Things are going well so far in our BitD game. We are in session 7 and the crew has taken some turf from the Grinders and have some ongoing antagonism with Lord Scurlock.
However, a player made a comment that gave me pause. They said they don’t even know who their character is and why these random people came together to make a crew. We did make a good back story for the crew in session 0 but it hasn’t been fleshed out at all.
Now would be a great time for them to have a fun social session that allows them to sandbox around and develop their characters and crew back stories. The problem is they are up against a nearly complete clock of Scurlock exposing their hidden lair.
My solution is to “pause” the clock by giving them the chance to do fun character building through flashbacks instead. Those things will have occured in the past so the ‘present’ Scurlock clock will not move.
Does this make sense to you? Do you have other ideas in how to accomplish this?
This sounds perfectly plausible for me. Imagine your game as a tv mini series. You’ve been following this group around and you’ve got questions. The action’s ramped up and the big bad is on their tail, it’s the perfect place for a flashback episode.
What I would maybe add is for you to do a little prep and have a couple of scenes featuring key NPCs. Maybe we get to see the Grinders again, show how much of a bad ass Scurlock is, to build up the tensions
My group has done this. It had no serious effects on gameplay or narrative, although I think we got into an argument at one point on whether players should have access to all of their powers. I’d get that issue resolved first and then you should be golden.
This is a great idea! Just make sure to let your players know you are doing this beforehand because, you know, maybe they are excited for the Lord Scurlock kerfuffle. To have a whole session of flashback before they can deal with it may caught them by surprise.
