What do you do when you're backed into a corner and the only option is to jump out the 80 story window? You simply declare that was always the plan, because that corner was where you hid your parachutes.
At any point in play, you can declare you did something, or tried to do something, in the past. The only really caveat is you cannot cause, or even possibly cause, a paradox with events that have already been narrated, which means you may not be allowed to do certain things. I.e, you can't roll for something that might sprain your ankle yesterday if you haven't been running around with a sprained ankle for the session so far. Or you can't go confront someone yesterday who didn't recognize you today...unless you're going to bribe them into being in on the entire con and that's why they 'didn't recognize you' today.
The GM will decide how much stress it's going to take. This is a narrative considerations, remember, this is an episode of TV. There is by necessity some level of give and take with the GM on this. So there are two questions.
- How much does it make sense that anyone would have known to do that? How did you know to hide the parachutes there as opposed to literally anywhere else? How did you even know the situation where you need them would arise?
- Due to time and it totally destroying the flow of the game, it doesn't make sense to roleplay out an entire prior 10 minute job in the middle of the current job just to get things where they need to be. So you can just declare 'I already got most of the way up this building and just need to sneak these parachutes into that corner and hide them'. And the question is 'How hard would that skipped part be?'
| Stress | Unpredictability | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Any planning would have included this. | No problem at all |
| 1 | It's not impossible for you to guess this | Doable with your skills |
| 2 | This is Batman levels of prep. | Really difficult |
The cost is whichever is higher
Basically, the way this works is, the more the flashback looks like a plothole, or something that causes the audience to question things, the more stress it costs. Which in turn means the more you can explain it to the GM and everyone else's satisfaction, the less it's going to cost.
You can also trade off and pay more stress to have already done the thing. You don't flashback to sneaking in and hiding the parachute, which would make you have to roll to Sneak. You flashback to having hid the parachute. You already did the thing. If you do that, and the thing was already difficult, you are now past 'really difficult' into 'practically impossible', and the GM is allowed to charge you 3 stress.
If you do have to roll, all the normal rules for rolling do apply. You can ask for assistance, you can push yourself, you can do a devil's bargain. Everyone exists in the flashback, even other players, who also can do things if they are with you.
Uniquely, within a flashback, if you took Stress for the flashback, that Stress then can be used to reduce the Stress cost of something in the flashback. I.e., if the Flashback gave you one Stress, and you end up having to do a Resistance roll, you'd take one less stress. Or if you were Assisting a Roll in the present.