Mechanic: Action Prioritization

In Episode 10 of my Beneath the Missing Sea session reports, I mentioned a mechanic that I improvised during the game to abstractly handle a complicated situation that had come up. After one of my players, mtb, playing Manqoba, mentioned that he'd used it successfully in his Dracula Dossier game the following week, I thought it'd be worthwhile to pull it out and present it in case it might be useful to anyone else.

Chongqing Zhongshuge Bookstore / X+Living

The situation the players found themselves in was a labyrinthian library, which (per the map provided in the text) was too small to be labyrinthian but too windy to be worth tracking closely. The text mentioned that there was the possibility of falling through the weakened floor between the shelves (my players noted this seemingly nonsense problem--the shelves would be much, much heavier than the player load) but of course these spots weren't called out on the map, the map below didn't align so I'd have no way to tell where they fell, and I wasn't using the map anyways. And then I rolled a random encounter for a big monster (who also wasn't falling through the floor? The entire tower used the same random encounter table--apparently to its detriment). 

Problems aside, once they'd decided they needed to leave the library, I had to come up with how to manage this, preferably in a way that maximized player choice. Here's what I did:

1. I outlined for the players the problems their characters were facing. 
• In this case, it was the big stompy monster, the weak flooring, and navigating the maze.
2. I asked them to order the problems by which they were going to focus their energies to neutralize.
• It was most important to them to avoid the holes because they didn't want to get separated, followed by finding their way out, followed by avoiding the monster.
3. I then called for a roll from each of them.
• This seemed like a wisdom roll to me so I had each of them roll that, per the standard rules of the game we were playing, Black Sword Hack. One player mentioned that their bookish character spent a lot of time in libraries, so I let him roll intelligence instead.
4. I adjudicated the results in order of their priorities.
• Each success handled a challenge in priority order, so the first meant that they dodged the weakened floorboard, the second found the exit, and the third avoided the monster.

In other words, ask them what they're trying to make happen the most, ask for them all to roll something, and determine what happens based on the number of successes.

Important to note that you can use anything as your oracle/randomizer. I happened to use an ability check because I was running Black Sword Hack, which is built around ability checks. Ability checks are by and large a bad, overused mechanic that too easily replaces interesting gameplay, so I've minimized their use when possible. A contextual d6 roll based on PC background and skills would probably be my typical choice. 

The way I figure it, throughout a potentially action-packed dungeon turn or another extended period, the PCs are making a lot of decisions that are too quick, minor, or tedious to cover, and so this represents what objectives they're focusing their energy on. It still likely means bad things might happen to them (how likely are they all three to make their roll?) but it adds a layer of choice to what might otherwise be mindless dice rolling.

So it worked out that we had three challenges and three players. How might it have worked out if there were more or fewer players? I'm not sure. Please comment if you have some ideas that don't add a bunch of extra rolls.

This is reminiscent of the primary dice mechanic of a game, ghost/echo by John Harper (the Blades in the Dark guy) I once read years ago although I cannot recall if I was thinking about it when I came up with it. I was almost certainly asking myself "How do I make an abstracted labyrinth into a problem that presents the players with a choice?" and fortunately was able to come up with something during the game.

I wasn't going to write this post until mtb mentioned that he'd already found a use for it, so I asked him to describe the situation he had to handle:

The PCs (in a Dracula Dossier game with a homebrew system) were running out of a church with a civilian (or at least not experienced) NPC contact. They got intercepted by a kill team as they left. They had three priorities, in order:

1.  Getting away clean enough to shake the immediate pursuit.
2. Not getting separated from their NPC contact (either the contact falling behind or getting shot or otherwise going a different way or whatever).
3. Not getting into a shoot-out in east London.
   
   I did ask if they had any other priorities since I thought of those as possible consequences of getting chased by a blackbag team, but they were happy with those as possible outcomes. I ruled that it would be an athletics check as a default (which covers all manner of physical exertions and similar), but they could be motivated to use something else if they wanted to as part of the narration of the chase. Two rolls were athletics (so just running and ducking down some alleys and such to stay ahead of the kill team) and one was Intimidate to hijack a car and get some distance on their pursuers who were also moving on foot. They got lucky and had three successes, so they managed to get away from their pursuers in a hub underground station that had multiple exit routes (more than one underground line, bus routes, and such), giving them the breathing space they needed to split up and safely regroup later at a rally point. This was a very nice and clean way to handle a chase that was not pivotal in terms of possible outcomes but was important to keeping the heat down and being able to get some answers from their contact.