War of the Burning Sky – Scouring of Gate Pass detailed impressions (spoilers)

[Morrus]

For example, the random series of events that occur while moving through the city early in the adventure provide an interactive (instead of narrative) way to establish the atmosphere of the city under attack. As for the weasel... well, if I used xp, I'd award it for analyzing the situation and deliberately deciding to skip the encounter.

I think the important thing to realise here is that these encounters take up five minutes of your game at most. In my campaign they worked out really well to quickly portray the "city under siege" environment, but if you don't like them - WotBS is a campaign which does not hold you by the hand. A WotC adventure might lead you from room to room or encounter to encounter; we try provide enough information for you to adapt and adopt.

We've never made a secret of the fact that this series is for experienced DMs. Our goal is to create a story, but in a way which a DM can improvise, adapt and explore to his/her desire. Thus that series of encounters is clearly not plot-critical; it's merely a scene-setting series. If it's not to your taste (and there's no way it can be to everyone's taste - as it happens, it was to mine), then it's structured in a way that a DM can do whatever he likes.

There are options to simply narrate the atmosphere if you prefer. But it's structured in a way that you can easily deviate.

You'll find this repeated all the way thorugh the series. We're never going to lead you from room to room and encounter to encounter. We trust you to take your game to the next level and to use the information and ideas to run the game you like, not the game we like.

 

[Skyscraper]

I thank everyone for their input. I realize that some DMs had the same concerns as I have but the experience appears to be that the game is fun to play out notwithstanding those issues. Convincing.

Sky

 

[urbanfractal]

Keep in mind that these vastly different and perhaps kitch/extravagant/bizzare/etc encounters are given for a specific purpose. And I am not telling it to you.

No, just pulling your leg.

In my opinion it shows how much common people cling to their routine normal lives, even when chaos errupts. Especially the dire weasel encounter is a perfect example of snobbish attitude. At first the merchant asks or even orders the group to save his prrrreeeeciousssss from certain death, wile wyvern drop WWII-like bombs to the city. Probably he knows a couple of the City Council members that have agreed to letting the Inquisition in, so he doesn't care much for collateral damage. Right after the rescue, he pretends to be all broken etc and insults the characters that ask for a reward for their troouble.

I think all of it is a qute realistic scenario of someone who is wealthier than avarage in a small society and is used to boss everyone around, stingy as hell, etc.

 

[Skyscraper]

I think all of it is a qute realistic scenario of someone who is wealthier than avarage in a small society and is used to boss everyone around, stingy as hell, etc.

But the scenario gives XP for helping out this stingy, short-sighted individual while lives of people are at stake? This is suggestive that doing so is "the right" course of action and I think it makes little sense, although you can probably find some reason for that also.

It's always possible to figure out a reason to explain anything written in a scenario and it's always possible for a game to turn out great whatever the base product you have.

In this case, although I accept many of the convincing arguments set out in this thread and I now plan to run this adventure starting 10 days from now, I think that some of the encounters are less interesting or make little sense. I'm also sure that some DMs will find them to be to their liking, which is fine, and will make them look appropriate in their game. Me, I don't like having to resort to mental acrobatics to convince myself that some far-fetched encounter makes sense in an adventure, and if I don't believe it, my players won't, so I'd rather simply drop those encounters. It's not that little things like the weasel don't matter and that life isn't about little things; it's that heroic fantasy where players wield power to change the world doesn't intermesh with weasel pet saving, in my game. Personal preference.

Edit: In the end, this thread turns out a bit like my initial reading of the adventure: too much focus on the weasel, not enough on the big picture. Heh.

Sky

 

[Marius Delphus]

Just because the PCs solved a problem (and therefore got XP) doesn't mean it was the "right" problem to solve, or that it was even necessarily a good idea. If it still troubles you, take a Magic Marker to your printout, cross the encounter out, and don't even present the PCs with it. Have the PCs save some citizens from a collapsing (possibly burning) building instead. Or maybe present them with the encounter but give them XP for snubbing the selfish prat for the greater good. As with all published adventures, you have to make sure it's tailored to your group.

 

[Gort]

Just because the PCs solved a problem (and therefore got XP) doesn't mean it was the "right" problem to solve, or that it was even necessarily a good idea. If it still troubles you, take a Magic Marker to your printout, cross the encounter out, and don't even present the PCs with it. Have the PCs save some citizens from a collapsing (possibly burning) building instead. Or maybe present them with the encounter but give them XP for snubbing the selfish prat for the greater good. As with all published adventures, you have to make sure it's tailored to your group.

Agreed. I'd give them XP if all they did was yell, "Find your ferret?! Don't you know there's a war on?" You could even make a skill challenge of it - "Convince this idiot that he has more pressing matters than finding a pet right now".

 

[Blackbrrd]

Skyscraper: It would be really interesting to have your feedback after DM-ing this module.

One thing I am wondering - is anybody running the skill challenges as written? I am usually winging about half of it, sometimes not bothering with skill checks if somebody has some clever solutions in character.

I like the idea with the skill challenges and they give me a lot of inspiration, but I usually run them a LOT looser than I run combat. For me, the skill challenges are about role playing, not roll playing.

Combats on the other hand are for me more like tactical board games - which I and my players enjoy. Most board game players don't enjoy rules that change while playing, so I house-rule as little as possible. This makes it much more satisfying for the players when they win a fight - they know I tried my best to kill their characters within the limits of my monsters/npcs.

 

[Morrus]

One thing I am wondering - is anybody running the skill challenges as written?

I, for one, have never run a skill challenge as written. I realise WotC keeps wrting articles telling us "don't hold it that way" (oh, wait, that was Steve Jobs), but I have never thought Skill Challenges to be a good mechanic; and explanations as to how we're doing it wrong don't solve the issue.

We include them because we have to. I'd rather not have them at all and devise interesting skill-based custom encounters, each one structured completely differently, but we'd get shouted at if we did that for not following convention.

My advice to those who subscribe to my school of tought is to just use them as a general situation-advice guideline and just wing it according to how much your players are enjoying it. I've extended short skill challenges into two-hour long skill-based encounters on the fly and ignored skill chanllenges in favour of a single skill check depending on how I read my players at the time.

I personally think skill challenges in the core rules should be simply replaced with a chapter on advice how to use skills to make encounters more interesting.

 

[Gort]

Agreed. I hate skill challenges because they just seem so artificial. A single roll should suffice for most things.

Why does, "I try to sneak past the guard" or, "I try to convince the baron" have to involve fifteen seperate dice rolls? Perhaps they were trying to mitigate the effect one bad D20 roll might have on an important skill check, but in that case why not give them a +5 bonus to the check and have them roll a D10 instead of a D20? Or something like that that doesn't require vast amounts of dice rolling and spurious rubbish from players justifying using the History skill to shoe a horse.

 

[Morrus]

Agreed. I hate skill challenges because they just seem so artificial. A single roll should suffice for most things.

Why does, "I try to sneak past the guard" or, "I try to convince the baron" have to involve fifteen seperate dice rolls? Perhaps they were trying to mitigate the effect one bad D20 roll might have on an important skill check, but in that case why not give them a +5 bonus to the check and have them roll a D10 instead of a D20? Or something like that that doesn't require vast amounts of dice rolling and spurious rubbish from players justifying using the History skill to shoe a horse.

Well, if your players are into the encounter, then it's fine to make it an extended thing. It's all about reading your players' enjoyment.

I've had buying a single meal take 45 minutes, and I've had 500-mile journeys take 3 seconds. It's all about mood, interest, lucky spontaneous bits of DM roleplaying which really hook your players, etc.

There's no rule here.