Hello, Imperilers!
Any thoughts on doing a non-combative or rescue action scene? I’m used to doing Apocalypse World, mostly, so for that system I’d use a Countdown Clock or something to keep track of, say, the party’s dwindling water supply. But there’s no equivalent for WiP…
I can think of two ways to do it. You could make the disaster a kind of villain, like “Burning Building” would have the drive “to consume, to spread” and maybe the PC’s can defeat it with positive conditions, like “blaze contained” or “all civilians evacuated”? It could give the party ‘indirect conditions’ if it didn’t exactly burn them, like “civilian casualties” or “rough memories”. Maybe a custom twist on the Take Down move would help it apply here?
The other way to do it would be ‘by the book’… using Defy Danger and Use Environment, no custom stuff, just do the scene until there’s consensus that the issue has been dealt with, or run out of control.
Any experiences doing a scene like this in game, ‘by the book’ or not?
Sounds like Seize Control to me, although perhaps broken down into pieces so that multiple heroes or steps are involved.
I can see combinations of Seize Control, Defy Danger, Examine and Take Down.
Yeah, depending on how you want to do it I could see either approach being fun, or even just making up some custom moves if you want it to be a set piece (that you could continue to use in the future even really).
If you wanted to do something like the first option, you could take a look at the Fight Fire setting for Fate Core in the Fate Worlds Companion book (which is pay what you want if you don’t have it and want to check it out). That uses aspects in Fate for fire fighters taking on fires and rescuing people; stating up fires as villains could be a cool alternate way of doing things in Worlds in Peril
I have a similar set up for handling aftershocks and storm effects in the Don’t Let the Sun Go Dawn Fate Accelerated scenario I have.
Thanks for the feedback, all. I may or may not go the custom move route, but I wrote one up as an exercise. As far as the move with ‘multiple heroes or steps’, I modified a Dungeon Worlds move which kind of seemed a lot like that.
When you Coordinate a Disaster Response, choose one member of the party to act as controller, one to be frontline, and one to be cleanup (the same character cannot have two jobs). If the PCs can’t or don’t want to fill all jobs, one may burn a bond with an NPC to give them a job (treat as 7-9 result). For a job nobody has, treat it as if a 6 had been rolled. Additional PCs are floaters, and can choose one (but only one) PC with a job to aid.
When the PCs first arrive on the scene, the controller rolls +Influence.
When the PCs are in the thick of things and have hit a turning point, the frontline rolls +Maneuver or Protect.
When the threat has been (more or less) dealt with, cleanup rolls +Examine.
On a 10+ the controller effectively organizes your team, everyone else gets +1 forward. On a 10+ the frontline remains steadfast under pressure, reduce the next Condition each other PC receives this scene (Critical to Moderate, Moderate to Minor, Minor to no Contion). On a 10+ the cleanup ensures that there are no lingering threats. On a 7–9 each roles performs their job as expected: nobody gets in each other’s way, the disaster doesn’t get dramatically worse, and if the PCs aren’t prepared for aftermath, it doesn’t catch them off-guard, either.