Test Run With the Radiance Adventure Engine 5

Part 5: Things Go Sideways

This is part 5 of my test run with the Radiance Adventure Engine from Oddfish Games. Read Part 4.

Danger Ahead

The next path I draw is Grenade, which is deliciously nasty. Let’s look at it:

This path has a condition tied to it: “Roleplay making a decision whether or not to sacrifice their safety and well-being in order to move forward on the path.”

So, I can let Laura go down this path, but it will cost something, as in “they suffer damage, a condition, a negative modifier, or impairment.” But I can also choose not to and draw another path instead, in which case the path will have an added complication, which is a Radiance term for added (and harder) problems to overcome.

In other words, take a hit (as inflicted by the RPG you are using) or try something else that could pose even bigger obstacles. I hope it’s obvious that you are constantly confronted with such sweet decisions every step of the way with Radiance. The payoff in this case, if I take this path, is that the related action will be easier, at lesser difficulty.

Difficulty in Radiance

Radiance operates a difficulty scale in six steps, which may or may not directly be transferable to your RPG, in ascending order: Insignificant (auto success), lesser (routine), moderate (standard, 50/50), greater, significantly greater and impossible.

When taking actions, you are sliding up and down this scale. If you manage to bring it down to insignificant, then your attempt succeeds no matter what. On the other hand, if you keep failing and perhaps bumps it up to impossible, then this line of action is no longer possible, and you have to abandon the path.

Cartel doesn’t use a difficulty scale as such, so you will have to make some judgement calls, possibly with die roll modifiers such as +/- 1 for every step of the scale.

Crash

First I draw a detail card for the path, which is Conspiracy (planned, covered-up, treacherous)! I think I get an idea, and I’m going to use this path and let Laura suffer the consequences.

The Conspiracy detail will be a mid-level member of the Sinaloa cartel, Victorio, a nasty piece of shit, so the path storyline will be: “Our hero encounters Victorio, who can only be overcome by some significant sacrifice.”

Laura has been parked in her old Saab outside the house, where Morisa is held, for some time, and so far only two men have come and gone in shifts. This time one of the men exits the house with a guy that Laura knows: Victorio! Victorio has gone over to Zeta! The men men are walking from the house’s main door towards the pavement, chatting, laughing. They stop behind their car to light cigarettes. Victorio looks around and spots Laura in the Saab, and Laura goes into auto-survival mode without thinking. She turns the ignition key and floors it, and the heavy car shoots towards the two men with a wild roar from the turbo engine. The men are completed taken off guard, frozen in time.

Laura’s action will be a so-called Test Action, which is Radiance’s basic action type, and since we now have lesser difficult due to the path, I will add a +1 modifier to Laura’s move, Turn to Violence. The roll is a 9 with the modifier, a weak hit: inflict terrible harm and suffer little harm.

The car ploughs right into the two men and squashes them against their own car, killing both instantly in a rain of blood splatter. The now smashed Saab continues its trajectory sideways after totally damaging the other car, glides across the pavement, flip onto its roof and ends up on the lawn in front of the house, where Laura manages to get out.

Laura will mark 2 Stress, bringing her to 4 out of 5, critical.

This resolves the path, but since it was a weak hit, the action says: “The path resolves, the next path gains a complication.”

Lovely.