Recover, Regroup, Prepare

Hi, Vincent!

Of all the new moves, this one seems rather significantly unlike most (or all?) the AW moves. It's not 100% clear to me what the "fictional trigger" here might be, as sometimes I can imagine it being used in the heat of the moment (you've been stunned, lying in the corner, and the necromancer is about to complete his ritual - you roll to see if you can snap out of it and get up to try to stop him somehow) and sometimes I can see it working as a real "time passes" kind of move, a la "and so, a month later..."

It seems like it might not be that well suited for situations at either extreme of that spectrum, so you probably have something more specific in mind.

This also makes it - as far as I can see - much more challenging to consider the effects of a miss. Presumably the MC makes a move, as in AW, but it's not necessarily that clear-cut. If a long time is passing, something bad might happen to the character... but if a month goes by, surely it would ALSO make sense to choose some of the "positive" options, since a calamity is unlikely to take up that entire stretch of time.

I suppose that's a long-winded way of saying that some better explanation of this move, and what purpose you intend it to serve in play, might be useful.

Hi Paul.

Freebooting Venus isn't a "fictional triggers" game. Instead, it's all, "here are your moves, make them went you want to."

It also doesn't respect fictional time, nor expect it to pass at any kind of sensible or consistent rate. It's perfectly happy to have one character running around preparing traps and gathering information and making a plan, during the "same time" it takes for another character to struggle to their feet.

Does that help? It probably makes it worse! Ask again?

-Vincent

Sure, it explains your thinking behind the design, sure (and, to be fair, that IS exactly how it comes across in the text, at least to me).

However, as advice to someone trying to play, it doesn't seem useful a'tall. :)

Perhaps at the very least, some guidance on the miss clause would be helpful.

Aha, it's true! I did forget to tell the GM what to do on any miss. It's exactly what you'd expect, something like this:

Have an enemy attack, have an enemy escape, give an enemy a bonus or advantage, give them or a friend a penalty or disadvantage, have the current trouble develop in some unfortunate direction, or have something else go wrong.

It might turn out that, like in Apocalypse World, I need to present these as a list of GM moves. Do you think that would answer your question?

-Vincent

I think it makes good cinematic sense for a game like this that you can regroup on a big scale, taking a few days, or on a small scale, taking a breather behind a rock while the enemy is busy attacking one of your friends. And I can see most of the options making sense in both circumstances:

The ongoing effects of any bad experience come to an end.

• You take a few days to lick your wounds.
• You take a minute to gather your resolve after being forced to flee, or to stop my bleeding.

You regroup with your allies. Compare experiences, if you like.

• We all hole up in a safe place and share experiences
• After being forced apart by our enemies, I find my way back to the others and find out what their situation is.

You study the situation and make a plan. Ask the GM what you’re able to
determine, and declare your plan.

• After doing some digging around, you sit down to determine a course of action.
• You survey the battlefield and try to scout out a good way forward

See to your equipment, supplies, defenses, stores. Ask the GM their
current state.

• You go through you stores and make an inventory
• You hide in the corner and take a look at your quiver.

Use a spell tablet to wrest a spell from its native world. See “Spellcasting”
for details.
See, this one I'm a bit more hesitant about. On one hand, it's very thematically appropriate to have someone sitting there, frantically trying to read the tablet with arrows flying around their ears. On the other hand, that might be the kind of thing that requires a bit more time.

...and you do it quickly

• It only takes a few hours, and your foe will not have time to make a move while you're doing ti
• You are only out of the combat for a round or two.

Vincent,

I had assumed that anything not specified would be more-or-less AW-like, including MC moves. So, that's fine.

However, I got the same sense about this move that eliashelfer (above) did: the notes on recovering from certain details and, particularly, wresting a spell from its native world, imply a certain timescale. Can I, for instance, make the argument that since I'm "Recovering and Preparing" for a whole month, I should be able to wrest all four of my spells from their native world, or is that going against the letter of the rules? Can you, likewise, say that since this is a fast action, I cannot wrest a spell, as that takes much longer? (The rules are silent on how long anything takes, so it's up to us to establish.)

In AW, some moves which did not have fictional triggers based in clear positions of conflict often had a miss clause specified. (For example, Visions of Death, Dangerous & Sexy, Healing Touch, Fucking Thieves, and others.) It feels a bit to me like that could be handy here.

I'm thinking of a situation like:

MC: "Let's skip ahead to a month later. Any objections?"
"Ok, I spend the next month licking my wounds and waiting for the poison to wear off, while studying my spell tablet. I think I'm *Recovering and Preparing*, yeah?"
"Sure, roll for it."
"Oh, I missed the roll..."

Now, whatever the MC says, is it kosher to assume that the character does not recover from his poisoning and prepare his spell? Because, you know, a whole month has gone by. Or should the MC judge reasonably - hey, a month has gone by, so you all have your spells back in mind, if you wish, and effects of poisons and such have of course worn off (in which case, why roll the move?). Or do we reverse-justify the decision ("Well, you probably had time to study the spell, sure, but let's say you used it again during that month and *right now*, when we pick up play again, you don't have it in your mind after all...")?

I'd like a little more guidance on this kind of stuff. The other moves seem pretty clear. This one is (perhaps intentionally?) ambiguous on almost all fronts.

"A month," just like Elias' "a few days" or "a minute," are table talk. They have no mechanical significance; the rules just don't care, not a bit, which one you say!

-Vincent

Vincent,

I know that, but it doesn't help me resolve any of those questions (unless the answer is, "Ignore the fiction and just follow what the rules say," of course)!

I mean, I can come up with my own answers, but, from reading your rules, I have absolutely no idea what yours are, and how this piece of the design is supposed to operate.

You've got it! Follow what the rules say. Recovering etc. for "a month" is mechanically exactly the same as recovering etc. for any other fictional period of time. Roll and choose!

-Vincent

Aha! So play the rules first, then make sense of it in the fiction! If you fail the roll to regroup/recover during a month of downtime, I guess that poison really knocked you for a loop: you're tossing in bed, sweating up a storm, cursed with terrible headaches! At the end of the month, you're utterly fed up and tired and .... what do you do?

is that how it works?