#ToProsperIsToFall
In my game of Uncharted Worlds, our Missionary just made the choice to save the life of a colonist who was dying from wounds incurred during a terrible flesh-rending sandstorm. The only way to save the patient, though, was to grind up this plant the Missionary was carrying around into the needed medicine.
The plant was the only living sample of crops in the colony that had grown and taken root in the planet’s alien soil; everything else always, always withers and dies and without the plant for study, the Colony’s agriculture (and by extension, growth and self-sufficiency) will be pushed back who knows how long. A full growing season’s effort and hard work wasted, all of it gone.
It’s a pretty great game.
The character rolled a long string of 7-9s, gradually escalating the situation from losing the plant, to getting the plant but having the choice to save a friend, to getting the friend to safety but finding a colonist dying.
The PC didn’t have their medical kit on them — this was just following the facts of the fiction — and had to improvise. The PCs research Crew had research kits, and the Player made a solid argument repurposing it as a rubbish medical kit.
I said sure, sounds like you’re Facing Adversity with Expertise, and the Adversity is not having the tools to affect the situation. They rolled yet another 7-9, and I gave them a Cost: you can totally turn this research kit into a medieval med kit, but your patient is about to go into shock, and you remember reading something somewhere about this plant you’re carrying around being quality medicine if mixed with a few chemical you happen to have in your research kit.
And then it was the PCs choice whether or not to pay the Cost, just to have the chance to roll Patch Up and hopefully save the NPC.
So, it was actually a Soft Move at the end of a long string of mediocre rolls, escalating the situation and ramping up the tension, finally putting the PC in control of a terrible choice that had to be made.
Epilogue: The PC got a success on the resulting Patch Up roll, and the NPC will totally live; the plant’s sacrifice was not in vain.
This entire thing is amazing.
Fantastic! That’s a hell of an awesome chain of GM Moves.
It was pretty great in-action, Sean! The players’ reactions when I said “So… This plant of yours” while looking at the 7 they rolled? So much investment. I think they’re having a blast.