GM TIPS: Managing Encroachment

Encroachment 101

So lately I've been asked for advise in running, normally on /tg/ or by people in the Rizon chat room, and part of this blogs point is to help GM's and players get a feel for the game.


This won't be a particularly long entry but I since a particular thread on /tg/ has the subject coming up right now, I want to talk about managing encroachment for a second.


As a GM, the first thing you want to keep in mind, is how much encroachment, given the number of Lois dice a player *should* have at the end of a scenario. I like to use the formula of [Lois count * 5] +100 To help me decide what the safe limit a player can hit before backtrack. The short long and the short of that means that your going to generally have a safe level of 115 encroachment, assuming a 5 average on your roll.


The best tricks I've found to kinda managing that so I'm not to worried about players going over frequently, although encroachment is suppose to be a sort of stress point for the players in the game,  is to either throw down with scenario Lois' or to keep the scene count in check.

Scene counts and you!

So in any given scene, a player might gain 1 to 10 encroachment, if your scenario is about 5 scenes long, then your looking at between 5-50 encroachment.


The Scenario Armageddon's Youths from the core rules book, has abut 14 scenes (not counting post climax scenes) in it, meaning, a potential for 14-140 encroachment! Now mind you in that scenario, many players have the options to sit out scenes entirely, nothing is saying that your players have to be in a given scene, and that is a great way for a player with concerns to sit it out.


Obviously if your not concerned with campaign length and are mostly running an episodic game, then really don't worry about the scene count, in that situation the occasional player death is expected, and a rotating cast keeps the game fresh.


On the other hand, if your more aiming for a cohesive story, consider keeping the scene counts down to maybe 5 to 6 per player, that way they can still throw down with powers allot.

Even Superman Needed Lois

Do not be afraid to throw down a scenario Lois or 3, each Lois effectively raises the "Safe" encroachment levels of a scenario by 5 or so each. Keep in mind that even if they fail to keep around the safe level, there's a second "unsafe level" that's 10 over 100 for every Lois.


And honestly, Lois' can be tied to anything, a sense of Justice beyond compare for example, or another Player that there hitting it off with that particular session. Heck consider even giving them a Lois or two past what you think you need them to have "Just in case" or so the players can have something to burn off for a Titus. The players themselves can suggest Lois’ and for gods sake, let them. it takes some of the load off of you, and makes the players more involved in that aspect of the meta-game.

Last Thoughts

Another article I'm going to write is going to expand on  a comment I said in the session 2 post while I, well ranted about Episodic vs Serialized story telling about Lois’ and making them to good to burn in another post.

But yeah keeping a party alive really does come down to sort of managing encroachment. there are other ways to manage encroachment such as E-Lois' but I'm not going to get into that right now.