Shooting Paige... Action Breakdown
Okay, the question is, when does the crazy street kid shoot the player character, whose name happens to be Paige.
Not that it matters much, but this is for Kult. So, Paige and his friends are hanging out at an abandoned amusement park. He's new so his crew of friends is forcing him to walk through the fun house alone. He figures they're going to jump in there and try to scare him so he hides. At that point, for reasons that are unimportant here, one of the crew goes crazy, pulls a gun, and starts trying to shoot his friends.
Paige sees his girlfriend, Jessica, run off and he knows he has to save her (or lose a lot of stability, this is Kult after all), so he assesses the situation...
"I don't know where the guy is, but if I hear him going in a different direction, I'm going to make a run for it outside and follow Jessica."
So, Observe a Situation roll (or whatever it's called, it's in every PbtA game) and he gets to ask the question, "what is the safest way out of here?" He fails the roll with less than 9, which is like less than 6 for other PbtA games, which means he gets the answer and I get a move.
Does he get shot now (let's call this point 1) since I've already made the move where I announce a threat?
Assuming he didn't just get shot, I tell him that the best way, the only way, out of this situation is for him to run like the wind because the gunman has seen him and is following close behind. He runs off, but he wants to determine what the best way to run would be so as to keep the killer from following Jessica. Another Observe the Situation.
As he is actively under a threat and this doesn't divert the threat, do I shoot him here (point 2). If he fails the roll, what about then (point 3)?
He misses the roll and realizes that the killer has lost him and is now following Jessica who screamed something at the last minute so as to prevent Paige from getting killed. Paige decides at that point to get the killer's attention and start the chase again. He hurls a rock at the guy, making himself a threat, and then tries to Influence Other (which goes by many names, but is a Player Move throughout PbtA). Arguably, because there is the threat, he could get shot here (point 4), but the real question is, what happens when he fails in such a way as I get another move (point 5).
Assuming that Paige still hasn't been shot yet, the killer shoots Jessica (I know, it was like a loss of 4 Stability) and then turns to follow Paige.
Paige looks for somewhere to run, which technically doesn't do anything to keep the killer from shooting him, which is the threat (point 6), but this time he gets a moderate success. He finds a way out, but I get a move (point 7?) I tell him that he can run out over the open ground and hope that the killer's aim isn't too good or he can bolt into the undergrowth, but he'll be at close range. He goes for the undergrowth, making an Act Under Pressure roll pretty well and he gets away. Had he not, that would have been point 8.
So, bigger question, Paige has failed a lot. A LOT. Should he really get to point 8? PbtA doesn't really tell you when enough is enough and the damage starts happening, rather it preserves these questions for the fiction, but does my description here seem excessive to others. This is, by the way, how it played out in my game, and I'm not saying, a real GM would have shot Paige at point 1 or anything like that, but there are a lot of places where Paige doesn't try to hide or take cover, where he stops to consider where to go and the like. I wouldn't fault anyone for shooting him at points 1-8, I'm actually more curious as to where, if you were running the game, he'd get shot.
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