I am looking for some guidance on debt – it’s a great concept and I was happy to see it featured so prominently in the game.
But I don’t see how it engages with the rest of the rules. Where do moves and debt interface?
I was looking for something similar to what exists in Urban Shadows – but the lack of engagement with the rest of the system kind of brought me up short just as I was getting really excited to run this game.
Help me see what I’m missing – I’ve got some scifi to play!
The gm move involve a faction ties into debt. You can call in a favor if your in trouble but you owe a debt. You bust that nice spaceship you don’t own and a seedy repair yard will repair it on credit but you owe them. Then just when the pcs are thinking life is grand in walks a member of that faction saying pay up.
Debt is fictional. I think of it more like a combination of money and adventure hooks.
I wish I could help but using debt properly is something I’m struggling with as well.
Debts are favors that the players owe. And often they have them from competing factions. Having the factions call those debts in on top of each other creates a lot of interesting conflict.
The players start off indebted either fully or partially. One of your options on a partial hit or a miss is to put them in debt (I offer it as a hard choice.)
Oh I have a good one: Debts are stored up GM moves specifically for the faction.
I asked my players who do they owe and why. Then I had those people demand something of them. A service or to pay up. If they pay up, fine. I find another player and have their people demand something. Easy adventure hook
What Aaron Griffin said, 100%. Debts don’t sit idle, the factions don’t let them slide. You fucking owe them, man. If they’re not calling that marker in, you’re liable to wind up in deeper shit down the line.
Use debts as fictional justification to make a PC miserable.
When the conversation lulls and you’re grasping for what to say next, look at the debts. Who hasn’t been bugged about outstanding obligations recently? Who might be pissed off about the current state of affairs? Who is going to push the PCs to do worse stuff to one another? Whose number is getting uncomfortably high? That is a golden opportunity to say something the PCs wish wasn’t true.
To echo what others have said: Debt is only partially tied to player-facing mechanics: they can earn Debt through Acquisitions, and can incur Debt to erase any social/political failures.
Removing/resolving Debt is closer to a “hero points/bennies” system in reverse, and tied to the GM.
In a hero point/bennie system, the players get to spend their hero token or whatever for a bonus at a crucial moment, to turn a bad situation or to ensure victory, right?
In UW’s Debt system, the GM gets to spend those tokens at crucial moments, to make situations more complicated or to force a character’s hand. Essentially, the GM can “spend”/offer a chance to erase a Debt in order to use get a Faction involved.
Judicious timing and use when calling in Debts can be devastating twists to the story, really upping the ante. Most importantly, Debts gives the GM the ability to justify adding those new elements to the story whenever they want.
Sean Gomes Did you mean Favours in your first paragraph? Because otherwise I’m confused. That makes debt sound like a tool rather than something you don’t want.
Debt is absolutely a tool, but one with a potentially ruinous deferred cost. Much like in real life, characters can go into Debt to buy things they can’t normally afford, or beg for Faction involvement in exchange for the promise of future services (mob style).
Check page 131 for calling in a favour when you don’t have a Favour lined up.
Favours are “free” uses of the Debt mechanic, in which a character can ask a Faction for something without earning any Debt, because the factions owes them one.
[edit] Oooooh right, bad word use! Sorry I see where the confusion is. They can incur Debt to solve problems. Not “use” as in expend. My bad.
Thanks, everyone, especially Sean Gomes! I can see that debt hooks into the GM Moves, not PC Moves. I’ll reread the game with that perspective. Would it be safe to say that debt is analogous to “hold” for GMs?
I really appreciate the discussion here!
While it’s not spent like hold, per se, I would absolutely think of Debt as hold for the GM.
How much is too-much will vary depending on a lot of stuff in the fiction: what it represents specifically, the relationship between the faction and the PC, how strong the faction is in the fiction, how badly they need any given thing at any given time… If you need a way of measuring when a PC’s debt has tipped over from “uncomfortable” to “so screwed,” I’d recommend using a countdown clock a la Apocalypse World or Dungeon World.
Pump the PC for info about their relationship with the faction, and then start measuring Debt out of 6 if it’s a normal business relationship… Or 4 if it’s bad and tenuous… Or 8 if it’s a really good relationship. This is, ya know, just an idea for “eyeballing” debt since it doesn’t have a mechanical cap in the rules; it’s meant to vary. I just really dig the utility of countdowns in PbtA games.
Thanks. Yeah, I really like countdown clocks – I like the way Blades in the Dark uses them so broadly.
I think it is a good system to not worry about small purchases. In classic Traveller you are counting things to the credit, your life revolves around monthly ship-payments and near the end of the month you are going to be tempted to risk brash quick-cash adventure schemes and “aim to misbehave”. Plus always the constant payment for Life Support, berthing costs and a shockingly low expense for fuel. I hypothesize that Traveller was invented shortly after the 1973 Oil Crisis and cheap, cheap fusion fuel became a wish-fulfillment for many. You can even suck it out of a gas-giant or an ocean for free.
But with a simple Debt system you only keep track of major shifts in your fortune.
In the science-fiction game BULLDOGS! (space truckers, colourful aliens, working-stiff ethic), which has Fate-based rules, you have 10 Debt spaces for a character, but 9 spaces are filled up in the beginning, indicating that you are forced by dire financial need to sign on to the TransGalaxy corporation for 5 years, hauling the Class D cargo nobody else wants, to places nobody else wants to go. “I have 8 squirmlings at home, and 6 of them need expensive gall-sac operations!”