Acting Under Fire 7-9

Acting Under Fire 7-9's are the bane of my AW playing experience. I hate them. I am forever failing to come up with good stuff for them, ugly choices, etc.

Am I just uncreative?

Most situations aren't binary, of course, but it feels like they are. A guy's running rooftops from some crazy dude with a pickax and he's acting Under Fire. 7-9'd it.

So he makes it. It's a hit. But that interesting situation, that ugly choice. It's always on the tip of my tongue and I hate taking a bathroom break right there, you know?

Any thoughts?

I wish I'd seen even more Acting under Fire with resulting 7-9 rolls, both in the campaigns I've played in and in the ones I've run/am running.  I love them.

A worse outcome or a hard bargain is pretty conditional and I'm not sure I can help with that.  A vanilla worse outcome that can be a default back-up option when your brain freezes up is success but some narration about some physical duress that makes sense and a 0-harm (ap) roll for a 16.66% chance that they might actually end up taking 1-harm.  This also gives you time to think of some other possibilities during the course of the harm roll.  e.g. they lose track of someone or something they're attending to or they miss noticing something important.

All the ugly choice grist should be occurring long before they roll that Acting Under Fire 7-9 .  What do your PCs care about, what constitutes a difficult choice for them?  You learn that by the choices they've made previously, from asking questions generally and from asking pointed questions when they open their brains to the psychic maelstrom.

Even if it's early in game, the PCs seem a little one-dimensional so far and you haven't quite got a handle yet on what makes them tick, they likely at least care about their gear, yeah?  Success at a cost of some of their stuff is a reasonable back-up option for me.

"So you're scrambling over the rooftops trying to get away from Kartak and your 9mm ammo box falls out of your pack.  You're going to have to leave it for now if you want to escape clean."

In my experience, if you don't take Make them buy by taking away some of their stuff now and then, their Barter will tend to pile up.

A vanilla worse outcome that can be a default back-up option when your brain freezes up is success but some narration about some physical duress that makes sense and a 0-harm (ap) roll for a 16.66% chance that they might actually end up taking 1-harm.

This is good. I usually don't want to give harm because they hit, but 0-harm is cool. Hmmm.

"So you're scrambling over the rooftops trying to get away from Kartak and your 9mm ammo box falls out of your pack.  You're going to have to leave it for now if you want to escape clean."

In my experience, if you don't take Make them buy by taking away some of their stuff now and then, their Barter will tend to pile up.

Yeah, that's what I usually do. The thing is, I'm talking about a group that's just starting off. We've been playing since the playtest and they've seen those before.

The first few times, sure. But the whole reason I posted was because I got a "Oh, I 7-9'd it. What equipment do I drop?" last week.

I think my problem is with misdirection, really. Might be burn out. I'm moving over to playing next week anyway.

Thanks, nemomeme.

Well this is very situational, and I struggle with it too.  Unfortunately you just have to be creative in the moment, here are some general ideas I use though:


You're running along the rooftops away from the crazy dude with the pickaxe.  You're about to get away clean when you see little Twice is curled up napping in a nook of the last rooftop.  You're out of here, but that will leave him alone right in the path of the crazy guy.


You're running along the rooftops, but the going is super tough.  You slipped a couple times, and the crazy guy is practically on top of you.  Up ahead though is a gas tanker parked between buildings.  It's all old and beat up; you can smell the leaking gas from here.  If you lit that thing on fire as you passed, it would block the path behind you.  It would set the damn town on fire though.

(In a different town you could have a levee with a release, or a bridge to collapse, etc.)


You're running along the rooftops, but so is your assailant.  You don't know how, but he's gaining on you.  Looking at the roofs ahead, you don't think you can outrun him to [the place you're running], but you could probably make a break for [that dangerous place you'd rather avoid] and lose him there.

(Dangerous place can also be dangerous people.  Out of one frying pan and into another.  Generally thats the sort of thing I do.  If you miss the roll you escape from one danger, but arrive at another.)



You're running along the roofs and pulling away from your attacker.  You catch a glimpse of something through a hole in a roof though.  You aren't sure what it was, but you think there's treasure to be had.  No way you'll be able to find your way back here later, do you want to try for it or leave it be?

(The treasure can be explicitly described or not.  Perhaps it's some rivals's horde, or an untouched stash of stuff from the golden age, or perhaps it's a beautiful man/woman, or music faintly heart, or a scent of perfume, or a vibration in the maelstrom.  Whatever would tempt this particular character.  The "try for it" could be a lot of things too.)




Those are some of the things I do in that situation.  Basically though, just look at the list of MC Moves, all of them work for this.  Put them in a spot.  Separate them.  Capture them.  Tell them consequences and ask.  Etc.  The only trick is that you can't make these moves as hard or direct as you might otherwise.  "Capture them" can be having them rescued by someone who they'll owe for the help.  Make sense?

Yeah, dropping gear is a pretty obvious one.  More of a back-up than a default for sure.

John Mc is on to some good stuff here in that you definitely don't want to only think about the situation as you've described it so far.  Feel free to bring new details into the situation, things or NPCs that no one realized were there until just then.

In any case it's not easy for most of us and it takes practice.  Playing Danger Patrol is one good form of practice.  That whole game is constantly creating new reasons and results for situations under fire!  :)

Matthew, that's awesome. Now that you say it, it's so obvious. Danger Patrol is like an AW hack with only one move: do something under fire.

That really cracked me up. I was going to post about how much I love 7-9 results on that move, and now I know why. :)

I don't think it says in the book that a hit on a Acting Under Fire roll means you get away scott free and Inflicting Harm (as established) is a totally valid MC move, just like Telling Possible Consequences And Asking is.

In the whole "being chased over the rooftop" scenario as a Hard Choice I would say:

"You're coming up on the end of these rooftops. In front of you is a big gap, but on the building at the other end there is a fire escape you could throw yourself into. You would take some damage, but no way Big Bubba is going to be able to follow you. What do you do?"

The character takes some harm but gets away (succeeds in his roll).

The easiest choice for this is a worse outcome. Success with consequences, as others have pointed out.

Trying to get away from that gang? Okay, you get away, but you took a bullet in the leg. Make the harm move.

Diving into a river to get away from the explosion? Okay, but now you've been swept into the tide and there are some nasty rocks downstream.

You're trying to shut one of those psycho weirdo Mad Kings out of your mind? Okay, you succeed but you wake up in a strange place. (On a miss they would have been covered in blood).

Running away from a guy with a pickaxe? You made it and now you have a brand new pickaxe. Sweet! It's buried in your shoulder though.

Hey Chris,
The others have given excellent advice, but as I too often get brain freeze in these 7-9 grey areas of success with consequence, I have turned the tables on the players. Like with any situation in the game when as MC I'm stuck, I've asked their characters provocative questions.

What I mean is, in your example, say we'd already done the lost gear thang, or potential harm thang, or a vunerable threat thang and I was fresh out of ideas, I might say:

'You desperately scrabble along the slippery roof, Crazy Kartak hot on your heels, his pickaxe taking the odd chunk of sheet iron off for good measure. Escape is in your grasp, you can feel it, but as your ragged breath fogs your thinking, you realise it's gonna come at a cost. What or who is it you fear most to lose? What are you willing to sacrifice?'

'So from your vantage point on the street, you see Able careening backwards across the rooftops, arms flailing in a desperate attempt to escape that crazy mo-fo with the pickaxe. Just you breathe a sigh of relief in the thought that he's made it, something awful happens in cinematic slow-motion. What is it?'

This has allowed the group to explore their characters through near-hit results and 'share' somewhat in the narration of success and failure. (Whilst still sticking to the principles). Works for us.