Thrilling Combinations (Night's Black Agents)

 

Police Story (1984, Eng dub)

In Night's Black Agents main rules there's sections on Thrilling Chases, which later gets expanded to Thrilling (Any General Pool) in the Resource Book. There's enough high-octane action to keep anyone occupied. 

What happens if you try to combine two Thrilling possibilities?

Hong Kong action films are good for this. Last week I talked about Twilight of the Warriors, which has plenty of examples of Thrilling Combat combined in the same scene as a Thrilling Chase. Jackie Chan vehicle Police Story does much the same in this sequence, with a Chase mixed with Athletics and Hand-to-Hand plus a final Firearms confrontation - or Intimidate, depending on how you want to play that final showdown. 

If you, as Director, want a scene to flow like this, how would you go about it?

For starters, don't forget the existing Thriller Combat options like Feint, Evasive Maneuvers, Multiple Targets, Smashes and Throws. All these have their place in a Thrilling Sequence. If you want the players to make use of them, you may need to print out reminder cards with these rules printed out. It's easy to forget things like this in the heat of the moment. Players who're itching for Thrills may not need reminding but not every player lives for the moment when their agent get attacked by a machete gang.

The Raid: Redemption

Next, establish a Win condition for the scene.

This needs to be understood by all participants in the scene. With Police Story, the win condition for Jackie Chan is to capture the bad guys; the bad guys' win condition is to escape. In Raid, Rama's win condition is to escape; the machete gang's win condition is to kill Rama. It's easy to imagine a win condition of capture the McGuffin (a camera or hard drive with vital evidence, say), or survive until dawn (useful in a vampire game). Whatever that win condition is, everyone in the scene needs to know what it is. If it were me, I would state the win sequence right at the start.

There's a strong case for saying that the Players should have input on the win condition. The Players are responsible for Thrills; they should have a say in how those Thrills come about. Not all Players are confident enough to get involved at this stage. If yours aren't (and you know your players better than I do) you could state the win condition without their involvement. Still, you should ask. They're not going to get confident by constantly dodging their responsibilities. 

Next, establish which two Pools are going to be used.

I would stick with two. There's an argument to be made that more than two pools could be used, but then things get more complicated than they need to be and the folks at the table start losing track of who's doing what.

Take the Police Story scene. There are at least two pools in play: Athletics, and Martial Arts. Technically there's a very short Firearms sequence at the end, which could easily be replaced by Intimidation. Or the Raid sequence, where again the two abilities in play are Athletics and Martial Arts. 

There are some General Abilities which work well together. I can see a case for saying that Thrilling Infiltration and Thrilling Digital Intrusion go together like peanut butter and chocolate.  Or Thrilling Surveillance and Digital Intrusion. 

The Conversation Trailer

There are some scenes which aren't as immediately obvious, but which still work together. 

Let's say that a Network Contact with vital information turns up badly injured and close to death, and a hit team is on the Contact's trail. The agents bundle the Contact into a car (or steal an ambulance, or however you want this to work) and take off at high speed for the nearest hospital. In that case, the two likely pools are Driving and Medic, with the win condition being get the Contact to the hospital alive, or at least get the Contact to cough up the vital information before they die.

You could pull much the same thing with Driving and Shrink. In this example the Contact isn't physically injured but their mind is fried, and the agents aren't getting the Contact to a hospital but instead to the nearest location with Blocks to defend against vampires; a Catholic Church, say. The agents use Drive to keep one step ahead of the hit team and Shrink to get the Contact to cough up vital information before the end of the scene. 

Shooting and Infiltration: the Infiltration team are sneaking into an armed facility, and the team sniper is taking out opposition so the Infiltration team doesn't get spotted. 

Piloting and Driving: the agents are in hot pursuit, and the eye in the sky is keeping them updated as to the target's route. Or Surveillance and Piloting, same deal.

Now, there's a case to be made that Maneuvers do the same thing, and I would definitely agree. If a result of equivalent use can be achieved through a Maneuver, do that. However, I'm suggesting this be used on those occasions when the Thrilling option is more interesting to the group as a whole than boiling it down to one Maneuver and a die roll. 

OK: you've established a win condition and the pools to be used to achieve that win condition. Next: use both those pools as needed in the scene. Let the players decide which pool is more useful at a given moment. That pool is the Primary pool for any given roll, and the Secondary pool is used either to establish a Raise, to Swerve, or is saved for the next moment it's useful.

Let's say this is that moment in the Raid where Rama is running from the machete gang. The Primary pool is Athletics. Martial Arts is the Secondary pool. Rama is the pursued, and the machete gang are the pursuers. In any given check, Athletics is the Primary, but Rama has the option of spending Martial Arts to Raise the difficulty in the chase. Or Rama can save Martial Arts for a later moment in the same scene, where Martial Arts becomes the Primary pool and Rama can use Athletics to Raise the difficulty.

The win condition is for Rama to escape, so the mechanics are the same lead/chase mechanics used in any Thrilling Chase scene. With the difference that Rama can spend Martial Arts to Raise or Swerve, and has the option of switching at any time to make Martial Arts the Primary and Athletics the Secondary pool. 

The obvious caveat is that this gives the agents a larger pool to draw on, which in turn means the agents may be more likely to win any given Thrilling sequence. That's not a huge problem. The players should be expected to win most of the time. A story is no story if the hero fumbles at the first hurdle. 

Where this becomes interesting is towards the midpoint or the end of any given story arc, because at that point the agents have probably spent a fair number of points and taken advantage of any refreshes on offer. Now it's do or die time. They'll need all the help they can get. 

Time for some Thrills.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!