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Short questions - Chaos Level, Crew Types, Equipment and MEM slots

A topic by ZiggyZapf created May 13, 2021 Views: 381 Replies: 12
Viewing posts 1 to 7
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Only recently bought the game, but I'm already putting out feelers, looking for an interested group.

1. How do you determine the chaos level? Is it based on the region's Data Structure (Stable/Chaotic) bar, or is it something else?

2. Are rules for Conspiracy, Moderators, Revisionists still in the works?

3. I'm trying to wrap my head around how MEM is swapped out. Is standard gear like having an ethereal catalogue or inventory and taking the time and MEM slots to download an item make it substantial? If that's the case, I'm guessing the time or opportunities are too prohibitive to reliably swap out during a Score, hence the restriction.

Developer

Welcome! I'll answer your questions in order, feel free to follow-up with any others!

1. Chaos level is similar to Wanted level from blades in the dark. It's tracked on the Crew sheet, and it usually increased by having the Heat on the crew reach maximum. The idea is that your crew's Heat-increasing actions in World are actively destabilizing the status quo, which has disruptive effects on World's infrastructure and also makes the Administration less lenient with the crew (as they realize that you're the source of the instability!).

It's actually very good feedback to hear that there's a (obvious, in hindsight!) possibility for confusion with the regional rating for Data Structure between stable and chaotic. That's not meant to affect the Chaos level, and I could probably do better by renaming that to clear any confusion. Great question!

2. Yes!  Here's a preview of the Revisionists:


3. The MEM system is designed to give flexibility to the characters. The core system of the game (blades in the dark) was designed to run heists, and heist fiction (especially cinema) is often about the characters showing us their cool equipment right at the moment they need it. In-detail planning often happens off-screen. Another example of this principle at work is the system for Flashbacks, which let you back-fill in clever planning on the part of your characters in the middle of the action.

The way MEM is represented in Hello, World is that until a PC locks in their MEM slot by announcing what they're carrying with the slot, it's quantum: a piece of gear that their character has planned for and knows (or suspects) they'll need later in the score, but since we're discovering how the heist goes as it happens, we the players don't need to plan that stuff out ahead of time. In Hello, World, depending on how you envision the setting, it might actually be quantum data that turns into the item, or information that is downloaded just as needed, but that's up to you!

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Thanks for the answers! I haven't played Blades in the Dark yet, so I'm not used to the non-linear perspective to running heists. (It'd probably help one of my usual groups move along: We're prone to excessive planning phases.) But yeah, it makes sense from that perspective. I'll probably have to get used to it, since Revisionist is looking especially mindbending in the fun way.


Character I've had in mind: A Filcher Artist who sneaks into places he's not supposed to be to unleash 3D fractal graffiti, just to add a little beauty, chaos, and whimsy to places in need of it. Now I'm thinking of an art-focused Revisionist crew who's reckless with the past out of their philosophy of impermanence.

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One gameplay issue I'm thinking about: What does a player do while their character is in The Stack? I've got a few ideas of my own, like giving players a simple Process crew member to control (Some Function dots and standard equipment), letting them manifest as a Shade, or shuffling GM responsibilities so they get a bigger say in plot developments.

I'm also pretty fascinated with some ideas on handling the Process. I feel like treating instances as ephemeral beings that fade in and out in response to User actions, allocating and freeing up memory as needed. Admins and Users can mark exceptions as unique ones who stick around.

Developer (2 edits)

Those are strong ideas! One thing players also do is just make a new User character, and introduce them as a switch-hitter who fills in temporarily with the crew while their PC is on the stack (this is common in Blades as well, which uses Incarceration as a potential outcome that can also take a PC out of the game for lengthy periods). Depending on how "hard" the GM and players like to play the system, it's possible to chew through PCs! This can be used to tell a generational story about the founding members of the crew and how the torch gets passed as they fade out of the story and get replaced by fresher blood. It's not necessary to play the game that way, you can certainly end a campaign with the same character you started with if you play them a bit more cautiously, but it's one way to do it.

One of my 'stretch goals' is to eventually have playbooks for Shades and Process, which would introduce official options for the other ideas you've mentioned. In the meantime, check out the Daemon if you want to see one example of this!

There's a lot of setting writing I need to do to flesh out the idea of Process in the setting, but it's definitely meant to be something you can adapt to your own ideas... and you definitely have some great ones! I'm glad the setting inspires!

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Sweet. One of the things that encourages me about HW is that I had a similar seed idea for a setting, and then you come along and show me an example much further in development, with a TTRPG framework to build on. So, yeah, I'll be quietly making my own homebrew HW setting and dreaming up ways to tweak the system as I get a better understanding of it.

Oh, yeah, one little thing that activated my pedantry: It's called The Stack, but it functions as a queue. I'm going to be calling my server's equivalent the "Rez Queue" for the pun's sake. ;) Anyway, off to reading the Daemon playbook.

"Rez Queue" is how I will be referring to it as well now. I suppose I never really noticed as I am far less pedantic, apparently.

Though... Maybe it could be a heap? Do you think that admin deliberately keeps the worst offenders there the longest?

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Looking at Authority, now, and trying to get an idea of how it works. Let me know if I missed something.

Let's say my crew is ready to move up to Tier 1. They've made a name for themselves in the local Bohemian society, and decide they want a mobile art studio and base of operations. They can probably Compile one from scratch, or Format an old airship after using Restore to get it functioning, again. We spend 12 Rep, minus any discount we might have for leverage.

Compile:

  • Scale 2 (Building-sized: They want it to be fairly spacious.)
  • Duration: 6 (A Demi-iteration: They want it to last.)
  • Quality 3 (Might as well make it nice.)

The total is 11, plus any points the GM might assign to make it mobile, if slow. The crew pays that in stress, and we go over the factions to see who's attitude would be affected by our new airship.

Alternatively, we might work on obtaining and restoring an existing airship, and then use Format to improve it.

  • Scale 2 (Building-sized)
  • Quality 3 (Starting from 0, up to 3)
  • Force 2-4? (It's a very large vehicle, but no combat functions, aside from possibly ramming.)

In this case, the total would be 7-9, making it less stressful, but it would require more initial work and someone with a strong Restore function. Follow up with the same questions as we increase our Tier.

I'm also thinking about the issue of Scores, and what would constitute them for a not-so-criminal group of bohemians. Some ideas that seem the most appropriate:

  • Adding graffiti in a secure area. (Stealth)
  • Obtaining Leverage by recruiting or infiltrating (Social)
  • Protecting our people on the inside by sowing confusion or allaying suspicion. (Deception)
  • Defense? I imagine some "critics" would not take kindly to our crew adding fractal graffiti to their territory. (Assault or Transport)
Developer(+1)

Hey Ziggy!


I think your example with the floating airship is spot-on, highlighting how your crew might use Compile or Format in different ways to achieve their goals. I would only add as clarification that the Rep cost of the Authority function puts the crew down to 0 (or close to 0) rep, meaning they have to earn that Rep back before they can Tier Up. You probably already figured that but I wasn't sure if the writing in my Authority chapter is clear enough on that front. It's similar to the notion of the "Weak" vs. "Strong" Hold that a crew in BitD has, where aside from narrative function it makes the crew go up the Rep track twice for each Tier Up. In HW, if a crew just really likes doing Authority functions it might delay them from Tiering up (there are a lot more ways to spend Rep in HW in general).


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I actually hadn't realized that, but I notice the updated handouts make it clear, so thanks. I guess having the crew make their flying coffehouse/studio would be followed by a series of social scores to make it a popular hangout and regain the spent reputation and then raise their Tier.

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Writing up some notes for a game of HW I'm hoping to run or play, since I've got some interested players. I'm filling in gaps and homebrewing from the Forged in the Dark SRD. Currently breaking my brain on the Revisionist preview you posted earlier, since I'm excited about that crew type:

1. Inversion Lab: "Retroactively plant items in Archives."

My current interpretation: I have to be able to fit a "host object" into the lab. For example, I could put a briefcase full of documents in the lab and plant a weapon in the Archives so that I could Restore the briefcase to get the weapon out. How I'm thinking it'd play out at the table:

Player: "I'm carrying a briefcase full of documents in through the front door."
GM: "Security checks the briefcase for weapons."
Player: "That's fine. There aren't any weapons currently in there."
Player, later in the score: "I do a flashback where I brought along a ping rifle in the briefcase."
GM: "You're going to need to explain why the guards didn't find it."
Player: "I prepared to be searched by using the Inversion Lab. I put the briefcase in the wayback machine and added the rifle to its history in the Archives. I want to roll Restore to 'revert' the briefcase to the state where it contained the rifle I planted. The rifle wasn't there when the guards did the search."
GM: "That makes sense. You don't need to take any stress for the flashback, since it was a reasonable preparation. Roll Restore to see if you can retrieve the rifle."

Without the inversion lab, I'd probably have to pay more stress or have a better explanation of how I got the rifle in there undetected.

2. Memory Tomb: "+1d to Find and Restore on Site"

I'm guessing it's referring to such checks made inside the "Tomb."

3. Inversion Mastery: "Change the past with a Score"

This one just scares me, but at least it'll take a while before my crew would be able to get it. I'm just going to guess there's a much longer explanation than would fit inside the circle. Of course, it could just be fun having the crew fight cyber-Cthulhu as they do literal time travel by going into the Archives.

4. Message In A Bottle: "When you indulge [Futuresight] by describing an unforeseen complication that will soon affect the whole crew, you may clear 1 additional stress. Also a Mysterious Stranger will assist any one function roll you make - from now until you next indulge this recall."

Mechanically, this is easy for me to understand. It's not so easy for me to get what's going on from a narrative perspective. Is the Mysterious Stranger like your future self hitting World's "rewind almost everything" button and helping you out in the new timeline that results? That's the closest I can imagine without involving "actual" time travel.

5. Stable Loops: While paying the costs of any flashback, you may mark Memory as if it were stress. How do you close the loop?

Mechanically simple, but still confuses me on a narrative level. I'm kind of guessing that from a narrative perspective the Memory expense represents manually changing the past to accomplish the same meta-effect as a flashback.

In some of these cases, I'm just kind of tempted to say, "It's Archive Magic, let's not try to explain it and just get on with the game."

Developer(+1)

These are some great ideas for the Revisionists.  That example for the Inversion Lab is really good, and exactly the type of thing I would love to see players at the table use it for.

The Memory Tomb has a similar format to claims in the Black Hats and Dynasty which also provide a bonus to various functions while the players are taking action on their "home turf." It's up to you and the table to negotiate the exact prerequisites to get those bonuses, as they are deliberately written loose. Really the primary goal was to make the player's headquarters feel gradually more personalized and under their control (this is especially true for the Dynasty, which can rack up a lot of bonuses for fighting on home turf).  This is important since the Entanglement table in downtime includes a few results that prompt a "home invasion" scenario where the crew's HQ or Claims can come under attack. In the specific example of the Memory Tomb, it might not exactly provided combat bonuses, but it's definitely good for research and information gathering... maybe that's something the crew might desperately need to do while under siege from an enemy? That could be a cool scene.

Message in a Bottle is definitely one of the most challenging special abilities for the reader in HW, but I think you've got the idea. It's deliberately nebulous, but the implication is that one of your crew (perhaps even a crew member not yet created?) is the Mysterious Stranger, from your future (or maybe a bad future, and they're trying to save you from it?). The Revisionists are full of this sort of thing, where the mechanical bonus is here for you to drape your own story over.

Stable Loops is exactly as you say in my imagination. It's a Flashback, except the cost is different because it's a Flashback you have not done yet. The memory cost may be the computational strain on the user of memorizing the scenario, the precise timestamps, and the exact circumstances which need to be altered in the future so they can seamlessly "save themselves" in the past. At the table, you might frame the scene as a kind of Flash-Forward, where the player narrates how an older version of their character goes back in time to help themselves in this present moment... but basically framed in the same way at the table as an ordinary flashback.

In general I knew for my recent update that the themes of HW can be a little esoteric, and so one of the goals was to throw in some actionable prompts for adventure lines and story hooks to help get everyone's imagination stirring. And yeah, the Revisionists are pretty crazy conceptually so they need the help most of all out of my existing crew types.

To that end, the Player Handouts section has score prompts now! These are towards the back of the PDF in the GM handouts area. Here's some examples from the Revisionists page (Black Hats and Dynasty also have their own tables, the Council will get one with my next update).



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So, I've got some questions on quality and equipment.

Acquisition: Right now, I'm thinking standard quality equipment is readily available, while better equipment is scarce. If I want an open source monocycle, I can just flashback to using the equivalent of a 3D printer to make a standard cycle or Restoring one from the Archives. But if I want a higher quality cycle and for the crew to keep it for more than a score, I imagine I'd probably need to do something like the following:

  • buy one for Coin or a Fortune Roll,
  • Compile one or more with Authority (Quality + Scale for cost)
  • Steal one from a cycle gang.

Using Quality Equipment and bonuses: I've stolen the High Roller's prized cycle, a Quality 4 retro style motorcycle. They're pursuing me in their Quality 3 bikes. If I understand correctly my Goto rolls to outrun them gain +1 effect. [Edited after reading a bit of advice]

Gear outside of Scores: I'm guessing that players can store items in their homes or HQ, which run on a different, larger set of memory, where MEM on the character sheet is just how much stuff a character can keep on their person.

EDIT: I think my "crunchy" background is asserting itself, again, along with some min/max tendencies. Probably best to assess quality, potency, and so forth on an individual basis, rather than try to form a concrete matrix.