Orlov:
This is a bit ridiculous though. Why is it so hard that twenty men cannot find a room in a basement with the help of a map, and the experience was so traumatic that the Navigator was almost scarred for life? Just what the hell happened down there?
Mechanics wise, I don't think we should even have had to roll to find it.
As I said, you don't have a map of the actual basement part of the manor, though it's not that large. The entrance to the vault is hidden, you do know that it used to be a wine cellar before the governor had it remade and hidden.
And the roll determines how well and smoothly the search goes. As for why it's so stressful with the three failures, if even one of you rolled a Success, then the overall group action would be a Success without any Consequences and the other two failures would be disregarded. So this essentially is you trying to avoid Consequences as you were trying to keep that wild mob under control before they 'ruin everything'. Only you utterly failed. And even then, since it would be a group action there would be less Consequences then if everyone acted individualy.
Now, you don't have to use a Group Action for this and everyone can just roll their own action. I just suggested it to try it out. Since you are all new to this system and I was the one who decided to use it, I'll let you decide that you didn't use a Group action for this and instead it was just individual actions.
But the thing is, you all failed, which means Consequences. And if you wanted to resist those, it would probably cause more total Stress than the Group Action. The cohort can't resist Consequences since those don't have Stress, at least I think so. I'll have to check the rules for Cohorts again.
The consequences could come in the form of filled in hidden Threat clocks as reinforcements could arrive while you spent some time fruitlessly searching. Or whatever else I deem appropriate.
Now, the fiction of course changed even with the failure. Eventually, you'll probably find the vault entrance anyway without needing to roll further, cause as you said, you have 20 men and there's only so much ground to cover. But as always, the question is, what's the situation gonna be like once you do and how much time passes.
That's basically what the system is about. Deciding what Consequences you need to avoid and which you can just afford to deal with as they come.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:05, Wed 10 Apr.