[PIE] Golden Moments

[Altaem]

[Altaem]

[Altaem]

[Altaem]

[themaloryman]

Gabriel (my character) and Carick have kidnapped Saul, second in command of an old slaving ring responsible for the deaths of Gabriel's wife and daughter, and able to give information on the location of the old gang leader, Davidge. Gabriel's intention is to pump Saul for information on Davidge - location, weaknesses, old dirt, etc - then dispatch him. His roll on intimidate is quite high, but includes a local critical on Self. I declared that Gabriel was being very intimidating, but that he was so enraged that he was at risk of losing control and killing Saul before he could give up enough information.

Carick's player therefore declared that he would attempt to restrain Gabriel and save Saul's life. His roll was average, but included a critical success on Opposition, and a critical failure on Self. As a group we concluded that as Carick grabbed Gabriel's shoulder, Gabriel spun and punched him in the face, knocking him sprawling over an old chair behind him. These two roll combined nicely to further intimidate Saul, and the GM (Altaem) stated that I now had the right to invent a certain amount of information that would be useful in pursuing Davidge. Also, Gabriel later had to buy Carick a drink...

[themaloryman]

Having located the daughter of Davidge (see my previous post) Gabriel kidnaps her, and takes her out of her town. He does this by floating down the river with the unconscious young girl on his chest. His roll was 13, critical successes on opposition and environment (the guards and the river) but with a critical failure on self.

As a 13 was more than sufficient to accomplish this action, and there was no obvious way to immediately interpret the mix of successes and failures, the GM and I decided between us that, though Gabriel had accomplished his action, having this young girl rest on his chest in the dark took him back so strongly to his own lost daughter that it affected how he felt about her and about life. Though he had never intended to hurt the girl (indeed, he had sworn to her mother that he would return her unharmed before tranquilising them both!) he now wondered if he would have the strength to give her back, and had to adopt a much more protective style of play, putting his own safety in jeopardy to keep her alive if it became necessary.

[David Berg]

A lot of these highlights seem to be based largely around dramatic situations, like "sneak into a military base guarded by turrets through a field of dead bodies.  You have a truck seat."  How do you generate these situations?  Unstructured prep?  Structured prep?  During play?

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here's my blog, discussing Delve, my game in development

[Altaem]

A lot of these highlights seem to be based largely around dramatic situations, like "sneak into a military base guarded by turrets through a field of dead bodies.  You have a truck seat."  How do you generate these situations?  Unstructured prep?  Structured prep?  During play?

Everyone gets to make up anything that fits the situation and background.

GM: You see a field of dead bodies, they are surrounded with loot.  Beyond the field are two automated turrets each with twin mini-guns.  It's clear parties far more equipped than you have failed to make it past the turrets.
Player: there's nothing nearby I could use to assist me?
GM: There's a whole field of equipment, armour, rifles, explosives...  just go help yourself!
Player: err... I'll pass.  I followed a road to get here.  Were there any abandoned vehicles on the road?
GM:  In Fallout?  Always!  You passed a truck maybe 1 km back.  It was looted of anything useful over a hundred years ago.
Player:  That's ok, I'm sure they left something.

Always trust players to think of the unexpected.

I really like the way the GM uses one resolution result to feed into the next.  I'd probably look for every possible opportunity to do that if I ran it.  Is that what you do?  Or do you hold yourself to rules about what kind of roll against what kind of difficulty equals "this doesn't screw you (or save you) THIS time, but maybe on the next one"?

I never managed to generate rules or even guidelines for this process.
The only rule is: local criticals must always be included in the narration, no exceptions ever.
(As seen with the kidnapping of the child, sometimes this can be rather difficult.)
As GM you get used to making up rulings on the fly, to accommodate player narration.

Note that in PIE rolls are often made where other games would declare an automatic success or failure.  It can be interesting to see what colour the local criticals bring to a scene.     

[themaloryman]

I think, to add to Altaem's comment, that it's important to note that the thing that works really well so often in PIE is the fact that, while

As GM you get used to making up rulings on the fly, to accommodate player narration.

the GM is also generally willing to allow a good deal of player input into the ruling. The GM's decision is final (it needs to be) but Altaem is good at hearing player suggestions and then making a ruling that will make the experience the most fun and the most satisfying for the greatest number of people. That's not something you can create rules for.