Hi there Sean, great work so far on this game. I was wondering how the Assessment move from UW compared with the Read a Sitch and Read a Person moves from AP. Could the Assessment move be used in similar situations? Could you asses the situation in the heat of battle, or analyse another ship or vehicle through scanners? Could you try to assess whether the person talking to you is actually lying or feeling agitated? Just wondering what’s the actual scope of the move, or what situations it is intended to cover.
Also, on another topic, I’ve noticed that the Debt / Favor feature disappeared from the Acquisition move in the Preview Chapter. Are these removed from the game entirely, or just missing from the current preview version?
Hey Etienne. (Warning, Long post ahead!)
Making an Assessment in Uncharted Worlds is a bit more active/focused than Reading a Sitch or Discern Realities, but not too much. It front-loads the Move, requiring the character to “target” a specific subject for important information, rather than targeting “the situation” and choosing the kind of information you get after the roll. (Certain Career skills allow you to quick-scan a situation, however.)
In the heat of the moment, you can indeed use scanners (Assessment+Interface) to determine the enemy ship’s status, capibilities and lifesigns. Or watch a formation’s movements to figure out what the enemy forces’ tactics, equipment, and goals are. Or your Influence to Assess information about someone, including “Are they lying to me”? (or use Physique to Assess someone else through seduction). Other Assessments are considerably longer, (Research/experimentation, exploration/scouting, etc) but follow the same principle of “choose a subject to study”.
After much playtesting and feedback, Debt and Favor have evolved (and no one pressed the B button). Instead of being a stand-in for currency, a character can Call In a Favor to erase, mitigate or deflect social, legal or financial consequences. It’s a “heroic point” style save when things look their worst. Calling in a Favor when you have none saved up will earn Debt. And the GM can “spend” Debt to force the players to agree to the faction’s demands (or suffer even more Debt!). The Faction, Debt and Favor chapter is coming soon, but right now it’s reeeeeeallly messy, so I need to clean it up/format it.
thanks for clarifying the assessment. That make sense. I’m also glad the Debt/Favor mechanics is still lying around. In a sense, it adds a level of metagaming, but I like the political implications of these. I was thinking of running a Vorkosiganesque campaign, and the Debt / Favor adds some political leverage that both the players and GM can use.