So not having played yet it seems that uncharted worlds could be DEADLY. It you get into a fire fight and get shot by a firearm you get a sever injury. You can’t necessarily heal up right away so I would say taking two shots from a firearm could be fatal. Is that an accurate assessment?
So not having played yet it seems that uncharted worlds could be DEADLY.
So not having played yet it seems that uncharted worlds could be DEADLY.
Three shots, in normal circumstances. The first does Severe, the second rolls up to Critical (organ/limb damage included), and the third rolls up to Fatal.
That’s assuming the character gets less than 10 on their Brace for Impact three times in a row.
That said: yes, it can be quite deadly if the characters aren’t careful.
Thanks. That makes sense. I forgot about critical.
Any science-fiction med or stimpacks that can counteract that? For those militarily inclined?
Pierre Savoie Well the toughness skill (I forgot its name) lets you take more injuries, heavy armour means those injuries won’t be as bad and a good doctor with the right kit can patch you up in less than ideal circumstances. If you’re prepared for it combat’s not as dangerous.
Matthew Browne has it right. Check out page 23 for more on the Patch Up move, that will help recover from most injuries below Critical. “When attempting to Patch Up a living being, the character needs to have access to medical supplies, […] like anesthetics, stims, dermal graft sprays”
Remember that most Severe and Critical injuries often come with a wonderful set of Debilities that limit a character’s ability to function, and Patch Up can also mitigate those.
I should also point out that the game dynamics make it fairly straightforward to control the lethality of the game. The GM has wide latitude to choose consequences besides doing damage, and to provide opportunities to get out of trouble (with or without a nasty but nonlethal cost).
Chris Wilson I’m super excited about trying it out. I think it’s a beautiful and elegant system.
Chalice In Chains
Absolutely. My group has been running a game since before it officially launched. Best game I’ve ever run OR been in, by far.
Chris Wilson wow man. That is high praise. I can’t wait to get my physical copy here and starting running the game.
What do you like best about it and what do you wish was part of it that isn’t?
Things I like:
– Very little prep involved, and the game really does a good job getting everyone involved in the storytelling. It’s really satisfying to have everyone chip in and build up entire settings and scenarios from scratch.
– Utter lack of fiddly rules to slow things down and trip people up.
– The equipment / vehicles / crew rules in particular are very elegant and effective.
– The “Open Fire” and “Launch Assault” rules are really cool ways to compress action sequences, and the gamebook does a great job describing how to make it work well.
– XP system nudges the players to do interesting things and get into situations that they might not otherwise.
Things I don’t like:
– After playing for a while, the lines between player archetypes / specializations start to blur (since everyone can get any skill).
– The debt / favors system feels a bit out of place. I like the way it motivates interaction with factions, but I don’t think there’s any good guidance on what different amounts of debt are supposed to correspond to in the fiction. It’s one of the few things in the game that is tracked by a number but there’s nothing that tells you what the number means. I’d rather see something more like the wound cheatsheet applied to debt, where each level has some clear guidance on what it means. Or something along those lines.
Chris Wilson that’s great feedback. I wonder if you would do something like Fantasy Flight Games edge of the empire with its obligation. Maybe you say that debt or obligation to a faction and add a debility if it’s strong enough (ie stress)
Sean Gomes what do you think?
Regarding the Debt system, an early version of UW did indeed use words rather than numbers. However, feedback and general observation of play led me to go with a numerical simplification.
In fact, I had the word-as-debt system in place at the same time that the Wounds were shaking out. Previously, your Debt would range between Modest, Significant, Important, Extreme and Crushing (names still in development, natch).
Personally I liked that more, it just didn’t playtest well and ended up causing confusion or play slowdown. Also it didn’t really play well with faction membership (“Debt” as loyalty) so I simplified it to a numerical standard. Maybe I went too far? Something to revisit at some point.
Sean Gomes – how do you use it in your games right now?
Sean Gomes
Yeah it’s definitely more complicated than wounds / damage because it’s got more dimensions and forms it can take. I do think a cheatsheet to help scale what each level of debt means would be helpful, though. It would also be nice to have more clarity on debt owed by individuals vs debt owed by the crew as a collective. (The game seems to focus on the former, but narratively the latter often makes more sense).
In my game calling in a favor usually comes with the strings very closely attached, so the debt tends to cancel itself out in short order most of the time (or cause trouble quickly if ignored). We haven’t paid very close attention to the numbers, which have moved very little since the campaign started. Faction interactions have all been very quid pro quo for the most part. 🙂
Just spitballing here: what if I think of debt as measured by urgency rather than amount? So a debt of 1 means you owe the faction, but there’s not a lot of time pressure. 2 would mean that you can expect them to reach out to you any day. 3 means you’re actively hounded, and 4 means they’ve given up on asking nicely (debt bankruptcy). This maybe works for loyalty as well, where the tighter your ties to an org the faster they expect you to cooperate.
Another spitball: you should be able to cancel all of your debt with a sufficiently crazy One Big Job… and likewise asking a big enough favor of a faction could immediately put you in extreme debt. The rules don’t prohibit this, but it’s something that only just occurred to me as a possibility. Hmm…
Chris Wilson
I think you nailed it.
Levels of debt should determine how much attention you give to a faction.
Obviously being hunted 24/7 with no quarter means you are going to be devoting your full attention to a faction until you pay down your crushing amount of debt.
Similarly one unit of debt should be similar to a single charge on a brand new credit card; you can ignore it until the end of the month and the creditor puts the least amount of effort into reminding you to pay by automating the delivery of an email/print statement…
So that faction is sending a communique to your ship kindly asking for low level cargo or completion of a ridiculously simple task as re-payment.