underside dev diary #5: pvp enabled zones

across basically all superhero media but especially the darker, grittier stuff that underside is based on, a crucial part of any hero or villain team is the violent fracturing over moral faultlines, over who gets to be in charge, over whose plan to follow. but player-on-player conflict is always a tough thing to handle, and especially to encourage -- it can be hard for people to keep that stuff in-game, especially when they connect closely to their characters. something i've always found to be a useful antidote to that is guide rails--bounds sanctioned by the game that say "this is how to resolve in-character conflicts". when there's a sanctioned, designated space to explore and resolve vicious character conflicts, it makes it a lot easier to leave that behind at the table. 

in underside, this sanctioned space comes in the form of the fracture clock. whenever an in-game disagreement between characters comes up, the team's leader can put it aside for now and instead tick the fracture clock, a segmented blades in the dark-style clock that counts down to the team fracturing:

the fracture clock gets ticked whenever characters disagree on something, whenever anyone pulls rank, and also passively ticks the more friendly NPC's you've brought on board your team. every team is going to have tensions, the only difference is how quickly that tension hits a boiling point. once the team's fractured, you have to resolve the issue--whatever is happening is on hold until the character drama is sorted out.  

this also neatly serves as a fix to something introduced by underside's semi-random character creation: unlike a lot of TTRPGs, you can't necessarily all make characters who are going to be on the same page regarding the team's goals and methods. sometimes, making a team that gets along is out of your hands. fractures allow a mechanical release valve for all that in-character tension without letting your game devolve into a full-time pvp arena (unless you want that!). 

most of all, i'm fond of this mechanic because it neatly encapsulates underside's core themes -- it's a game about trauma, conflict, and how one leads to the other. & obviously it's something that maybe isn't for everyone -- but i'm a strong believer that games shouldn't be for everyone. underside is for people who want to tell stories about people who are hurt escalating and reliving and relitigating that hurt -- everyone else can (and i mean no ill-will when i say this!) play another game.