Event/Scenario Encounters

[Celebrim]

So, several times in my career I've tried to run non-combat event based encounters. These are the sort of things that 4e would call a 'skill challenge' and a movie would call an 'action scene'. They can be weather events, disasters of various sorts, chase scenes, or basically whatever you might do in a movie instead of or in addition to a fistfight/gunfight with the bad guys.

Basically, as the game master, you set up several things to happen. Each thing involves a certain amount of narration and then an anticipated saving throw or skill check.

In my experience, these seldom go as well as I want them to go. The tension isn't there. I don't feel I know how to pace them, and even when they go fairly well, they are still basically alot more railroady than I usually do.

Does anyone have any tips on making one of these run smoothly and keeping player's interested? How exactly do you map them out? Do you plan branching paths, or is the scene really on rails? Is the resultant map more like a tree or more like a chain were things keep folding back in on each other? Do you keep careful track of time so that events occur on tight schedule, or are the events under narrative control and happen when as soon as the last scene plays out?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

RC is thinking of Hot Pursuit, which is indeed an excellent chase mechanic. It is very well done and creates a tense, option filled scene.

Wildscape does have material for overland hazards and bringing the challenge of adventuring through various landscapes {jungle/desert/etc} into fairly easy mechanics for both the macro-skill challenge'ish scale as well as the local combat encounters. Its another excellent resource and I use it in 4e pretty much as written, even tho its a 3x book.

For the actual skill challenge mechanics, I use Stalker0's Obsideon system which uses a three round set-up. This encourages all the players to participate and come up with good ideas. I have ran the gamut from a pre-planned complex skill challenge that had a couple branch options, down to an adhoc challenge. In both cases the players choice of skills and description of what they do alter the narrative.

In a way they can be railroady, after all they tend to be "you need to accomplish X", which tends to have limited options. In a recent game we were using a published module, "Stick in the Mud" of the Chaos Scar PDFs, in which a skill challenge is presented to 'fix' a broken magical staff. There was really only a couple things the group could do per the book... specifically brace the arcane users while they attempt to manipulate the magics weave. I had to toss a couple other items in to make it less of a game of 'guess the right skill'. It turned out well and the group enjoyed the challenge.

For tension, you always need a 'something can go wrong' option that the players are aware of. In the case of the aforementioned stick, it contained a portal to the elemental plane of mud and some things were trying to come through. The 'go wrong' option would have landed them in combat after a long adventuring day. Usually this means a failed skill challenge results in combat.. but not all the time. Just something that is bad for the players goals.

Anyway, check out the Obsideon system.. .

 

[Haltherrion]

These can be problemmatic and I have a mixed track record with them myself but a few thoughts:

• Tension can be drained if the players do not feel they have any control or that they are not really threatened.
• Just as exposition can be the death of a story, a ref describing a calamity without interacting with the players can kill a session.

To turn those around, then:

• Show the event matters by having it affect things they care about, right off the bat and continuously as it unfolds.
• Execute it in stages with cycles of a small amount of referee narration followed with input from the player that effects how it unrolls.
• Setup the event over the course of some earlier sessions so that it fits seeminglessly with the game.

For example, let's say you want to do a fire storm- a wildfire that has become a raging inferno such as used to hit the US midwest in the 1800s, sometimes killing 100s or 1000s of people.

You could set the stage for this in earlier sessions during the summer where you describe drought conditions and some smaller wildfires (a fight in a small forest fire might be different at some point).

By late summer you can make it clear the drought is severe and the air is frequently smokey from many small regional fires. Let the party even investigate one if they seem inclined to intervene so you can establish that up to this point, the fires while a nuisance are nothing special.

Now the session with the firestorm. It starts with a very smokey day and higher than normal winds. The players have shown that they, like everyone else around, is used to the smoke and won't really do anything until a firestorm is upon them (much as happened to the people of Hinckley, MN when a firestorm destroyed that town and killed hundreds; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hinckley_Fire).

Distract them even with the promise of an adventure that has nothing to do with the impending event (maybe they are visiting someone to get information about this adventure, or checking out an inscription in a tomb or the like).

To this point, the session might feel like the start of any other session with some early getting gear and information together before launching into some adventure. The ref has described a few unusual things but is also doing the normal interaction with players.

Visibility drops as the smoke of the firestorm approaches, then winds part the smoke and they see fire in the forest, the entire woods on fire, flames 100 feet higher than the crowns of the trees, feel the heat.

This would be a good time to destroy something the players care about. Their own manor house in the distance, a friendly NPC in a wagon over taken by flames, the town temple on a hill outside the town. It brings it home to them and makes it clear this event is going to change things inthe campaign.

After a fairly short narrative describing this, you now ask the players, what do they do. As always, it helps to have some obvious options prepared and considered but it is good to go with the players if they take a different path. They could be among strangers and might simply just want to flee but fleeing a firestorm is hard: they have near hurricaine force winds and can move faster than a person can run. If they are good or have ties here, they will likely want to help others. Regardless, their desicions now will affect things: who or what survives, how they are perceived afterwards (heroes, villains, cowards?)

The players make their decisions, you evaluate them as appropriate to the rules in use and the game style, the firestorm progresses in repeated cycles of narration and player responses.

From here on out, it is useful ahead of time to have some idea of how you see the storm progressing. A true firestorm and other major disasters may present little opportunity for the players to really affect the overall flow of these things but it is always good to let them affect what is reasonable. Certainly at a smaller scale, their actions could save or cost many lives or structures even if they may not have the means to stop the firestorm.

It is nice to progress this as a series of short narratives from you describing what happens next with a pause for the players to make their decisions. All the while, it is nice to keep tensions up by showing the firestorm destroying most things in its path, including as events allow, more things that the players really care about.

This particular event played out at a PC's holding like his manor house near a town he cares about could be nice because there is plenty to wreck that he cares about, providing nice motivation and dramatic tension, he will care about the aftermath- how many of his tenants survive, whether his manor house does, what happens to the nearby town, and it is a major event mostly out of the players control but one that could still unfold over a fair amount of in-game time (that is, it isn't just over and done with like an earthquake).

You could do something similar with a great flood or even an invasion of barbarians or monsters of some sort.

Naturally, if you wreck the holding they have painstakingly constructed, this might cause issues but you can show the silver lining to it but having them gain stature with their overlord or community, stature that might include outright gifts or ego-stoking awards and ceremonies. And maybe the firestorm clears foliage to reveal some ruin full of treasure and adventure.

 

[buddhafrog]

IMO the lack of tension is what makes most skill challenges less exciting. What I often do, which has really made my skill challenges a lot for tense and thus pretty intense, is demand quick actions. I will count down from "5", for example, and if they haven't declared their action and rolled, then they fail the skill challenge. After the roll is made, we will determine the outcome and how this has caused the situation to advance in a thematic sense.

This generally fits many skill challenges/event scenarios -- when you're facing an avalanche or being chased through the street, your actions are determined in split seconds. It has worked well for my group as well as speeds up the game. I even use a similar method on occasion in battles where the individual monster is not a great threat but the number of continuous attacks is the threat (swarms of insects, jumping spiders, etc).

 

[steenan]

One of things that make challenges fun and exciting is the feeling that every action taken matters. That is how it works in combat - we use powers, we maneuver around the battlefield, we make tactical decisions. Each success and failure has a clearly visible consequence. When it stops being so - and the only thing that matters is removing enemy's HPs fast enough - we call it grind and mark as a thing to avoid.

That is the weakness of most skill challenges. One makes rolls and describes actions, but there is no perceivable success or loss until the whole is decided. To make it fun, the DM must take an proactive role and start to push the PCs. Let the players feel that not only the final result matters, but each situation encountered on the way. Each action, each roll, each skill choice should be a chance of gaining or losing something, not necessarily big, but significant nonetheless. This way you may lose, but still feel that you did a lot. Or win, but with a cost high enough that you doubt if it was worth it.

Of course, it will not work for each group. It requires putting what the PCs value at stake and quite a lot of people don't like it, feeling entitled to what they managed to earn in play or what they created as the character background. But many players enjoy the emotional engagement that comes from challenging not only their tactical ability, but also the relations and possessions they deem important.

I'll give a few examples to make clear what I have in mind.

Let's say that an elf ranger in the party sees wild animals as his brothers, of no less value than any sentient creature. Now, during a skill challenge of crossing the wilderness in time to stop the BBEG he encounters a wolf caught in a trap, hurt and bleeding. He may continue on his path or help the animal. Both give a success, though healing the wolf may be a harder roll. But no matter what he chooses and if he succeeds, it will be something important for him.

Another example. With the BBEG defeated and his magic disrupted, the levitating fortress the PCs are in starts to fall apart. They are running to their flying ship to get out of there. The rogue's turn comes up and you describe as through a widening crack in a wall he sees a small chamber, gold glistening in it. Will he go for the treasure, with no benefit in the skill challenge, or help the party get out in time?

Or this: The party is doing some detective work to find a traitor in the king's court. But, in questioning various people, they not only learn things about the traitor - they also learn things about other people. They uncover things somebody would rather keep secret. They discover issues some people have that they may help with later. They make friends and enemies - depending on which skills they used and how good they rolled. When a botched attempt at bluff may turn you into a bad guy in chancellor's eyes and a good approach to questioning the princess can give you not only the information, but also a night in her chamber, each individual choice and roll starts to matter.