SOTI Pros Assemble
Call-out to my Sagas of the Icelanders hardcore krew: Jason Morningstar Keith Stetson Misha B Kit La Touche Stras Acimovic Catherine Ramen Mikael Andersson and I know I’m forgetting folks.
Any opinions or thoughts on how easy/shitty it is to move folks into and out of an ongoing SOTI game? I’ve got a few weeks where I can’t get the same folks, but all the folks have an interest in the game and I would love to run it for longer than a one-shot.
I mean, eyeballing how I run it as a one-shot, it seems like it’d totally break the relationship map building stage. You yank out a bunch of connections, and then the new person creates a bunch of social context that wasn’t there before (and nobody has any bonds back). Is it even doable? Has anyone made it work?
The last traditionally PbtA game where I tried to add people (Urban Shadows) was not a good experience.
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When we faced a similar problem we had everyone write new relationships with whoever was there to play at the start of any given session and it worked alright. Made sure that the bond economy was always flowing anyways.
Rob Deobald new relationships that didn’t contradict previous fiction, obviously, yeah?
The situation right out of the gate on turn 1 just feels so very, very tight. I suppose I could run them as loosely connected, like across years.
This seems very hard. What’s the breakdown of coming and going – do you know for sure? You could do it artificially by asking someone to come in as the Stranger, or more clumsily as a Monster or a character introduced early on as a Child and later grows up. But it isn’t really a super hot game for transient playersI think.
Jason Morningstar yeah agreed. I know the breakdown coming and going for sure. One player is out and another player is in, and then we could have the full quorum for a third session.
I considered the Stranger as well. Just have First Absentee be absent or dead or whatever. The child, now that’s an interesting idea.
The game produces by far the tightest and most claustrophobic situation of any PbtA on my shelf. Maybe Cartel, too, very similar.
Lemme think on this. First instinct is “hard”.
But OTOH how do new characters get dropped in when someone dies? I don’t recall reading anything specific about that but it must come up. It’s a pretty brutal/lethal game as these things go.
Paul Beakley yea, pretty much. It was more like every player’s character had a relationship with every other player character and only 4 were active in every given session. We were centered around a tale of two families with a core three or so of us who were always going to be there with another three who were a little on and off. We knew roughly who was playing on day one, and players who weren’t there were off settling affairs in Norway or visiting another gothic or Viking, etc.
Depends on how you handle time-jumps and seasons. It would require some buy-in from all players, but you can weave it in.
So for example, if you start in the summer, your Huscarl could be out game 1 because he’s Viking. And show up for the fall in game 2 and stay for winter in game 3. If you create chars together (say online or via email) you can establish the ties, and simply bring a person back.
If you know game 3 will be a wedding, you can arrange for it in 1 and have the Woman show up.
Hope that helps.
(funny story was going to make a post about this…)
I actually think that this would be easy, but that may be because MMMV on conceptualization of how you game. SOTI is meant for time jumps, there are plenty of opportunities for sending people into absentia for periods of time (like going to the Alþing frex) and just may need some conventions at startup: Whatever we do tonight is the season, or whatever we do for the next X sessions when we have common groups. we have relatives and allies that are not within a few days travel (allowing things like going to help with births, farm management, etc). Core SOTI (IMHO) is familial obligation. Leverage that to work your problem.
Well poop, one of my key players has fallen ill so the question is moot for now.
I think I’m gonna experiment next time I have the chance though, using big time jumps and hoping for the best as far as the bond questions go.
Late to the party, but when we did this for the Long Con it worked quite well to establish everyone’s relative relationship ahead of time in sketch and then fill in the details when they actually showed up. Time jumps do work wonders for this, as does the lethality of SotI.
Keith Stetson did people end up with enough bonds to each other?
There was a standing list of bonds and you grabbed the ones you needed to have 4. Although I may be mixing up bonds and relationships here, which I always do.
I think they’re the same in SotI.
I’m thinking it’d work okay IF I ran each session as a tight con-style 1-shot, with a clear ending, and then jumped ahead X years and did the RAW “change two relationships, take a bond with all your relationships” that’s already in there.
Yeah, the issue is if you don’t fit a season (or year, or whatever) into one session. We were bastards about “Whatever you don’t get done in one hour ain’t happening in the spring.”