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thelogbookproject · 2 years ago

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The Unity of Skovlan, Entry 24: The Glory

The Unity of Skovlan is an upcoming unofficial supplement to Blades In The Dark about the fall and rise of the Skovlander people. This series explores what it is all about in the leadup to its September release.

Oh, I’ve been excited for this one. It’s The Glory! So, this was the Mission that convinced me that I had something in this campaign idea. I’d pieced together the Soldiers conceptually, and was figuring out the format point of the Missions and planned out how this Mission would look. I sat back and smiled at the results, from the concept to the Optional Objectives to the Areas and their Clocks, and knew this was gonna work for the whole game. Across this series, I’ve been trying to show off pieces but leaving enough in reserve to excite people into wanting to download the book and see more, but today (and maybe only today?) I’m going to break from that and I’m just going to show off the entire Mission.

A piece of worldbuilding, the Imperial warships being modified Leviathan Hunters builds on existing concepts from the game while amping up the military aspect of it. It also lays out the singular nature of the Unity War, that full-scale Imperial war hasn’t broken out in centuries.

Critically, the Soldiers succeed if they disable either the engines or guns, and it is not the Squad’s responsibility to destroy the ship or anything, just to set it up to be unprepared to fight back when the Skovlan Navy attacks. Anything else is bonus.

The opposition section reveals that there’s not quite as many foes as one might think on a warship. The naval officers and engineers make up the core of the people necessary to run the ship. The text’s “battalion” is poetic, not logistical — this ship doesn’t have 1000 soldiers on board, but there’s still too many to fight head on without a plan. Captain Hok continues a trend that will persist throughout the campaign: competent leadership. The Akorosi, for all of their flaws, are a well-run military, and the officers are professional leaders, not stooges, figureheads, or nepotism appointments. Anyone described like that has a much cushier posting far, far away from the front lines of rough, hostile Skovlan.

The first two Optional Objectives focus on helping Skovlan understand the Glory and its design, with the first option likely easier than the latter, though acquiring both would be excellent. The third and fourth Objectives involve softening up the vessel for the oncoming attack, and getting at least one of these should be fairly easy. The last Objective is the ultimate challenge: take the ship. The Squad doesn’t need total control, they just need to be able to stop the ship itself from fighting back at all, allowing the Navy to board and take out the soldiers on-board. Still, taking the bridge without unleashing a flood of armed infantrymen is no easy feat, and the huge Valor reward (combined with the likely Desperation Valor almost certainly accrued during the attempt) makes it worth it if you want to go all in.

All of the Soldiers are good for this Mission, but in particular Garm, Tillery, and Kelld can excel here, which is a fun difference and overlap from The Ambush. Garm probably stayed home from the Ambush, while Tillery is more effective here, leaving them fresh for The Glory (or safe to use up before The Ambush). On the other hand, Kelld is hugely valuable in both Missions, and probably is going to suck up some healing Valor between Missions.

The first of the Areas gives a Squad who rolled well on Engagement a chance to act without too much trouble, easing into the danger. If the players intend to disable the guns to clear the Mission, they’ll need to spend time on the deck, which has a bit of leeway but if they start generating suspicion already the rest of the Mission is going to be very difficult. The callout to the lifeboats is an interesting one that brings up a topic I haven’t really discussed: Mission Failure.

None of the Primary Objectives of the game are actually necessary for the war to continue on its course, which means that failure is always an option. Mechanically, players will probably only give up on their goal if everyone is forced into Exhausted condition, though if there are other Missions they want to try instead and they think things have gone too wrong, they might retreat early to save a little Stress. If everyone gets Exhausted, the GM can talk through how the PCs make it back to camp still, bailed out but failed. The trick is, you still get some Valor. The Straining Period Missions give you 2 Valor just for everyone getting back alive, so if no one chose to make a last stand and die, the group gets 2 Valor just for trying, meaning the early Missions kinda pay for themselves. Any Optional Objectives you complete still get paid out, so if the players acquire plans for the Glory but Exhuast before they take down the engines or guns, they still pick up the 2 Valor. Of course, an Exhausted Squad really needs that Valor to get back to health (especially if they don’t have Fane’s Rehabilitation Ability) but it all goes to reinforce the core theme of futility. You can succeed or you can fuck up and everything keeps on moving. You get credit for the little things you do, but even success doesn’t really make that much difference.

Of course, there is one really, really grim possibility: all seven Soldiers are Exhausted and the Squad doesn’t have the 6 Valor needed to refresh even one of them at the Period change. There are two main possibilities at that point. The big one: The Unity War is over. Alx Squad was defeated, and they take the Legacies they have and make it to Doskvol at the end of the War, and that was all there was. If you still want to do more though, the GM can be kind and freshen up enough Soldiers for everyone to play the next Period’s free Mission, maybe not even fully Ready, but trying to make it through. Still, that really should not happen. The game is meant to be generous enough to not make that happen. The players have to pretty intentionally blow up their Stress to get there. I mean, the players are in control of that — Stress is never charged by the GM, and any GM with a scrap of interest in continuing the game isn’t going to Harm everyone into Exhaustion to the point of not being able to play anymore, as there’s always other interesting consequences to inflict instead. Giving up is always an option, and players need to be ready for that.

The more the players investigate, the easier it is to find their way, but it’s slow, risky going. Finding and capturing a guide, or depriving the troops of any navigation, is a fun way to interact without going to outright constant violence, bringing an opportunity for talkier Soldiers like Maela or Fane to help. Having to try pretty hard every time the Squad wants to go somewhere new makes them think twice about how many locations they want to try to get to. Of course, they can just open at random and find what they find, which still ticks the Clock, but the odds of getting a face full of infantrymen goes way up when they leave it all in the MC’s hands.

If the players want to sabotage the guns, this is where they need to wind up. As the details say though, disabling each of them would be a huge task, and players trying that should realize quickly that there might be alternate options. In particular, the Exhausted Clock is a big possibility, and while the GM can normally hint the players toward it, if Kelld is there with their Codebreaker Ability, they’ll immediately get to expose the possibility. Using the engineers to handle the guns as a group could actually get them all worked on, if the orders seem believably harmless. The other big option is the ammo, which can be blown up. Doing so probably fulfills the “create a weak point on the hull” Optional Objective, but the secret sabotage one is much harder to manage by that method.

The plasm engine is desperately important to the Glory, but Maynard will reveal the issue with disabling it in any circumstance — shouting at subordinates if the Squad is undetected, begging the Squad if noticed. Magic doesn’t work in the room, gunfire could cause a ton of problems, and the engineers and soldiers are as afraid of the engine as the Squad might be. The Clock is one of the worst ways this Mission could go wrong while still succeeding. If a Leviathan arrives and starts to capsize the Glory, it certainly would count as achieving the Primary Objective, but escape is going to be horrible, and the Navy isn’t going to want to come anywhere near it. Unlike the guns, the players only need to handle the one engine to succeed, but the danger is extreme.

Everything on the Bridge is valuable, from the technology to the vantage to the Captain’s intel. It is very hard to deal with too. Schiff is harder than most to trick or hide from, the Captain (who is incorrectly named Cordova in the image, though this has been fixed, it’s Captain Hok) is an exceptional shot, and the alarms can go off instantly. The ability to turn off the engines is potent and instantly achieves the Primary Objective, but without being near Maynard, players might not know that turning the engine off will let the Leviathan come for them. The Clock is the first unusual Clock of the campaign, a tug-of-war between the Soldiers and the Imperials for the Bridge. Filling it will end the Mission as the Navy arrives, while it emptying loses the Bridge and the players will be desperate danger until the Navy can take down the ship, possibly violently, and if they retake it without the engines or guns disabled the Primary Objective will be failed.

This is some advice on running the Mission. The biggest bits being the suggestion that the Labyrinth random rooms can also take the heat off a little, that Sergeant Ryah’s map can be taken, and that this is supposed to be really hard. Honestly, if the players do this Mission before the Ambush, they’ll either find the Ambush easy in comparison or they’ll be too beat-up to do it at all.

I love this Mission. The Glory continues to be one of four Missions (The Glory, The Evacuation, The General, The Behemoth) that I think of as truly iconic to what I’m excited about in The Unity War. All the Missions are good, but when I find myself idly imagining the campaign, those are the big four I always come to first.

And that’s it for the Straining Period Missions! The game’s introductory tasks are over, and we’ll soon get to the middle of the War, where things are rough but hope is still strong, even as it becomes more and more clear that Skovlan will never be the same after this. First though, we’re going to take a little intermission and look at some of the new Factions introduced in Fractured Unity!

The Unity War releases for PWYW on September 1, 2023. Check out https://tinyurl.com/tuos-details for the rest of this series! Sign up for my Patreon at https://patreon.com/thelogbookproject for a preview, and full early access to the game! See you Monday!

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thelogbookproject · 2 years ago

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The Unity of Skovlan, Entry 22: The Factory

Let’s talk Missions! All three entries this week are going to be exploring the Straining Period Missions of The Unity War. The first Mission, and the Mission that all Unity War campaigns start off with, is The Factory.

The first Mission starts from the one big Blades canon element of the Unity War: the Leviathan Blood processing plant, planted on Skovlan’s shores without permission, activating the War. By the point of this Mission, it’s primarily symbolic, but the players’ experiences in the campaign are going to be pretty symbolic the whole time, given that they know they’re going to lose the War. This Mission has a bit of everything — military action, stealth, innocent bystanders, the supernatural… all the Soldiers have something to contribute to this one. But what are you actually trying to do?

This isn’t that hard. It’s left very wide open, with the Soldiers free to cause their damage in any way they choose, so long as it’s long, expensive, or hard to fix. Ultimately, this Mission is a bit of a warm-up. The Unity War is meant as a gradual on-ramp to the full Blades mechanics, so this easy Mission can let the players get a grasp on the rules, and they ought to succeed even if they’re not particularly efficient with their dice pools or stress management. The GM guidance indicates that they should never take the Primary Objective actually off the table, even if the players keep screwing up, meaning it’s really more of a matter of how beat-up the Soldiers are by the time they finish up the Missions. Even if, amazingly, they mess it up by all Stressing Out, the Mission can be lost because it’s still just symbolic. That said, if the players all Stress Out and become Exhausted, probably reset the campaign. That really shouldn’t happen…

…unless the Soldiers put everything they have into completing all the Optional Objectives. These can be tougher, and the impulse to try and do all of them is pretty strong! These ones are pretty widespread in nature, and doing all of them isn’t that easy! It’s a good teaching moment for players to naturally understand that doing all of the Optional Objectives can be pretty costly, sometimes even costlier than it’s worth.

I had a particular framing in mind when I started writing the Optional Objectives for Missions: Assassin’s Creed III (other AC games do it too, but AC3 stuck out in my mind). If you’re not familiar, the frame story of that game is that you’re a modern dude using a science-magic machine to walk through the memories of his ancestors. There’s some flexibility in the “how” stuff happened, though the biggest plot points are guaranteed — Alx Squad did The Factory, participated in The Evacuation, and were on The Last Ship Out (the three required Missions). There’s a lot of Optional Objectives on your way to the big Primary Objectives though, and these are framed as “full synchronization,” ie the historical, platonic ideal version of the memory is doing all of the Optional Objectives. The ideal form of Alx Squad, operating at maximum efficiency and ability, successfully did all of the Optional Objectives, and that’s what built their legacy. The more Optional Objectives the Squad accomplishes in play, the more like the ideal form of the Squad they’re acting. This usually involves clever tricks, perfectly-executed plans, and unnecessary but beneficial tasks. In play, you could skip dealing with the Foreman, but it would be a better outcome if they were eliminated. You could allow the workers to get caught in the crossfire, but it’s not the moral ideal of the Squad. You could skip the distractions, but it speaks more to the Squad’s nature to go that route.

This is what the Areas look like for the game! A little blurb, some Characters and Features, and a Clock (or special rule, see below). All of the bits are meant as hooks and levers for the GM to provide or use to inspire opportunities or consequences. For this particular Clock, getting the workers on your side can be helpful, but the Optional Objective to keep them from getting hurt means players won’t want to push them too hard, and will have to be careful about them getting caught, in the crossfire or aiding and abetting the Squad. Getting the workers to trust the Squad is best for just getting them out of the way before they become collateral damage.

This Area is included to show how to complete one of the Optional Objectives, but also provides a great avenue to complete the Primary Objective too. Each Mission has an Area like this, with a Special Rule instead of a Clock, adjusting the rules in a unique way. In this case, the Storeroom is a huge risk/reward opportunity — dangerous to be around, dangerous to use to the group’s advantage, but potentially incredibly valuable.

The climactic Area of the Mission has the potential to be handled quickly and easily, but even one misstep can escalate the situation drastically. Be efficient and quiet, and getting out of the Factory will probably be pretty easy. Otherwise, it’s going to be as much a battle out as it was a tense sneak in, possibly with ghost intervention. This is the first timing Clock of the game, which fills as the players do other things or just take up time. Acting fast is the key when clocks like this come into play. This one fills very fast, being only three segments, but these countdowns are a staple of the campaign going forward.

This was three of the five Areas in the Mission (the second, fourth, and fifth).

I think this Mission does a great job of focusing the campaign on electroplasm, the technological and supernatural difference between the two nations, which as explored in Entry 8 is the best point to focus on if you want to de-emphasize a specifically racial component to the Unity War. This Mission is the centerpoint that I designed around as an easy-but-expandable challenge with widely varying Optionals, and very much grounded me in how I would design the rest.

Next time, we’ll move on the The Ambush!

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thelogbookproject · 2 years ago

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The Unity of Skovlan, Entry 19: The Ground

The Ground is something entirely new, arising in Doskvol’s Charhollow neighborhood in a way that couldn’t happen anywhere else. In Entry 11: Calibri I laid the groundwork of the landpriests, the ancient Skov spirit-talkers who made deals with spirits to keep communities safe in the days before the lightning barriers, and were stomped out by a combination of Imperial persecution and simple obsolescence. It did not escape notice, however, that the Akorosi have made their Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh and outright hatred of the supernatural into a part of their national and cultural identity, and that makes it something that the Skovlanders can contrast themselves against. The Ground, perhaps with a small group, but perhaps alone as the only one to dare stare into the dark, is reviving the old ways. The old ways of spirit-talking are lost, but by eschewing modern technology, attempting old Skov rituals, and delving into deep sorceries brought to Doskvol by other cultures (in particular the Severosi, who canonically have a long history of using arcane methods to fight ghosts directly), the Ground(s) became something new. They have become immune to the effects of electroplasm, and have gained the ability to solidify the ghost field, making the spectral corporeal. The Ground can walk fearlessly among ghosts and unleash them upon their foes, and none of the advanced technology of the Imperium can stop them. Everyone, ghost and man alike, is afraid of them. Their allies are likely as frightened of them as anyone else, but the Ground’s unique powers make them one of the best weapons against the Emperor in the world.

All Grounds start with two Abilities, Grounding and The Legacy (I’ll get to it). Grounding is the core of the Ground’s power, and lets a crew attempt jobs no one else could. While they are incorporeal, the Ground cannot be harmed by ghosts. But let’s talk about electroplasm. From the base book, electroplasm is the stuff that the ghost field is made of, and is a near-limitless font of death energy. Levianthan blood, by contrast, is a near-limitless font of life energy. Both are refined by the Imperium into a substance called plasm, which effectively can be used like an electrical source. In short, they’re big wet-cell batteries. As an aside, the refinement process to get to plasm is incredibly toxic, and the Imperium’s attempt to put such a processing plant into the Skovlan city of Lockport is what kicked off the Unity War. The Ground can handle plasm just as well as electroplasm, which means that the Ground effectively has the ability to shut down any electrical device. Considering the Akorosi use their plasm engineering as their biggest technological advantage, the richer and more impressive the target (in other words, the higher their Tier), the more likely they are to have a whole bunch of plasm devices, which means the Ground actually kinda scales with their foes. All of the lamps and lights of the city run on plasm, so the Ground is capable of plunging areas into darkness, increasing their reputation for being terrifying. Consider the possibilities if you were to ground out a section of the lightning rails, or a factory’s generator. The greatest of all: it’s not impossible to ground out one of the towers of the Lightning Barriers protecting the city from the swarming ghosts of the Cataclysm. Only puncture it if you’re really ready, but it’s basically the nuclear option in fighting the Imperium. A lot of civilians will probably be in harm’s way.

Augmenting the Ground’s ability to be basically an unstoppable ghost fighter is The Legacy, an Ability that drives you to seek out the genius loci of the city and forge pacts. If you remember Entry 11, the landpriests of the past differentiated between the vengeful ghosts of the Cataclysm and the spirits of the land, far older, that aren’t driven by the same hate that the ghosts are. The Church of the Flesh would definitely call them demons (like anything else spiritual that isn’t recognizably human), but the Ground is capable of seeking out such spirits for power. There are a ton of these, each bound up in the identity and nature of the District they inhabit. The power you gain is associated with the District they come from, so GMs can invent a spirit, but the Legacy benefit is set. Here’s a couple examples.

All of these Legacy benefits are really nice, and, critically, there’s no limit on how many you can get. However, each one requires a pact with the genius loci — they’re not gifts, the spirits want something in return, often ssomething ongoing. The more the Ground picks up, the more their life becomes about servicing their pacts. If a pact slips, they lose the Legacy benefit and likely need to forge a new pact for that District to get it back, but it can be so, so worth it. A Ground with a pact in every District is one of the most individually powerful people in the city.

I love how The Legacy gets the Ground to foster more than just an antagonistic relationship with the spirits, managing the violent and frightening needs of their revolution with the cultural history of their landpriest predecessors. I also love how it gets the crew doing jobs all over the city, which is kind of necessary as Fractured Unity could feel a little claustrophobic if the scope stays just in Charhollow.

I want to do one of the optional Abilities, and I was pretty darn torn between them. I really really like the Ground Abilities, but I eventually decided on Harbinger. As hinted at in the support text there, Harbinger is not the Ground’s only way to keep their Stress down. I’ve played sessions where we’ve basically accepted every Devil’s Bargain, and it’s the most chaotic and fun thing out there, and I want to encourage players to take Devil’s Bargains. Getting in way too deep and needing to take desperate measures (often literally Desperate) to get out is the good stuff. Make your crewmates as terrified when you act as your foes are. Speaking of terror…

We’re going to close on the Ground’s XP Trigger, which is pretty multifaceted. The easy one to work on is the fear one, but the others are so much more interesting (but sometimes hard to wedge in, so the fear is always an option). The Ground is, above all else, an iconoclast. They’re breaking every taboo of as many cultures as possible and forging something brand new, but making it out of what came before. Be traditional and be forward thinking — just don’t be of the now. Get weird. At the same time, consider the value of terror. When people look at your crew and call you terrorists instead of freedom fighters, they’re probably thinking of you. Make sure your fear has a purpose, and know that it can be alienating. A monumentally-powerful many-pacted Ground is the best way to gain individual power, but if you scare off too many potential allies, you’ll still never be as effective as if you had a coalition of compatriots alongside you. Make people question why they do things and think things, break the binaries they live under, and remember that holding up your hands as everything goes dark except your Spooky Lightstaff casting strange eerily-colored light across your face is always cool.

Next time, we’re wrapping up the playbooks with the Mend!

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thelogbookproject · 2 years ago

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The Unity of Skovlan, Entry 31: The General

As we enter the Fracturing Period, the final coastal fortress of Reaxh on the western coast has fallen. Queen Alayne, now attempting to avenge her late father King Aldric, has accepted that there is no longer a path to victory. All there is left is spite. For every inch the Akorosi take, the Skovlanders will make sure they pay for it with lives and treasure and leverage. Without any of the coast left, it is only a matter of time until Stonetable is captured, but that’s not going to be easy. Until that time came, the Skovlanders would fight, all the way up the bitter end. These were the days when the Skovlanders began planting the seeds of future revolution. If Skovlan was going to fall, the Skovlanders never would. The Unity War was ending, but even then, Skovlan looked to the future. One day, this would all matter.

What if the Skovlanders let a castle fall with the Squad hidden deep inside so they can sneak up and assassinate the fusion of Major General Armstrong and Ned Stark? That’s this Mission.

Seriously.

For real.

I conceived of General Teaves, the Ox of Akoros, as mostly Olivier Armstrong, a towering woman whose cold eyes and relentlessly brutal patriotism led her to success after success after success, all while wearing the huge black wolf pelt cloak of Ned Stark and wielding their enormous greatsword. Teaves is probably the single most powerful soldier the Squad will ever have to fight, and if the players still happen to have any qualms about outright assassinating enemy officers, this one is going to be extremely difficult (or the players may just want to give this Mission a pass).

As is introduced in the Opposition section, this is the Imperium’s Southern army, not the only army. Given my lore of Stonetable being the ancient and definitive capitol atop the mountains that cover the northern half of the island, losing the south or forcing the Akorosi out for now won’t change the course of the war — it would have long-term supply ramifications, and obviously affect the lives of the remaining Skovlanders there, but even if this Mission pushed back the entire Imperial army it wouldn’t be enough. That said, Teaves is also likely to be replaced if killed, which is why this Mission is so much more about costing the Imperium something and exacting personal vengeance on a hated foe — not that buying time while the southern army regroups isn’t a benefit.

As we enter the Fracturing Period, there are no longer any Valor rewards for making it back with anyone alive. Come back a failure and there’s no consolation prize. You’ll still get whatever you might earn from the Optionals, but Last Stands are really on the table now.

Additionally, kidnap is a permissible end state for Teaves, but this is a bit of a trap. It is very hard to take Teaves alive, and a couple of the Optionals will be ruinously hard without killing The Ox Of Akoros. It’s there if the Squad is still clinging to a moral objection to being assassins, which is a valid mindset, but at this stage of the war it really limits what can be done, and the players should feel that.

I’ve revealed one of a couple of Optionals that will get the Squad sidetracked from just tracking down and killing Teaves, pushing them to explore Castle Adriack further. I like this one because it emphasizes how the whole strategic point of this is delay. Picking up the pieces of the southern army and restoring it will take time, and the Skovlanders can try to regroup in that window or push their luck hitting the disorganized remnants. The longer the Skovlanders can keep the Imperium split between the two fronts (southern tundra and northern mountains) the longer Stonetable will hold. The Sneaking Mission Optional is going to take a ton of resources, probably accepting a ton of stress from Resisting alarm-increasing Consequences. I’ll say that while all five Areas of the Mission have Clocks, none of them is actually an alarm! This is both blessing and curse. On the one hand, the GM is going to have a bunch of things to tick that aren’t raising an alarm. On the other, the GM doesn’t have to wait to fill a Clock — any Consequence could rain guards on the players’ heads. Of course, given the situation, that would basically be an instant Desperate Position so it would eat up a Risky Consequence to impose that, but the players are always one bad roll from jeopardizing this Optional Objective. The last one is a big danger, as it requires alerting the army that something is happening, but it doesn’t inherently expose the Soldiers. There should be some leeway on this one, in that the literal killing doesn’t have to be obvious, the staging can do it. It’s not actually that tough (as we’ll explore in a minute, The Ox is on the roof turret, and pushing them over onto the soldiers working far below would do it) but it will make escaping much harder, and figuring out a way to do this while also doing the Kidnap path will be challenging.

This is how the players stowed away during the takeover of the Castle, and with a Controlled or Risky Position they’ll probably still be hidden in the Passages leading to the low levels. Finding and using the Passages is the key to the Sneaking Mission, but their unpredictability gives the GM a ton of flexibility to put together setpiece moments. As mentioned here though, don’t get bottled up in the passages or risk a quick death.

This is, ultimately, a bit of staging ground for the final encounter. If the Squad gets in and disables the guards, they’ll have a bit of time to breathe and put things together. The safe represented by the Clock is, ultimately, interesting without being strictly helpful. It isn’t an Optional Objective. If the GM has an idea for a reward, go ahead, but it’s mostly a narrative victory and a thing to have to choose to carry or leave behind. If you’re really looking for a mechanical boost from it, I’d suggest +1 to the next Engagement roll for the morale improvement. The final Feature is a “shortcut” to victory if the players try it. They’ll need to stay hidden as the General comes back in and eventually goes to bed, easier said than done, but if they get there it will make quietly killing Teaves much easier. It’s still no instant-kill, as Teaves’ reflexes and strength will keep them from being flawlessly murdered, but it’s much easier than the next Area’s Clock. That said, if the players do this, they have definitively embraced being assassins, and the “immediately panics and terrifies” Optional is blown, as Teaves likely wouldn’t be discovered until morning, which is hardly immediate.

Teaves knows something is up the moment the Squad is on the stairs to the roof. They don’t know what, and don’t immediately find the Squad or anything, but they’re not at ease. Fighting them is an absolute nightmare — a 12-step Clock is huge for killing a single person, and their immunity to Group Actions will keep everyone on their toes. If the Squad skipped the side Objectives and took the least Stressful paths up, they can probably take Teaves on. If they’re already getting tired, this fight is going to suck. Beyond the Group Action immunity though, the rules are still normal, so it’s not like instantly Desperate or anything. Play carefully and don’t get too unlucky with the rolls, and the General can be whittled down. Plus, once on the roof, the howling wind and the private bedchamber below means the players don’t need to worry about alarms. It’s as close to a private showdown as the Squad are likely to ever have, and the Ox is balanced to fight a full group alone.

The amount of focus the escape requires is very context-dependent. If the players are trying to take Teaves with them, or if the alarm is raised (whether from previous action or from the final Optional Objective) and the way is especially blocked, play it out. If the players are still succeeding on the Sneaking Mission Optional, play it out. Otherwise, probably cut past it.

Next time, we’ll take on a very different Mission: The Siege.

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