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Gnomius ha compartido en su partida un documento magnífico con consejos sobre como dirigir un combate en City of Mist que yo creo que es oro para ayudar a cambiar el chip sobre como dirigir combates en cualquier PbtA, ya que las ideas subyacentes al texto son fácilmente extrapolables a los Movimientos de otros juegos PbtA.

Nota: para quien no lo conozca City of Mist es un juegazo que usa un sistema PbtA con toques de Fate.

Aunque lo tenéis en el link de arriba, os lo copio aquí por si os da pereza abrirlo en una ventana aparte.

HOW TO RUN COMBAT IN CITY OF MIST

The RPG industry derived from tactical wargaming with miniatures and the most popular games in the industry today all show that background in how they make combat the centerpiece of the game. City of Mist is from a later tradition of story oriented games. Combat is still a thing, but it's not the main thing or what players get rewarded for. But it is still a thing that is generally a lot of fun. It just is run quite differently than a tactical wargame.

 

In a tactical game, the player announces what their character is doing, does all the measurements and calculations, rolls the dice, and then narrates what happens based on the roll. Almost exactly the opposite happens in City of Mist. The player narrates what happens, then the MC determines what, if any, Move is involved, and the player rolls the dice to determine the consequences of what they did. The dice are not determining the success or failure of the player’s action, just the effect it had on the situation. This is a subtle but important distinction. Let me give you an example.

 

Player: “The Big Bad Wolf is sick of these idiot robbers. I leap into the middle of the gang and tear into them, tossing them this way and that. They are not getting the diamonds!”

MC: Okay, that sounds like Go Toe to Toe. “The robbers fight back. They really want to get those diamonds before getting out of here.”

Player: Okay, I roll a….

 

10+: Nice! I pick Inflict a Status and Achieve a Goal: Protect the Diamonds

MC: “The gang is scattered and tossed in every direction, cut and bleeding. They are driven away from the diamonds. As they get back to their feet, they look between the exit and the diamonds, as if deciding which is more important. A few of them managed to land some blows on you in return.” (Player applies a status towards the robbers’ defeat spectrum and has to Face Danger)

 

7-9+: Hmm. Well, I guess the important thing is stopping the diamonds from being stolen, so Achieve a Goal: Protect the Diamonds.

MC: “The gang is scattered and tossed in every direction, cut and bleeding. They are driven away from the diamonds, but as they get to their feet, they don’t look dissuaded at all. A few of them managed to land some blows on you in return.” (Player protects the diamonds, but doesn’t add to the defeat spectrum. Player has to Face Danger).

 

6-: Argh! That sucks! Looks like a miss.

MC: “The gang is scattered and tossed in every direction, cut and bleeding. You’ve driven them away from the diamonds, but are still in a brawl with a few of them. They’ve landed some blows on you in the process. Unfortunately, what you didn’t know was that one of the store clerks was in on the job. She was gonna play the victim and escape notice, but now that you’ve interfered, she’s grabbed the diamonds and split for the door. The gang’s trying to keep you busy while also keeping their escape route clear.” (Player rolls Face Danger, but does not inflict any status on the robbers, nor did they achieve their goal.)

 

As you can see, the MC added context to the player’s action without contradicting anything they said, regardless of what the player rolled. You can narrate cinematic effects without having to have the associated mechanical impacts. If the big bad wolf attacks some thugs, they are gonna get in a world of hurt. That’s not an issue. The question is whether the gang is getting closer to being defeated (a status) and whether they get to accomplish what they are there to do (achieving goals). Players are badass and good at what they do. They don’t just whiff. But there may be things they didn’t know or circumstances beyond their control or unintended consequences. That is what the dice are determining. In short form, all Moves boil down to 10+: Player gets to say what happens. 7-9: Player and MC both get to say what happens. 6-: The MC gets total control of what happens. The specific descriptions of the Moves are there to keep the players and MC on the same page about the scale of what they should be narrating.

 

MOVES

So, with that in mind, now we need to discuss the specific Moves used in conflicts, combat or otherwise. After that, we’ll discuss how to keep the combat flowing and how to handle moving the spotlight around between the players.

 

The two main Moves for conflict resolution are Go Toe to Toe and Hit With All You’ve Got. Any of the other Moves can be used in combat, but they function pretty much the same as they do in any other use. Go Toe to Toe and Hit With All You’ve Got need to be properly understood to see how to keep combat and other conflicts flowing properly.

 

Go Toe To Toe

This is the most commonly used “attack” action in the game. The trigger for GTtT is: When you use your abilities to overcome someone or something in a struggle for control, state what your goal is. Note the “state what your goal is”. This is absolutely critical. If the player does not have a goal they are trying to achieve besides “apply a status”, then they are not triggering this Move. They are trying to trigger Hit With All You’ve Got, which we will discuss in a moment.

 

Go Toe to Toe has three options on a success: Achieve your Goal, Get them Good, and Counter their attack. Get them Good is straightforward: the player applies an appropriate status equal to their Power to the opponent. Counter their Attack is pretty straightforward, too; The Danger does not get to apply a status to the PC in return. Inexperienced players overwhelmingly pick these two options. Inexperienced MCs let them get away with it without getting punished for it. This makes GTtT very unbalanced, as a 10+ roll seems like total victory. It's not.

 

Achieve Your Goal is by far the most powerful combat option available in the game (unless you count Stop Holding Back as a combat action, which it isn’t really). It allows the player to make a statement about the situation that is now true. The path to the door IS clear. The robbers DON’T have the diamonds. Thanos DOESN’T kill Thor. The mooks are attacking me, NOT the hostages.

 

Conversely, when the player doesn’t pick this option, they are giving the MC permission to set the situation as they feel like. Well, you did blast the robot to bits, but now it's a pile of machinery blocking the escape. Ooh, that guard is bleeding like crazy, but he pushed the alarm button. Yeah, you are right, the crazed gunman can’t shoot you, but he can shoot those bystanders. Pew! Pew!.

 

The MC should always be narrating what their Dangers are trying to do as part of their soft moves (discussed later) and clarifying what the PCs are trying to accomplish with their actions. Once you make it clear how important Achieve a Goal is, players will learn how to use it effectively. This will make your combats more dynamic and make it less likely they’ll just pile defeat statuses on your Dangers before it feels like anything has happened.

 

Hit With All You’ve Got

This is the Move for just going all out to hurt your opponent. The trigger is: When you have a clear shot and you use your abilities to hit someone or something with all you’ve got. Note the key element here “When you have a clear shot”. Unless your PC has some kind of special ability that their target just can’t resist, like a telepathic blast or whatever, they need to do something to create that opening. (As an aside, if the player is set up with a sniper rifle a half mile away and is basically safe, don’t bother with a Move. Just apply the status. If you can’t think of an interesting or plausible fail state besides “you miss”, it's not generally worth a roll. Hopefully you made getting into that position interesting. That was the failure point, not the shot).

 

Creating an opening is normally the result of another Move. That might be Sneak Around, Take the Risk, Investigate, or an Achieve a Goal result from Go Toe to Toe. It depends on what the player narrates as part of getting that opening. It's also possible the opening might be created by another player. The only thing to keep in mind is that Tags used in the Move that creates the opening are not able to be used in the Hit With All You’ve Got except in the case of a Goal from Go Toe to Toe in an earlier moment in the spotlight. (In that case, the player forgoing other GTtT options is sufficient to make this not really a linked action).

 

As with Go Toe to Toe, options not taken by the player making a Hit With All You’ve Got are permission for the MC to avail themselves of that option. This mostly means setting the level of collateral damage. It is up to the MC to make this a real option. If the player does not’ control the collateral of their all out power use, the MC can and should. This is, after all, a comic book style game. Wreckage around battles is a given. That doesn’t mean you should kill bystanders, collapse buildings, and blow up cars every time they use this Move. Save the real “punishments” for Misses. But definitely use this often enough to make the players think about whether it's important for them to pick the option. Especially use it if you’ve warned them of dangers with an earlier soft move and they’ve ignored it.

 

MANAGING THE CONFLICT

So, how do we put this all together? First, establish the scene of any conflict clearly. You want interesting, evocative, but kind of vague descriptions. Things that give players ideas of stuff they can maybe do with Change the Game, but not so much detail that they feel like you’ve mentioned everything important and they shouldn’t add their own touches.

 

Second, have a clear idea of what this conflict is about and what your Dangers want to do. It's pretty rare that someone just wants to hurt the player. Are they trying to chase them away? Teach them a lesson? Keep them from getting past? Are they trying to get away from these maniac players? Always keep the Dangers’ big picture in mind. Use it to establish their goals and actions during your soft Moves.

 

City of Mist is not a game system about fights to the death. The PC’s and Dangers are defeated long before they are dead. So, in addition to the Dangers’ goals, keep their Spectrums in mind. Decide what Defeat means for them. Do they surrender? Do they run away? Do they burst into a cloud of party favors? Generally, assume the wounds are not fatal unless there is clear intent on the players’ part (and make that a problem for them if they operate that way. We have police and stuff, it's not a wilderness dungeon! :P). Likewise, defeated PCs should be captured or dumped in an alley to learn their lesson (admittedly, PCs are bad learners..).

 

Using Soft Moves/Making Fights Dynamic

Once you have those factors clearly in mind, use them to inform your Soft Moves. The MC gets to make a Soft Move before and after every player moment in the spotlight. Use those Soft Moves to establish what your Dangers are doing. Don’t be coy. If they are going for the diamonds, say so. If they are menacing the hostages, say so. If you have some inscrutable villain and the PCs are supposed to Investigate to figure out what he’s doing, make that pretty obvious. You want the players to feel pressure and you want them to have a clear idea of what they might want to do.

 

Putting the Spotlight on A Player

So, you set the scene. You put some or all of your Dangers in motion with your Soft Move. Then you pick someone to put the spotlight on. Pick the character you think would be most interesting to have act. Or the one who hasn’t done anything in a while. Or the one chomping at the bit, if he hasn’t been hogging the spotlight all night. Or roll a die. Whatever criterion floats your boat. Once you have put the spotlight on someone, if anyone else wants to act in any way other than helping the spotlight character with a Help Point or Change the Game move, make them Take the Risk to cut in line. Use that player’s Move to resolve any of the declared actions by your Dangers that the player’s action deals with. Then use your Soft Move to state how the scene has changed, what’s new about your Dangers’ actions, and then Spotlight another player.

 

Remember, a player’s turn in the spotlight is not one Move. And it's definitely not one “action”. It's a cinematic action sequence. In Avengers: Endgame, the entirety of the time from Captain America hitting Thanos with Mjolnir until Captain America slumps on the ground after Thanos sends him flying is ONE spotlight comprising three Moves by Captain America. First, he used Change the Game to equip himself with Mjolnir. Then he rolled Go Toe to Toe to attack Thanos with hammer, shield, and lightning with the goal of keeping him from killing Thor. Then he made a Face Danger against Thanos’ counterattack (which he Burned a Tag for a Hit to make, costing him his Adamantium Shield in the process).

 

Breaking Down the Fight

If you have a lot of bad guys, you can break the fight down into sub scenes ala Thor: Ragnarok. Where the spotlight would shift from Thor v Hela to Hulk v Fenrir to Valkyrie v the Einherjar, and around and around. If you just have one big bad to fight, it’ll look kind of like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor vs Thanos in Avengers: Endgame. An initial “We attack!” breaking down into seemingly one on one fights, where the players not in the spotlight can act by Helping the character in the spotlight (like Thor charging up Iron Man with the lightning. Mechanically, that’s Thor spending a Help point to boost Iron Man’s moment in the spotlight.). That’s perfectly fine. As long as you are making exciting narrations, giving folks options to Help/Change the Game, and moving the spotlight around fairly, it’ll be great.

 

What do you not want is players saying the equivalent of “I hit him. I hit him again.”. They don’t get to repeat actions. That thing they did the first time was a whole sequence of actions. It's played out. If you want to accomplish more, they need to do something else. And that is, again, where Achieve a Goal comes in. Because if you are pushing your Dangers to get their objectives out of the fight, the players are gonna have a lot of options for different goals they want to achieve and that’s not repeating an action.

 

Hard Moves

When you do get a chance to inflict a status on a player or Make a Hard Move, don’t default to the most obvious or detrimental thing you can. The game is not about “winning” fights or “challenging” the players. It's about telling the story of the characters’ struggles. Pick the option that is most interesting and most likely to trigger a player having to make a choice, not necessarily the most “effective” thing. A counter attack from a Go Toe to Toe or Hit With All You’ve Got should generally be something resulting from that scuffle. An attack by the Danger or an environmental effect. Respect the Player’s Tags. If the player has a Tag that suggests a particular kind of attack won’t work on him, that Tag is still +1 on the Face Danger roll but you can narrate a different kind of consequence that makes that player’s Tag feel real even if he rolls a Miss. Likewise, you don’t have to drop a status on the players just because they gave you a Hard Move. If you are pushing your Dangers’ goals in your soft Moves, the players are gonna feel pressured and threatened without you having to drop Hosed Over 4 on them. Bring in allies. Let bad guys escape. Have bystanders get hurt. Blow up the PC’s car. Let the bad guys get off a distress call. There are lots of ways to ratchet up the tension besides “I hurt you”. Of course, you should totally hurt the players when that’s appropriate. But always think if there is something more interesting you can do. Too many statuses will put a player in a death spiral that isn’t all that fun.

 

SUMMARY

And that’s the key to running combat in City of Mist. Use your Soft Moves to set the goals of your Dangers. Make the players want to pick more options from their Moves than they possibly can get by making all of them seem cool and useful (not just the inflict and avoid status options). Move the spotlight around. Use the player’s Moves to resolve your Dangers’ actions. If the players don’t do anything that resolves a Danger’s declared intent, make that thing happen as a “fair warning” Hard Move. Don’t drag the fights out longer than makes sense or is fun. If your Dangers are losing, have them run away (or try). If they are kicking the PCs’ butts, have them accomplish their goal and laugh as they leave.

 

A combat in City of Mist is just one type of scene for furthering the characters’ story. It should still be an avenue for giving them choices to make and options to showcase their personality and mythos/logos struggles. There’s no xp for winning. No treasure to loot. Make the fight INTERESTING first and foremost. Challenging is only necessary to the extent you need that for the enjoyment of the players. They don’t have to “earn” any rewards because the rewards don’t come from the fighting.

Gracias mil por compartirlo, le tengo muchas ganas al CITY pero como con Blades in the Dark parece difícil (que no imposible) llevar al rol por web. Sé que ha habido partidas de ambos sistemas por aquí, pero creo que suelen exigir un ritmo bastante alto por el tema de negociación entre dire y jugadores para las tiradas y por ahora no he podido ponerme con ello.

Creo que en la nuestra de City of Mist se aceptan VIPs :)

Hablolo con Gnomius si te interesa para echarle un vistazo. Nosotros no llevamos un ritmo de vértigo y vamos resolviendo bastante bien (creo) las negociaciones entre dire (que tiene una paciencia de santo!) y jugadores :D