[Piratecat]

Good feedback.

It looks like players were handing out Stitches to each other at a somewhat lower rate than the game expects (in games I run, I see people spending 5-10 Stitches during the game). Getting fewer than that constrains resources. That's not a problem per se -- it ramps up scarcity tension and it's easy for GMs to compensate by handing out stitches or refreshes themselves, if they so choose. And of course, handing out stitches is controlled by the players, so if you're low and you do something clever, you'll probably be rewarded by someone at the table.

<Note that I'm not necessarily sure that scarcity tension, like you'd want in Trail of Cthulhu, necessarily jibes perfectly with pulpy sci-fi. It's why I built in a player-controlled refresh mechanic.>

Pointy-headed reflection about chronal stability and travel tests: in lieu of fuel, Agents with a reality anchor of less than 8 make a Travel Test when they time travel. This works out to losing an average of 1 Chronal Stability with every time jump. You can obviate the need for a roll by spending a stitch, but you actually get 4x the benefit from that Stitch if you heal any travel damage with Reality Anchor, then use the Stitch to refresh that pool by 2 points. But you know what? In my experience, eroding Chronal Stability is scary as hell.

Regarding Investigative ability spends: it interesting to take a look at your character sheet at the end of a game and count how many IA points you didn't spend. In one sense, those are all unrealized potential. I tend to find that it's not much of a hardship for me to spend an IA for points when I really need to (I once saw someone save their entire group's bacon by duplicating their Agent with a Paradox Prevention spend, then spending their military tactics on more points so they could go to town on the bad guy. Sometimes, it's the right choice.) But as always, this is an issue of player choice and preference.

I think that if you have enough game time, there's lots of opportunity to start somewhere other than Florence, where clues then point you towards Renaissance Italy around 1500. Or hey - the whole game still works if you excise Florence entirely, although you miss out on steam-powered robots. A sandbox runs the risk of a much slower start, but it's doable with some plot-hacking.

And as always, this conversation is fun and useful for me. Thank you.