I’m GMing a game of BE that’s just getting the world burned, and I’m trying to decide how many of the GMFoNs I want to have start hulled. I kind of want to have none of them hulled, none of them actively working for the Vaylen, at least at first. Does that even work? I mean, no non-Vaylen are going to be Circling up offworld Vaylen contacts to bring worms onto the planet.
How would you set up a situation in which none of the GMFoNs are Vaylen themselves, or knowingly working for the Vaylen? Is it even possible, or should at least one of the GMFoNs be either hulled or complicit?
That’s about my favorite way to play an infilitration. The potential for tragedy and betrayal is huge! Usually, I compromise and start with one Vaylen monstrosity on the planet and everything else clean (for now).
I’m 3 Maneuvers into the Infiltration phase. I started with two normal FONs and one Vaylen FON. My Vaylen FON is now dead.
One of the things I might recommend to future players of the game is: do not start with a planet that has Personal Experience of the Vaylen. My players from scene one have been on HIGH ALERT for the Vaylen presence. Their Intent for their first Assess was: We discover crates of worms. Every maneuver has been about shutting down a Vaylen arms race/smuggling operation.
Had we started without Personal Experience and maybe no Valyen FONs, it might have been easier ease into the game with stuff mostly being about the relationships and politics of the world and less a mad hunt for the Vaylen which I think has lead to some premature stresses about rules applications.
But how do you do it? Do you give one (or more) GMFoN(s) a relationship with someone who’s secretly Vaylen, and then hull them mid-phase? I’m having trouble conceptualizing how the Vaylen break into the “FoN scene” if none of the GMFoNs start out hulled or allied with the Vaylen. Would hulling a GMFoN just be a color scene?
-B
Edit: Apparently I should review " Hulling," pages 194-198. Books ain’t with me.
Set your Phase objective for Infiltration to be something that your non-Vaylen FONs can be unwittingly moving towards. Then set each individual Manuver to be what the Vaylen are trying to make happen in the background. Finally have each GM FON take action toward unwittingly help serve that agenda.
Right now in my game the Vaylen are trying spark conflict between the factions of the planet and create a dependency on Vaylen controlled sources for weapons and technology. My non-Vaylen GM FONS hate each other and are constantly escalating the political issues on the planet which feeds into the Vaylen plan. You can probably play the entire game this way no problem.
Right now in my game the Vaylen are trying spark conflict between the factions of the planet and create a dependency on Vaylen controlled sources for weapons and technology.
This is what I’m getting at. How are the Vaylen trying to spark conflict? How can they do anything? They aren’t FoNs; they don’t get scenes to do stuff. How can they spark conflict with no scenes to spark it with? Are you using building scenes for NPCs other than GMFoNs?
Maybe this all stems from a misunderstanding I’m laboring under. The GM can use his scene budgets on non-FoN NPCs? I can use a builder scene to have my Vaylen sleeper hull a GMFoN?
Edit: Maybe my headspace is calibrated wrong, and I should be thinking of scenes (hell, and GMFoNs too) as belonging to a side. So while it may not make sense to have my spymaster spending scenes to hull himself, it does make a lot of sense to have the Vaylen side want this spymaster GMFoN hulled. I might be having trouble making the jump from “BE player” to “BE GM” thanks to the interaction between scenes, FoNs and Infection.
Son of Edit: But wait, I’m still confused even under that paradigm. Sure, it makes sense to think of scenes in terms of who the action is centered around, like a building scene to hull my spymaster is about him so it’s his builder. But he’s not rolling Surgery to hull himself, so…what? Back to square one. Whose scene is it to hull my spymaster GMFoN, if none of the GMFoNs are Vaylen or working for/allied with them? (I mean, obviously it’s my scene, I’m the GM; but does that mean I can spend a builder for a non-FoN Vaylen sleeper NPC to hull a GMFoN, etc.)
So…hm. If the action is centered around my FoNs, then it’s OK to use their scenes to allow other NPCs to make rolls like Surgery to advance the action in favor of the Vaylen side (by, say, hulling my GMFoN)?
Hate to be bothersome, but I want to make 100% sure I get untangled. Don’t want to screw up play when we begin.
Does that feel right to you? Do you feel like you’re cheating the players if you further the Vaylen’s cause (in other words, your side’s cause), by integrating a Vaylen plot into your FoN’s scenes.
Hm. Gut-wise, it feels less like I’m cheating the scene budget, and more like “yes, I absolutely want to use my scenes to do that, but I can’t work out how that’s legal!” Like, I know it’s got to be how it works, but I find that I don’t know how it actually works when we break it down to details. My hangup is the “whoever’s scene it is, they’ve got to roll the dice” bit from the building scene description. I want to use a builder scene to hull my spymaster, because it would feel like cheating if it were color. But my spymaster isn’t rolling to hull himself, right? That’s where my disconnect comes in.
I mean, just integrating a Vaylen plot the FoN was inadvertently forwarding, nah, that’s expected and indeed something I am already plotting. But hulling - effectively suicide on behalf of my FoN - trips me up for some reason.
If I need a scene with one of my FONs’ relationships, that scene “belongs” to the FON to whom the character has a relationship. So like…I have the Imperial Steward, fully human but a GMFON, and the IS’s 2iC is his master of the guard. I want the Master of the Guard to go off and get hulled, so I apply that scene to the Imperial Steward’s budget.
If I need a scene in which the GMFON appears but is not the instigator, I have it apply to that GMFON’s budget. Just like above: my intent, as the GM, is to get a worm into the Steward’s head. Great! If I was smart I kept back some unspent Circles, and use that bit of GM cheating to bring a Vaylen surgeon and his team of kidnappers into the game. I narrate the Vaylen surgeon’s ninjas grabbing the IS (probably a ichashitf roll, intent = grab the steward), narrate the surgery roll, and still have a roll left to…who knows? Maybe ichashitf his Master of the Guard.
If I was dumb and did NOT keep back some unspent Circles, then I need to use the GMFON’s budget to Circle up a suitable Vaylen. This one feels the hinkiest because that’s a very, very authorial decision. You have a player intent – put the Imperial Steward in the same room as a Vaylen surgeon – but you have to break your own fourth wall to get there. It’s obviously not the character’s intent to seek out the Vaylen. I’m okay with that! I’m also okay with my players doing that: That means they can Circle up their own Vaylen spies from amongst their own ranks, grab 'em, and interrogate them for information. BE I think really plays up that bit of authorship in the Circles rules.
Anyway…any clearer? I think the bottom line is, the scene economy is for the player, not the character. We expect the player to spend his economy on his own character’s efforts, but really we need to be okay with spending the economy on our narrative efforts (which may or may not be coming from our character’s POV).
If I need a scene in which the GMFON appears but is not the instigator, I have it apply to that GMFON’s budget. Just like above: my intent, as the GM, is to get a worm into the Steward’s head. Great! If I was smart I kept back some unspent Circles, and use that bit of GM cheating to bring a Vaylen surgeon and his team of kidnappers into the game. I narrate the Vaylen surgeon’s ninjas grabbing the IS (probably a ichashitf roll, intent = grab the steward), narrate the surgery roll, and still have a roll left to…who knows? Maybe ichashitf his Master of the Guard.
If I was dumb and did NOT keep back some unspent Circles, then I need to use the GMFON’s budget to Circle up a suitable Vaylen. This one feels the hinkiest because that’s a very, very authorial decision. You have a player intent – put the Imperial Steward in the same room as a Vaylen surgeon – but you have to break your own fourth wall to get there.
It’s not any hinkier whether you spend Circles points or Circle someone up. That’s probably where I’m getting tripped up: it’s like a player going “I’m going to Circle up an assassin to kill me, and then we’re going to roll ICHASHITAF to see if he kills me!” I mean, it’s not like that because I’m the GM not a player and it’s all part of the Vaylen plot mwahaha, but it feels that way. Gut-wise. I thought I was used to authorial stance, but this is a whole level above our usual operating altitude. Like you said, you have to break your own fourth wall.
I think I’m beginning to get it though. I wonder if it’d be easier, speaking in terms of my apparently fragile mental state, to have the Vaylen roll to Circle up the IS, rather than the other way 'round. By “easier” I mean “parses more easily to my brain.” As it is now, we’ve got “The IS goes looking for some Vaylen (that he doesn’t know are Vaylen),” which is a hell of a weird Intent, and then we switch gears and have the Vaylen rolling to hull him. We pass the baton of agency: the Circles test is initiated by the IS, so it’s implied he is the one looking for someone. Then the successive tests are initiated by the Vaylen against the IS, as it doesn’t make sense for the IS to hull himself. Switching up initiators like that is weird. So maybe I’d be cool with having the Vaylen “make” the Circles test to Circle up the IS, and hull him, all with a builder scene. I mean, just for my own peace of mind. They’d get his Reputation dice as advantage to the Circles test, right? Nah. Probably jack the Ob super-duper high. Still…I mean, like, what happens if you fail the roll to Circles up your Vaylen assailants?
I think for now I’m definitely going to have to have a GMFoN with a relationship to a Vaylen sleeper who he doesn’t know is a sleeper. That’ll function as a workaround for this whole weird Circles problem. In whatever scene the GMFoN has with his relationship, sooner or later the relationship goes “by the way: please to be hulling you now.”
Thanks a lot for taking the time to help me work through this, guys.
Your “assign a Vaylen sleeper to the FON’s staff” solution is the cleanest and least authorial choice. To be EXTRA clever – and this may be wandering over the line of GM cheating and GM CHEATING – you might privately burn up that character, but leave the Circles points unspent 'til you’re ready to reveal him to the players. That policy, in general, I think you need to use with kid gloves…but I still like it.
Making a Circles test with the intent to fail is bad faith.
Make legit Circles tests. Let the players make legit Circles tests. One of you is bound to fail. Use that failure to introduce this twist that you’ve had planned. Perfectly fair play!
I was saying roll the Vaylen sleeper’s Circles with the Intent “Circle up the Imperial Steward”, aiming to succeed, instead of rolling the Steward’s Circles with the trans-fourth-wall hyperauthorial Intent “Circle up some Vaylen kidnappers that I don’t know are going to kidnap and hull me.” But it was really just a throwaway stream-of-consciousness scrap of thought I had anyway.
Although I still don’t know WTF you’d do if you made the Steward’s “Circle up my kidnappers” roll and failed it.
And come to think of it, “don’t intend to fail” is the entire reason why I’m weirded out by the idea of using the Steward’s building scene to prompt a ICHASHITF to kidnap and hull him: you want your FoN to fail, you intend him to fail, or you don’t get what you want. But let’s not re-tread this again! I’ve got an answer that makes sense to me, and I’m content to leave it at that.
Nah. Probably jack the Ob super-duper high. Still…I mean, like, what happens if you fail the roll to Circles up your Vaylen assailants?