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My house-rules for extreme weather and sleeping in armor
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<blockquote data-quote="machineelf" data-source="post: 7032313" data-attributes="member: 6774924"><p>You've hit on something that's very important in my games. In the same way that it's not a good idea to call for a skill check in a situation where a character has no chance to fail, I also think calling for travel, forage, navigate, and survive weather checks, and even monster encounter checks, are pointless at certain times in the campaign when the characters are merely traveling from one region to the next. My philosophy is that we are telling a great story along with our players. Are their characters' storiesy going to end with them dying along the road because they failed too many weather checks, or foraging checks, or even lost in a single travel monster encounter? </p><p></p><p>To me that would be silly. And so those checks just become what I call pointless "accounting." They become monotonous, and offer no real benefit to the story. So when I DM, there are times when I essentially pull back our focus, narratively speaking, from the campaign and summarize some travel until they get to the next region of the world they will continue their story in. There, in the new region, if they are traveling through the peaks of cold-blasted mountains, or on top of a frigid glacier, or in the middle of a scorching desert, I will have them deal with the elements and travel again, and start making survival checks, and navigation checks, and whatnot. Basically when every day, or even every hour, of travel counts in the story, then those checks become meaningful. I only have them make checks when failure has real consequences to their story.</p><p></p><p>So what you did in your campaign I think is exactly right. I like the idea of having them deal with the environment in the beginning, because Dark Sun is so much about the environment and you're establishing the setting. But once their characters have become used to what the environment is like, don't worry about the "accounting" of all those various checks unless something changes or they are in a place in the story where those checks become meaningful again and failing them has real consequences.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="machineelf, post: 7032313, member: 6774924"] You've hit on something that's very important in my games. In the same way that it's not a good idea to call for a skill check in a situation where a character has no chance to fail, I also think calling for travel, forage, navigate, and survive weather checks, and even monster encounter checks, are pointless at certain times in the campaign when the characters are merely traveling from one region to the next. My philosophy is that we are telling a great story along with our players. Are their characters' storiesy going to end with them dying along the road because they failed too many weather checks, or foraging checks, or even lost in a single travel monster encounter? To me that would be silly. And so those checks just become what I call pointless "accounting." They become monotonous, and offer no real benefit to the story. So when I DM, there are times when I essentially pull back our focus, narratively speaking, from the campaign and summarize some travel until they get to the next region of the world they will continue their story in. There, in the new region, if they are traveling through the peaks of cold-blasted mountains, or on top of a frigid glacier, or in the middle of a scorching desert, I will have them deal with the elements and travel again, and start making survival checks, and navigation checks, and whatnot. Basically when every day, or even every hour, of travel counts in the story, then those checks become meaningful. I only have them make checks when failure has real consequences to their story. So what you did in your campaign I think is exactly right. I like the idea of having them deal with the environment in the beginning, because Dark Sun is so much about the environment and you're establishing the setting. But once their characters have become used to what the environment is like, don't worry about the "accounting" of all those various checks unless something changes or they are in a place in the story where those checks become meaningful again and failing them has real consequences. [/QUOTE]
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