Monday Night Woes

[Supplanter]

I think this is something that needs to depend on context. Sure, sometimes a transition scene is a chance to stop and recover from the previous action scene... but sometimes it's desirable and necessary to keep the tension mounting, particularly if there's a "race against the clock" type situation to stop the villain before he does something disastrous.

It's a matter of distinguishing between transition scenes that are literally just a transition from one action scene to the next (where you may want to keep a reasonable amount of dice in the Doom Pool), and ones that represent longer or calmer periods of time where characters can properly rest and recuperate.

Are you speaking from your experience playing heroes here? That is, do you find, when playing a hero, that a bigger doom pool instills a narrative/esthetic tension in you, rather than a purely mechanical one?


Jim

[N01H3r3]

Are you speaking from your experience playing heroes here? That is, do you find, when playing a hero, that a bigger doom pool instills a narrative/esthetic tension in you, rather than a purely mechanical one?

Actually, from both playing and running games. If the Doom Pool is low, it signals an opportunity to rest and recover (because such will be easy). If the Doom Pool is still large, then recuperation is not so easy and there's a sense of a threat still looming large upon the horizon.

It's particularly effective if the Watcher makes a point of narratively equating the size of the Doom Pool with the trouble and mayhem caused by villains, collateral damage and so forth. In essence, the Doom Pool becomes a part of the problem to overcome, rather than just a resource for the GM. It kind of evokes that idea that a hero doesn't rest while other people are in danger.

Along those lines, in the game I regularly play in, other players in the group have even taken to viewing a failed action or reaction that removes a lot of dice from the Doom Pool (because the Watcher spent several dice to ensure that the hero fails) as a success in its own way.

[Supplanter]

Actually, from both playing and running games. If the Doom Pool is low, it signals an opportunity to rest and recover (because such will be easy). If the Doom Pool is still large, then recuperation is not so easy and there's a sense of a threat still looming large upon the horizon.

It's particularly effective if the Watcher makes a point of narratively equating the size of the Doom Pool with the trouble and mayhem caused by villains, collateral damage and so forth. In essence, the Doom Pool becomes a part of the problem to overcome, rather than just a resource for the GM. It kind of evokes that idea that a hero doesn't rest while other people are in danger.

Interesting! For the most part, I don't experience fluctuations in the doom pool that way, when playing a hero - they don't make me feel anything particular about the story. What makes me feel a particular way about the story are concrete fictional events. "The spaceship you left Cammi on is about to blow up." "There's a Hulk somewhere in Washington, DC." "Karl Lykos says SHIELD is on their way to kill him so he won't reveal the truth about their Antarctic operations." Contrariwise, You only have a 25% chance of succeeding at a healing roll feels, at best, mechanically inconvenient, and at worst, just kind of annoying.

It doesn't really represent an impetus to action, just an impediment to one set of them. That is, I can make a recovery roll whether the doom pool is small or large. It's simply that if it's large I may as well not bother. Meanwhile, if the spaceship is going to blow up, I'm going to try to get Cammi off the thing no matter the size of the doom pool. A five-die doom pool doesn't make me more inclined to try to save her than a two-die doom pool does.

Contrast that with a couple of other Cortex Plus mechanics. Put me in a Leverage Timed Action, where the bomb goes off in three beats? That's genuine mechanical reinforcement of narrative tension. If I want to keep that bomb from going off, I have to succeed at X, Y and Z within three rolls. Add a ticking Scene Complication (from MHRP: Civil War) to an action scene? It represents a concrete, fictional thing that is getting worse. Again, as a player, I feel a direct, esthetic connection between the mechanic and the story.

Hm. Suddenly I'm thinking that the problem with trying to make the doom pool work as a tension meter is that it's Telling not Showing! It's a soup of polyhedral adjectives and adverbs when good storytelling requires verbs and nouns.

I can think of exactly one exception to the above in my experience so far. In the All-Star Marvels "Suicide Hulks" event, the Newvengers were tracking the final Hulk, in civilian form, through NYC, trying to prevent or minimize a rampage. In this case, there were two crucial contributors: 1) We knew by now that a Rampaging Hulk uses the doom pool. 2) Therefore, we could take actions directly against the doom pool to reduce or eliminate it - e.g. by covertly evacuating areas around the Hulk; deploying surveillance around him; getting rescue units into place. These actions were rolls against the doom pool, with successes removing doom dice. That drew a clear connection between the mechanical fact - large doom pool - and the fictional situation across the two crucial dimensions: we knew exactly what the doom pool represented and we had a meaningful course of action in direct response to that.

Doing all those things, even though they weren't fight-y, meant that we were in an action scene. But I suppose the fact that we rushed to enter that action scene - and exit transition - counts.

Along those lines, in the game I regularly play in, other players in the group have even taken to viewing a failed action or reaction that removes a lot of dice from the Doom Pool (because the Watcher spent several dice to ensure that the hero fails) as a success in its own way.

Oh absolutely. As a Watcher, I particularly stress this when introducing new players. "You lost that roll, but since I spent three of my five doom dice in the course of it, it was a really effective loss."


Jim

[Doc Hydrogen]

Jim,

That exact issue comes up when using the Rampaging Hulk. Any use of the doom pool, even to prevent stress, is still effectively causing stress to Hulk. Each spent doom die reduces the Hulk's effectiveness, just as surely as stressing out that particular die would have.

Also, I've seen the "recovery rolls suck" thing pop up all over the place. Am I the only one who just defaults to the pulling punches rules on OM24? To me, lasting stress and trauma simply aren't compatible with superheroes gaming.

[Supplanter]

Jim,

That exact issue comes up when using the Rampaging Hulk. Any use of the doom pool, even to prevent stress, is still effectively causing stress to Hulk. Each spent doom die reduces the Hulk's effectiveness, just as surely as stressing out that particular die would have.

Also, I've seen the "recovery rolls suck" thing pop up all over the place. Am I the only one who just defaults to the pulling punches rules on OM24? To me, lasting stress and trauma simply aren't compatible with superheroes gaming.

Yeah, I think Rampaging Hulk might be the best use of the doom pool of any of the "Void-like" mechanics.

Pulling punches works well for avoiding trauma-infliction, but it doesn't affect stress taken short of trauma. If a player-hero ends a scene with D12 stress, she starts transition with D10 stress, always. And a hero stressed out by a pulled punch still carries D6 stress into transition.

Now, Cam's alternate approach laid down a few weeks ago is: Feel free as Watcher to declare, "Stress is gone!" at the start of a "no hurry" transition scene where players have plenty of time to hang around and chill. This actually gives you a more powerful switch to throw in re tension & stakes than fiddling with doom pool modulation, because it breaks very clearly into "Time" And "No Time!"

But I think my own preference is to always vanish away stress-short-of-stressout between scenes. If you get stressed out, take your D6 trauma or stress (if opponent pulled punch) forward. Otherwise, it just goes away.

Honestly, that's already what I do for villains when I am Watcher, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one. But maybe I am! Question: Does any Watcher here track villain stress across transition scenes and start villains with residual stress in subsequent scenes where mechanically appropriate?


Jim

[Doc Hydrogen]

Pulling punches works well for avoiding trauma-infliction, but it doesn't affect stress taken short of trauma. If a player-hero ends a scene with D12 stress, she starts transition with D10 stress, always. And a hero stressed out by a pulled punch still carries D6 stress into transition.

Now, Cam's alternate approach laid down a few weeks ago is: Feel free as Watcher to declare, "Stress is gone!" at the start of a "no hurry" transition scene where players have plenty of time to hang around and chill. This actually gives you a more powerful switch to throw in re tension & stakes than fiddling with doom pool modulation, because it breaks very clearly into "Time" And "No Time!"

But I think my own preference is to always vanish away stress-short-of-stressout between scenes. If you get stressed out, take your D6 trauma or stress (if opponent pulled punch) forward. Otherwise, it just goes away.

Honestly, that's already what I do for villains when I am Watcher, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one. But maybe I am! Question: Does any Watcher here track villain stress across transition scenes and start villains with residual stress in subsequent scenes where mechanically appropriate?

Jim

See, and I was reading pulling punches basically as you describe your preference, that as all stress melts down to a d6 at the start of a Transition and you roll recovery from there. So that the characters "feel it" in the Transition scene, but aren't totally hampered by it.

[MidnightBlue]

Actually, from both playing and running games. If the Doom Pool is low, it signals an opportunity to rest and recover (because such will be easy). If the Doom Pool is still large, then recuperation is not so easy and there's a sense of a threat still looming large upon the horizon.

It's particularly effective if the Watcher makes a point of narratively equating the size of the Doom Pool with the trouble and mayhem caused by villains, collateral damage and so forth. In essence, the Doom Pool becomes a part of the problem to overcome, rather than just a resource for the GM. It kind of evokes that idea that a hero doesn't rest while other people are in danger.

Along those lines, in the game I regularly play in, other players in the group have even taken to viewing a failed action or reaction that removes a lot of dice from the Doom Pool (because the Watcher spent several dice to ensure that the hero fails) as a success in its own way.

I absolutely LOVE this interpretation of the Doom Pool and its ebb & flow.

Any chance to turn mere mechanics into narrative fodder is a great thing in my book.

It does seem like a Watcher should be keeping an eye on his doom building/spending as if it was another narrative element and let that help to set the tone for the situation at hand.

[Cam]

That is actually how the doom pool was intended to be portrayed, yes.

Also, I've been suggesting an optional rule for Watchers, which is that they might use only some of the doom pool for a roll, not all of it. Alternately, given that the Watcher is allowed to choose the two dice she wants to use for the total, nothing stops them from arriving at a lower total.

Of course, none of this helps those who think such activity makes rolling the doom pool a waste of time, so.

Cheers,
Cam

[Nerd King]

Actually, from both playing and running games. If the Doom Pool is low, it signals an opportunity to rest and recover (because such will be easy). If the Doom Pool is still large, then recuperation is not so easy and there's a sense of a threat still looming large upon the horizon.

It's particularly effective if the Watcher makes a point of narratively equating the size of the Doom Pool with the trouble and mayhem caused by villains, collateral damage and so forth. In essence, the Doom Pool becomes a part of the problem to overcome, rather than just a resource for the GM. It kind of evokes that idea that a hero doesn't rest while other people are in danger.

Along those lines, in the game I regularly play in, other players in the group have even taken to viewing a failed action or reaction that removes a lot of dice from the Doom Pool (because the Watcher spent several dice to ensure that the hero fails) as a success in its own way.

I absolutely LOVE this interpretation of the Doom Pool and its ebb & flow.

Any chance to turn mere mechanics into narrative fodder is a great thing in my book.

It does seem like a Watcher should be keeping an eye on his doom building/spending as if it was another narrative element and let that help to set the tone for the situation at hand.

In a similar vein when I explained this intepretaion of the Doom Pool to my players they then asked if they could act directly against the Doom Pool to reduce it - targetting that rather than the Villains or their Complications, Assets etc. eg. escorting civilans away, baracading falling buildings, encouraging the morale of the fleeing masses.

For now I haven't really come up with a suitable mechanic to handle it, and even decided whether I should even allow it! So has anyone included this or something similar?

[Supplanter]

In a similar vein when I explained this intepretaion of the Doom Pool to my players they then asked if they could act directly against the Doom Pool to reduce it - targetting that rather than the Villains or their Complications, Assets etc. eg. escorting civilans away, baracading falling buildings, encouraging the morale of the fleeing masses.

For now I haven't really come up with a suitable mechanic to handle it, and even decided whether I should even allow it! So has anyone included this or something similar?

It's really simple. Player-hero describes what they're doing, builds an appropriate dice pool and rolls it. Watcher rolls the doom pool in opposition, possibly adding a relevant scene distinction, plus one complication and one stress die if applicable. If the player wins, her effect die knocks a die that size out of the DP.

We've done this in game, as described above. I could've sworn the OM explicitly discusses taking an action against the doom pool as one of a player-hero's options.

One wrinkle, from the player's perspective, is that she risks rolling opportunities, which means she could potentially be no better off after a "victory" than she was beforehand. For this reason, it's probably a good player tactic to buy extra effect dice with plot points, assuming the odds make that a good play. Of course, the more opportunities you roll, the fewer useful effect dice you can buy.

ETA: Mechanically, it's the same kind of roll you'd make to create an asset. It's just that instead of creating an asset, you "stress" the doom pool.


Jim