Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="MonkeyBoy" data-source="post: 158330" data-attributes="member: 1229">Re: In addition...Mmmm.I always treat the &quot;investigation skills&quot; as crutches.By that I mean this; your average person can walk, right? But sometimes, they will be in a position where a crutch will help them (twisted ankle, whatever). Assume your average person can &quot;investigate&quot;, but that on occaision they will get benefit from their &quot;crutches&quot;:Make all / plenty of your info findable without ANY rolls; if Hengist knows X, make sure that any PC who treats Hengist &quot;right&quot;, and asks can find out the info. (&quot;right&quot; can vary from buying a drink, making friends with through to threats) Be open to the player simply saying &quot;Right, Hengist - gimme the facts, or its teeth-smashing time!&quot; (and you not saying &quot;make an intimidate roll&quot;) Its also a case of making the appropriate method of interaction pay off; Its no use deciding that Hengist must be intimidated and then setting the DC at 35! (you just made that secret door un-findable, kind of like a 1st edition party with no elf in most of those modules...) If Hengist should be intimidated, make him timid - both easy to intimidate, and also giving a clue as to how to get around him <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Fall back on the rules if the players either want to (&quot;I intimidate Hengist, trying to get him to spill the beans&quot; is a good indicator) or if they suit the method better (&quot;I go Gather Information tonight&quot;) or if you want to speed the game.Relying on them to determine access to the info leads you straight back to &quot;one secret door&quot;. (as in &quot;Sorry, you didn't scare Hengist, so the information stays put; now the princess dies.&quot;)I find that these kinds of adventures really work well in 2 ways;In fantasy I tend to use this kind of stuff to make sure that the setting gets explored - say to introduce a setting, or to move to a more settled game. You can introduce a lot of your setting ideas via Hengist telling them to go see X...Of course, I'm a firm believer in the concept that the best campaigns are only ever planned 1 session in advance. Personally I plan enough things for each session to fill 3 sessions, then see which happen and wing it as the session progresses. Before next session i've then got a clearer picture of what bits of the left-overs make sense to do next time, where there are gaps and what modifications need to be made to the old plans.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MonkeyBoy, post: 158330, member: 1229"] [b]Re: In addition...[/b] Mmmm. I always treat the "investigation skills" as crutches. By that I mean this; your average person can walk, right? But sometimes, they will be in a position where a crutch will help them (twisted ankle, whatever). Assume your average person can "investigate", but that on occaision they will get benefit from their "crutches": Make all / plenty of your info findable without ANY rolls; if Hengist knows X, make sure that any PC who treats Hengist "right", and asks can find out the info. ("right" can vary from buying a drink, making friends with through to threats) Be open to the player simply saying "Right, Hengist - gimme the facts, or its teeth-smashing time!" (and you not saying "make an intimidate roll") Its also a case of making the appropriate method of interaction pay off; Its no use deciding that Hengist must be intimidated and then setting the DC at 35! (you just made that secret door un-findable, kind of like a 1st edition party with no elf in most of those modules...) If Hengist should be intimidated, make him timid - both easy to intimidate, and also giving a clue as to how to get around him :) Fall back on the rules if the players either want to ("I intimidate Hengist, trying to get him to spill the beans" is a good indicator) or if they suit the method better ("I go Gather Information tonight") or if you want to speed the game. Relying on them to determine access to the info leads you straight back to "one secret door". (as in "Sorry, you didn't scare Hengist, so the information stays put; now the princess dies.") I find that these kinds of adventures really work well in 2 ways; In fantasy I tend to use this kind of stuff to make sure that the setting gets explored - say to introduce a setting, or to move to a more settled game. You can introduce a lot of your setting ideas via Hengist telling them to go see X... Of course, I'm a firm believer in the concept that the best campaigns are only ever planned 1 session in advance. Personally I plan enough things for each session to fill 3 sessions, then see which happen and wing it as the session progresses. Before next session i've then got a clearer picture of what bits of the left-overs make sense to do next time, where there are gaps and what modifications need to be made to the old plans. [/QUOTE]

Verification