So I'm opening up my demo round with a "friendly" tavern brawl. All the opponents are brutes. It's really just meant to give the new players a taste of how combat works. But rather than everyone investing in putting down brutes, I want to throw in some colorful consequences for them to buy off. Funny thing, a lot of these tthings are related to the fight and would probably be handled with pressure if the opponents were villains. Here's a rough version of my list:
- trip on bloody ssawdust (1 wound, fall prone)
- hit by a tossed brute (1 brute, fall prone and pinned)
- brutes pin your arms (?)
- thrown out bar window (2 wounds, fall prone)
Do these sounds like they would work?
Im also adding in a timed consequences: chandelier falls on 2nd round: 5 raises (2 wounds and pinned)
What are your thoughts? Any other ideas for cool tavern brawl consequences? Timed or otherwise.
1) Taking a page from John Wick's playbook....kill it with Fire!
If there's a fireplace or candles or torches, someone falls and knocks one down...Each round there could be a Timed Consequence at say 4 Raises left where the fire spreads. Each round there's a number of Raises needed to put it out. Each Raise goes towards keeping it out of control but if it's still burning at the Timed Consequence, it spreads say "4 Raises" and requires more the next round
2) Innocents...if there are women/children (others that are innocent in your game), each Hero has a Consequence of accidentally attacking/damaging/harming an innocent unless they spend 1 Raise to avoid that. They might also have a number of people they can keep the brutes from harming using Opportunities. At the end, these folks may be grateful in some way
3) Valuables...assuming the tavern keeper does not want their tavern trashed, each Round there could be valuable items that may be destroyed unless an Opportunity is taken...Save the glass sculpture, save the china plats, etc. Each Opportunity used for this could garner the Heroes bonus reputation or something at the end or 'free drinks for life!' sort of thing
4) Some of the brutes may try to carry away someone and the Heroes have to rescue them with Opportunities
My more complete list:
Something I'm considering doing is actually making this a table. On the player's first action in the round, I roll against it to determine what consequences they are going to face. This feels approapriate to the scene and makes sure everyone is having different consequences and potential opportunities. Originally I was going to have a roll each action, but the Counter Actions thread has me reconsidering how "rounds" work. Like plenty of others, I had assumed them to be linear affairs.
Despite what people may think, Rounds ARE linear affairs. If you take Wounds on an Action you immediately take them, potentially taking you out of the combat before you take your actions. If all Wounds were kept until the end, I would believe it's non-linear :)
Dammit, Harley! Stop making sense! Grrrr! First action still works better in this case. Less dice rolling, more brute slashing.
You might consider rolling for the random Opportunities / Consequences for each person before they choose their Approach (BTW, I like this idea and may be implementing this for my Chase rules). While this is different from the normal way, I think some of your Opportunities and Consequences may actually change what folks want to do in the Round. Then again, it would benefit those with Dynamic Approach, etc. to continue to do it after the Dice are Rolled. I'll be curious how it works in practice.
The 'Fall down" could be an investment...spend 1 Raise this round to avoid the Consequence or spend 2 Raises next round to stand back up into fighting position.
This of course begs a new Advantage - Kip Up: It never costs you Hero Points or Raises to stand up from Prone.
Doh!
Here's the thing. If you charge a raise not to fall down, or one raise to get back up, what's the difference? You are essentially taxing a raise one way or the other. I would think there needs to be more to it than that. Right? And yeah, Standing up for free basically negates it as a consequence. That's why I added the Wound to it.
If it helps, all the wounds in the barfight, unless specified otherwise, are non-lethal and go away at the end of the scene.