab 'em into my scenes?
Perfectly cool to tap their relationships, and even recommended! Still, unless your characters have them as a relationship, you’ll need to use a Building Scene to circle them up.

Another thing I really struggled with was using building scenes as a GM. I think I did a good job of tossing color out there to try and get the players active in the game, but I really didn’t know how to “build” as a GM. I think it’s cause I’m used to just going “By the way, the Lord summons more troops to his aid.”
Remember that color can be countered with color, whether by you or the players. If your Lord’s troops are merely color, then the players could dispose of them with color too. Also, the troops won’t be able to give helping dice to the Lord and stuff like that if they haven’t actually been circled up (although Anvil Lords and Hammer Lords have a special advantage, as their traits allow them to bring in certain types of troops without the need for a Circles roll).

Building scenes are also the scenes you use to hull important characters (unimportant characters can be hulled with Color scenes, but characters we care about, like Relationships, should get a builder.

Builders can also be used to hack into the PCs’ security networks, recon their positions, call up their financial records, track down their families, etc.

How does a GM color scene flow into a building scene? Say I knew the players were planning on destroying the prison and I wanted to hull the prisoners (ALL THE PRISONERS) with the Warden. As a GM, I feel like all I had to say was “Cut to the prison, nightmarish scenes of prisoners being dragged into the infirmary…the Warden holding a worm while his assistants hold yet another patient down…etc etc”.
It really depends on what’s happening. Are the PCs using a Building Scene to break into the prison. If they still have rolls in that particular Building Scene, I think you need to ask them permission to cut away from the middle of their scene to take your scene. Although I also think they should give you that permission.

If you are in between scenes, it’s perfectly kosher to choose to take your scene before they take their next scene.

But what if as the GM I wanted to get a hullin’ before the PCs show up? What if I wanted to get General Leaf’s kerrn crew properly hulled in time to be “rescued” by the PCs in order to activate them later? Do I set my own obstacle? Do the players? How does this work? It probably explains all this in detail somewhere in the book, but honestly my reading comprehension skills aren’t the strongest….and the book…the book is large.
Do it as your Building Scene. The obstacles for hulling are listed under the Surgery Obstacles for Hulling heading on page 195. Because you need to do it rapidly, I think a Field Hull would be your only option.

Then I read a post that’s all like “GM building scenes are a budget…not associated with any particular toon.” Which leads me to believe that I don’t have to have the Warden Build and the Baron Build and the Kodiak Conflict. I could build with the Warden 3 times if need be. Right?
Not quite. Take a look at The GM’s Scenes on page 428. One of the GM’s characters, whether a Figure of Note or not, is guaranteed a Conflict scene. Any Figure of Note that did not initiate a conflict scene may take one building scene each.

Each Figure of Note may allow its scenes to be used by someone else instead, like a subordinate. It’s not intended to allow one character to take multiple scenes of the same type.

Also, say the players begin the “color” leading up to their conflict…they’ve got their plan and they’re moving towards the prison to wipe out the vaylen there. Can I then color-into their color my own conflict? In play, that’s exactly what I did (so while the Kerrn Murcs, led by Leaf, moved thru the tunnels towards the prison, I had the Kodiak attack with the intent to slow them down (or destroy them) long enough to isolate Julius for a hulling attempt by the Warden)…but afterwards I thought maybe it was mean cutting off their move towards a conflict with my own. Mental note: learn how to be mean(er) in play.
That color sounds like it would be part of a Building Scene or Conflict Scene, not a Color Scene on its own (though it could be). Anyway, what you did was perfectly fine. Color can be countered with color. If you want to ensure that a statement can’t be countered with color, you need to use dice. For instance, an Infiltration roll to get past any guards or security systems.

Then I’m thinking…wait a second. If I conflict in the mines….how am I going to conflict Julius? Can I ‘build’ a scene in which I capture him (I saw an example from Luke saying a kidnapping could easily be a building scene which shocked me since it seemed like a conflict scene!)? And I still got to weather the conflict scene from the players! Yowza!
Sure. You can use Single Roll Combat (page 497) as part of a Builder. Overbear him or use Weapons Fire to fill him full of tranq. Make sure you succeed though! You’ve got one roll to make it happen.

Thanks for the reply, Thor.

I might be an idiot, but I also can’t seem to figure out how to set obstacles for myself as a GM. Is everything I do basically versus tests? Do I have to use wises to establish game facts in the word?

I guess I’m trying to figure out my limitations as a GM. Say the Baron decides to summon the Steward with the intention of convincing the Steward to trick Julius or Leaf into a trap. Sounds like a building scene to me…I want the steward to eventually get julius to agree to show up to rescue him or something. Maybe it’s just an interstitial.

Do my own FoN and NPCs advance? How do I test their skills if I don’t know the obstacles? A lot of skills include a obs list, so I could use that…but again…building scenes as a GM really befuddle me.

First and foremost, remember that Building scenes (along with Color and Interstitials) are optional for the GM. You don’t have to use one if you don’t want to.

That said, they’re extremely useful (especially in terms of generating help and advantage during conflicts) and you’re missing out if you don’t use them occasionally.

If you are going to use a Building scene, you should use exactly the same criteria for setting your characters’ Obstacles as you would for setting an Obstacle for a player.

The first place to look is the skill description. They have Obstacles listed for a reason. Many of the Obstacles you’ll need are right there.

Second, you should look at My Favorite Obstacle on page 622. That should help.

Finally, when in doubt, use Obstacles to Overcome on page 19. Between the sample Obs in the skill descriptions and this chart, you should always be able to set an Obstacle.

Also, note that most Obstacles are going to be versus tests.

You want to listen in on the players’ encrypted communications? It’s your Signals versus the Signals of their Signals operator.

You want to off a PC at the bar? Close Combat versus test as per the I Corner Him and Stab Him in the Face! rules.

You can’t go wrong if you use your Building scenes to create tests against the players.

Occasionally, you’ll want to do a simple test. Want to insert a sleeper agent into the players’ organization? That’s a Circles test. But when you want that agent to get you an important piece of information, it’ll probably be Infiltration and Security Breaking versus the players’ Security.

As to whether your characters advance? You can certainly record tests if you want to. It’s also perfectly fine to decide it’s too much paper work and leave it alone.

Thor, your responses in the last post left me with some questions. First, we almost never do versus tests… That’s obviously a huge boner and I’ll try to begin framing tests that way as the default mode. More specifically:

Once you’ve circled up the infiltrator, how often can you go back to him for Infiltration/Security Breaking tests? Just in the same Building scene? In future Maneuvers? Or do you have to circle him up again in the future in order to have him make additional rolls?

From my own experience, not advancing the GMFoN’s is a recipe for suicide. I have four players, and with all of them advancing like mad, scripting downtime and tossing helping dice left and right, if my guys don’t advance, they don’t have a chance.

-Chris

As a rule of thumb: One building scene. You Circle him up and then you can use your remaining two tests to have him do something for you. To use him again you’ll have to use your Circles to get him again. Of course, once you’ve Circled him up enough times he’ll become a Relationship and you can just use him without calling on your Circles. Alternatively, you can use your GM Circles Reserve to buy him outright as a Relationship.

From my own experience, not advancing the GMFoN’s is a recipe for suicide. I have four players, and with all of them advancing like mad, scripting downtime and tossing helping dice left and right, if my guys don’t advance, they don’t have a chance.

You’re absolutely right. But it’s usually not a big deal if you’re only playing one Phase. In the course of a single phase, it’s a rare player that will Advance so much that your figures of note won’t be able to challenge them.

Cool, that’s how we’ve been doing it. Thanks Thor,

Chris

I was one of the other players in Pedro’s game. Another question that was raised was how escalating to Conflict works under the Burning Wheel scene economy. From my reading of the text since we played, each side is not strictly limited to one Conflict per session, but I think we felt constrained by knowing the PCs could only initiate one Conflict during the Omac scenario.

For example, Pedro framed a scene where the Anvil Lord called Julius, the X-O, to the orbital station to give him a dressing-down about his current allegiances and to keep him occupied on the station and out of further trouble. Their confrontation seemed like the perfect opportunity for a Duel of Wits. We already knew that , however, we wanted to save our side’s Conflict for the assault on the prison that we were planning, so the scene ended rather inconclusively because we were not sure where we could take things. Would it have been possible to tap the characters’ BITs to get more Conflicts in this case? Is this kind of situation more flexible when the session is just a segment of a larger Burning Empires campaign?

Hi Dan,

You bumped into the scene economy there. In the context of that game, you only had one conflict to play with. You had to weigh if that confrontation or the assault on the prison was more important. You chose the latter. That’s cool. What happened in the fiction? Here’s one option: play out the scene (as an interstitial). The characters have a heated and earnest debate, but it has a tragic undercurrent. The audience knows that they can’t say the right thing to each other. No matter what, these two beleaguered brothers are going to come to blows…

Does that help?
-L

Hey Luke,

Thanks for chiming in. What was interesting about how the scene played out–and this fits with what you’re saying–was that the brothers came to this impasse where neither one could convince the other of what was important to him in the situation. It was as if they, tragically, couldn’t communicate with one another. What was left for Julius, then, was that he was forced to go behind his brother’s back in order to achieve his ends, assembling some loyal Iron soldiers on the station, which was mostly played out with Color. Everyone seemed comfortable with that result, given the constraints of the scenario.

But anyway, that does help. Looking at what took place in the fiction, through the eyes of the audience, makes sense, although I know I struggle to do that in the moment at the table. Thanks again.