In this session, a poor series of rolls ended up nearly killing Simon (6/8 Lethal Damage taken) and render him unconscious the balance of the session from the moment he took it. This actually turned him into a new challenge for the party, since he required emergency medical care from the critically important mission specialist, in this case, Clark. While this seems like a non-issue, it is important to understand that this entire mission, from the time Cho stepped through the facility door, to the moment Shin left carrying Simon on his back, took something a hair under five minutes game-time, despite taking 180 minutes real time.
The practical upshot of this wound was to further complicate an already seriously problematic situation. This worked out splendidly for me, but was purely by chance; Simon was the only character to take damage from falling debris, and the expected value of the damage was much lower than what he ended up with. In this case, since the blast that took down the ceiling was something the party thought they had already disarmed, I ruled getting his was a straight EDG attribute roll, taking MoF damage. Since most of my party has at least 3 or 4 EDG, I didn't think it would be too serious; a point or two for most. Anthony just rolled exceptionally poorly.
The reason I'm bringing this up is that this was the first time the party had to deal with a real casualty that affected their operational capability; they had to move Simon, and they had to do it quick, because a naval bombardment was coming down around their ears. This was surprisingly effective in raising the tension of the session well beyond what I was expecting. I'm thinking about how I can engineer that kind of concern in the future without relying on a lucky roll and without overexposing the party to danger.
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