So, it’s me again (I’m afraid I’ll have quite a bit of questions, even after campaign’s start!), and this time is about Order of Titan , and more exactly about Kaiju Threat Alert (fantastic name, by the way!).
So the move says:
When you scout for signs of behemoth attack,pick a danger in the world as an omen of an incoming assault. Say how it threatens Families of your choice, who become Alerted. You can spend Treaty you have on one Alerted group on any other.
and the first two outcomes:
• If the behemoth is stopped before the threat becomes plausible, each Alerted Family or Faction gets 1-Treaty on you.
• If you stop it once it’s a clear threat, gain 1-Treaty on every Alerted Family or Faction, and redistribute Treaty on them as you
like.
What happens if the Behemoth is defeated when it has become a threath for some of the Alerted Faction, but not all? If my Order’s Player says “All of the Homeland is threathened!” Alerting three Factions and four Families, and then the Behemoth is stopped when is about to attack a town with a Faction and a Family whitin, and the other Factions/Families don’t even see a glimpse of it or its presence… what happens? Does he give 1 Treaty to all the Alerted Families/Factions? Or only on those that weren’t threathened by the Behemoth ?
I must admit, it’s the piece in the Playing the Order chapter that gives me doubt: I’m not sure if I nailed above what “There’s a challenge: your story must be well told. Make it too extreme and it might never come to pass, and you lose Treaty for crying wolf.” means…
The wording for this one was pretty hard to cram in without taking up all the playbook, heh. What those outcomes are looking for is whether the specific threat you outlined when you triggered Kaiju Threat Alert seems plausible or not. This means that the Order player needs to be specific when they outline the threat – for example, ‘it’ll burn our fields to the ground, threatening the Cultivators and the Tyrants that protect them’. In that case, if the monster is stopped after knocking over a guard post, it was dangerous but the particular threat you saw hasn’t happened and they weren’t in the danger you said they were.
This also means that as a GM, you should be looking to make the Order’s prediction come true. It’s no fun if you just have the behemoth go off and do something else entirely.
Ok, understood! Thank you very much!
And now I understand what “And what will you sacrifice so your prophecies will come to pass?” means too! Using your example, the wisest and safest course of action would be to stop the Behemoth when it’s not even in the sight of that guard post (let alone the fields), but this wouldn’t be dramatic at all. The player had to wait until the threat is real because he want to benefit from the move, but of course the Order arrives at the last minute because, even if it acted as fast as possible, they couldn’t made it there earlier (and because it’s what heroes do, to arrive when all hopes seem lost! ). I like it!
Yeah, definitely. If you take out the threats before they’re a clear danger, maybe the other factions won’t appreciate the sacrifices you’re making to do so? So the playbook allows for some quite cynical calculus. Though not as cynical as using Sleep Now in the Fire to turn a rampaging behemoth as a weapon against your enemies, and then swooping in to defeat it afterwards for the prestige 😛
You know what, I love how the Order always drags the Fiction by the horns! =D