Parameters: Are required Specialists or equipment not on the mission? Take -1d.
Has anyone required equipment for a mission? I don’t see it as part of the random mission generation.
Is it really only used for special missions, like the supply carts for the warding stone mission on p385, or the horses for assault near Westlake on p409?
Would you require supplies for a 3 day round trip or just say that’s a good idea (so not affect engagement)?
Is that connected to the Intel 0 question: What would be a useful item to bring? I figured that was more to do with fictional positioning but I wondered if an answer to this could impact an engagement roll?
Yes. I appologize if I sometimes I feel like a broken record: You have to understand the fictional position.
There’s an important step of missions creation that you do as a GM: fleshing out the mission. In other words “scout +1 intel” is a prompt. You have to actually write a mission and that will tell you what you need. When I wrote Calisco, we didn’t know that horses would be required till we realized that you had to charge in and out. Without horses, that becomes a radically harder mission. Doable, but much harder. If you want to see how it’s handled check out my wild and wacky crew doing it on ActualPlay (they succeeded, but it was epic). We talk through “ok this is why you NEED horses” and figure out “ok but what if we don’t have them, is this even possible” and then give it a go.
No.
Spending Food or Supply? That can stress the resource economy. But you’re well within your rights to say “everyone equips supplies” (one of the ways to do that is to spend Food, which is then a player choice—do they take fewer utility but bring supplies but take the worse engagement?). If they skip it or take it as primary it’s pretty straightforward, if it’s secondary maybe it does take food. It’s in the players hands then, but talk it out with your table. Supplies last 5, so you don’t even need everyone to do it and something like Home Cooking can skip it. So ask which rookie has home cooking, or if they send a Scout to forage for them (their Specialist ability can cover the group for food). Maybe it requires a Scout specialist even if it’s not a recon mission etc.
There’s way more play and give here. Mostly it’s about asking the players hard questions and having them come up with some sort of solution.
This is a really good question (the Magpie crew asked that on twitter a few months ago). Asking this an REQUIRING an item is shitty because intel is supposed to help rather than hurt, so asking a question and having to send extra stuff is not great. But it adding +1d can be unbalancing on secondary missions in particular.
Generally what we do at our home table is if a primary mission takes this we either remove or soften an obstacle, or start them in a better position. (Like if they bring climbing kits to approach someplace over a tough climb, we skip the “breaching the wall” obstacle because they’re going over, or make it a less risky roll). It’s a good question to ask once you know which missions you’re going on.