Starting up Always On Time: Initial Questions

[al_fredo]

So I'll be finishing up Digging next session, and starting prep for AOT.

Two questions right off the bat:

1) The Skill Challenge to start. Have DMs told their players the # of needed successes? Seems like you shouldn't really 'know' how good your cover story is...I'm not sure I'm going to tell them, just that they need a certain number. They may want to focus on cover stories just to be sure. I don't know...seems gamey if you tell them exactly what they needed in this set up.

2) On the train. I'm going to assume that some or all of my party goes somewhat undercover. What about Armor and Weapons traveling on a train? If traveling 'first class', would you really be in your full armor and carry sword and shield? Wizards might get away with it...but any melee character is going to way to intimidating (unless they are part of a bodyguard cover). What about gear? Normal adventuring stuff we take for granted, but leisure train travel makes you think. Do I really have that 50' rope with me, all my potions, components, Javelin, armbands, special boots, helms, etc, etc. Does the adventure just assume PCs are fully armed/equipped, and don't sweat the details?

Thoughts?

 

[RangerWickett]

1) In playtest I said, "This is like a training montage, so we're going to keep things brisk and lean a bit more on mechanics, but we're not going to neglect the narrative. If you get x successes on a given task, that represents you feeling fairly confident that you accomplished the task. Only I know whether that's actually enough, and the way you describe your successful and failed skill checks will influence how things turn out."

2) Have you seen how much luggage some people travel with? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjjoVAgqp4s (Until about 30 seconds in.) Just pack it in there.

 

[al_fredo]

1) In playtest I said, "This is like a training montage, so we're going to keep things brisk and lean a bit more on mechanics, but we're not going to neglect the narrative. If you get x successes on a given task, that represents you feeling fairly confident that you accomplished the task. Only I know whether that's actually enough, and the way you describe your successful and failed skill checks will influence how things turn out."

2) Have you seen how much luggage some people travel with? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjjoVAgqp4s (Until about 30 seconds in.) Just pack it in there.

So...I'm thinking I don't tell them on # of successes then, maybe give them hints but no more. For gear..yes they can pack it. But will they really unpack and gear up in town? What about the on top of train fight...no time to don armor! Anything that surprises them on the train will likely leave them without their best weapons and definitely without armor. I haven't fully read the adventure yet, so there might not be any time to collect their luggage with all their gear before a fight.

 

[skotothalamos]

For the super skill challenge, I had Delft basically give them a giant (whiteboard) spreadsheet of tasks to take care of and weeks, then let them each assign themselves to something for he week, then had Delft (or their own intuition) give them updates on how things were going, basically planning telling them to work on something else once they'd hit the success threshold (but they didn't hit their final successes until the final week, so it didn't matter).

When it was done, I set the whole thing aside and told them that it would affect how things went during the adventure, but i didn't tell them how well or poorly they had done.

We had three characters in first class, one in second class, and two in coach. Most of my PCs don't have armor, but they wanted to store extra weapons and ammo on the train so they booked passage for a crate of supplies (which gave them a great reason to keep poking around the freight cars).

 

[Ajar]

I didn't tell my players the required number of successes, I just framed the problem for them and then explained that their goal was to accumulate successes in each category. They made their own judgments about which ones they thought were successes based on how I described what happened, and I secretly recorded the truth.

They did conclude that they could stop working on a category after 3 successes, although they went to more than 3 successes for at least one area.

As to luggage and whatnot, my players split up. We had 2 in one first class car, 1 in another first class car, and then 2 more in two separate second class cars. Each of them packed their gear or carried it as appropriate. The psion kept his orb on his person, and the runepriest posing as his bodyguard wore her armour and weapons at all times. The others largely kept their weapons/armour stowed in their luggage, which resulted in them having to go retrieve gear from their cabins during the various events that happened on the train.