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Actual play examples - balance between fiction and mechanics
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<blockquote data-quote="Krensky" data-source="post: 5464256" data-attributes="member: 30936"><p>That it was a module (rather then a book of encounters or something else) wasn't clear. In hindsight, it is, but that's always the case. Of course, I often find modules don't make much sense outside of their own weird set of rules. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Not really. It's a more immediate sort of pacing. If it takes too long, one of three things will happen: </p><p></p><p>The player characters will all die. - This is a problem because it's hard to have the whole party Cheat Death (also a mechanic) without resorting to really cheesy explanations. Granted, if it was a Dramatic Scene, that's one thing, but from what you're saying there's nothing there that justifies that.</p><p></p><p>The players will get really bored and scrape up the Action Dice to buy a Flash-Forward, skipping over the entire encounter. Forfeiting the rewards, but also escaping and getting the boredom over with.</p><p></p><p>The players will tell me its stupid and leave the game.</p><p></p><p>So I'm literally talking about how many rounds I think the players will tolerate balanced against how few rounds it will take for the appropriate dramatic tension. A good bit of this is predicated on that the encounter isn't working right (the PCs are walking all over the NPC because I designed it wrong or it's slaughtering them, because I designed it wrong) and I, for whatever reason, can't adjust the NPC on the fly or fudge it.</p><p></p><p>Granted, since they're not important scenes I probably would just pull the stats for a grizzly bear out for the first and a Water Elemental IV for the second, spec them to the party's Threat Level and run them as Special NPCs so they can stand up to a whole party with out much tweaking. The bear's an average threat, so the party shouldn't have much problem with it but it should have a good lick or two. The Elemental is at the low end of being a serious threat, so they'll have to pull some good tricks and work together, but should still come through. Bloodied and battered, but intact.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Krensky, post: 5464256, member: 30936"] That it was a module (rather then a book of encounters or something else) wasn't clear. In hindsight, it is, but that's always the case. Of course, I often find modules don't make much sense outside of their own weird set of rules. Not really. It's a more immediate sort of pacing. If it takes too long, one of three things will happen: The player characters will all die. - This is a problem because it's hard to have the whole party Cheat Death (also a mechanic) without resorting to really cheesy explanations. Granted, if it was a Dramatic Scene, that's one thing, but from what you're saying there's nothing there that justifies that. The players will get really bored and scrape up the Action Dice to buy a Flash-Forward, skipping over the entire encounter. Forfeiting the rewards, but also escaping and getting the boredom over with. The players will tell me its stupid and leave the game. So I'm literally talking about how many rounds I think the players will tolerate balanced against how few rounds it will take for the appropriate dramatic tension. A good bit of this is predicated on that the encounter isn't working right (the PCs are walking all over the NPC because I designed it wrong or it's slaughtering them, because I designed it wrong) and I, for whatever reason, can't adjust the NPC on the fly or fudge it. Granted, since they're not important scenes I probably would just pull the stats for a grizzly bear out for the first and a Water Elemental IV for the second, spec them to the party's Threat Level and run them as Special NPCs so they can stand up to a whole party with out much tweaking. The bear's an average threat, so the party shouldn't have much problem with it but it should have a good lick or two. The Elemental is at the low end of being a serious threat, so they'll have to pull some good tricks and work together, but should still come through. Bloodied and battered, but intact. [/QUOTE]
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