Longer games

[izikial]

Hi guys love role play and i love ttb but i dont like the way it shoe horns the story into small episodes and forces you through a charictor quick. Has anyone tryed running a longer game and not adreasing a destiny step every session? If so did you find the game has legs to keep going?

[EnternalVoid]

I have seen it being done, but you might have to slow down experience/character advancement a little bit.  Talents and such can really change the power level of characters, namely once they get 7+ steps down a single pursuit.  Unless that is addressed I imagine it would be more of a problem then the destiny steps.

that all said, I don't think it can handle like some other games, I doubt you can do an open ended deal, you really need an end game goal in my opinion to aim them at, even if they don't know where you are taking them.

[zeeblee]

I've experimented with delayed progression. Everyone got 1 exp at the end of every session, but the official epilogue portion (destiny steps, pursuit steps, and exp spending) only happened at the end of narrative arcs. Some of the arcs were quick while others lasted awhile, but it seemed to do a decent job of slowing growth to a manageable point for a longer campaign.

[Sernus]

I've been doing something similar to the method zeeblee describes, with the added restriction that "session" doesn't equal "a night of gaming" in our group's case.  My crew tend to get really into the role-playing aspect of things: we've had four-hour game evenings that only covered an afternoon of in-game time talking to people in the Little Kingdom or the Northern NCZ or somesuch!

I typically review a new adventure before starting them on it, to decide where the logical "mid-points" exist for experience points and Pursuit steps.  The TtB "Penny Dreadfuls" published by Wyrd are typically already arranged in a way that makes this fairly easy to do.

[Claymore65]

Technically speaking, if players follow the Advanced Pursuit rules, it should add an extra session (keep in mind Session ~= Adventure in this game) for each Advanced Pursuit step the characters wish to follow. You can hypothetically add a lot of session this way even if you don't fudge the rules.

That said, it should be fairly easy to just keep going, and not address a destiny step each adventure. Slowing down the Destiny Steps should make power levels a bit lower, though as others have suggested lowering Experience or Pursuit steps slightly might be a good idea as well.

[Steamtastic Vagabond]

There isn't a wyrd employee with an Alpine machine gun watching you while you're playing, you don't HAVE to complete a destiny step every session

[War Disciple]

I've found that the best balance for my own players is to award experience and deal with Destiny Steps at the end of an adventure.  It's a good benchmark:  The Fated have definitively completed a story, and usually there's a natural break in the action anyway where they get time to do personal things (heal serious injuries, build constructs, etc.).  My group plays a lot like the way Sernus describes:  A single session doesn't equal a single adventure, and much of the time there hasn't been enough accomplished by the end of the session to really warrant an experience reward.

Also, since I write a lot of my own stuff, it really helps me as a Fatemaster if the Fated stay static over the course of a single adventure.  It can be frustrating to work out good challenges only to have someone pick up a Talent that changes Fated potential so much you have to go back and adjust (or worse, completely rewrite) your story.

izikial, you are absolutely right - TTB isn't meant to have open-ended character progression.  It's more like a movie franchise or a TV show than say a book series:  There's a definite arc to these characters and they won't be around forever.  You can stretch it out with Advanced Pursuits or getting creative with when you hand out experience, but at some point the story should end and the Fated should ride off into the sunset.  

That doesn't mean you can't try something open-ended on your own, but at some point you'll be leaving the regular game behind--the Fated will be far too powerful for the standard Fatemaster Characters to present much of a challenge.

[Undercover_Guildsman]

It's taken a little time to become accustomed to the difference in play style that TtB affords, but I can see the benefits.  In many other games, a campaign is a long affair (I've run eight to nine year campaigns in the past) and if the PCs are relatively stable in attendance and there aren't many character deaths then you really get a deep slice of a single aspect of the game.  In TtB, I see an advantage to playing a number of sessions with certain types of Fated in a particular theme, and then be able to explore the city from a completely different angle.  I noticed this most keenly when I recently started a second TtB group.  My first group are trying to live in Down Town (above a Saloon) and mingle with a certain class of citizens because of the composition of the party (Dabbler, Showgirl, Sawbones).  The other group are living in the Slums (an Overseer turned Grave Robber, and a Drudge turned Guard).  There are massive thematic and narrative differences that make each group distinct and enjoyable.

I'm now looking forward to when we resolve the Destiny Steps and I get to explore two other styles of game.  By then I'll have a better handle on the setting so I'd like to run a game deep in the Quarantine Zone, or in the Bayou (where a trip to the 'big smoke' is a major journey).