Duty as campaign default

[dcarson]

It makes sense to have it as a reminder but roll for the whole group. You don't tell them what the result is, so one time they have no duty and spend the session doing slice of life stuff on a patrol that doesn't have any attacks and another time they do and that nice beach house that Bob lent them while on leave as a unit gets attacked by something while they have minimal gear.

[namada]

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[The Benj]

Barring player absences, I'd definitely treat the Duty as covering everyone together.

Action 2 has some pretty good (if brief) advice on using Duty, which is worth checking out, I think.

But, by and large, I'd say you can just treat it as an assumed thing of the campaign. They oughtn't get points for it, as their Duty IS the adventure and it's part of the campaign frame.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by fartrader

The frequency chart for Duty does say that at level 15 or less, the GM can rule the character is always on duty (no roll required). That always felt like a shaft to the players to me, given the existence of a "Constant" level for the frequency of advantages, and the lack of one for disadvantages.

The difference is that if you are running a game in which every adventure is Duty, then the character can still turn in time-use for the 5% of the time they have free. Constant duty would mean that even off-screen time-use is 16 hours of work with 8 hours of sleep per day. Which isn't realistic for humans, even for front-line soldiers in combat.

[Tyneras]

As a campaign decision, I would treat it as a "group disadvantage" so a single roll is made (if I bother) for the whole group, since they all have duty to X-COM.

I would additionally treat it one of two ways.

1) The disadvantage is cosmetic and worth zero points since everyone has it automatically, it's on the sheet for flavor only.

2) If the characters have "down time" and non-X-COM related adventures, I would roll against it to have aliens pop up during one of those adventures.

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

As a campaign decision, I would treat it as a "group disadvantage" so a single roll is made (if I bother) for the whole group, since they all have duty to X-COM.

I would additionally treat it one of two ways.

1) The disadvantage is cosmetic and worth zero points since everyone has it automatically, it's on the sheet for flavor only.

2) If the characters have "down time" and non-X-COM related adventures, I would roll against it to have aliens pop up during one of those adventures.

Roll? Surely, that's the assumption?

[sir_pudding]

Duty isn't the "has an adventure" disadvantage. It is the has a specific mission or orders that are inconvient or dangerous disadvantage. If you roll Duty, then you have a mission, which could very well be a milk run. If don't, you aren't on duty, which doesn't mean ninjas aren't going to try to murder you in the shower.