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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6186756" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>INTERLUDE - PLAYER CHALLENGES</strong></p><p></p><p>This is an idea I had come up with as a way to try to shorten the range of character levels we had going on in our campaign. At this point, we had one 19th-level PC (Cal), one 18th-level PC (Galrich), one 17th-level PC (Feron), three 16th-level PCs (Akari, Delphyne, and Telgrane), two 15th-level PCs (Chalkan and Rale), and a 12th-level PC (Thunderwolf). I thought I might be able to close the gap a bit by offering the players an opportunity for an "off-screen adventure" for their PCs to bump up some of the lower ones - basically, free XP. Rather than just arbitrarily giving out free XP, I thought I'd do it in a manner that would give the players a challenge. It would be part "Challenge of Champions" scenario and part "just how much do you want this free XP, and how much humiliation are you willing to undergo to get it?" test.</p><p></p><p>So before we ran our 73rd adventure, I gathered everyone around Dan and Vicki's kitchen table and read them the ground rules, as follows:</p><p></p><p>After that, I set up the table for Dan's Player Challenge. For the five Player Challenges, I'll post the sheet I had prepared for myself, and then let you know how each challenge went. Everyone started off sitting in Joey's seat at the kitchen table, which was directly across from where I sat. I read over the player's XP status for their PC(s) (Joey has just the one, Thunderwolf), then read the briefing and activated the timer. Once the 30 seconds were up or they had completed the challenge, I read through the possible solutions.</p><p></p><p>Here's Dan's, who was up first.</p><p></p><p>Dan spent his first two seconds of the challenge looking at me in amazement, then immediately realized I wouldn't really expect him to draw an "L" on his forehead in permanent marker, knew there must therefore be some sort of a twist, and immediately pulled over the pad of graph paper that was conveniently within reach. He drew a big "L" with a Sharpie, but then wasted time rifling in a kitchen drawer for some Scotch tape, somehow thinking he had to attach it permenently to his head. As such, he ran out of time; the timer beeped while he still had the paper sitting on the table.</p><p></p><p>Dan went and sat in the living room, I set up for Vicki's challenge, and then went and got her from Joey's bedroom. Here's what she was faced with:</p><p></p><p>Vicki had the same initial reaction as Dan had: expressing incredulity that I would actually expect her to draw on her face. She even started to tell me she didn't think she wanted to accept the challenge, then the answer struck her in mid-sentence. Instead of grabbing for the pad of graph paper like Dan had done, though, she uncapped the Sharpie and started drawing a handlebar mustache on the mirror. However, instead of making a quick mustache with two curved lines, she made a top and a bottom to each side, then spent time coloring it in. In the end, when the timer beeped, she still had the mirror sitting on the table in front of her.</p><p></p><p>We quickly found out that the marker wasn't coming off the mirror with just a paper towel, but Vicki had some type of cleaning solution that took it right off. She went to go sit in the living room by Dan while I went to go get Logan.</p><p></p><p>Here's what I had cooked up for him:</p><p></p><p>Well, what can I say? Logan <em>really</em> wanted those free XP! I don't think he wasted a single second before standing up out of the chair, cursing "You suck!" at me as he began unbuckling his belt. Dan and Vicki were both stifling laughter from the living room, and they both turned their heads away as Logan proceeded to take off his pants, fold them nicely, and place them in my hand. So he won the challenge, I asked him to put his pants back on, and he went over to sit by Dan and Vicki (who, despite their laughter, were highly impressed by his gumption). I got another good-natured "You suck!" out of him when I read him the other possible solutions and he realized he hadn't really had to strip down to his undies, but he was nonetheless glad to have gotten the free XP. He gave it to Telgrane, who he had decided to run through the upcoming adventure, so after all of the challenges were done we did a quick upgrade to Telgrane's PC stats.</p><p></p><p>In the meantime, I went to go get Jacob. Here's what I had for him:</p><p></p><p>Jacob attempted the literal handstand, and ran out of time attempting to do one. By that time, Dan had figured out the second possible solution and demonstrated it to Jacob after the timer had run out. Jacob rolled his eyes, and went to join the others in the living room.</p><p></p><p>Finally, here was Joey's challenge:</p><p></p><p>Alas, Joey took it literally, and tried sticking his tongue up high enough to touch the tip of his nose with it. I thought for sure of all five players he would be one to win for sure, because I envisioned him trying to pull his nose down lower with his fingers to try to get it in reach of his tongue, which technically would have satisfied the requirements of the challenge - but he sat on his hands while trying to maneuver his tongue into place! Jacob demonstrated the solution after the timer had beeped, and it still took Joey a while to "get" the trick, as he was so hung up on the literal solution.</p><p></p><p>So, the only end result was that Telgrane bumped up to 17th level. We went immediately into the adventure that I had prepared for that day's session. However, at the end of the session as I was packing up my D&D gear to head back home, I decided to give both Dan and Vicki 1,000 free XP to the character of their choice, as they had both figured out the solution to their respective challenges, even if they didn't have enough time to fully implement them. Dan gave his XP to Rale, and Vicki gave hers to Delphyne - in both cases, the lower-level of their two PCs.</p><p></p><p>This was a fun little diversion, and all in all it didn't eat up too much of our gaming time for the day. However, I explained that I'd never be able to do anything like this again, since now they all knew that there would be a "trick" involved in the solution of whatever I threw at them. And we also realized that this campaign was winding down; we'd already decided that once everybody - or nearly everybody - was 20th level, we'd quit this campaign and start up a new one, set in the same universe but clock-advanced 20 years, and everyone would start out as new 1st-level PCs in the Kingdom of Kordovia, ruled for the past 20 years by King Galrich. With everybody running a single PC, I likely won't have such a level discrepancy between the PCs (unless we run into multiple deaths, where the PCs come back a level lower than where they had started), so the need for such a set of Player Challenges won't likely be necessary.</p><p></p><p>But you never know. I might find a way to do something similar in the future, if I change it up enough.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6186756, member: 508"] [b]INTERLUDE - PLAYER CHALLENGES[/b] This is an idea I had come up with as a way to try to shorten the range of character levels we had going on in our campaign. At this point, we had one 19th-level PC (Cal), one 18th-level PC (Galrich), one 17th-level PC (Feron), three 16th-level PCs (Akari, Delphyne, and Telgrane), two 15th-level PCs (Chalkan and Rale), and a 12th-level PC (Thunderwolf). I thought I might be able to close the gap a bit by offering the players an opportunity for an "off-screen adventure" for their PCs to bump up some of the lower ones - basically, free XP. Rather than just arbitrarily giving out free XP, I thought I'd do it in a manner that would give the players a challenge. It would be part "Challenge of Champions" scenario and part "just how much do you want this free XP, and how much humiliation are you willing to undergo to get it?" test. So before we ran our 73rd adventure, I gathered everyone around Dan and Vicki's kitchen table and read them the ground rules, as follows: After that, I set up the table for Dan's Player Challenge. For the five Player Challenges, I'll post the sheet I had prepared for myself, and then let you know how each challenge went. Everyone started off sitting in Joey's seat at the kitchen table, which was directly across from where I sat. I read over the player's XP status for their PC(s) (Joey has just the one, Thunderwolf), then read the briefing and activated the timer. Once the 30 seconds were up or they had completed the challenge, I read through the possible solutions. Here's Dan's, who was up first. Dan spent his first two seconds of the challenge looking at me in amazement, then immediately realized I wouldn't really expect him to draw an "L" on his forehead in permanent marker, knew there must therefore be some sort of a twist, and immediately pulled over the pad of graph paper that was conveniently within reach. He drew a big "L" with a Sharpie, but then wasted time rifling in a kitchen drawer for some Scotch tape, somehow thinking he had to attach it permenently to his head. As such, he ran out of time; the timer beeped while he still had the paper sitting on the table. Dan went and sat in the living room, I set up for Vicki's challenge, and then went and got her from Joey's bedroom. Here's what she was faced with: Vicki had the same initial reaction as Dan had: expressing incredulity that I would actually expect her to draw on her face. She even started to tell me she didn't think she wanted to accept the challenge, then the answer struck her in mid-sentence. Instead of grabbing for the pad of graph paper like Dan had done, though, she uncapped the Sharpie and started drawing a handlebar mustache on the mirror. However, instead of making a quick mustache with two curved lines, she made a top and a bottom to each side, then spent time coloring it in. In the end, when the timer beeped, she still had the mirror sitting on the table in front of her. We quickly found out that the marker wasn't coming off the mirror with just a paper towel, but Vicki had some type of cleaning solution that took it right off. She went to go sit in the living room by Dan while I went to go get Logan. Here's what I had cooked up for him: Well, what can I say? Logan [i]really[/i] wanted those free XP! I don't think he wasted a single second before standing up out of the chair, cursing "You suck!" at me as he began unbuckling his belt. Dan and Vicki were both stifling laughter from the living room, and they both turned their heads away as Logan proceeded to take off his pants, fold them nicely, and place them in my hand. So he won the challenge, I asked him to put his pants back on, and he went over to sit by Dan and Vicki (who, despite their laughter, were highly impressed by his gumption). I got another good-natured "You suck!" out of him when I read him the other possible solutions and he realized he hadn't really had to strip down to his undies, but he was nonetheless glad to have gotten the free XP. He gave it to Telgrane, who he had decided to run through the upcoming adventure, so after all of the challenges were done we did a quick upgrade to Telgrane's PC stats. In the meantime, I went to go get Jacob. Here's what I had for him: Jacob attempted the literal handstand, and ran out of time attempting to do one. By that time, Dan had figured out the second possible solution and demonstrated it to Jacob after the timer had run out. Jacob rolled his eyes, and went to join the others in the living room. Finally, here was Joey's challenge: Alas, Joey took it literally, and tried sticking his tongue up high enough to touch the tip of his nose with it. I thought for sure of all five players he would be one to win for sure, because I envisioned him trying to pull his nose down lower with his fingers to try to get it in reach of his tongue, which technically would have satisfied the requirements of the challenge - but he sat on his hands while trying to maneuver his tongue into place! Jacob demonstrated the solution after the timer had beeped, and it still took Joey a while to "get" the trick, as he was so hung up on the literal solution. So, the only end result was that Telgrane bumped up to 17th level. We went immediately into the adventure that I had prepared for that day's session. However, at the end of the session as I was packing up my D&D gear to head back home, I decided to give both Dan and Vicki 1,000 free XP to the character of their choice, as they had both figured out the solution to their respective challenges, even if they didn't have enough time to fully implement them. Dan gave his XP to Rale, and Vicki gave hers to Delphyne - in both cases, the lower-level of their two PCs. This was a fun little diversion, and all in all it didn't eat up too much of our gaming time for the day. However, I explained that I'd never be able to do anything like this again, since now they all knew that there would be a "trick" involved in the solution of whatever I threw at them. And we also realized that this campaign was winding down; we'd already decided that once everybody - or nearly everybody - was 20th level, we'd quit this campaign and start up a new one, set in the same universe but clock-advanced 20 years, and everyone would start out as new 1st-level PCs in the Kingdom of Kordovia, ruled for the past 20 years by King Galrich. With everybody running a single PC, I likely won't have such a level discrepancy between the PCs (unless we run into multiple deaths, where the PCs come back a level lower than where they had started), so the need for such a set of Player Challenges won't likely be necessary. But you never know. I might find a way to do something similar in the future, if I change it up enough. [/QUOTE]
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