PBF Scurry: Making your mark

Role-playing games Play by Post
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Scurry is a game about beasts embarking on a fast paced heist. Together, players tell the story of animals on a race against the clock, resolving conflicts with imaginative solutions, while trying to complete their goal before succumbing to exhaustion!

Link: Scurry! by Stout Stoat

Each scurry should take 2 to 3 hours to play (kept to note short scenario), with the story ramping up towards an exciting finish.

Who does what?

One player acts as the Scurry Master (SM). The SM describes the world, telegraphs its dangers and presents conflicts for the beasts to solve. The other players act as crafty Beasts who need to work together to complete their scurry.

Conflicts are resolved by rolling Multi-sided Dice.

@JGD @Phil @RogerBW if you are still up for it, character creation instructions to follow. I will explain all the (not many) rules.

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The key mechanisms are the Scurry Dice and the Progress Clock.

The Scurry Dice

The group’s level of energy is represented by the
Scurry Dice, which starts as a twelve-sided dice (d12), and gets smaller as the group tire.

This is the dice that is used to resolve situations where there is a chance of failure.

If a solution’s success is likely, all goes as planned.

When success is unlikely, the SM asks the Beasts to roll the Scurry Dice. Depending on the result, the SM describes how successful the solution is:

Max / Critical Success / They do better than
expected. The tension eases a little.

Optional: The SM removes 1 progress from the clock.

4+ / Success / They do as well as they can.

2 to 3 / Complication / They barely manage to
pull it off, but not without consequence.

1 / Hijinx / Something goes hilariously wrong, and chaos is sure to follow.

If success is impossible, the SM tells the players. They can still choose to execute their doomed plan anyway.

The Progress Clock

The SM uses a device called the Progress Clock to
represent the Beasts getting tired, their stride being
unexpectedly broken, or their stress levels rising.

The SM marks progress by filling in segments of the Progress Clock.

Each time the clock fills up, the Scurry Dice is reduced in size (e.g. from d12 to d10), and the clock is reset. When this happens, the SM hints at terrible danger brewing on the horizon.

Mark Progress when:

• A conflict is resolved with hijinx or complications.

• The Beasts hesitate because of indecision.

• A Milestone in the heist’s progress is achieved.

• Something Bad happens, like a Beast falls into a
trap, a predator is alerted to their presence.

[in essence I will tell you when progress is marked on the clock. There are 4 segments to the clock, so 4 progress marks until the dice drops].

The Beasts cannot continue their adventure if
the Scurry Dice is reduced below a d4. When the
progress clock next fills, roll the Scurry Dice:

If the result is a 1, Something Awful happens and the scurry immediately stops.

The SM describes how the catastrophic events of the Beasts’ scurry has led to a tragic end. All Beasts are encouraged to join in to make this ending worse!

If a 2, 3 or 4 is rolled, the Beasts manage to keep it
together. The SM removes 1 progress from the clock.

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Characters have multiple different abilities/skills/posessions, which can be used in the following ways:

Using Tags

A Beast can roll the Scurry Dice twice and take the higher result if they can convince the SM that any of their tags would be useful to their solution.

Using Skills

Once per scurry, a Beast can use their Skill to automatically resolve conflict with a success.

The rest of the time, they are regular tags.

Using Tools

All tools have a narratively sensible supply. There’s no specified amount (such as “12 grams of chalk”). However, the SM may ask a Beast to cross out a Tool tag as a consequence, to represent the tool breaking or running out.

Using Guts

Before resolving conflict, a Beast can describe a flashback to a scene in the past that gives them just what they need to solve the problem at hand, such as the perfect tool, or a convenient talent.

Using Guts resolves conflict with a success, but also marks 2 progress.

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Creating your Beast

The default is small woodland creatures, native to the Bristley Woods - an area analogous to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs in Scotland. Think hedgehogs and voles and mice and stoats.

Each Beast is resourceful and capable in their own way.

Words or short phrases called “Tags” are used to convey how a Beast has prepared for the coming scurry.

Alongside their name, their guild, and a special crest

to represent them, each Beast has four tags:

• A Skill, taught to them by their guild.

• A Tool, brought along to help in the coming heist.

• A Talent, that they love to show off.

• A Trait, something special their body can do.

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Guilds and Skills

Guilds are working unions devoted to specific crafts. They foster unique Skills, which are passed from member to member.

[Here the graphic design gets exuberant and difficult to cut and paste so I will just list the Guilds and then follow up on interest!].

Loners
Hivewardens
Noonmessengers (diurnal beasts
Mapmakers
Stitchers
Wickerweavers
Doughfellows
Tanners
Fairwinders (birds)
Poulticepounders
Orebeaters

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Tools

This is a special piece of equipment your Beast has
prepared for the upcoming scurry. Don’t worry, it’s appropriately shaped for their paws or claws.

Choose a Tool
or
Construct your own!

The list of tools is various, from shovel to book of pressed flowers to glow worm. So I am inclined to let you invent, but let me know if you need more inspiration!

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Talents

This is a specific area of expertise that might be relevant to the mission ahead. While this talent is fresh in your Beast’s mind, it isn’t all they know. They might have other talents for other adventures!

Practice a Talent
or
Discover your own!

Singing
Pathfinding
Making friends
Getting small
Being long
Weaving reeds
Orientating
Moving like the wind

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Traits

These are distinct physical characteristics of your Beast’s species. Each kind of animal has their own eccentric way of experiencing the world.

Exhibit a Trait
or
Identify your own!

This is where you choose the type of animal. No I don’t know why it is last …

Again, a lot of detail on this page, so instead just pick an animal and I can follow up.

Capercaillie
Crow
Mole
Rat
Hedgehog
Stoat
Beaver
Otter
Goldfinch
Lizard
Robin
Bat
Mouse
Badger
Hare
Bluetit
Frog
Squirrel

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So there we have it. Choose your four tags

• A Skill, taught to them by their guild.

• A Tool, brought along to help in the coming heist.

• A Talent, that they love to show off.

• A Trait, something special their body can do.

And give yourself a name.

When we have done that we will start with a little bit of background for the scenario, and some establishing questions.

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Sadly, I’m dropping out. I’m getting lots of Blades in the Dark vibes off this, and I didn’t like that game.

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No worries. For what it’s worth I don’t think it is anywhere near that prescribed or complex, but I understand the comparison.

If others happy to continue that is great; room for perhaps one or two more.

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Can’t resist a chance to play a crow. No no mate, you have it. I’ll just wait till later.
Wickerweavers sounds like a plausible sort of guild. More details?
Tool: old cigarette lighter. (May fail at any moment.)
Pathfinding makes sense as a talent: go up, spy out the way, come back and report.

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A wickerweaver is a manipulator of soaked willow branches. Their skill is Reform - alter the structure and function of a thing.

A Crow can be defined as having Soaring Flight, Mournful Caw, Rending Beak

Now the rules are not 100% clear on this - if you pick one of these (or make up one) or you choose to exhibit for this scurry. At the moment I will err on flexibility - you have all three to use, or can replace these three with others you create on a one for one basis.

There are no rules for effect for traits, they are used as tags as part of the narrative.

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Wickerweavers sounds fine to me.

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I haven’t thought this through, but… Hubert, the star-nosed mole. Their noses are one of the most sensitive touch organs of any animal. They also swim well, and can smell things underwater by blowing an air bubble at an object, and then inhaling the air bubble! So my Trait is being able to smell and identify anything by touch alone, even underwater. They can’t see very well, and yet my carnivalesque Talent is that I can guess your weight! Or the weight of anything, really. My Skill is skateboarding, which also explains my Tool – which I’m usually riding whenever I “go urban”.

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Thanks! @RogerBW what is your crow’s name?

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Animals have inherited the earth. They look mostly the same as we know them today, but they think deeply, form civilizations and use tools. Beasts understand different species by how they relate to their native environments, and their natural appearance.

For example, squirrels and rats consider each other cousins, as do toads and frogs. There are stereotypes and misconceptions, but there are no species with a universal superiority complex. They speak from the heart, unrestrained by languages or borders.

They work (and flourish) within their limitations. Hordes of rodents forge scalemail armour for bears who cannot wield the hammer themselves. Birds conceal messages with bright pigments that are indistinguishable to predators who only see in tones of grey.

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An integrated society of beasts thrives in the
mountains and forests that surround Crossing Loch.

The animals call this region the Bristley Woods..

Mountains to the north and west shield their homes from the worst coastal storms. To the east grows the Greenwall, dense and sprawling, where many a paw has become lost, never to return. Even the Freshmire to the south can be treacherous if traversed at the wrong time of year.

Animals of all shapes and sizes live here in melting pot communities; stoats alongside shrews, owls among mice. Across the Woods, solidarity and empathy are the foundations of society.

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Pinelight

10 summers ago, just as the earth cracked under a long drought, a group of mice stumbled across a sickly cat with a kindle of kittens. Overcoming their gut fear, the mice stayed to nurse the ailing mother back to health. In turn, she pledged to protect the mice and their many descendants.

And so, Pinelight was founded. Though the founders have long since gone Elsewhere, Pinelight remains a home where all beasts (big or small) can find safety.

Today, Mapmakers, Stitchers, and Wickerweavers have come together to celebrate Pinelight’s 10 year anniversary with a mural, The All-Craft.

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@Phil and @RogerBW Toto the Overseer has asked to see you. Can you please introduce yourselves, establish your relationship with each other, and including how you might choose to answer these establishing questions :

1.What is your link to Pinelight?

  1. What joy or sorrow did you experience in Pinelight?

  2. What connection do you have to the guilds of Mapmakers, Stitchers,or Wickerweavers?

  3. What kinds of art do you like to make, and why?