FitD flashbacks

#1

So, I’m re-reading the rules for Blades (actually via Scum and Villainy, which I won in the Revelation convention raffle, ker-ching) and pondering how flashback consequences are meant to work.

The rules explicitly call out that action rolls during a flashback are possible. But there’s nothing in the rules to say that they’re handled differently from normal action roll consequences. Still, there must be limits - you can’t die during a flashback. So… how are you meant to handle them? Should they just inflict generic consequences like Heat, perhaps? How do you handle it?

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#2

I’ve had this happen in play before.
Our group infiltrated a ghost prison the Bluecoats were experimenting with. The Whisper flashed back to where he got a captive ghost from The Duppymen (fishermen who catch and sell ghosts from the canals).
He failed terribly, maxed out his stress and I had a quick panic working out how to deal with that. The Whisper’s player and I agreed that a ghost had been riding him all this time, having gone up the fishing line and into him. He’d been quiet for most of the session so it was plausible that he’d been possessed.
The ghost caused a jailbreak and the Whisper hasn’t quite been right since.

As far as death… that’s a trickier one, but I guess you could have similar results.

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#3

Those are awesome opportunities to go into really out there narrative developments. Like being possessed, as @Charlie mentions.

And why not die? Begs the question who this Doppelgänger in the present is… a consequence now all players at the table know but none of the characters are privy to. Imagine the awesome questions and the fiction that follows from there!
:smiley:

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#4

Hrm… The way I had read it was that the outcome of action rolls in a flashback would apply to the current events. You do the flashback to make things better for you now. So you do the flashback and if you are successful then you are better situated now. If you are unsuccessful then you are in a worse situation now. I’d say any consequences flowing from a bad action roll in a flashback are applied in the here-and-now, not in the flashback.

Though for questions like this I generally look to Kyle Thompson’s videos, for example:

Not sure if the answer is in there, but it might be worth watching. :wink:

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#5

Nope, didn’t answer it! But thanks anyway. :slight_smile:

In terms of the consequences, my take was that (like the flashback itself) it establishes a fictional change in the past which then rolls forward to the present. Which, like I say, seems potentially problematic with the whole “not time travel” bit (notwithstanding the ingenious “you were possessed/it’s a doppelganger/you were your own identical twin all along” gambits).

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#6

I agree, I do think it’s wise to try to feed back most of the outcome of the flashback into the present.

But when have they actually been problematic in experience? Really, I just work with the consequences like I usually do. Heat is an option, as well as just putting the present into a worse position or with less effect as go-tos.

Or increase clocks… the “‘infiltrate compound undetected’ 4-clock turns in an 8-clock as you realize the guard you charmed for information last night must have reported it to their superior and the patrols are increased and changed up”.

Now, when they try something desperate in the flashback, I’d go to severe consequences that are in part outside the scope of the current score (like heat but worse, like losing faction status, compromise a friendly contact, etc.). Thinking beyond the current objective and of the larger picture.

Stuff like that. Does that help?

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