| Post/Author/DateTime | Post |
|---|---|
| #1bawylieOct 09, 2014 9:34:38 | Ladies and Gentlemen, pull out your One-True-Way debate notebooks. |
| #2bawylieOct 09, 2014 10:25:28 | A follow-up question. How are you guys writing your scenarios? What are you doing to challenge the players other than tougher/more monsters?
What are you doing to create and increase challenge in non-combat scenarios? |
| #3MechaPilotOct 09, 2014 12:25:06 | I like to use cut scenes to tie the story to objects or places. Imagine the party spotting the ambush site. They get an inkling already that something isn't right, and now you ratchet that up with a cut scene. Time cut back to the goblins ambushing Sildar and the dwarf. Heck, if you have stats for them you could even have two of the players play through the ambush as Sildar and the dwarf (though I'd probably stick with the cut scene as storytelling so the story isn't too much in flux). |
| (Reply to #3)bawylie |
|
| (Reply to #3)bawylie |
|
| #6RamzourOct 09, 2014 15:07:01 | 1) You claim the 3 pillars are separate. They aren't though. You see invisible barriers....but why? Why can't combats in your world have exploration and interaction elements? Battlefields sometimes need to be naviagted. And monsters/NPCs sometimes talk during combat.
Since you bring it up, let's use LMoP Part I. Up ahead you see a couple of dead horses. Exploration. Goblins hiding in the trees spring an ambush. The rogue dives into the trees to try to circle around and flank them (happened in one of my run-throughs of that scene). Exploration+Combat. The Heroes call out to the goblins. What do they want? They try to bribe the goblins to stop attacking by offering food and shinies. Interaction. Goblins mostly defeated, but one runs off. Do they chase it? Can they track it? Exploration. Search through the remains of the horses. Find map scroll case that looked like Gundren's. Oh no! They're missing! That's the Dwarf's cousin! We should track them down! Exploration + Interaction.
I could do that for almost every encounter in LMoP. (and I did, when I ran it. We finally just finished yesterday after 10 awesome sessions!!!!)
So I disagree with your assessment that the three pillars are somehow mutually exclusive in 5e. The system does not prevent you from overlapping them at all!
2) Improving LMoP Now, if I set aside the majority of the post and really just get down to the questions, you want to know how one might improve upon LMoP. This is a great question, and one I have asked myself a lot, as well as one I have asked here a lot. I've spent a lot of time prepping and improving the adventure and I think I've come up with a lot of good changes to the adventure....and I've got the 30 page word doc to prove it.
I've even come up with a nice story line that links LMoP to HotDQ. After the Heroes completed Wave Echo Cave, I've added a new part to serve as a segue between the two adventures. I call it: "Part 5: Return to Thundertree!" I think you can imagine what might happen there.....
At some point I plan on writing up a series of posts here about my changes. I've already started a couple threads about them, 2 of which are in my signature. If you're looking for help on a certain part because you're prepping for the game, I can share some thoughts with you in PM.
3) Writing Scenarios These are good questions to ask yourself as DM. But then, I can tell you already ask yourself these questions by the content of your post. That Dramatic Question bit is good. Did you read that on the Angry DM's blug? I'm about 75% through that long post about Dramatic Questions and improving encounters. Lots of good stuff there.
How do I write scenarios? I write scenarios that tell stories. I don't (as you assumed people do) write "combats" and "explorations" and "interactions". I write stories. If the story contains combat or interaction, then it happens, but I don't specifically say "hmm, I think the players need someone to talk to here and someone to fight there".
So what makes a good story? Let's use LMoP's Wave Echo Cave (which is an awesome dungeon). What's the story here? The Heroes get bits and pieces of it throughout the whole adventure. A big battle took place 500 years ago. Orcs and Dwarves. Magic items. Spells. All that good stuff. When they make it to the cave, they are contantly running into elements of the old mine, as well as the remains of the huge battle. Piles of dwarf and orc skeletons wearing ruined armor and rusty weapons. Angry wizards turned into wraiths, still haunting the cave. Ancient guardians summoned to protect certain areas, still doing their job. Magic items scattered all around the place, some obvious, some buried deep. The Wraith wants to get rid of the Spectator and the Spectator is protecting the Forge of Spells from undead.
As you can see, there are LOTS of story opportunities here. Now, how does that play into the encounters and how I run them? When you write a scenario, it must always contect to and hopefully further the story. The wraith isn't just an angry undead spirit. It's intelligent. It wants to interact with the Heroes to get something (kill the spectactor). When I ran LMoP, the Flaming Skull, the Spectator, Mormesk the Wraith, and the Black Spider all had motivations and personality. When the Heroes confronted these NPCs, they battled some but they Interacted with ALL of them. The Heroes convinced the Black Spider to a truce after collapsing in the roof, they tried to negotiate with the Flaming Skull (didn't work, ended up having to kill him twice, and then they punted him into Area 16 to "cool off"), they talked to and then scared off the Spectator by chopping off some of its eye stalks, and finally they laid the Wraith's soul to rest by helping him complete his tasks.
4) Challenging Players outside of combat One word: Obstacles. Could be almost anything. Physical (high ledges to climb, slippery stairs, piles of skeletons from ancient battles) or Mental (moral dilemas, puzzles and riddles, investigations). In fact, these obstacles could work both in or out of combat. |
| #7Chiisai_UsagiOct 09, 2014 19:49:29 | I don't know how to improve LMoP. I don't have the Starter Set, so I'm going to skip that part. But about writing encounters, I think one thing that helps is starting combat with the assumption that killing the monster isn't likely to be the best outcome, the expected outcome, or necessarily even a desirable outcome. The more an environment is brought to life and encouraged as an answer (and the more XP is given as an award not to 'killing' the monster, but defeating the encounter/achieving your encounter goal), the more it will be used. The more the environment is used and interacted with, the more it will naturally lead into the exploration pillar. As Ramzour points out, other monsters can be parleyed with, bribed, or even simply fed to get them off of your trail or out of your way. If a pack of rabid, hungry dogs are guarding a doorway, I don't need to kill them all, use spells, and waste hp necessarily. The odds are good that a few small handfuls of meat will take them out of the way just as easily (and much more quietly).
The one danger to this is that sometimes it can become better to never fight, which shortchanges the players who enjoy lots of combat. However I don't see that as a problem that's hard to get around with a little planning, either. If the approach to any problem is to hit it with a sword, hitting it with a sword will begin to seem to be the only solution. But in my mind, hitting it with a sword should only ever be the final, last solution. It's why the old murderhobo phrase never sticks well with me. Adventurers don't "kill monsters and take their stuff", they're problem-solvers who occasionally have to take extreme risks in their pursuit of accomplishing a goal. |
| #8MechaPilotOct 09, 2014 22:23:46 |
|
| #9RamzourOct 10, 2014 1:45:08 |
|
| #10MechaPilotOct 10, 2014 1:59:36 |
|
| #11BoldItalicOct 10, 2014 3:10:01 | One aspect of the first encounter in LMoP is that there is a presupposition that "you are always supposed to fight goblins". By placing goblins, the DM is more or less railroading the players into combat. That's intentional, because in the starter set it's an excuse to exercise the combat rules, but we are dropping that requirement. So let's defuse that by replacing the goblins with creatures who are not iconic enemies, and see what happens. Replace the goblins with, say, a group of jolly hobbit-wives out picking mushrooms. They aren't armed, they aren't hostile, they are just there. What does this do to the scenario? Does it completely fall apart, or does it become something potentially equally interesting but different? I think that depends on the DM and the players being prepared to pick up a situation and run with it in an open-ended way. |
| #12RamzourOct 10, 2014 4:01:15 |
|
| #13KravellOct 10, 2014 4:19:15 |
|
| #14RamzourOct 10, 2014 5:15:41 | Kravell, awesome story! |
| #15ArjenLOct 10, 2014 5:24:19 | I must say that I don't remember the mentioned adventure very well, only read it through but didn't run it so I'll present a different scenario which can have all 3 the pillars:"assasination plot".
-The party finds out that there is a plot to assasinate the dawrven king and that there are enemy agents in the stronghold that are aiding the assasin strike team. They know that the strike team is now in the stronghold and moving in on the target but they don't know exactly where the king is (normally he should be inspecting the forges around this time but was seen walking to the quarry, which is the opposite direction just half and hour ago).
This will set a scene in motion where the party must explore the stronghold and find the king or the strike team before the latter finds the former. Tthey are most likely in for a fight when they catch up with the strike team or other hidden enemy agents that want to stop them from interfering. Most people they encounter are loyal dwarfs and don't know about any plots but might be an obstacle in findinf the king or fighting the enemy.
-Exploration: check, the party is assumed to not be intimately familiar with the stronghold and must find people and find alternative rouites around obstacles (convince the stubborn guards or find another route to the south tower that does not take the party throught the central courtyard, evade sopme partols because an enemy agent convinced some guards that they are the assasins etc. etc. -Social: check, getting from A to B might just be a question of asking the right person for a key or directions. As it is unwise that everyone knows about the plot there should be some bluffing, convincing and fasttalking. The party must assess whom is an (double)agent and whom isn't. And off course the king is very stubborn:"Hrowlf is an enemy agent? Nonsence, I've known him from when he was a wee lad." -Combat: eventually agents must be fought, assasins confronted and sometimes it is easier to subdue some stubborn loyal guards than convince them
Another twist might be an infiltration in an enemy stronghold where the party has to find their quarry or McGuffin and get into contact with loyal agents within that enemy stronghold.
Or even a traditional dungeon might work if there are different factions that the party can set up against each other (in the Caves of Chaos the party struck an alliance with the hobgoblins to fight the orcs in order to find the missing merchant, after each fight the hobgoblin commander would start to haggle for compensation for each hobgoblin hurt or killed). |
| (Reply to #12)Timborama |
|
| #17bawylieOct 10, 2014 11:34:59 | Any thoughts on the dragon encounter? |
| #18MechaPilotOct 10, 2014 15:24:05 |
|
| #19RamzourOct 10, 2014 16:10:30 | I had the Cultists (who were pretending to be "dragon hunters" from Neverwinter, hired by a rich noble to steal some dragon treasure) call out Venomfang into the town square so they could parley with it. The Cultists try to convince Venomfang to side with them and eat the Adventurers. They tell Venomfang how rich the Heroes are and they probably have lots of magic items. Then roleplay out the encounter. Don't roll unless you have to. Look up the behavior of Green Dragons, including their penchant for lies and their sweet tooth for elves. |
| #20UchawiOct 11, 2014 8:01:57 | You need to think 4D. In a story a character can do anything the author wants, no matter how absurd. But in a RPG, you have to frame the 3D, around what the party/class/character can do, and we go to 4D. |
| #21Tony_VargasOct 11, 2014 16:19:55 |
|
| (Reply to #20)bawylie |
|
| #23Brock_LandersOct 12, 2014 5:32:42 | I prefer an organic approach, all 3 naturally collide. |
| #24arnwolf666Oct 13, 2014 4:58:06 | I promote we advance the game to 5 dimensions |
| #25ElfcrusherOct 13, 2014 11:00:08 | Funny that you use LoTR as an example. (Although it breaks my heart that you use the movie not the book, when the book would make just as good of an example and is in a medium more similar to TTRPGs.)
Coincidentally, for most of this year I've been mostly playing "The One Ring", an amazing RPG that is most un-D&D-like. It does also have three main components of adventuring, which are called "Combat", "Encounters" (that is, social interactions), and "Journeys". And the game...and the adventures for the game...do an excellent job weaving all three parts of the game together. Very rarely do you kill a monster just because it's there; it's almost always part of the story, and the story is almost always part of a bigger story.
Even more coincidentally, I've been working on creating 'rules' for exploring dungeons. TOR is sort of the anti-dungeon-crawl RPG. That is, going room to room, kicking in doors, slaying monsters, and taking their treasure. (E.g. "Munchkin" card game.) Combat is a much smaller component than in D&D, partly because combat is so freakin' dangerous, and there's no such thing as a Heal spell.
At first I wanted to create a Moria adventure (of which there is no official version yet), but that made me realize it needed rules for exploring abstract and massive "dungeons". TOR is designed for theater of the mind, not tactical miniature play, so drawing every twist and turn and then mapping it out for players isn't really in the spirit of the game, which tends to abstract away the filler and focus on the important details.
Anyway, here's the latest draft of my rules for dungeon exploration: Delving in The One Ring. (Fixed!)
Bah, it's not letting me create a link...will post this then try to edit in the link. But here it is in plain text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oPGvljt_RtRyy9q1Ywg-3oRiqmY8uRkrDuVAEqYJCK0
I don't know how much sense these rules will make to a non-TOR player, but (without going into specifics, which would require explaining lots of TOR rules) my goal was very much to weave together, and even blur, the three pillars of adventuring. |
| #26ElfcrusherOct 13, 2014 11:02:54 |
|
| #27bawylieOct 13, 2014 11:58:19 | @Elfcrusher
I love the books. The movie was just so deft and memorable in that section. It moved really well and you can just pop it in and look at it.
Contrast with the conversation with Smaug from the Hobbit 2. Same elements - super boring. Wtf? (The book handles that better, though it's strictly a non-combat affair there). Some alchemy went bad in that film and I believe it's just a matter of 3 elements working parallel and not together. |
| #28sleypyOct 13, 2014 14:30:59 |
|