Post by World Champ Game Co. in Necronautilus comments

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I’ll wing some answers!

1. Correct, you can have words of power equal to spaces in the sheet.

2. words have a minimum of 4 letters at any point.

3. It is 1d6, it’s meant as a last ditch effort sort of, you’re risking the last use of a module so the odds are more in your favor than normal

4. You’re right, there’s some dissonance between conduction as a positive connotation and damage as negative since were using a clock here. It is meant to start at 8 and deplete.

5. There shouldn’t ever be a point where a player doesn’t have any words in their collection, the gm should be passing out new words to players as or more often than they’re being used for any overcoming of obstacles or victories in battle, managing that is just sort of a new thing to be aware of during play for a gamemaster

sedgeHammer4 years ago

Perfect! That helps a lot.

On that last point I'm finding that my players are consuming words really quickly in a single challenge clock. I guess you're saying that players should be receiving words during a challenge, not just upon completing it.

World Champ Game Co.4 years ago

maybe! players burning through words is not something I encountered at all during testing so thats a surprising issue to come up, but yeah it'll just take a bandaid of your own making to solve which might either be starting with more words before the scenario or finding excuses to give them words during exploration/between challenges?

sedgeHammer4 years ago (1 edit)

Thanks for taking the time to help us out. This makes me think I'm missing something really important. I swear I read the book!

Here's a brief example in the context of my players encountering a hostile Iron Porcupine (3):

1st word consumed: Iron Porcupine (3) attacks to start the encounter. A player uses a word of power to avoid the damage, and generates a memory. **this actually raises a couple of other questions I've had - do hostile creatures attack the entire party, or a smaller number of targets, or is it GM's choice? Can one player act to protect the entire party or does each DA have to act individually to avoid a negative outcome?

2nd word consumed: A player then uses a word of power to engage the Iron Porcupine (3) and succeeds, filling one portion of the encounter clock and consuming another word from their collection and generating a memory.

3rd word consumed: Understandably angry, the Iron Porcupine (1/3) does a dangerous thing, and a player uses a word of power to guard against it consuming another word from their collection to generate a memory.

etc until the challenge is overcome. By my count that gets us to a possible 6 words consumed in one challenge, where the reward is one new word by default. Is it that my players are overusing their words?

World Champ Game Co.4 years ago

haha no worries, you are running it as written but I think I have a few broad notes. aside, Creatures attack whomever, since gamemaster doesn't roll dice it is up to the players to react instead, so a player protecting everyone or each person rolling to avoid would both be acceptable.

This isn't explicit in the book but I would make sure players are starting with at least 3 Words in their collection when they land on the planet, not counting words that are used for any planet generation on your way to start the mission. Those generators at start of play I usually consider words (lowercase w) instead of Words (the game currency).

From your examples, it sounds like they're succeeding a lot more often than I expected, so they're having tons of memories early on! Since a Memory's starting value is higher than a Word of Power, that's meant to entice players more to use those so they don't just use Words, especially with successful Memory rolls granting you more Life. Of course, thats a choice, and it makes sense for a player to be more interested in their Words especially early in play.

For a band-aid answer, I'd just start them off with more than 3 at the beginning of play. The other potential fix that's not in the book but is how I've come to like when running the game now is instead of making them spend a Word from their Collection to inspire Memory, instead make their Memory derivative of the action they just took. Like when you fire a laser cannon and hit your target, it prompts the memory of firing artillery in the Thorned Wars or something.

You could combine this with GM giving immediate-use words on successful rolls, so in that example, I as GM would give the player the word Artillery and they could choose to immediately use that for their Memory or stash it and use something else from their Collection, which feels like a nice average of how the book works and how to patch it!

sedgeHammer4 years ago

This is fantastic. Thanks again!

itch.io

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