Hey, a couple things that occurred to me as I re-read all the locations and thought about the end-game.
Firstly: The end-game has penalties for each Infamous the Legion hasn’t killed, which are… harsh! That got me to question something I am now not confident about: do you need to ‘unlock’ basic troops of the same type as the Infamous to have those Infamous (and LTs) ‘available’ in the game? Like, I don’t intend to introduce Transformed as Breaker’s units in our campaign (the animal suffering angle just isn’t something I care to spend a lot of time with), so does that mean Chimera and Bhed aren’t a factor? If I don’t want the in them game for personal safety/enjoyment reasons, I feel obliged to elide any mechanical effect their availability might otherwise have.
Second: Rewards outside the cope of the listed mission parameters. This is mostly a non-issue, but if the Legion manages to rustle a bunch of horses in fiction, or impress a hostage they rescue sufficiently that they want to sign up, will it break the game to occasionally toss them an off-book extra use of Horses or a single Rookie? I’m not confident enough in back-end design to have anything but a vague sense. How have others handled this?
Third: Does anyone who GMs let players portray the Chosen, or do you tend to save that role for yourself? We’ve only seen her onscreen a couple of times, and not yet in a Back at Camp scene. I could be convinced of either approach.
For the second: I do this all the time, especially for Primary missions. If the characters pull off hijinks, or do things you’re not expecting which result in a windfall for the Legion, it not only should but it must matter. Remember, the primary rule is to “follow the fiction.”
In the game I am currently running, the Legion had two squads out-of-commission due to losses on prior missions, but because of the events during a primary mission, they ended up bringing those squads back to full strength with a band of lost legionnaires they rescued and convinced to rejoin the Legion.
Frankly, it would have been both disappointing and terrible if I’d ruled, “OK, you’ve saved this band of lost rookies and convinced them to come back with you, but you can only get new rookies with a Recruit action, so it doesn’t really matter.”
(Of course, the command staff also has some concerns about these recruits that might cause issues down the line – they’re suspected of having deserted, and that one of them was planning to betray the rest – but those issues, and their mechanical or narrative effects, also arise from following the fiction.)
For the third: Anyone who wants to play the Chosen. Which fits with the general troupe-style play and how most scenes are run (“everyone pick a character to be involved”). Others may feel otherwise. But I figure we’re telling a story here, together, as a group, and if someone has a story idea or cool narrative scene for the Chosen, then let them have at it. It isn’t for me to say only I get to “own” a specific character.
@JimLikesGames a single bubble or a rookie won’t throw it off too much. Just try not to do it more than once every 3 missions or so.
Firstly: One of the first rules of the Broken is to read their themes and troops and make decisions based on that. If you’re not into like a third of the Broken it I have to ask… why pick Breaker? I’m curious.
Let’s talk fixes! Because we can do that! Fortunately the game has some flex for you. This isn’t the end of the world. Lines and veils are important.
If an infamous is never possible or available on the field, they don’t count as surviving. So you could just declare them as not counting and dust off your hands. It’s fine.
Note that Bhed is a Lieutenant (there’s eratta on Lieutenants in the final roll, and the PDF should be fixed).
So. Honestly, nobody is FORCED to make picks on Broken, but I genuinely hope folks pick up the extra troop types (there’s stuff encouraging that, like new lieutenants, and some powers synergising). It gives more variety to threats and missions, and gives you new angles to write.
So if you WANT a new type to replace one you’d have to write up a new theme, then derive some monsters from it.
So Breaker is sorcery and corruption of nature. Since you lose half of that, it’s probably good to come up with a second set of something. This isn’t actually a trivial task. And if you’re mid-campaign it’s probably a decent idea to tie it to an artifact Breaker picks up (that’s kind of her story, if you’re going with that angle). Maybe they find the missing tine of the cinder crown up in the hills and return with some burned and enflamed units … you can probably run with that if it fits your gut/group better. Just make sure that you’re taking a look at roughly what makes something threatening, then making something in a similar ballpark.
Ooop missed Q3: Nope. I don’t. This is one of the lines I don’t cross.
Chosen are supposed to be mysterious and not easily comprehensible. Legion Players should advocate for the Legion. And the Chosen isn’t that. It’s also the only semi-permanent character you get to actually embody in the game as a GM, and it’s one of the ways you’re a player (in terms of design this was important to me) and not just this nebulous game-running machine.
Plus it’s just fun to have someone outside the order, but with some power have opinions and put their thumb on discussions. When the Legion is like: EXCUSE ME NO WE WON’T DO THAT MISSION YOU WANT CHOSEN PERSON it’s one of my personal favorite things ^_~
That said… i don’t think the game ends if you do this
When choosing my broken advances, I was trying to make the legion’s choices matter. So Render didn’t start with heartless, but one of the questions in play was “what might happen over the course of the game that would cause heartless to appear?” As part of that, I created an infamous that might eventually become Ache over the course of play. Since my goal was “guy so into render he might tear his own heart out in a dark magic ritual”, I decided to create a spiritually powerful chaplain of the Black Oak Knights–thus “Presbyter Carolinus, the Cinder Priest” became my last infamous.
I’ve added rewards to the roll twice: the first time, when a back at camp scene described a large quantity of black shot going missing, I had the QM erase it from his sheet. The next session, one of the missions was about confronting the gentleman bandit who had stolen it, and I added the stolen black shot back in addition to the rewards I’d rolled. Second time, I rolled “fine asset” as a reward. The legion was already pretty well loaded up with fine assets, so I was a bit stumped as to what that could be. Eventually, I decided that the mission reward would be “fine religious supplies”, but that felt like it needed a little bit more zing to be interesting, so I also added “+5 points.”
Haven’t let anyone else play the chosen. I was briefly tempted to make that an extra legion role when it looked like I might have 6 legion players, but that situation was avoided.
Because the witchy stuff and Hexed are awesome. I’m leaning hard into the mind control, weather, and tree manipulation aspects of her shtick and less the human/animal hybrids. Now that you suggest subbing in something else, it occurs to me that creepy, walking, moaning twigblight plant critters could fill the same niche as Transformed, with a big, blighted treant thing as their LT. Less blackshot, more fire.
My own instinct on Zora was to hold playing her for myself, so good to have that backed up.
Fortunately the game has some flex for you. This isn’t the end of the world. Lines and veils are important.