Hulk Smash! --How Do You Save Civilians?

[figurefour]

Throng of Endangered Civilians--pool of 5d6--players may take actions to save civilians or evacuate them to reduce dice pool--when dice pool is gone, all civilians are saved--however, if the Watcher Spends 2d12 from the doom pool, then the scene ends, and any remaining dice in the "endangered civilian" pool were injured or killed in the collateral damage

I wouldn't actually give the "civilian" dice pool it's own turn--it's really more of a task to accomplish than it is a coherent "character"--the growing doom pool will take care of endangering them--and if doom pool gets high enough, heroes will fail to save some or all of the civvies.

I recommended something like this in a discussion about how to handle rescuing people from a burning building. Someone suggested statting up the FIRE as a character, which I thought was pretty much nuts. The burning building is clearly NOT a character.

Instead, I thought the best plan was to make "Burning Building" a scene distinction and stat up the civilians as specialty characters and/or mobs. Then, when the civilians get a turn, you just narrate them being in danger somehow. If the PC's don't react to this danger, you add a die to the Doom Pool (in this example, probably the d8 from the Burning Building distinction) as if the civilian was grandstanding.

I think it's an interesting way to punch up the human element of the "civilians in danger" problem.

[Dunlaing]

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The moderators of this board do not condone nor recommend reading on any mobile device while driving.
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-EF

That was firmly tongue-in-cheek.

[Dunlaing]

I recommended something like this in a discussion about how to handle rescuing people from a burning building. Someone suggested statting up the FIRE as a character, which I thought was pretty much nuts. The burning building is clearly NOT a character.

Why not? It's not clear to me that the burning building isn't a character.

[figurefour]

The burning building is clearly NOT a character.

Why not? It's not clear to me that the burning building isn't a character.

Because a character is a person. That's what "character" means.

There's nothing mechanical going on here, I'm just being pedantic about the meaning of the word "character". If it was a scene in a comic book, would you call the fire one of the characters?

[Supplanter]

Because a character is a person. That's what "character" means.

There's nothing mechanical going on here, I'm just being pedantic about the meaning of the word "character". If it was a scene in a comic book, would you call the fire one of the characters?

We've played a lot of Nobilis . . .


Jim

[Mailer33]

Figurefour,

Yeah, I am mostly inclined to agree with you. When I was discussing using a character dice pool to represent something like a burning building--I was sort of building on Jim's concept of endangered civilians as a dice pool or character-

From that concept, I had already determined that a better term for the burning building character or endangered civilians pool would be something like "obstacle" or "task" pool, but I just stuck with the term character so as not to add confusion.

Your way of handling the burning building plan is probably the best way to handle that if you are representing any of it's elements with some sort of dice pool. With the civs as a mob.

I still might be inclined to use both the buning building and the trapped citizens as plain old scene distinction, but I haven't thought the scenario through all that thoroughly yet so I'm not sure.

[EldritchFire]

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The moderators of this board do not condone nor recommend reading on any mobile device while driving.
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-EF

That was firmly tongue-in-cheek.

The PSA tag was meant to covey the humour. Obviously I failed. #humourFail #lifeFail #hashtagNotFail lol

-EF

[Supplanter]

I recommended something like this in a discussion about how to handle rescuing people from a burning building. Someone suggested statting up the FIRE as a character, which I thought was pretty much nuts. The burning building is clearly NOT a character.

Instead, I thought the best plan was to make "Burning Building" a scene distinction and stat up the civilians as specialty characters and/or mobs. Then, when the civilians get a turn, you just narrate them being in danger somehow. If the PC's don't react to this danger, you add a die to the Doom Pool (in this example, probably the d8 from the Burning Building distinction) as if the civilian was grandstanding.

I think it's an interesting way to punch up the human element of the "civilians in danger" problem.

This sounds interesting. If you do it that way, how, mechanically, do you "save" the civilians? What do you roll against? if you win the roll, what do you apply your effect die to?


Jim

[Mailer33]

For those of you who are finding the examples of play helpful, I thought I would elaborate on my Hulk Rampages the Vegas Strip scenario.

I had set up the endangered civilians, casinos, and traffic as scene distinctions to use for collateral damage, and gave details on how to use emotional stress and reactions to handle collateral damage and saving innocent bystanders.

But I didn't go into much detail on the players side of the action. I mentioned assets and complications briefly--so I thought I would elaborate on this:

What can players do to save innocent bystanders other than trying to knock the Hulk (or any other rampaging menace).

Several things. The sky is the limit, but here are a few ideas:

Someone like Captain America could work on evacuating as many nearby civilians as possible. He might start by looking for a good evacuation route where he can herd the fleeing citizens. He would do this by creating the asset, "evacuation route". Now on the Hulks next turn, let's say Hulk hurls a car into a crowd of bystanders near Captain America. Captain America would resist by saying, "I'm already directing the bystanders into the evacuation route as Hulk is picking up the car, and I'm guiding them by motioning with my shield like its a flag"

So, Cap A would build a resistance dice pool that included the "escape route" asset, and his shield because he was using it to guide the human throng. If cap resists the Hulks attack, then bystanders make it to safety before car goes barreling through them.

Another Tactic:

Say Spiderman wants to draw all of the Hulk's wrath on himself and lure the Hulk away from the strip. Spidey could do something like land on the hulks shoulder, honk his big green nose, then swing away. Spidey then builds a dice pool that includes wise cracker, reflexes, webs, etc, and tries to put a complication on the Hulk called, "Distracted by Spiderman"

Now that Hulk has the "Distracted by Spiderman" complication, anytime Hulk does something other than attacking Spiderman--you can pull the complication dice to help you resist.

What's more, if Spidey keeps stepping this complication up to D12, he literally has the Hulks full attention, and he can now lure e Hulk away from the scene. Now where he leads the Hulk to might be its own separate problem, but you get the idea.


Another Tactic--
Get all the bystanders to safety. Do this by directly removing the scene distinction "endangered civilians" and you can use assets such as "escape route" to help you do it. If you remove the scene distinction completely, then no more "endangered civilians" are around to get hurt. Hooray! Of course, there are still the casinos and traffic jam to worry about.

That, and the fact that a devious Watcher will spend a doom dice to bring more "endangered citizens" screaming out of a nearby Hotel. (buy a new scene distinction)


What it comes down to, is that you can handle pretty much ANY tactic the players come up with by using distinctions, assets, and complications along with the rest of the rules. This could Handle plain old webbing the Hulk up, or trying to talk the Hulk down from his rage, to evacuating all the civilians on sight (of course, there are still the Casinos and Cars to deal with.

[Supplanter]

What it comes down to, is that you can handle pretty much ANY tactic the players come up with by using distinctions, assets, and complications along with the rest of the rules. This could Handle plain old webbing the Hulk up, or trying to talk the Hulk down from his rage, to evacuating all the civilians on sight (of course, there are still the Casinos and Cars to deal with.

This is pretty interesting. Question: Let's say I'm playing Captain America and I miss my roll. Under your system this means emotional stress to Cap and injury or death to the civilians, right?

Now per the rules, I spend a Plot Point to make the damage physical stress rather than emotional stress. Narratively, could that represent Cap sacrificing his body to keep the civilians from harm?


Jim