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WotBS critiques for Zeitgeist planning?
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<blockquote data-quote="bert1000" data-source="post: 5474774" data-attributes="member: 29013"><p><strong>Things to keep:</strong></p><p></p><p>1) complex, interesting story</p><p></p><p>2) variety of types of scenarios -- city, wilderness, political, involved in large scale battle, etc.</p><p></p><p>3) notes for how to adapt the adventures if PCs take a different path (e.g., don’t ally with X, Y kingdom falls)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Things to improve:</strong></p><p></p><p>1) please keep skill challenges (SC) but only use them when the outcome is important story wise and you are ok with the PCs failing. This is my biggest pet peeve of published skill challenges. The implementation of SC, I can do on my own (I personally use Obsidian), but setting up high enough stakes in relation to the story is the tough part. Do not have consequences like losing healing surges or slightly tougher combat as outcomes. For example, the wilderness trekking SC in WoTBS had low stakes outcomes like these. An example of much more exciting stakes is a situation where you have to navigate the wilderness quickly using a difficult shortcut path in order to get to a village before enemies overrun it. If you succeed, you get to participate in the battle and likely save the village. If you fail the SC, the village gets pillaged, people you met before die, and this has consequences going forward. Don’t be afraid to have real story consequences for failure (story consequences that hurt for the PCs/players, but don’t stop the action). The Star Wars Saga SC example in Galaxy of Intrigue is another good example of this. The stakes are getting away with your fellow prisoners or those NPC prisoners getting recaptured. If the PCs have befriended some of these prisoners, this is an outcome they care about. And failure hurts, but also opens up interesting story possibilities – maybe one of the recaptured prisoners holds a grudge and blames the PCs for leaving them behind. They can show up later in the campaign…</p><p></p><p>2) Be bold in combat encounter pacing! Don’t be a slave to the “official” rules of XP, encounters per level, etc. Avoid filler encounters. So how about this -- double the XP per combat encounter and have 1/2 as many quality combats per level with more non-combat action in between (exploration, skill challenges, general role-playing). BUT also actually include in the adventures at least as many combat encounters per level as is standard (10?) with the explicit intention that PCs will make choices and only play though about 1/2 of the combat encounters included. This would give you flexibility to really open up the choices for players. I also like no more than 3 combat encounters in one location. Of course, spice it up a little by varying this formula. </p><p></p><p>3) Find ways to impart juicy background information in-story to PCs/players. This is another pet peeve of mine with published adventures. Often there is amazingly detailed backgrounds of NPCs, plots, histories, motivations, etc. but no easy way to impart this information in-story to PCs/players. Think about interesting ways to do this without resorting to finding notes and diaries on every foe (ala Pool of Radiance gold box).</p><p></p><p>4) if you are going to include a bunch of different paths/choices the PCs could go down like noted in #2 above, include flow charts of how the action could unfold</p><p></p><p>Keep up the great work, and look forward to the new Path!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="bert1000, post: 5474774, member: 29013"] [B]Things to keep:[/B] 1) complex, interesting story 2) variety of types of scenarios -- city, wilderness, political, involved in large scale battle, etc. 3) notes for how to adapt the adventures if PCs take a different path (e.g., don’t ally with X, Y kingdom falls) [B]Things to improve:[/B] 1) please keep skill challenges (SC) but only use them when the outcome is important story wise and you are ok with the PCs failing. This is my biggest pet peeve of published skill challenges. The implementation of SC, I can do on my own (I personally use Obsidian), but setting up high enough stakes in relation to the story is the tough part. Do not have consequences like losing healing surges or slightly tougher combat as outcomes. For example, the wilderness trekking SC in WoTBS had low stakes outcomes like these. An example of much more exciting stakes is a situation where you have to navigate the wilderness quickly using a difficult shortcut path in order to get to a village before enemies overrun it. If you succeed, you get to participate in the battle and likely save the village. If you fail the SC, the village gets pillaged, people you met before die, and this has consequences going forward. Don’t be afraid to have real story consequences for failure (story consequences that hurt for the PCs/players, but don’t stop the action). The Star Wars Saga SC example in Galaxy of Intrigue is another good example of this. The stakes are getting away with your fellow prisoners or those NPC prisoners getting recaptured. If the PCs have befriended some of these prisoners, this is an outcome they care about. And failure hurts, but also opens up interesting story possibilities – maybe one of the recaptured prisoners holds a grudge and blames the PCs for leaving them behind. They can show up later in the campaign… 2) Be bold in combat encounter pacing! Don’t be a slave to the “official” rules of XP, encounters per level, etc. Avoid filler encounters. So how about this -- double the XP per combat encounter and have 1/2 as many quality combats per level with more non-combat action in between (exploration, skill challenges, general role-playing). BUT also actually include in the adventures at least as many combat encounters per level as is standard (10?) with the explicit intention that PCs will make choices and only play though about 1/2 of the combat encounters included. This would give you flexibility to really open up the choices for players. I also like no more than 3 combat encounters in one location. Of course, spice it up a little by varying this formula. 3) Find ways to impart juicy background information in-story to PCs/players. This is another pet peeve of mine with published adventures. Often there is amazingly detailed backgrounds of NPCs, plots, histories, motivations, etc. but no easy way to impart this information in-story to PCs/players. Think about interesting ways to do this without resorting to finding notes and diaries on every foe (ala Pool of Radiance gold box). 4) if you are going to include a bunch of different paths/choices the PCs could go down like noted in #2 above, include flow charts of how the action could unfold Keep up the great work, and look forward to the new Path! [/QUOTE]
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