gnarlygninja
Hero
Expecting my players to learn a system might be hoping for too much lol
Draw Steel General Thread [+]
- Thread starter overgeeked
- Start date
Aldarc
Legend
And then did it all again.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
Some people can find the comedy is OSR/NSR games. I’m certainly one of them. I don’t mind throwing pawns away just to see what would happen. Especially if I think it’ll be funny.
gnarlygninja
Hero
The group did not die fighting the Arixx, but it was only because of some very lucky rolls and the fact that in every instance where I could have been mean it would have meant killing the Fury first. And I didn't want to kill that character, because the player is uncharacteristically focused in this game, and was the only one who suggested they rest.
Tactician player continues to not quite understand how Parry works, and gets annoyed that the "You can shift 1" doesn't let him completely mitigate the attack but the Conduit at least realized praying when you have 2 stamina, are bleeding, and already have a ton of Piety is a bad idea.
Tactician player continues to not quite understand how Parry works, and gets annoyed that the "You can shift 1" doesn't let him completely mitigate the attack but the Conduit at least realized praying when you have 2 stamina, are bleeding, and already have a ton of Piety is a bad idea.
CommodoreKong
Adventurer
I must say I’m looking forward to the Arixx fight when my group gets there in our game. I want to see how they handle a solo monster.
gnarlygninja
Hero
Good luck! I kept forgetting until the very last round that it's range was Melee 2.
AdmundfortGeographer
Getting lost in fantasy maps
I’m still not getting the flow of negotiations. Only been the 2nd though and I still feel clumsy. My players are also clumsy role players themselves.
Regardless, last time the heroes entered the mage tower with about half recoveries. Then they got wrecked by the first tower’s encounter. So tonight I was afraid they were going to TPK with the remaining encounters and no way to escape and do a respite. But they wisely opted for negotiation at the last combat when two characters had 1 recovery left and the other two were depleted.
While I’m a big fan of the tutorial aspect of part 1 of The Delian Tomb, it feels like the organization of the Part 2 sandbox in Broadhurst is in need of critical improvements that would match the organizing of Part 1. Maybe even a diagram?
Regardless, last time the heroes entered the mage tower with about half recoveries. Then they got wrecked by the first tower’s encounter. So tonight I was afraid they were going to TPK with the remaining encounters and no way to escape and do a respite. But they wisely opted for negotiation at the last combat when two characters had 1 recovery left and the other two were depleted.
While I’m a big fan of the tutorial aspect of part 1 of The Delian Tomb, it feels like the organization of the Part 2 sandbox in Broadhurst is in need of critical improvements that would match the organizing of Part 1. Maybe even a diagram?
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I ran my first one last Sunday and we kinda eased into it but got the hang going pretty quickly. I did have to double/triple read some of the stuff in the full chapter and still missed a little!
A couple things I did:
- Reminded the players they can just ask what somebody wants and if it's not hidden for some reason, they'll probably get told! Can't negotiate without starting positions after all.
- Offered the players a chance to try and suss out motivations through free-form skill use that makes sense (eg: eavesdropping on some guards, Reading a Person to see how they react to stuff, whatever). Basically the PR+Int/Reason/Pres they suggest, but expanding that to the area or context in the moment. I think this is more helpful when the party didn't know they were walking into a Negotiation.
- Used the NPC to push the players a bit in the back and forth to sharpen their argument, including like body language and stuff before prompting for a roll.
This made me think of the old World of Darkness games, where you'd put motivations on your character sheet (there was probably some high-faluting term for them I can't remember). The thing was that you'd have two of them: Nature and Demeanor. Demeanor was what you presented as, and Nature was what you really wanted deep inside.
This could easily be translated to NPC motivations in Draw Steel, where they would have one public motivation and one secret. Using the example negotiation on page 290, Zola starts the formal negotiation with "The Clock has sacrificed much against Saxton. Why should we risk more to help? No one was here to help us months ago when we stood up to tyranny." She's talking about risk, so it's pretty clear that she cares about the safety of her organization: that's the Protection motivation. But her Benevolence motivation might be harder to discern, without insider information about generous sharing of prizes taken. You could do the same for pitfalls: she might be curt and straight to the point when she meets the PCs, and turning down offers of wine and other pleasantries, making it clear that she's all business and doesn't care for that kind of thing (pitfall: Revelry). But her independent streak and refusal to bow down to anyone else (pitfall: Higher Authority) might require some research.
