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| making things harder https://forums.paradigmconcepts.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=217 |
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| Author: | SamhainIA [ Wed Oct 23, 2013 8:24 am ] |
| Post subject: | making things harder |
Quote: The idea of a costly win is something I think authors should be looking for ways to bring that back. I'm not really sure how to go about it. Eric wrote this and I am shamelessly stealing it. What kinds of non-renewable character resources do we have, OR what kinds of conditions can we create where the normal renewal of resources is less effective. In the blessed lands there are areas of magical fallout from the gods war and massed Elorii death curses, at times there are blood rains or falls of razor sharp crystalline shards. Some places feel no different than other places, but healing magic simply doesn't work. and other places where magic goes wild or doesn't work at all. There is a place near the fervidite hills that is so blood soaked and the earth its self so tortured, divinity seems to falter here, all divine magic spells has its CTN raised by 3 and the strain doubled. OK if we jumps start a dozen ideas or so hopefully mod writers will see them and run with em ... |
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| Author: | SamhainIA [ Wed Oct 23, 2013 8:27 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
Sorry I totally got carried away and failed to address the first half of that question. The costly win... what limited resources do the heros have that they can use up.... Money? influence? but those seem to be a permanent kind of expenditure less permanent is fate points, but thats useful in another context entirely thoughts? |
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| Author: | Harliquinn [ Wed Oct 23, 2013 12:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
I think having to give up a permanent resource for a 'win' is appropriate in some cases. It shouldn't always happen but some examples: 1) In order to keep the honest merchant who got robbed from getting killed by the thugs, the PC's must pool together 1 Gold 2) In order to convince the priest to perform the ritual that saves lives, they have to call in a favor with "X" (crossing it out on their sheet) These should not be every adventure of course, but occasionally it can make for a very memorable adventure. John |
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| Author: | Nierite [ Wed Oct 23, 2013 12:58 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
Fate, Money, and Fame/Infamy are the main "less-renewable resources" in the game. |
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| Author: | SamhainIA [ Wed Oct 23, 2013 1:20 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
Thinking outside the box, the number of party members is also a resource (you can only have so many people doing things at one) the last ArcanisCon LARP introduced the 500GP "cert" as GREAT limited resource kinds of things (no one got to keep the money except the NPCs) what new things can we introduce that arent "tacked on" feeling |
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| Author: | Hat [ Sun Nov 10, 2013 8:35 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
Resources can mean lots of things. A costly win could mean the loss of a key NPC - PCs choose between saving a single key NPC and achieving a key objective. It could mean the loss of game resources for a time - say Marketplace outside of Solanos Mor for example if it got burned down. It could be the loss of a notable sanctuary for the Sanctorum in a particular city until they can find a new location. It could be the temporary loss of Ansharan Portal if it got buried or walled off for example. It could be that a key military unit that is significantly degraded or destroyed that has a ripple effect on travel or other mods. Just some ideas. With a sweep of his... Hat |
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| Author: | Harliquinn [ Mon Nov 11, 2013 9:45 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
Those are all good suggestions. Keep in mind the 'objective' needs to be important enough to warrant the loss in resources. For instance, I wouldn't sacrifice an important NPC if the objective was just to deliver a message. Now if the message held the names of sleeper agents who were about to assassinate the King... John |
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| Author: | val Holryn [ Mon Nov 11, 2013 2:53 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
This is all good stuff and taking the idea in directions I hadn't thought of myself. But when I first posted this I was talking about "in combat." One of things I miss in the new system is the lack of resource management. I know many other players hate resource management in role playing games, but I've always seen it as a necessary evil in many cool scenarios to build up the sense of danger. For example in D&D you could have the classic "Ravenloft" scenario where PCs have to fight their way through several waves of zombies to reach the vampire in his lair ... while still keeping enough gas in the tank to deal with the vampire when they get there. The zombies themselves aren't ever a threat, but as the parties spells and hit points are largely non-renewable your total stock pile of "capacity" slowly goes south... Unless you make camp somewhere and the bad guys let you sleep through the night. In the world of Arcanis that kind of scenario can't be built with the current rules as I understand them. Each fight is binary (win & regain everything, or loose) and the actions in one fight don't meaningfully impact your later fights. I don't immediately see a way to wear PCs down, either in fact or in perception...or build tension that the last fight is getting harder. The exception seems to be wounds. And perhaps the exhausted condition. But those are blunt instruments that would be wrong to use out of context. At the tail end of the BI in the fight with Uhxbractit my PC had three wounds (we had an Ansharan who gave us all an extra phantom wound from Benediction of the Gods) and couldn't hit the broad side of the barn. That felt emotionally spot on for where we should be for the end of a story arc ... but I wouldn't want to see that in an ordinary module. I would love to brainstorm and come up with other tools that could be used to build suspense (and the sense that things are getting harder) over the course of a module. |
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| Author: | Nierite [ Mon Nov 11, 2013 3:09 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
As you said, the immediate threat against a hero is not as much when they don't have to sacrifice more resources for the success of their adventures. This is probably one reason why magical and alchemical items are not more prominent because they would give even LESS suspense as it gives even more options for the Heroes to cure themselves of ailments. One thing to build suspense is to add a set time limit. This can take the form of the BI system where you only have a set time per scene, forcing Heroes to think more tactically than before. Another way is to have an adventure where you must make time-sensitive decisions. For example: You are investigating the murder of an important aide of a noble before they go onstage in public, and you have only time for 3 Scenes of investigation, but the Mod gives you 10 different places you can investigate. This adds tension as it means you have to make hard choices which could destroy your ability to succeed in the adventure. This shouldn't be an auto-fail, but it can take the form of "for every wrong place you go, add 1d4 minion groups to the final combat" sort of thing. Another way to ramp up tension is to include MUCH higher level NPC's in the adventure, with the possibility that the Heroes could disappoint them and suffer for it. This could be an extra combat with a MUCH more powerful enemy than you are used to, adding additional combats, having references to earning the disfavour of them, or to even have the NPC put a 'hit' out on the Heroes. It is basically the threat of the Harvester way of adding tension to an adventure, where the Heroes may be a bit circumscript about how they go about a scene under threat of a powerful force. I have a few other options rattling around in my head, but these are the ones I think are most easily implemented in the system (with some of them already being used to one extent or another). |
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| Author: | DeadZone [ Mon Nov 11, 2013 4:02 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: making things harder |
So, hopefully this isn't taking thing off-topic. But the previous post gave me a thought. In the previous campaign, the Harvesters *did* harvest PCs. It wasn't a common occurrence, but it did happen. I'd kind of like to see a spot on the Chronicle Pages for "Notice of the Harvesters" (and maybe "Notice of the Inquisition" or some other such.) And every time a caster obviously uses spells in a scenario where bystanders can see it, he gains a point of Notice with the harvesters. (Or any time he preaches heresy in public he gains a point of notice with the inquisition. I think you get the idea.) Now, the campaign staff could put "random" combats or misfortunes into certain adventures, BI's or Role playing Interactives for all PCs who have gained a certain level of notice. Once the encounter is over, maybe the notice points decrease some amount. But some kind of mechanic like that would help to reinforce the "actions have consequences" mantra. And maybe some PCs might actually get harvested again. (As a side note, I remember running a table of, I believe, "Hope of the Fallen" back in the old campaign. In that adventure, the PCs mount a rescue mission to save someone who has been harvested. Things were going well until the players suddenly decided to break from their plan and do something completely different. To my knowledge, that ended up being the only TPH {Total Party Harvest} in Living Arcanis history.) Scott |
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