Hey, folks-
For anyone who’s run and/or played Night Witches, the thing I’m unsure of heading into next week’s game is how to calibrate how much daytime play you ought to explore before rolling into the Night phase and Missions. I presume it’ll make sense once we get going, but if anyone has some rough guidelines or tips/tricks, I’d love to hear how you handled it as and MC, and/or what worked (and didn’t!) as a player.
Thanks!
I dunno about “should” but my day phases are typically around 6 scenes, I guess? I tend to let people do about 2 significant things, plus side conversations. Then I do a night phase.
I was pondering whether it might be more engaging to start with a night phase though. Then you’ve got the potential for damaged planes and wounded people and dramatic deaths right away. Have never actually tried though.
My rule of thumb is one scene/significant thing per player per day, then follow the fiction - maybe it’s time to fly, maybe there’s more to do. Never more than a couple. Never flinch from inflicting harm for people who refuse to rest - if you add 1-harm, they will learn to manage their days accordingly, because that’s pretty harsh. My goal is always to encourage the players to think tactically and really hunt for some mission pool, to make their short, intense day scenes count. There should never be enough time.
I like to start at night, and give them some generous mission pool (2-3). This begins the game with some immediate danger and perhaps some problems for the following day, but probably not a complete catastrophe. It tends to bond the group a little. You can also start with them returning from a mission and ask them what happened.
I wonder how similar this is to Blades.
There’s some obvious similarities, right:
Night Time is akin to mission
Day Time is akin to downtime actions.
In Blades, you get two downtime actions. One if you are at War with another faction.
This seems pretty similar, with some pretty important differences like mission pool and taking harm if you don’t rest up.