Orklord’s Haven

First of all, I’ve missed two days of writing on MtB.  On one hand, I broke my Seinfeldian chain.  On the other, a couple days away got me thinking more creatively, rather than plodding through rephrasing the shadow of Yesterday (tSoY) rules into MtB vernacular.

This post serves as me typing up a stray thought I had while driving to work listening to the Narrative Control podcast (the suspense episode) so I don’t lose it.

It has to do with the transition from a single conflict roll resolution of a baseball match to drilling down the the pitch-by-pitch situation (in tSoY).  I’ve been pondering how to give the playgroup tools to quickly move from “we roll some dice and then the outcome of the game is determined” to drill down to a specific time, a critical point in the match where one at-bat or one defensive stop could turn the tide of the game.

My idea is this: when the playgroup rolls the conflict roll to resolve the entire match, this has a determining factor in the setup for the pitch-by-pitch scene.  The player who takes the at-bat or defensive highlight opportunity and The Ump use the results of the conflict roll to state facts about the situation.

The facts that are open are as follows:

• inning of the game
• score
• men on base
• number of outs

Still need to flesh this out, but in the idea form currently existing, it would work like so:

(Example with one player only) The Ump and the player roll.  The ump rolls the Team stat, a single stat that represents the opposition.  The player chooses which stat for his minor leaguer to use (this will color the outcome if the conflict stays as one roll).  Both sides roll and calculate totals.

The Ump gets four successes.  The player rolls three successes.  The game is won by the opposition if the player doesn’t ask for a highlight.  In this case, the player demands a highlight, an at bat for his character.  The Ump won the conflict roll, so he gets the option of stating the first fact.

The Ump: “The Home Team (the opposition) has four runs, the Visitors have two.”

The player can then states the next fact.  Since The Ump stated “his team” was in the lead by stating score first, the player opts for men on base.

The Player: “A man on first and third.”

The Ump then gets to declare outs or inning.  He decides to push the stakes of the at-bat.

The Ump: “Two outs.”

The player has the option of setting the stakes even higher for his team by declaring the game is early on in the inning.  If there were other players, he could declare it is only the third or fourth innning to allow other players to “jump in” and call for highlihgts in other innings before the game is over (or they could be one of the men on base, of course).  Since he is playing a solo game, the player goes for the glory and puts the game on the line for his at bat.

The Player: “It is the top of the ninth!”

Now we have the entire situation.  Two outs, two men on, top of the ninth with the player’s team behind a run.  It all comes down to this at bat.

DRAMA!