The Design of BCS IV: The Intermission Rules (Patreon)

Intermissions are a rather large part of the game. Often, the longest part of the game. They've always been rather simple on the mechanical side though, and BCS doesn't change that. It does improve how you play them, though.

The general structure of Intermissions is the same. You roleplay until you run into some kind of conflict, at which point you use one of the various types of Tests to try and resolve conflict your way.

Technically, there's 7 different types of Tests you can roll during Intermissions (8 if you want to include the Characters vs Mecha rules). Realistically, there's 4, and the rest are just the most basic type but with a very minor change and a new name. All but two of them are Full Turn Actions, meaning that if you're in the middle of a combat scenario and you are trying to roll Interfacing to hack a database, each attempt takes as long as aiming at and attacking an enemy. 

Let's go over the 7 Intermission actions, starting with the aforementioned most basic type.

Skill Tests

I've already talked about how these work back in Part II: The Core Mechanic, so I'll mostly point out here a few factors: First, this section breaks down how many Advantages and Disadvantages you will get in most circumstances, a helpful reminder not just for new players but also experienced GMs who still forget that opposing NPCs make the roll harder. Second, there's a higher cap for Disadvantages than for Advantages (though Advantages are more common and Disadvantages are rarer, which ends up favoring Advantages ultimately). Third and final, we repeat the chart from Part II and a summarized version of what the rolls mean for convenience's sake.

Two of those are a matter of presentation, because one thing I learned over the years is that it doesn't matter how good your rules are if people don't remember them or, worse, don't understand them.

The fact that it is possible to have more Disadvantages than Advantages is partly a mechanical choice and partly a coincidence. It's partly a mechanical choice because nearly every Skill Test rolled by the PCs is going to have at least one Advantage and very possibly a large Attribute bonus, meaning that GMs are more likely to need to use Disadvantages to keep things difficult than not. It's also partly a coincidence because I only realized this after writing the section but then thought about it and went "No, this is okay."

Attribute Tests

These are just unskilled Tests. They get their own section because, originally, they were going to be a bigger deal and the primary way in which the GM could threaten PCs. Think of them as "saves" in D&D-inspired systems. You would roll Fitness to avoid harm, Intellect to see through deception and Charm to prevent emotional manipulation.

I ended up axing that subsystem, partly because it's very difficult to justify Intellect or Charm defensive Tests that don't feel intrusive of a PC's agency by forcing them to fall for deception or manipulation, and partly because I don't think BCS is the kind of game where I want to emphasize those too much. I'm still keeping the Test category, and the Traits associated with them, because they need to exist, but they're no longer as big a deal as they used to be.

Also, ever since I axed using rolls to lie good or detect lies in Monsterpunk, I genuinely think it's more interesting to be ambiguous and let people come to their own conclusions regarding when someone is or isn't being truthful.

Contested Tests

Because NPCs don't make Intermission rolls in BCS, I almost didn't have Contested Tests in the game at all. I was halfway through writing down a sidebar explaining how PCs can solve competitions between them without dicerolls in a peaceful and rational manner that results in whatever would be best for the story, when I realized... I might as well include Contested Tests back in again just for that. Contested Tests are entirely divorced from the Core Mechanic, and don't fit super elegantly into the system as a consequence, but they're a simple, more organic and arguably more fair method of resolving which PC wins than talking it out.

Mixed Tests

These are for complex and elaborate plans of action that need not one but multiple rolls. Over the years I don't think I've used Mixed Tests more than a handful of times, but your mileage may vary, so a rule for them still exists. Other than that, it's changed from BCGR in that it needs two rolls, but the first roll applies Advantages or Disadvantages to the second, which is less complicated to remember how it works than the old way to do it of using one roll and applying the modifiers for both Tests after. That way of doing things was clever, but inconvenient. TRPGs are already difficult enough to run when the designer isn't prioritizing their own cleverness over the group's convenience, so I changed it.

Extended Tests

Extended Tests only get their own section because they go outside the Turn Structure. Otherwise, they're pretty much a Skill Test. Really, the only meaningful change they've had from BCGR is that the longest ones (Exhausting Tests) are pointed out to be best handled during Downtime and, in fact, many of the things that used to be Exhausting Extended Tests are now things explicitly given their own sections in the Downtime Rules.

Item Acquisition Tests

These serve the same function as the old Equipment Tests from BCGR, but with a better name. You use them to borrow or buy things. I'm still not a superfan of the idea of pausing gameplay to go shopping, but they're a necessary rule in a modern setting with commerce and inventory systems, so they stay. If I'm being honest, there is a part of me that wants to axe this section and splice it into the entry for the Contacts Skill. The only problem there is that it might be too complicated for just one example in a Skill section. It's the kind of action that wants to be done when there's downtime, but Downtime Tests happen between Episodes, so that isn't helpful if you need to prepare for an underwater infiltration mission this session and you need a scuba diving suit right now instead of next episode.

Group Tests

Finally, we borrow Group Tests from Monsterpunk, using pretty much the same mechanics but presented in a slightly clearer form (or at least I hope it is clearer). I've gone on record before about how much I like these for being a challenge you can present to the whole party that takes into account all of the PC's powers and encourages even unskilled PCs to participate instead of discouraging them, and all of that still applies here. Having said that, I might tweak it a little bit in the future.

There are two reasons for tweaking Group Tests. First, I'm not 100% satisfied with the math involved. Right now, it's notably easier to succeed at a Group Test than it is for everyone to succeed at individual Skill Tests, and while I think that's better than it being harder (cooperation should be encouraged, not discouraged), I'd like to make the difficulty closer, or hopefully the same. 

The second reason is that the explanation of Group Tests was originally a full page's worth, but doing that in BCS would have broken the current layout, forcing the manual to either have a full blank page next to it or to find some kind of filler (which, trust me, I was out of by then). It took a lot of editing to cram the whole explanation into a single column, and while I think the explanation is in some ways better than the old one, it is certainly more rushed. I think I can find a way to fill that page in the final version of the manual later, and expand the Group Tests rules also to a whole page of their own to improve clarity and pacing.

Incidentally, a lot of decisions regarding how content is presented often hinge on  preserving a currently functional layout. It's one of the more frustrating things about working with PDFs. And don't get me started with physical books using the Print-on-Demand format, those have their own complications, like needing a number of interior pages that is a multiple of 4 or 6 depending on the size, requiring a blank page at the end for the printer to put their information there, and other headache-inducing elements that can and will destroy your book's organization if you're not careful.

Environmental Conditions

In BCG, I chose not to make explicit rules for recurring complications that the PCs might face. It wasn't necessary, and it still isn't, but just because it isn't necessary doesn't mean it isn't handy. Without writing down rules for dark environments, Adaptable Eyes was a wasted Trait. With them, it has an explicit purpose. The conditions are Dim Light, Total Darkness, Harsh Weather and Extreme Environments (which I will probably rename to Extreme Weather for consistency's sake). The former two cause Disadvantages to characters that don't have a way to see in the dark, while the latter two cause Health loss to characters without adequate protection for their body. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is slightly more emphasis in BCS for action on foot, and in facilitating characters that don't necessarily pilot a robot like toku heroes or magical girls so these conditions might come up multiple times per campaign for some groups.

Character Conditions

BCS doesn't have hundreds of status conditions like Monsterpunk does, but I still find it useful to determine conditions beforehand and to reference them later. I can make a whole bunch of abilities that give flight and have them all say "You become Airborne" without having to repeat the description each time. Also, it allows me to elegantly make abilities that remove said conditions with that precise wording instead of writing down the specific bonuses that it removes.

Anyway, the only three conditions that PCs can get during Intermissions are Invisible, Airborne, and Retired Operations have a few more conditions, but they're described later. During Intermissions, Invisible makes you immune to detection or being targeted by attacks until you suffer a Twist, which instead of doing anything else simply makes you lose the condition. During Intermissions, Airborne gives you freedom of movement in three dimensions and makes you immune to attacks from characters on the ground unless they have specific abilities that let them fight flying enemies (like, say, guns).

Finally, there is Retired. This is the 0 Health state, which puts your character in the hospital until healed. Because PCs naturally heal 1 Health per Episode, this at first allowed PCs to stay comfortably at 1 Health forever because even if they were 1 Twist away from being rendered helpless they would still heal it out between sessions and most GMs would never remove a PC from a session at the beginning of it anyway, so you could play for most of a session and then sit out at the end for a bit without any real complications. Now being Retired prevents natural healing and forces that PC to spend their next Downtime doing Rest & Recovery. I might tweak Health recovery further, but that's better talked later when we cover Downtime actions.

And that's all for now. Next time, we get in the robot at last!

Gimmick Out.