My biggest concern in the game was how I handled the consequences of the Kill conflict.
Throwing a softball?
Page 74 has a special section called Killing Is My Business, which covers compromises for Kill conflicts. It says in the decription these rules are written from the player perspective and since all they cover is losing a conflict I didn’t use them (as the players won). Looking back at the chart on page 75 thought, it says that if the GM looses, the Killing Is My Business section should be used, but from the monster’s perspective.
What I should have done:
Left one of the ghouls for dead, but have in actually survive, albeit horribly maimed and given all the conditions. Or,
Kill off all but one of the party members (Thaspar was taken out and Orrin took a terrible bite to the neck, they could both easily have died from these wounds). Or,
Badly injure the party members (reducing their nature by 1 and removing a trait). Or,
Introduce a major collateral damage (all of the backpacks dropped in fight sunk into the ghouls ichor and were destroyed, along with all of their contents).
What I did:
Applied two conditions. Injured for Orrin, and Afraid for Thaspar. The latter was because I really wanted to play up the Ghoul’s paralyzing touch and its effects of seeing yourself cold and dying. If I was going with conditions, I probably should have given Thaspar Afraid and Injured. Or you know, murdered the two of them.
Watched last night. Loved it! Seriously Sean, thank you for posting those AP videos, and thank you too to your players for being okay with it. They’re a huge help in actually seeing people play these rules out.
Shit guys, sorry if I shared a link that was NDA. I of course wouldn’t share the backer code, but I assumed that if it was up on the store, it was for sale. I re-read the email where the link was sent and I didn’t see anything in there about keeping it quiet, but maybe that was in another backer update that I didn’t read thoroughly. At any rate I’m really sorry if I shared something I should have. I’ve taken the link down from the post.
It’s cool Sean. Please don’t feel bad. It was our bad for not asking folks to keep the link private. You weren’t the only person that shared it.
We wanted backers to have a chance to enjoy their spoils before the general public had access, but it seems like most of you were so excited that you wanted everyone else to check it out too. What a terrible problem for a publisher to have, right?
Just wondering about something – when determining Disposition for a conflict, Sick gives you -1D for the skill roll, but it also reduces Health by -1. Shouldn’t Sixtoe’s Dispo for the conflict with the ghouls have been 7 instead of 8? Or has that been changed from MG?
That doesn’t seem impolite at all, we’re all learning the new system.
On page 78, sick reads “In addition, being sick imposes -1D to Nature, Will, Health and skill tests.” (Emphasis mine)
So as I read that, Sixtoes would have a penalty on a Heath test, but not on his actual Health rating, which is what is used on figuring out disposition for Kill conflicts.
The rule is the same in Mouse Guard (p124) and I can’t see where it imposes -1 for Health.
Being Sick imposes a -1D penalty to Nature, Will, Health and skill tests. This penalty is not applied to Resources and Circles tests, nor to Will and Health tests for recovery.
To my mind, that has to be a penalty to tests, not ratings, because otherwise it would be expressed as -1 rather than -1D.
The cause for my confusion was the Conditions in a Conflict section in Mouse Guard:
Since being Injured or Sick imposes a -1D penalty on Will and Nature, it also reduces your starting disposition for all conflicts.
Will and Nature only feature into disposition as the base to which you add the skill roll, so I thought it quite clear that you get -1D to the skill roll and -1 to the base, as per the quoted rule. I thought it was the same for Health, since the writeup for Injured/Sick says “-1D to Nature, Will, Health and skill tests”, as quoted by lowlyminion, and the base for dispo is always either Will, Nature, or Health.
[P.S. Of course this only applies to MG; for this reason I asked if the rules had changed in TB.]
