The Gaming Den

So we were discussing how things like Bag Full of Guns in Feng Shui are often very in genre, but not the sort of thing that makes sense as a character shtick. After all, the trope namer for the Bag Full of Guns is a scene in Hard Boiled, where the characters bust out a bag full of guns to go into the final shootout. But they didn't have that bag during the shootout in the cafe or any other time in the movie.

So the idea is for there to be scene preparation shticks. That's where you do something at the beginning of a scene that modifies that scene. Ideally, these would be a trade-off that would be a good deal in some scenes and a bad deal in other scenes so that players didn't just spam the same declarations over and over again. The Bag Full of Guns already is that way, with the disadvantage that your damage starts out bullshit and the advantage that you ramp up in damage and never run out of bullets during the scene - ideal for a large battle with lots of mooks and rather terrible in a one-on-one showdown.

One could imagine other similar mechanical trade-offs, and there are of course a myriad action movie preparations from putting an iron plate on your chest to pouring grease on the ground. And to prevent this from being too spammy, it could require the expenditure of a fortune point to make it happen.

-Username17

I really like the idea, but I think we're missing some opportunities if we only talk about scene schticks being preparation based. It's also in genre for the tide of a fight to be turned by the setting unexpectedly changing in the middle.

For example, there's a bit in the transporter where the hero is losing until he finds grease in the room and pours it on the ground in the middle of the fight. You also gave the example of something getting lit on fire in the other thread.

So some kind of "discovered scene effect" schtick the MC can bake into a fight scene for players or bad guys to discover might be a worthwhile mechanic to consider as well. Would something like that also cost fortune?

My first concern would be whether the number active in any given scene should be limited. It's no big deal if one character brings a gym bag of guns and another has a sheet of iron under his coat, but it might get problematic with setups that alter the entire scene, like setting the place ablaze, or greasing the roadway prior to your getaway, if different PCs use different such setups to result in a battlefield with multiple conditions.

So some kind of "discovered scene effect" schtick the MC can bake into a fight scene for players or bad guys to discover might be a worthwhile mechanic to consider as well.

Feng Shui already has these and encourages GMs to include one or more of them in all set-piece battles, it just doesn't have a name for them.

Like a temple with crumbling support pillars that you can blow up to bring the roof down, or a giant wok full of hot oil that you can pour all over the floor or set fire to. Let's not reinvent the wheel.

As long as it doesn't turn into the DM telling the players what hoops to jump through.

ishy wrote:As long as it doesn't turn into the DM telling the players what hoops to jump through.

The idea behind making them "scene schticks" instead of merely "GM advice" would be to give the players more authorship abilities for such things.