|
Hey does anyone have any great ideas for skill challenge encounters regarding traveling the wastelands? Our campaign needs some sprucing stuff so that traveling from city state to city state isn't a simple, "Ok you go there. Lots of sand. It's hot. Three days pass. Congratulations." I'm also really excited about overcoming the environment as a survival theme in the setting. Not in a grognardy-way, but just because the setting makes it fun. Obviously I'm working up some of my own, but they are pretty rudimentary "Bandits ambush you in the night!" sort of things because I'm still not too well-versed as some of you all in the setting.
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2010 19:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 13:39 |
|
|
Treat going from one city to another as an entire adventure in itself. Write up 2 or 3 random encounters for them to come accross as they go along. Have them encounter a sudden sandstorm and make getting out of it a skill challenge. For every success they can feel getting closer to the edge of the storm, after 3 failures they get to the center of the storm and find the source: a group of angry/lost/whatever elementals. Theres a lvl 3 earth/air elemental called a Dust Devil, have a couple vanilla earth and air elementals to round out the encounter. Success: They get out of the storm no worse for the wear. The better they do, the less they deviated from the road Failure: They have to fight the elementals, after which the storm disapates and they're moderately off course.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2010 20:07
|
|
|
The campaign setting has a lot of ideas for terrain that aren't 'lots of sand'. There's 'You could cut across the salt flats, shave a day off the trip because it's faster to travel, but take penalties to forage checks (because salt flats are barren as gently caress) and endurance checks (because there's no shelter at all)', for instance. Alkali marshlands are also a good terrain variant -- very hard to extract usable water (residue fouls your distillation kit), plants/mud/bugs make it hard to cover ground. Broken lava fields (google up some images, some of the flows on Hawai'i are astonishing) are an amazing impediment to travel, acres of sharp jagged rocks where nothing grows. History (to remember references to a terrain feature and its hazards), Perception (to be aware of the quicksilt before someone's bogged down in it), Acrobatics/Athletics (navigating jagged terrain/silt slides/rockslides), Heal (to avoid losing a healing surge for failing to navigate same), or Stealth (to move through dangerous terrain without triggering loose rock/sand) are all possible additions to the obvious Endurance/Nature checks. Bluff, Intimidate, and Diplomacy are pretty much out (though if the party is escorting NPCs that could totally tie in), and I have no idea how to tie in Streetwise or Religion (I actually have only a foggy idea what Religion is good for in Dark Sun, though I might use it as a stand-in for 'Sorcerer-King specific knowledge'). Instead of bandits, there could be Ssurran ambushes, wild Eladrin defending an unknown oasis, wild creatures that mangle the party's supplies leaving them with 5 travel days to go and 3 survival days each. Failing all that, a simple time limit can go a long way to making a routine trip into a nailbiter. "We need to get to Raam from Tyr." "Okay, we've done that a few times before." "...in 60% of the time it usually takes us." "Aw crap."
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2010 20:12
|
|
|
Even when crossing just sand, you can have nature and perception checks to determine the nature of the dunes around you and how to pick the best path. And stealth and bluff checks can be used to avoid hazardous denizens. Insight checks can be used to determine the nature of other wanderers. A failed insight check and the players end up doing their best to avoid the merchants from whom they could have bought much needed supplies.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 00:03
|
|
|
Vault of Darom Madar from Dungeon does it like this. Every time you travel, do a complexity 1 skill challenge (4 successes before 3 failures). This isn't to cover a specific distance, just generic overland travel. Primary Skills Each must be attempted at least once. These are all group checks, at least half the group must succeed to count as a success, DC depends on terrain but tends to be low. 1) Endurance "its hot!" 2) Perception "hey look an oasis...wait its just another mirage" 3) Stealth "raiders ahead, stay low" Secondaries Use these only to convert a group failure into a success. Unlike the group checks, these are one player saving the day, and only 1 person can try to fix things and attempt this per Primary failure. Harder DCs than the Primary. Bluff - converts a failed Stealth "there's reinforcements right behind us!" Heal - converts a failed Endurance "drink water!" Nature - converts a failed Perception "dont eat the berries" Penalties for failure Endurance: If the group fails, each individual that failed gets sun sickness. Perception: If the group fails, each character that failed gets -1 cumulative to Perception for this challenge. Stealth: If the group fails, they get a combat encounter. Failing the whole thing If they manage to fail the whole thing, characters are all jacked up and low on resources. No outright penalty besides forfeiting the xp and having to deal with all the bullshit. Havent tried it yet but its a pretty detailed way to do things. For 'random' encounters I usually prepare a few not-so-random encounters that I intend to run at one point or other. Players failing just provides a good time to run them.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 00:31
|
|
|
Wow these are all fantastic ideas. Full of variety and flavor. Thanks for the tips. That Vault of Darom Madar write-up is particularly awesome. Cannot wait to use it!
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 04:37
|
|
|
Just finished up our run-through of the three encounters in the back of the new DS campaign guide. Sometimes you just need a little shell of a module to build around and get the ball rolling. The Vault is next up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 05:27
|
|
|
ritorix posted:Vault of Darom Madar from Dungeon does it like this. Every time you travel, do a complexity 1 skill challenge (4 successes before 3 failures). This isn't to cover a specific distance, just generic overland travel. This, except that I'd swap the positions of Nature (Don't go near that cactus, guys, that's a zombie-making cactus that will gently caress us up.) and Perception (Something ain't right here, everybody back away from the cactus!) and have the failure for that be another combat.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 12:18
|
|
|
Yeah I could see switching it up depending on where you are traveling. I'm not a huge fan of the skill challenge system anyway, and would rather just do one check for each of the main three instead of the '4 success before 3 failure' contrivance, which could have you do up to 6 primary checks before the challenge is over. Seems repetitive, especially with lots of travel and doing this over and over. Game-design wise I think they choose endurance/perception/stealth to hit the three NAD groups. End for con/fort, Percep for wis/will, Stealth for dex/reflex. Everyone will probably have at least one weak point. The fighter will suck at stealth, the rogue will suck at endurance. Not everyone is expected to succeed though as long as the group average is success. So subbing Perception for Nature works, both are Wisdom. I would be careful about subbing Perception for something like Acrobatics, now you have doubled-down on dexterity. Of course this is dark sun, you want them to fail at the checks sometimes so cool things can happen. ritorix fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Sep 16, 2010 |
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 13:46
|
|
|
ritorix posted:Yeah I could see switching it up depending on where you are traveling. I'm not a huge fan of the skill challenge system anyway, and would rather just do one check for each of the main three instead of the '4 success before 3 failure' contrivance, which could have you do up to 6 primary checks before the challenge is over. Seems repetitive, especially with lots of travel and doing this over and over. Well, as a general sort of guideline for new/inexperienced/lazy DMs, it's honestly pretty good, but good DMs are pretty much always going to get more creative, like I did with my poker challenge.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 14:52
|
|
|
I use an abnormal version of the skill challenge, where there's no failure cut off but each failed skill check costs the player a healing surge. Then I go around the table throwing challenges at individual players, and see how they deal with/succumb to them. Challenge ends at ten successes, which means that on average everyone is down a surge. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how well this would work for overland travel, as by nature the action is ponderous and group-oriented--if I told player A that the path led through a ravine full of rocks and shadows, he could just tell player B to make a nature check to look for snakes. It's better when the skill challenge is fast and furious, or the party is working independatly somehow.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 16:38
|
|
|
Mystic Mongol posted:I use an abnormal version of the skill challenge, where there's no failure cut off but each failed skill check costs the player a healing surge. Then I go around the table throwing challenges at individual players, and see how they deal with/succumb to them. Challenge ends at ten successes, which means that on average everyone is down a surge. During overland travel, sometimes you can create the same sense by having each character take a shift. My DM for one game confronted us with a huge plain of tangled brambles, much taller than us, that we had to go through, because going around would take way longer. Each person's roll represented that character's shift at the front doing the pathfinding/trailbreaking, and their skill check depended on how they handled it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 16:51
|
|
|
Best Skill Challenge system - http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/241440-stalker0s-obsidian-skill-challenge-system-new-version-1-2-a.html Short version, it gets rid of tracking failures, only successes. Players must use certain categories of skills for physical, mental, and social challenges. There are three rounds of rolls, and total number of successes are used. It lets you change things up between rolling rounds, which means that you can give the PCs new information depending on what they rolled. It also has a system for in combat skill challenges, where you can spend Move actions to make a roll - fighting off goblins while trying to undo the chains holding the dwarf slaves or whatever.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 16:57
|
|
|
Skill challenges seem to work well with some kind of limit -- a fun variant skill challenge I was in at a con game involved sailing into town, realizing the dock is kind of deserted, then realizing the town is in the throes of a full-on zombie apocalypse and navigating the town to the big temple for sanctuary. The time limit (the zombies would communicate 'brains this way' to each other, more or less like ants, so in time too drat many of 'em would converge on us unless we kept moving, which would risk more of them noticing us and have 'em converge on us anyway) really gave a nice tense feeling to the whole thing. I think that the 'x successes before y failures' is the least satisfying aspect of the as-written system, but a lot of other elements (this skill can be used to gain at most n successes, secondary skills that ameliorate failures on primary skills, 'alternate tracks' for the challenge depending on which primary skills are used most heavily) are solid and can be grafted onto whatever underlying skill challenge backbone you end up using.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 17:06
|
|
|
NinjaDebugger posted:Well, as a general sort of guideline for new/inexperienced/lazy DMs, it's honestly pretty good, but good DMs are pretty much always going to get more creative, like I did with my poker challenge. Okay, you can't just post this and not follow up. What poker challenge?
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 17:15
|
|
|
RPZip posted:Okay, you can't just post this and not follow up. What poker challenge? Oh jeez. I actually posted it in the last 4e thread, a sort of stream of thought description of what exactly happened. Basically, it went down like this: The group listened at the door for once instead of just busting in, and heard a poker game going on. So they kick in the door and walk in, and the guys playing poker are like "WHAT THE gently caress" and the paladin says "World poker tour, we're here to play some loving poker!" The guys say "You should go see the boss next door." (that was the boss's room.) and the paladin holds up the boss's severed head and said "He told us to come see you. Can we play?" and so these guys say "Uh, sure, you can play whatever the gently caress you want." So they sit down, and I have one of the players grab a deck of playing cards he keeps around, and I deal the players side two cards and my side two cards, and then I look at one guy and say "What're you gonna do?" and he's like "Can i use theivery to cheat?" and I'm like "Sure" so he rolls above a 15 and gets 1 card for his side, and then the next guy is like, "Can I use perception to spot them cheating?" and I'm like "Sure" so he rolls above a 15 and gets one card per enemy cheater, and the next guy uses arcana to work the odds, and then somebody's using Insight to read opponents and he rolls a thirty and gets two cards, and when everybody's done one roll, and I do one roll for each enemy and got cards off it, each side looks at their cards and builds the best 5 card poker hand they can. So they win the first round, and then they lose the second, but then they just cream me in the third round and get all the treasure, and I'm like "You've totally cleaned these guys out." and they're talking about whether to let these poor saps go, and the paladin grabs the deck and says "I'm gonna deal you a card, and me a card. If your card is higher, you get to walk out of here. If your card is lower, we gotta kill you all." I flip my card, it's a deuce, and all hell breaks loose.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 17:28
|
|
|
That paladin owns.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 19:39
|
|
|
Strontosaurus posted:That paladin owns. He did, and he'd only been playing D&D for like six sessions. Before joining my game, the closest to roleplaying he'd done was world of warcraft, as far as I know. The entire skill challenge was entirely off the cuff, too. My instincts are honestly a hell of a lot better at DMing than I am.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2010 19:57
|
|
|
Siets posted:Hey does anyone have any great ideas for skill challenge encounters regarding traveling the wastelands? Our campaign needs some sprucing stuff so that traveling from city state to city state isn't a simple, "Ok you go there. Lots of sand. It's hot. Three days pass. Congratulations." I'm also really excited about overcoming the environment as a survival theme in the setting. Not in a grognardy-way, but just because the setting makes it fun. How about just making it difficult to get into the destination city-state? The entire trip is fairly normal, only once they actually get close to the destination, the party finds an embargo or a battle, something they need to get through using skills as opposed to just trying to murder everything, the reasoning being either if they start killing these troops, the entire place is gonna be on their rear end, or the monsters/troops involved just outclass them or outnumber them so much that fighting isn't a very viable option.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 08:50
|
|
|
zeal posted:It's a story, liesmith.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 13:47
|
|
|
happyelf posted:ok, where's the story about a sorcerer king getting stoned to death during a poorly timed visit to the royal quarry
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 14:03
|
|
|
My Dark Sun game is going pretty well so far. They survivied the 5 Arena battles in Draj(barely), and the Thri-Kreen Swarm Druid managed to tame a Jhakar from the final fight and named him Klack. They had 10 hours before the closing Ceremonies, at which point they were to receive the Greatest Honor (sacrificed). They take 6 hours for an extended rest, spend another two at the party trying to find a way to get the hell out of the city. I throw them a bone and mention lots of Traders at the party. They talk to a shady looking elf and strike a deal: he gets them out of the city, they work for him guarding his caravan from now on. The Shaman of the group, who had met them all at the party and is secretly working for the Broken Buidlers, went over to the Royal Managerie and let loose a caged up Megapede, unleashing a massvie stampede of horrible monsters into Two Moons City. With all the Moon Priests busy, they make their way out of the gates and meet up with the Elf. He and his buddies smuggle them out of the city and they continue to travel through the night. They make camp in the morning, at which point their extended rest is interupted by the elves turning on them with plans to hand them in to the templars for a reward. They're quickly dispatched, and the party takes the Crodlu, the cart, and a few pounds of elf meat with them. The next day and night are uneventful. The third day, however, they are overcome by a strange sand storm and I proceed with the same Skill challenge I wrote about earlier in the thread. They fail the challenge, but when they get to the Elementals in the center of the storm, the Elemental Priest Shaman managed to negotiate witht them. He learns their home was defiled by some strange thing used by some small scaly ones. They point to a far off broken tower. At this point I'm using the starter adventure in the back of the DSG, with a few changes. when they get to the basement of the tower, the drivers are long dead, and the Sssuran Poisionscale is holding a blue glowing obsidian orb, putting out defling arcane energy. I applied one of the Sunwarped theme powers and one of the mutations, and the fight went pretty well. Who ever smashed the orb at the end got an elemtal boon (Gift of Sand) from the grateful elementals. After this the session ended. Come next session, they Moon Priests from Draj will have caught up with them 
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 17:51
|
|
|
Super Waffle posted:Hot drat, can I play in your Dark Sun campaign?  From the write-up, it feels like you really know the setting well.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 19:00
|
|
|
All I know about the setting comes from the 4th edition DSG and reading through this and other threads. Its helps to identifiy the real-world civilization each city-state was based off of, and from that you can make your own assumptions and inferences. Nowhere does it say that Draj sacrifices its best gladiators at midnight on the last day of the High Sun festival, but it being based on Aztec/Mayan culture, its not a huge stretch of the imagination. Raam is based on Hindu/Indian culture, with the rigid caste system and all that entails. Balic is Rome/Greece, Tyr is Babylon/Mesopotamia, Gulg is the various African cultures of the jungle, and to be honest I'm a little fuzzy on the others. Nibenay is Thailad/Singapore?
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 19:51
|
|
|
My PCs only (weak) long term goal is to get from Tyr to Balic to act as liaisons between House Vordon and House Wavir. There will certainly be 'adventures' in between, but does anyone have any suggestions on what should happen when they actually arrive in Balic?
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 19:58
|
|
|
Comedy "Thrown in jail on trumped up charges by someone who would profit by keeping House V and House W unliaised, thrown into the arena, trial by combat to clear their names" option.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 20:09
|
|
|
Super Waffle posted:Nibenay is Thailad/Singapore? Nibenay is not-China/Khmer and Uruk I mean Urik is the not-Sumer/Babylon analogy, Tyr is more like Ancient Tyre than Mesopotamia (although yeah the ziggurat and whatnot).
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2010 22:37
|
|
|
So, apparently the DDI isn't being updated with any Dark Sun or other content until some time in October? Seriously?quote:D&D Insider Subscriber, 
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2010 14:08
|
|
|
yep, I'm getting my refund for September. if you send a message to Customer Service they will get you hooked up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2010 14:11
|
|
|
In the old 2nd edition Dark Sun books, did it ever say why the primordials rose up and killed/drove off the gods?
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 11:17
|
|
|
In 2e I'm pretty sure the gods left because defiling offended them.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 11:35
|
|
|
2E just plain didn't have gods. Once you hit the revised/novel content, there was a full cosmology explaining how Athas was inside of matrioshka netherworlds, and gods couldn't get power from followers inside of that and so couldn't exist on Athas. But that's dumb! Just say that there aren't gods in Dark Sun, and that's that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 12:10
|
|
|
Squizzle posted:2E just plain didn't have gods. Once you hit the revised/novel content, there was a full cosmology explaining how Athas was inside of matrioshka netherworlds, and gods couldn't get power from followers inside of that and so couldn't exist on Athas. Oh that makes sense, I guess I will have to come up with my own mythology for my upcoming game.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 12:17
|
|
|
2e also didn't have primordials, technically. But elementals always had a huge influence on Athas and the elemental planes were the only planes you could get to. In case Athas wasn't hot enough and you wanted to go to a plane full of fire. So the groundwork was there back in the 2e days for the primordial thing, since obviously something caused Athas to be all alone and ungoverned. Saying 'primordials caused it' isnt much of a leap.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 13:38
|
|
|
We ran the adventure out of the back of the campaign guide last week and I was suprised how good it was. It's light on plot, of course, so I had to embelish a lot for that Dark Sun feeling but the fights themselves are paced well. It's also enjoyable to watch the players' faces as they almost get TPK'ed by what are essentially kobolds. There were a lot of great moments and I'm looking forward to running the next game this week. For those familiar with Warhammer my players have coined the term GRIMBRIGHT to refer to the general bleakness of the setting.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 14:19
|
|
|
Idunno, "Guys the metaphysical yogurt's gone rancid and that family of inbred hicks we used to tangle with just walked in, let's get the gently caress out of this restaurant" is as good a basis as any for a fantasy setting cosmology.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 15:17
|
|
|
Personally, I don't see why there need to have been gods around in the first place, or, if so, what in-play value it gives to determine why they aren't around anymore before the start of the game.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 15:38
|
|
|
Eh, it's a decent source of epic level adventure hooks if you want it, and a negligible part of the setting if you don't. I doubt it will play any sort of role in the campaign I'm starting, but someone else might really want to do the whole "return of the gods" thing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 15:49
|
|
|
Squizzle posted:Personally, I don't see why there need to have been gods around in the first place, or, if so, what in-play value it gives to determine why they aren't around anymore before the start of the game. I guess it makes Athas more compatible with the official cosmology. That way, although there's nothing to do in the Astral Sea and no gods to supplicate, if you wanted it really bad, you could attach Athas to the rest of the campaign settings. Athas is no longer separate, but just really loving far away.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 16:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 13:39 |
|
|
I just want to run an Epic Darksun game where they go searching for the Gods, and eventually find their dead bodies being feasted on by what are essentially Astral Vultures.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2010 16:55
|
|
