Commentary thread for that “Describe your game in five words” thread.

[overgeeked]

“Player caught cheating; rage quit.”

Yep. A player decided to give himself a few hundred extra gold at character creation and when I asked about it he rage quit. At least this one was between sessions.

 

[overgeeked]

"Talk to each other."

"No."

(Sigh.)

There is a group in my West Marches game that has two "leaders", re: people who want to get their way but don't want to put in any effort in getting the rest of the group (much less each other) to do the thing. So I have one player saying "let's go left", another player saying "let's go right", and all of them looking at me to jump in and decide for them. Sorry, no. You all have to work it out. If you want to convince the rest of the group to follow you, then you have to, you know, actually convince the rest of the group to follow you.

 

[glass]

I feel like these two in particular could do with a little further explanation:

No combat due to pickaxe.

¹⁷/₁₉ths of the party survived!

 

[Jack Daniel]

I feel like these two in particular could do with a little further explanation:

17/19ths of the party survived!

Well it's really no mystery. There were nineteen party members exploring the ground floor of a Chaotic Evil temple — dungeon level A1, the Palatial Fortress of the Church of Bitter Doom — and only two of them died. (Given this party's track-record, that's actually pretty stellar.) Poor Tommy Twofinger the halfling burglar and one of the party's 0-level men-at-arms (a cowardly, stuttering youth by the name of Lerm who aspired to someday give up mercenary work and become a chef) got ganked by gnolls in round 1 when the monsters won the initiative.

Well, actually it was rather the fault of Oulek Gro-Grak, a boisterous NPC orc warrior who decided to smash a sealed ceramic urn full of copper coins in a seemingly-deserted goblin-barracks, little knowing that all the goblins and hobgoblins and gnolls lurking in nearby chambers would hear this and come running with weapons drawn.

All's well that ends well, though: despite very nearly being waylaid by over two-dozen territorial berserkers on the way back to the village, the party was able to bring Tommy and Lerm's battered corpses back to the Starshrine of Nereus Oceanus and have them resurrected by the shrine-priest (1,500 silver pieces vanishing into the aether as a sacrifice to the divinities for bringing the two hapless mortals back). But the mysterious Starshrines of Shade Isle (rumor has it that there are seven in total, one for each of the major gods) can only revive a dead soul once per individual per shrine, so Tommy and Lerm don't have any more second chances until the party explores more of the Isle and discovers the shrines dedicated to the other deities…

 

[glass]

Well it's really no mystery. There were nineteen party members exploring the ground floor of a Chaotic Evil temple

In that case, the only mystery is how 19 party members is at all manageable at the table! I assume there are not 19+GM actual players? Do the players play multiple characters? Or are you counting followers/hireling/henchpeople as "party members" (which I guess amounts to much the same thing)?

_
glass.

 

[Jack Daniel]

In that case, the only mystery is how 19 party members is at all manageable at the table! I assume there are not 19+GM actual players? Do the players play multiple characters? Or are you counting followers/hireling/henchpeople as "party members" (which I guess amounts to much the same thing)?

Yes, the total count includes NPCs. Unusual for a session, I had five of my regular players cancel shortly before game-time, so there were only two players present that day. Which meant that two player characters (a 2nd level fighter and a 1st level hobbit) were leading the expedition. They had with them five NPC allies (two more 1st level hobbits, a 1st level orc, a 1st level elf, and a 1st level magic-user); five 0-level NPC followers (three men-at-arms, one porter, and one torchbearer); and they were joining forces with a seven-member rival adventuring party (all 1st- or 0-levels: 1 orc, 1 elf, 1 dwarf, 1 hobbit, 1 thief, 2 men-at-arms).

 

[AverageMojito]

Organic skill challenges are awesome.

Can you tell us a bit about the skill challenges?

 

[overgeeked]

Can you tell us a bit about the skill challenges?

Sure. What do you want to know?

 

[AverageMojito]

Sure. What do you want to know?

I noticed you used the word organic. If you care to give us an example from the session as opposed to another you've seen that felt, well, not organic.

I like the concept and often find myself in trouble when I try to create "skill challenges" for my personal games. So, seeing successful ones is always nice.

 

[overgeeked]

I noticed you used the word organic. If you care to give us an example from the session as opposed to another you've seen that felt, well, not organic.

I like the concept and often find myself in trouble when I try to create "skill challenges" for my personal games. So, seeing successful ones is always nice.

Gotcha. The skill challenge in question is from a 5E West Marches game I'm running. One of the groups randomly decided to set an ambush, so I used my incredibly loose skill challenge house rules for that. The more they described doing things (sometimes skill checks sometimes not) to push the outcome in their favor, the better the checks (when made), the more positive the outcome when they finally sprang the ambush. I called it organic because the players just decided to set an ambush and started describing all the stuff they wanted to do, adding all the details they thought were relevant, with barely a word from me. As they went I asked them to make a few rolls. To me, that's organic. As opposed to me writing up a whole thing about this or that skill working or not working for this kind of prolonged, multiple roll event and slapping that framework into the game. Then basically me pushing a skill challenge on the group. I'm not a fan of that.

For the longest time I was stuck on grokking skill challenges and how to use them in games. What finally flipped the switch was to stop thinking about the rules, just think about the narrative. That's all that matters. Fiction first, rules a distant second...if at all. Is it something that's so easy or obvious that it should be automatic? Then there's no roll. Is it something that can be done in one roll? Then it's not a skill challenge. Is it something that would logically require several rolls over a longer time line? Then it's a skill challenge. Is it a one-sided thing, like setting an ambush? Then the rolls are for how well it's set up and how good the outcome will eventually be. Is it a moving, dynamic thing, like a chase through city streets? Then the rolls on both sides move the sides closer to their goals.

You're having a chase through the streets. The PC's goal is to catch someone who's running away and they have a slight head start. The NPC's goal is to get away. Okay...what are you (the PCs) doing? Describe it. They describe their actions and give me details while I describe the NPC's actions and give details like knocking over an apple cart or cutting through an alley. If the check is good, it helps get them closer to their target (reduce the number of successes required to achieve their goal). If the check is bad, it pushes the target further away (increases the number of successes required to achieve their goal).