Effects of Infiltration Missions

The recent playtests involving the Infiltration mini-game (used during Espionage and Sabotage missions) have been really fun.  However, an area that still needs more work is the overall campaign effect of Espionage and Sabotage in terms of benefits to the Stronghold.  This is an area that needs work on the whole, but is particularly poorly defined for those two mission types.

I had envisioned Espionage as primarily making it easier to build certain developments (the "tech tree" stuff that builds the kingdom up), essentially by stealing information from the target faction.  This would most likely translate to some sort of build point bonus (build points being units of "work" necessary to create a development).  Coming up with an exact number might require some revisions, but it should be good enough to merit attempting the mission, such as reducing the cost by half or something similar.  It's also possibly to get added build points by using Diplomacy with a faction, and having them directly aid your Stronghold.

It seems like not every development would benefit from Espionage (although, just glancing through them, I can justify some benefit to stealing secrets for all of them).  The specific effect of Espionage might need to be development dependent.  That also opens the door to effects besides simple build points.  For instance, maybe using the Espionage mission on a target castle plants a mole there - a mole who might be able to lower the defenses at a critical point during a future military campaign.  Similarly, it might be possible to learn some sort of forbidden lore through an Espionage mission.  That opens up the idea that one development might have more than one type of Espionage mission attached to it.

For Sabotage, the general idea is to inflict damage on a development, rendering it useless.  This is a little more problematic for the factions - since the GM doesn't keep track of their developments, and many of them really have no function for the faction.  Factions are really only described by two main attributes: stability and population.  Factions also have regions, with resources, although the resources aren't spent on anything - rather they exist only as locations to fight over.  A faction also has leaders.

So, most Sabotage missions function to lower the target's stability or population or both.  It's possible to assign some stability loss to developments (for instance, taking out their Improved Mining doesn't affect any resources, but drops their stability by some amount).  Another option for Sabotage might be a mission to assassinate a target leader, which would also have lasting consequences, to both Warfare and Diplomacy missions.

In order for this method to work, each development would need a list of all results of Espionage and Sabotage (could be none), as well as a general level of difficulty, which is used to add adversaries in the Infiltration mini-game.

Here's a sample development entry using this method:

• Mages Guild
• Build Points: 240
• Mana: 8
• Ore: 9
• Timber: 8
• Luxuries: 2
• Prerequisites: Mana Forge (Advanced), Expert Casting, Expert Channeling
• Effect: Caster may double effect of all mana expenditures (spending 4 mana now as the same effect as spending 8).
• Infiltration:
• Steal Secrets (Security: High) - Gain 120 BP toward building a Mages Guild.
• Destroy Ancient Library (Security: High) - Faction loses 3 stability as well as all effects of Mages Guild.

Most of the complexity in WotA comes from the choices available between missions, and this continues that pattern.  So, while play is fairly straightforward, it will probably be necessary to include some rough strategies to expose players to a few of the options that are available.

Espionage Part II Recap

The Espionage mission in it s current form went pretty well, but found a few problems which playtesting may help me articulate:

• Different Narrative Scenes.  It would be nice if the narrative scene structure for the Infiltration missions was no different than for the others, or at least very, very, close.
• Second Narrative Scene.  The second narrative scene was an elaboration of the first, adding more details about the different obstacles that needed to be overcome.  In practice, though, these details weren't really used in the mini-game.  It also adds quite a bit of time to the game to work these in.
• Plan.  At the beginning of the mini-game, the players make a plan.  While this is somewhat interesting, again, in practice, this is pretty time consuming, and subject to lots of change as the mini-game gets going.
• Time.  The additional creative element of coming up with details about the target made the session take too long.
• GM Fate Points.  In this iteration, spending these fate points required changing details of the plan.  Unfortunately, doing that could considerably add to the duration of the game, as well as requiring quite a bit of creative narration.  As such, it's better if the fate point spends are easier to accomplish - they should be resolved fairly quickly during the mini-game.

So, the current idea to address these issues is to have two narrative scenes (as usual), but with a different focus.  The first narrative scene might be a "get in" scene, where all the obstacles to getting in and getting access are listed.  The second is the "get out" scene, where all the obstacles to getting out safely are listed.

Every time one of the stress boxes is checked off in each of these scenes, a new obstacle is added to either the "get in" or "get out" pile with a number of stress boxes equal to those checked off.  Thus, the first scene might have a "Determine physical security" obstacle, which might produce "Hallway trap" and "Door lock" obstacles for the mini-game.

At the start of the mini-game, then, this list will be tackled by the players in a similar fashion to how the narrative scenes work.  One difference is that the number of stress boxes won't be uniform (at 3).  Also, the idea of an "alert track" is still in play, which goes up over time as the players deal with the mission.

The final elements to put in play are ways to raise/lower the alert track.  Failed rolls should raise it, and possibly tagging aspects or getting shifts on successes may lower it (preferred?).

Each obstacle in the mini-game may function almost like a "zone", where players move to in order to engage the obstacle.  Thus, it may take an action to move between zones.

Also, having "get in" and "get out" obstacles may make for an interesting difference in terms of getting caught.  That is, getting caught going in may have lesser repercussions than getting caught going out (which would be getting caught red-handed).

Finally, the GM needs to have a good way of spending fate points, that doesn't require too much thought during the mini-game.  Might be enough to add to the stress tracks of obstacles (like the regular narrative scenes).  Maybe, if the obstacles are zones, could even add aspects to the obstacles themselves, which could be compelled to affect the character in some fashion.

Espionage Part I - Recap

Played through the first half of an Espionage mission, and it went pretty well.  The narrative scenes in the Espionage missions revolve around the planning of the mission.  Figuring out what sort of security is in place, who has access to the target, and weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

The narrative scenes in Espionage are slightly different from other missions, in that the obstacles resolved in the first scene turn into the obstacles to resolve in the second scene.

For instance, the first scene may have an obstacle such as "What does the guard force consist of?" - and, as the stress boxes are checked off on this obstacle, new obstacles are created.  Such as "guard dogs" and "night watchman".  These are investigated in more detail in the second narrative scene.

This seems to work fairly well, although it is a departure from how the other narrative scenes work, which isn't usually desirable.  It could also be handy to have some lists at hand to help fill in details, since this isn't really done beforehand.  Or, maybe that's the role of the GM before play begins?

Infiltration Playtest 1

Tonight I'm hoping to run through Infiltration for the first time.  After making some progress on it months ago, it was pushed to the wayside for other considerations (a few Skirmish missions and a Negotiation mission).  The good news is, those went pretty well.  Unfortunately, after revisiting the Infiltration rules, I felt like they needed some tweaks.  Part of that was due to changes in other parts of the game (the narrative scenes).

Anyway, now Infiltration consists of two narrative scenes of planning, followed by the tactical mini-game.  The first scene allows the players and GM the ability to collaboratively lay out the sort of security issues that might come up.  The second scene is the players investigating those in more detail, looking for vulnerabilities.

The mini-game starts with the players laying out a potential plan to deal with the problems.  Each of the security obstacles discovered in the first scene has a number of steps, which correspond to skill rolls needed to remove the task.

There is still an alert track which represents how close the characters are to getting caught.  It represents the paranoia of the opposing faction that something is amiss.

My goal was to have the Infiltration mini-game revolve around a push your luck element.  As the alert goes up, there is a greater chance of getting caught.  But, aborting the mission means somewhat wasting the season.  Furthermore, it's possible for one character to get caught, but other characters to still succeed.  Of course, there could be somewhat of an international incident, but it might be worth it.  (Or, the character has a stunt which helps them disavow all knowledge.)

More Infiltration

After talking it over with friends, I have a sketch that's starting to become a full fledged mini-game for Infiltration.

Essentially, Infiltration is a series of obstacles, further subdivided into tasks.  These obstacles and tasks are created during the acts leading up to the finale.  While those scenes are played out, the heroes divide up responsibility for the plan.

During the mini-game, each character attempts to remove an obstacle by addressing the sub-tasks which make it up.

Besides obstacles and tasks, a suspicion tracker is used, which slowly escalates during failed rolls for tasks.  If this reaches a threshold, the hero is caught, and must face penalties.

When an obstacle is removed, the suspicion track goes down some, reflecting the new situation that results.

For instance, an obstacle might be "Palace Guards".  Tasks to get by them might be "Make a uniform", "Enter hallway", and "Command guards to leave".