[tSoY] Quick one-shot report with some questions

[Daermon]

So, after sitting on it for over a year, I finally convinced my group to try a game of tSoY. We ran the one-shot Rat Moon Rising and everyone seemed to have a great time. They were put off at first at the player vs. player nature of the adventure, but everyone quickly got into their roles and really pulled off some great moments. They really seemed to grok the Keys system and I barely even had to remind them to take XP for them after about half-way through the night. After a while, people stopped hoarding their bonus dice and they were being tossed left and right. We had players on opposite sides of each other spending a few minutes doing nothing but tossing out bonus and penalty dice to nearly everyone at the table. Great fun. The biggest problem was that I don't have my copy of the Revised Edition yet, and leafing through loose pages is a pain in the ass.

Questions:

How best to use Bringing Down the Pain for multpile contestants? At one point I had several players involved in BDTP all with intentions which just didn't work. It took a few minutes, but we finally narrowed down the intentions to something workable, but it was a little messay.

Parallel vs Perpendicular actions: At one point, we had two characters involved in BDTP using Sway on each other. I ruled that this was a parallel action, which caused a bit of a problem when, in one roll, both players were forced out of BDTP. The last time I read the rules, in a parallel action, both players take Harm equal to their opponents Success Level. Am I wrong on this? If not, then I will use the suggested house-rule that characters take Harm equal to the difference in their SL's, so as to avoid this problem in the future.

How are ties handled? We had several rolls come up a tie last night, and I had a real issue on how to rule on it.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

How best to use Bringing Down the Pain for multpile contestants? At one point I had several players involved in BDTP all with intentions which just didn't work. It took a few minutes, but we finally narrowed down the intentions to something workable, but it was a little messay.

Daermon,

How didn't it work? Could you give me some idea of what went wrong?

Parallel vs Perpendicular actions: At one point, we had two characters involved in BDTP using Sway on each other. I ruled that this was a parallel action, which caused a bit of a problem when, in one roll, both players were forced out of BDTP. The last time I read the rules, in a parallel action, both players take Harm equal to their opponents Success Level. Am I wrong on this? If not, then I will use the suggested house-rule that characters take Harm equal to the difference in their SL's, so as to avoid this problem in the future.

You're right, and you can't "knock someone out of BDTP." This is a common confusion. Being broken puts you at a serious disadvantage, but you aren't knocked out until you give up or literally cannot perform another action (empty pools + broken.) The difference in SL's is used for perpendicular actions.

How are ties handled? We had several rolls come up a tie last night, and I had a real issue on how to rule on it.

Ties are ties: an action equally opposed. One thing I do wish I had said clearer is how I handle this, which is to have something else happen, too. Two people are pushing on opposite sides of a door and the rolls are tied? Have the roof cave in. Seriously! This totally works. Otherwise, though, it's just a tie.

I have the feeling that there is some other game you may have played which has made TSOY harder for you, and I'm not talking about any mainstream game. I smell a certain "stakes setting" discussion coming on. What do you guys normally play?

[Daermon]

How best to use Bringing Down the Pain for multpile contestants? At one point I had several players involved in BDTP all with intentions which just didn't work. It took a few minutes, but we finally narrowed down the intentions to something workable, but it was a little messay.

Daermon,

How didn't it work? Could you give me some idea of what went wrong?

Hi Clinton.

I think for us, since it was our first instance of using BDTP, it simply took us a minute to get the intentions ironed out properly.  Initially, I had one player wanting to run and another trying to talk him into going back into the dungeons.  Then the first player changed his intentions due to the actions of a third player, which caused a fourth player to get involved.  In the end it worked out fine, once everyone was settled as to what they wished to do, but it just got messy for a minute with everyone changing their minds at once during the Free and Clear stage.

Parallel vs Perpendicular actions: At one point, we had two characters involved in BDTP using Sway on each other. I ruled that this was a parallel action, which caused a bit of a problem when, in one roll, both players were forced out of BDTP. The last time I read the rules, in a parallel action, both players take Harm equal to their opponents Success Level. Am I wrong on this? If not, then I will use the suggested house-rule that characters take Harm equal to the difference in their SL's, so as to avoid this problem in the future.

You're right, and you can't "knock someone out of BDTP." This is a common confusion. Being broken puts you at a serious disadvantage, but you aren't knocked out until you give up or literally cannot perform another action (empty pools + broken.) The difference in SL's is used for perpendicular actions.

I didn't realize you couldn't be forced out of BDTP.  It always seemed to me that when you were Broken, you were done.  I think not forcing my players out of BDTP at that point would cause more confusion in the future, but I'll definately run this by them.

As for my problem on this particular instance, now that I think about it some more (and with some insight over on RPGnet) I've realized that I should have handled that contest as a perpependicular action, rather than a parallel one.

How are ties handled? We had several rolls come up a tie last night, and I had a real issue on how to rule on it.

Ties are ties: an action equally opposed. One thing I do wish I had said clearer is how I handle this, which is to have something else happen, too. Two people are pushing on opposite sides of a door and the rolls are tied? Have the roof cave in. Seriously! This totally works. Otherwise, though, it's just a tie.

Okay, I see.  I'll have to remember this.

I have the feeling that there is some other game you may have played which has made TSOY harder for you, and I'm not talking about any mainstream game. I smell a certain "stakes setting" discussion coming on. What do you guys normally play?

Mostly we play D&D and GURPS, with some Exalted and Weapons of the Gods thrown in.  In fact, I think those are the only games I've ever played with this group.

Setting stakes is certainly new to us, but the majority of my players leaped into it fine enough.  One thing I failed to do as the Story Guide was to set stakes outside of BDTP, but I was mostly concerned with my players merely trying something new and seeing if they liked it.  Thankfully, many of them love the system and we'll be starting a new campaign with it next week, so I'll have to be sure to push for more stakes then.

[Ricky Donato]

You're right, and you can't "knock someone out of BDTP." This is a common confusion. Being broken puts you at a serious disadvantage, but you aren't knocked out until you give up or literally cannot perform another action (empty pools + broken.)

Clinton, you made a mistake here, according to the rules:

Harm past broken results in the attacker's intention immediately happening.

You can knock your opponent out of BDTP, but it doesn't happen when the opponent is Broken; it only happens when the opponent goes past Broken.