Montages

Montages

Montages

A montage compresses downtime into a brief scene where each crew member gets one task — a moment of focus to pursue their own goals before the next scene begins. Time passes. For example, stopping for the night on a journey, or exploring a new port.

Tasks

• Describe what you're doing and how — this usually clarifies any requirements
  • Only roll if the task is difficult, dangerous, or dramatic — one roll is enough
  • Some tasks need a specific requirement (place or resource) before they can be attempted
  • Gain advantage by working with a crewmate, but you can't help in two places at once
• Exploration - Split up to cover more ground. E.g. Talk to NPCs for local knowledge, or scout routes for further exploration.
  • Many explorations need no roll — Vault/Wavewalk for movement, Sway for social, language skills for cultural detail
  • If exploration leads into a scene, pause and resume when everyone's together
• Acquisition - Gain resources during downtime (trading, scavenging, fishing, hunting, gathering, theft, rumours). Uses the resource roll table (p.48).
• Recovery - Healing, repairing, relaxing. Uses the recovery roll table (p.62).
• Creation - Combine resources to create a temporary aspect (name + track + ability). Mark the track each use — when fully marked, the aspect is gone permanently. Usually applies to one crewmember. Uses the creation roll table (p.63).
  • Agree the benefit with the Firefly before rolling — outcomes are freeform.

Projects

Multi-stage tasks spanning several montages. Agree scope with the Firefly — they set a project track, noted on your character sheet. Spend a task slot to work on a project instead of a normal task.

Mark the track via:

• Time — study/practice/hard graft (not all tracks allow this)
• Rolls — roll as a normal action
• Resources — spend resources to advance
• Aid — others contribute skills or expertise

Longer Montages

Usually one task per montage. Take 2–3 tasks when:

• The crew is waiting idle for a particular event
• Extended downtime (e.g. leafless-month hunker-down in a campaign)
• Best run at end of a session — gives the Firefly time to plan follow-up scenes.

Wildsea, page 58-65