Feb 26, 2013 Okay so here’s my example of the steal...
Okay, so here's my example of the stealthy spy guy taking out two mooks, with appropriate dice rolls, table talk, and yadda yadda.
Those of you who are real experts, please chime in and tell me where I'm wrong :)
Game involves a GM, and a superspy character named "John Bund".
Now with bonus camera shots in italics! Notice that each die roll corresponds to a camera shot...
GM: "Okay, you're in the secret compound. This scene is going to be part of you sneaking through the compound - as you make a turn down a corridor, you see two security guys guarding the door. There's a Shadowy Area with crates nearby. You manage to duck back behind the corridor again before the mooks see you. What do you do?"
(We're framing the scene here, and declaring the scene aspect Shadowy Area)
The camera shows Bund round a corner, only to glimpse a couple of bad guys, and then back around the corner, out of sight.
Bund: "Okay, I'm guessing if these guys get a chance, they'll raise an alarm, and that's the real danger, right?"
GM: "Oh, yes. The alarms, they will be raised."
Bund: "Okay, I'm going to try and sneak behind those crates. Roll Stealth.... +4 total."
GM: "The mooks only get a +3 Notice. You're an Unseen Predator, and you get a free invoke, but not enough for a success with style and an extra free invoke."
(Bund rolls his Stealth vs the mooks' Notice. +4 is better than +3, allowing him to create the advantage Unseen Predator, and giving him a free invoke on it. If he had been able to get a +6, he would have gotten two free invokes!)
Bund waits for his chance, and when the mooks are distracted, he rolls behind one of the crates. The mooks think they hear something, but quickly go back to chatting.
Bund: "Got it. These guys look pretty reasonable? Like one-stress types?"
GM: "Yeah, they're one-stress box mooks."
(Transparency is usually recommended in Fate Core games)
Bund: "Okay, even with the free invoke, I'm not convinced that I can do the three stress needed to one-shot the two of them. I'd like to look around and see if there's something I can climb on or something to gain an additional advantage."
GM: "Sure, go ahead and make a Notice roll."
Bund: "+1. I guess that's not enough, is it?"
GM: "Nope. But that seems pretty cool, and likely, so we'll just say that there are some Pipes Over the Mooks, but you don't get a free invoke on them."
(Here Bund tried to Create Advantage again, but failed. Still, the GM thinks it's a cool idea, and so allows the advantage Pipes Over the Mooks to be created, but Bund doesn't get a fress usage of it.)
The camera focuses on the pipes above the mooks' heads
Bund: "Works for me. I'm going to try and climb up on the pipes, then. +6, woohoo!"
GM: "Yeah, you're on the pipes. And that was a success with style, so you get two invokes."
(Bund did a lot better here, probably because his Athletics is better than his Notice. A +6 is 4 over the default target of +2, which is enough to get a success with style, and two free invokes of the aspect Over the Mooks)
Bund climbs up the pipes in the shadows, and then crosses over to a perfect position over their heads. The camera looks down at the unsuspecting guards
Bund: "I've got this. I'm dropping on them, so I'm guessing that's fighting? Should I save up my free invokes?"
GM: "Yeah, this is Fighting. Go ahead and use those invokes, because after this you certainly won't be Above the Mooks any more, and you'll be out of the shadows, so Unseen Predator won't really apply either".
(Aspects apply until they're no longer narratively applicable. The GM rules that what Bund is doing would negate both aspects. Otherwise, he could roll without them and choose to apply them if needed)
Bund: "+1, with my three free invokes to get +7, what do they get?"
GM: "+3 to defend. You deal four stress, which is more than enough to take them both out. Good thing you had that additional advantage, or you would have just gotten a boost! How are they taken out?"
(Bund's attack roll was insufficient to Take Out the mooks, but the additional bonus from his free invocations is four more than the mooks' roll of +3, so he does four stress. Each mook can take 1 stress without being knocked out, so four stress would be enough to take them both out. The victor gets to decide what "Taken Out" means.)
Bund: "They're just knocked out. I don't see any reason to kill them, and besides, blood would probably be easier to spot."
The camera shifts back, to better get a shot of Bund landing and hitting each mook with one leg on the way down. The mooks crumple to the ground, and Bund looks around
GM: "Okay, they're unconscious. The camera pulls back to show you standing over them - in the middle of the hallway. There's now Unconscious Bodies on the floor."
The camera does exactly what the GM says it does
(Here the GM decides that it's appropriate to create a scene aspect, reflecting the bodies on the floor. It's not something that can be Invoked easily, but it sure is fodder for a later Compel to have someone find the bodies!)
Bund: "Ugh, that's no good. I'll haul them off behind the crates. What do you want for that, Physique or Stealth?"
GM: "We'll call that Physique, I guess. It's going to be more a matter of you being able to move the bodies to a suitable place than finding one."
(Bund wants to do an Overcome to get rid of the scene aspect. There's a couple skills that could be used, so the GM makes a call.)
Bund: "+1. That's not good."
GM: "Nope. You start hauling off the bodies, but they bang into a bunch of the crates and make noise."
(Bund fails his Physique roll! To make failure interesting, the GM decides to have enough noise to call attention to what's going on.)
Bund hauls off the bodies, and one of them hits a stack of crates - they're about to fall over and set off a bunch of noise!
Bund: holds out fate point. "I don't think so. I'm A Whisper in the Night, after all. It looks like the body is going to hit the crate, but I stop just in time. After that brief hiccup I get the bodies out of sight."
(Bund doesn't want to waste all of his work in making this quiet! He pays a fate point and invokes his aspect A Whisper in the Night to ensure he moves the bodies quietly. He chooses the +2 bonus, raising his +1 to +3 - enough to Overcome the default difficulty of Fair (+2)).
In the nick of time, Bund steadies the crates! He breathes a sigh of relief, and pulls the bodies out of the way
GM: takes the fate point "Yep. Congrats, you managed to get past the mooks without raising an alarm. Now, this door...."
Bund stands before the locked steel door, ready for the next scene...
Those of you who are real experts, please chime in and tell me where I'm wrong :)
Game involves a GM, and a superspy character named "John Bund".
Now with bonus camera shots in italics! Notice that each die roll corresponds to a camera shot...
GM: "Okay, you're in the secret compound. This scene is going to be part of you sneaking through the compound - as you make a turn down a corridor, you see two security guys guarding the door. There's a Shadowy Area with crates nearby. You manage to duck back behind the corridor again before the mooks see you. What do you do?"
(We're framing the scene here, and declaring the scene aspect Shadowy Area)
The camera shows Bund round a corner, only to glimpse a couple of bad guys, and then back around the corner, out of sight.
Bund: "Okay, I'm guessing if these guys get a chance, they'll raise an alarm, and that's the real danger, right?"
GM: "Oh, yes. The alarms, they will be raised."
Bund: "Okay, I'm going to try and sneak behind those crates. Roll Stealth.... +4 total."
GM: "The mooks only get a +3 Notice. You're an Unseen Predator, and you get a free invoke, but not enough for a success with style and an extra free invoke."
(Bund rolls his Stealth vs the mooks' Notice. +4 is better than +3, allowing him to create the advantage Unseen Predator, and giving him a free invoke on it. If he had been able to get a +6, he would have gotten two free invokes!)
Bund waits for his chance, and when the mooks are distracted, he rolls behind one of the crates. The mooks think they hear something, but quickly go back to chatting.
Bund: "Got it. These guys look pretty reasonable? Like one-stress types?"
GM: "Yeah, they're one-stress box mooks."
(Transparency is usually recommended in Fate Core games)
Bund: "Okay, even with the free invoke, I'm not convinced that I can do the three stress needed to one-shot the two of them. I'd like to look around and see if there's something I can climb on or something to gain an additional advantage."
GM: "Sure, go ahead and make a Notice roll."
Bund: "+1. I guess that's not enough, is it?"
GM: "Nope. But that seems pretty cool, and likely, so we'll just say that there are some Pipes Over the Mooks, but you don't get a free invoke on them."
(Here Bund tried to Create Advantage again, but failed. Still, the GM thinks it's a cool idea, and so allows the advantage Pipes Over the Mooks to be created, but Bund doesn't get a fress usage of it.)
The camera focuses on the pipes above the mooks' heads
Bund: "Works for me. I'm going to try and climb up on the pipes, then. +6, woohoo!"
GM: "Yeah, you're on the pipes. And that was a success with style, so you get two invokes."
(Bund did a lot better here, probably because his Athletics is better than his Notice. A +6 is 4 over the default target of +2, which is enough to get a success with style, and two free invokes of the aspect Over the Mooks)
Bund climbs up the pipes in the shadows, and then crosses over to a perfect position over their heads. The camera looks down at the unsuspecting guards
Bund: "I've got this. I'm dropping on them, so I'm guessing that's fighting? Should I save up my free invokes?"
GM: "Yeah, this is Fighting. Go ahead and use those invokes, because after this you certainly won't be Above the Mooks any more, and you'll be out of the shadows, so Unseen Predator won't really apply either".
(Aspects apply until they're no longer narratively applicable. The GM rules that what Bund is doing would negate both aspects. Otherwise, he could roll without them and choose to apply them if needed)
Bund: "+1, with my three free invokes to get +7, what do they get?"
GM: "+3 to defend. You deal four stress, which is more than enough to take them both out. Good thing you had that additional advantage, or you would have just gotten a boost! How are they taken out?"
(Bund's attack roll was insufficient to Take Out the mooks, but the additional bonus from his free invocations is four more than the mooks' roll of +3, so he does four stress. Each mook can take 1 stress without being knocked out, so four stress would be enough to take them both out. The victor gets to decide what "Taken Out" means.)
Bund: "They're just knocked out. I don't see any reason to kill them, and besides, blood would probably be easier to spot."
The camera shifts back, to better get a shot of Bund landing and hitting each mook with one leg on the way down. The mooks crumple to the ground, and Bund looks around
GM: "Okay, they're unconscious. The camera pulls back to show you standing over them - in the middle of the hallway. There's now Unconscious Bodies on the floor."
The camera does exactly what the GM says it does
(Here the GM decides that it's appropriate to create a scene aspect, reflecting the bodies on the floor. It's not something that can be Invoked easily, but it sure is fodder for a later Compel to have someone find the bodies!)
Bund: "Ugh, that's no good. I'll haul them off behind the crates. What do you want for that, Physique or Stealth?"
GM: "We'll call that Physique, I guess. It's going to be more a matter of you being able to move the bodies to a suitable place than finding one."
(Bund wants to do an Overcome to get rid of the scene aspect. There's a couple skills that could be used, so the GM makes a call.)
Bund: "+1. That's not good."
GM: "Nope. You start hauling off the bodies, but they bang into a bunch of the crates and make noise."
(Bund fails his Physique roll! To make failure interesting, the GM decides to have enough noise to call attention to what's going on.)
Bund hauls off the bodies, and one of them hits a stack of crates - they're about to fall over and set off a bunch of noise!
Bund: holds out fate point. "I don't think so. I'm A Whisper in the Night, after all. It looks like the body is going to hit the crate, but I stop just in time. After that brief hiccup I get the bodies out of sight."
(Bund doesn't want to waste all of his work in making this quiet! He pays a fate point and invokes his aspect A Whisper in the Night to ensure he moves the bodies quietly. He chooses the +2 bonus, raising his +1 to +3 - enough to Overcome the default difficulty of Fair (+2)).
In the nick of time, Bund steadies the crates! He breathes a sigh of relief, and pulls the bodies out of the way
GM: takes the fate point "Yep. Congrats, you managed to get past the mooks without raising an alarm. Now, this door...."
Bund stands before the locked steel door, ready for the next scene...
Shared to the community Fate Core - Public
+1'd by: Thomas Giles, Chad Cruse, Sterling Heibeck, Hector Trelane, Frankie Wakefield, Shawn Fike, Alex c, Michael Kinsley, Richard Van Tassel, Colin Matter, Nick Proud, Brian Boring, Paul Baldowski, Jon Tate, Brett Ritter, Julius Müller, Joseph Moore, Dave Cole, Treiral Tasarte, Jas X, Mike Thompson, Niall Maguire, Oliver Granger (watergoesred), hari capra, Dan Hall, Wille Backman, Adam Schwaninger, Ryan Poe, Dylan Boates, Jacob Possin, Jeremy Kostiew, Mook Wilson, Christopher Fedak, Matt Petruzzelli
Reshared by: Serpentine Owl, Hector Trelane, Richard Van Tassel, Jack Gulick, Jas X, Matt Petruzzelli
(oh, the cool thing about this example is that I don't consider it to be really that "set-up" or anything. Writing it was totally off-the-cuff, and matches pretty well with what I've seen in a typical game)
One question. The Mooks only require 1 shift to take them out (average nameless npc) so why does Bund think he needs 3 shifts to deal with 2 of them? (Or am I reading it wrong and they are Fair nameless npc's?)
It would have been totally cool to just use Athletics, if the pipes had been declared as a scene aspect prior, and I certainly could have written it that way, but I also wanted to show the player creating a detail in the scene, rather than just using existing ones.
As far as the mooks, my understanding is that you get Taken Out when you can't absorb a stress. Since the first mook can absorb one stress, the second stress (which gets overflowed to the second mook) takes him out, and a third point is required to take out the second mook. I may be incorrect on this, though.
(I'm not entirely sure how much stress it takes to Take Out a mob of multiple 0-stress mooks, though).
As for the multiple targets, he think he is using Fair mooks... 1 stress each, so it takes 2 points each, one to fill their box then one more take that one out out. Averages mooks don't have a stress box at all.
The (VERY small) caveat I have is with the very end, where the writing seems to imply a compel of the A Whisper in the Night aspect when, in fact, it's adding +2 to the existing +1 roll to get enough to Overcome the guards. It uses the correct term ("invokes his aspect), but doesn't explicitly do the +1 then +2 math, making it seem the point just automatically buys success ala a compel, which this isn't.
I've used "advantage" and "aspect" somewhat interchangeably in this example, which is a terminology fail on my part.
Hopefully this isn't the last such example you put on here. I'm sure they'll help more than just my group and I.