[Bliss Stage] Save Our Pilots!

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

No, there was no tactical advice in the playtest doc. I was coming up with my own along the way. So, basically we did every thing that made the whole scenario more difficult for us, namely:
a) bringing in nearly all our relationships
b) going in with two pilots
The two pilots thing needs to be fixed, seriously...

My players fell into the same trap on the first mission. Too many dice, lots of bliss. There should indeed be a segment on the need to balance (which, by the way, we all really like).

On the other hand, the two pilot system seems to function just fine, but that may simply be because one character is willing to take hits for the team, in order to impress the girl he's infatuated with. We'll see next week, as we intend to try out the mechanics for a three-pilot-one-conflict stunt.

(More tomorrow, in the form of an actual play report thread.)

[OneWingedAngel]

Yea, it wasn't my pilot...

And yes, those WERE the leftover dice...

Anyway, I think I can work out the current difficulty into a table using game theory, but I am a little lazy and tied up atm. :)

Anyhow, Ben, yeah... I could see that you are trying to include some sort of PvP action (I figured that's what the Betrayal scenes are for) into the game, but with a post-apocalyptic backstory and a rather "We Must Save The World" mood in the playtesting doc, we don't have any extra resources to put into backstabbing each other ala WW's Vampire.

Oh, and... Thanks Ben. :)

[Ben Lehman]

My thought here is that you guys may have been playing against the intention of the rules, if not the letter.  My intention was the pilot's could assign dice into each others categories -- including assigning, say, both dice into Mission or what have you.

yrs--
--Ben

[OneWingedAngel]

That's what we did too. However, our average rolls (Which is quite true, because about a third of the dice ended up 5s and 6s, another third ended up 3s and 4s and so forth) did not help much when we did allocate into each other's dice pools because then we will end up causing failures due to the keep worst dice rule.

So, if probability does not screw us over, we have a 2/3 chance of failing any given die roll and a 1/2 chance of gaining Bliss simply because we don't put 5s and 6s in the leftover anyway. However, that is assuming we do not deliberately take or cause our team mate to gain Trauma, or cause more mission objectives to be added, or take unnecessarily more damage to your relationships. So, when faced with immediate death, most sane people would sacrifice the future in the hopes of doing better to lessen the impact of the immediate danger and therefore take less damage on health and just keep adding Bliss (This is also due to the fact that all of us do not entirely comprehend the impact of Bliss and the longevity of the character in the beginning)

I would continue, but I am tired atm... I would continue this later..

[Ben Lehman]

Huh.

Okay, I'm just going to clarify how I intended the rules to work.  Clearly they need a rewrite.

Let's say two pilots are on a mission: Alice and Bob.  Clarice is anchoring.

Alice has two relationships: Clarice 5/3 and Dan 4/5

Bob has three relationshops: Clarice 3/4, Eric 5/1, Fiona 4/2

Alice rolls nine dice: -, -, -, -, -, -, -, -, -
Bob rolls twelve dice: +, +, +, +, +, +, +, +, +, +, =, -

Bob's player Bruce says to Alice's player Anne: "Hey, I got this one.  Don't place anything."
He places his 9 + dice: two into mission, two into nightmare, one into each of his relationships, one into each of Alice's relationships.  Alice places none of her dice.  Bob gains 1 bliss.  Alice gains 9 bliss.

Unless Alice is purposefully trying to sabatoge the mission, is there any reason Bob should be left with +s?

yrs--
--Ben

[OneWingedAngel]

LOL! That was pretty much what happened, except that both Doug and Vince got about the same rolls. There were times when one of them has extra + dice to give to the other. However, the - dice almost always ended up in the leftover, thereby causing tons of Bliss for both their characters.

[ptikachu]

That's right, that, and my players put - dice in Nightmare hoping for better re-rolls, and not getting them.

If the players had come into conflict about who assigns dice first, I would have followed the rules and gone with "take turns starting with the Highest Bliss player".

I haven't thought of what adjustments to make to my particular playtest - we're not going to reconvene until at least another week from now anyway.

[Ben Lehman]

Well, relying on your anchor's special ability is just your own darned fault.  :-)  I take no respnsibility.

I'll contact you guys privately about a couple of fixes I wanted to try out.