Shawn Tomkin so as not to derail your Q&A with Andrew Huffaker, I did find an interesting remark in your response to...
Shawn Tomkin so as not to derail your Q&A with Andrew Huffaker, I did find an interesting remark in your response to his question:
"Make however many segments of your journey are necessary to Reach your Destination."
I don't know why this didn't occur to me before - I guess I was just fixated on the ten mark Progress bar - but, am I correct in thinking that progress trackers can be of varying size?
Clearly, anyone can house rule it to fit their needs, but this really resonated on several fronts - it makes it easy to customize your Journey (since not one size fits all) and also has wider applicability for things like enemy health bars, i.e. it's easy to make a minion by simply reducing the number of Health in the tracker, etc.
I'm kind of winging this without referencing the rules so, I may be butchering things here. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
"Make however many segments of your journey are necessary to Reach your Destination."
I don't know why this didn't occur to me before - I guess I was just fixated on the ten mark Progress bar - but, am I correct in thinking that progress trackers can be of varying size?
Clearly, anyone can house rule it to fit their needs, but this really resonated on several fronts - it makes it easy to customize your Journey (since not one size fits all) and also has wider applicability for things like enemy health bars, i.e. it's easy to make a minion by simply reducing the number of Health in the tracker, etc.
I'm kind of winging this without referencing the rules so, I may be butchering things here. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Hi, Bjorsa Brimrsson. Close, but not quite.
ReplyDeleteProgress tracks are always 10 boxes. What changes is how you fill those boxes depending on the rank of your challenge. See page 17 for a visual representation of what that looks like. Every time you mark progress, you'll make the appropriate number of ticks based on the rank of your challenge.
So, if I am on a troublesome journey, and I reach a waypoint and mark progress, I will fill three boxes. That means I can be in pretty good shape to make the Reach Your Destination move after only 3 segments (9 progress boxes marked).
If I am on a much more arduous journey, let's say Extreme, I only mark two ticks (one-half of a progress box) for each segment of my journey. To get that same 9 boxes filled as in my troublesome example, I would need to successfully travel 18 segments. That's a pretty long haul.
Same goes for foes. For a troublesome foe, you get to mark 3 progress boxes for every point of harm you inflict. A single, solid hit will get you to 9 filled boxes and will probably End the Fight. For an extreme foe, you'll need to inflict 18 points of harm to get to the same point.
I hope that doesn't muddy the waters for you. Give Progress Tracks starting on page 15 a read and hopefully this context will give it a bit more clarity.
Having read the response, it reinforces my understanding of progress boxes. During my current solo game I did three harm, and it felt really weird marking six boxes off the progress bar vs a Dangerous foe. To be honest, it's not real intuitive for me.
ReplyDeleteAs a conventional roleplayer, I see everything in HPs and with everything having ten boxes it doesn't convey the threat or my progress against it well. Like in the example I mentioned, I had one hit (four full boxes) on it as I recall and was expecting to really have a drawn out dangerous fight, but when you are cleaving 2-3 boxes a go off it for a dangerous or troubling threat, or get a +1 Harm (6 box progress) from a Move, it only takes an exchange or two to grind through it. I was left wonder how to explain my described lack luster success up until that point to get to where my threat was eliminated just like that.
Based on the adjective of "Dangerous", even with some really crummy rolls, the Scrapper didn't feel that way. If that makes sense?
As a visual thinker to boot, I get confused/unsure of myself and consult the rules regularly. Granted it might become second nature after a while, but right now I think 40 boxes for an Epic foe, 20 for an Extreme foe, 10 for a Formidable, 5 for a Dangerous, and 3 for Troublesome would have intuitively made me grasp the threat better when I knew I was doing 1 or 2, and sometimes 3, boxes per success. But then again, as a visual thinker, the symmetry of 10 boxes for everything is appealing...
I'm not saying this to nit-pick because I really do like this... game (sorry, I hesitate even wanting to call it a "game". It's roleplaying!). I just bring it up from the standpoint of someone with a wide eyed view of something new and shiny that has only a single point of reference. Sure people who are familiar with PbtA games might get it right off, or maybe even people with no preconceptions of how other games do it, but it is a hurdle for me at times.
Again, it will probably become second nature to me eventually, but I can definitely relate to where Bjorsa Brimrsson's brain wanted to take them.
Shawn Tomkin thanks for the clarification. Harm/Progress trackers are beginning to sink in.
ReplyDeleteAlso, appreciate the feedback from John Risus, which I found interesting since the Dangerous foes in my first playtest were just that - dangerous (of course, it didn't help that the Action die was completely against me!).
I guess what I'm still trying to grok is much like John, is the narrative flow around, say, the Harm tracker.
Foe example, my PC fires a shot from his musket, scores a Weak Hit - now I need to think through the narration. The PC didn't do enough damage to end the fight so I don't exactly want to narrate the shot as hitting home, however, I also don't want to simply miss or wing an opponent every time my PC takes a shot.
That's sort of why I latched on to the idea of reducing segments and/or Progress trackers depending on the quality of the opponent.
Certainly, I think what is probably needed is for me to realize that not every single foe that a PC runs up against HAS to have a Harm tracker. I think it's probably fair to say that a tracker may be best utilized for dramatically important NPCs/enemies/Journeys (and, it may even state that in the rules somewhere).
Bjorsa Brimrsson, see my latest play report. In a nut shell, I started the fight, did 1 Harm (4 boxes of damage out of 10), lost Initiative, and then hit with a Strong Hit in a Clash, trying to get Initiative back, and took a +1 Harm for 6 boxes of damage (filling 10 boxes out of 10). My mind reels typing that, converting 1 Harm to 2 Damage to 6 Progress (vs a Dangerous foe)...
ReplyDeleteWait, now I've confused myself! Shawn Tomkin, I may need more coffee, but what am I messing up, or did I mess up my fight with the Scrapper!?
I think I might have, on my Strike I got do your Harm but lose Initiative. I do 2 Harm with an appropriate weapon, but progress 3 boxes per Harm vs Dangerous enemies, so should I have marked 6 boxes instead of 4? Either way, a Dangerous foe would have went down with a Weak Hit and a Strong Hit...
Shawn Tomkin, never mind, it's 2 boxes per Harm with Dangerous. So I did 2 Harm (4 Boxes) with a Weak Strike, then did 2 Harm +1, total 3 (6 Boxes) on my Strong Hit with a Clash...
ReplyDeleteYour last bit of math works out there John Risus. As for the progress tracks, there is some method to my madness, but I would agree the rank scaling is not super elegant. For the progress moves, I wanted an easy conversion of progress boxes to a 1-10 scale for the progress score, and I didn't want to do something like have 40 boxes for an epic challenge and then divide by 4 (round down) to get your actual progress score. Doing the inverse (scaling the actual progress instead of the boxes) works better, but is not perfect.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think in action it works fine, and I find drawing ticks to represent damage inflicted or progress made to be weirdly satisfying.
One note: there's a lot in Ironsworn that is a mechanical invention or far enough removed from PbtA games as to be unrecognizable, and this is one of those things. Ironsworn is sometimes a second cousin, twice removed from those games, which is why I've taken care to not sell it as Powered by the Apocalypse. So any clunkiness is my fault :)
Bjorsa Brimrsson ... as for envisioning what harm looks like, I agree that it becomes a bit more of a challenge with firearms. Let's say I am applying harm three times before I'm able to take out the foe. One of those I might narrate as a near-miss that unsettles them or saps some of their fighting spirit. Another might be a hit that wounds them. Another might be the killing blow, or the one that takes them out of the fight. In Ironsworn, human opponents are assumed to be generally troublesome or dangerous, and a decent hit or two should allow you to End the Fight. One strong hit against a troublesome foe is 9 progress, or 6 progress against a dangerous foe. That's without bringing any assets in play that might allow for extra harm.
ReplyDeleteWith musket weapons, I would also assume that combat will often close to melee range after the first shot, especially with a frantic, disorganized skirmish in the woods.
I would also suggest leveraging packs when appropriate. It becomes much easier to narrate the results of a hit (one or more enemy drops or flees or whatever), and will make your character more formidable against multiple enemies.
You can also try keeping the nameless foes at troublesome, even if they are assumed to be relatively combat capable. Or, give yourself 3 harm with firearms! That will tend to take out dangerous foes in 1 strong hit. It won't break anything.
Shawn Tomkin regarding Packs, just read that section (sadly, I didn’t even see that before running the test) and I think that is a great solution for what I had envisioned.
ReplyDeleteI’ll definitely use them in my next run and will try the firearm suggestions.
Great, Bjorsa Brimrsson! Let me know it works for you.
ReplyDeleteReading the rules for progress boxes, I believe I immediately thought of them as together as a single progress bar (with divisions), rather than HP: when something is loading or installing, the bar is often the same length, it just fills faster or slower.
ReplyDelete