peteradkison
07-06-2011, 01:08 PM
The big story arc for my Az group is finding out what's been happening to various elves (8 now) that have gone missing (one of which is a PC's betrothed). The theory is that someone very powerful is capturing them and selling them as slaves and there's a mounting body of evidence to support this premise. In the prior sessions the party found that two of the missing elves are owned by a local gladiatorial school and, of course, The Games are happening soon. In the immediately prior session the party infiltrated the gladiator school by having the party's surgeon convince the owner of the school that she would be the best qualified person to take care of his gladiators.
Last night's session: Time to bust them out!
The party decided they'd have a better chance of organizing a prison break for the two elves during the games, at the coliseum, with all the chaos and excitement of the event than trying to break into a fortified ludus. Immediately the players got very excited and started to throw out ideas related to a big caper.
Now at this point there was a temptation to get very detailed, with maps, and timing, and a big plan --- the old D&D-style method of play. Instead I jumped in and said "let's not spin a bunch of time trying as players to create an elaborate plan. Let's just assume the characters have spent a bunch of time working out the details of the prison break and let's create one vignette for each player that represents his or her character's key moment in the caper.
We came up with a great list of how each character was contributing. The dwarven tinker had to modify his cart to hide two elves and had to use a circles and persuasion to get his cart situated in the right spot. The surgeon alchemist sorcerer had to make knock-out poison and get in position in the cages under the coliseum. The elven bard had to get on the performance list to sing a spellsong in public (and rolled excellently, gaining a Reputation out of the deal). The elven ranger had to take care of two guards the old fashioned way. And Argent had to get some guards to drink the poisoned wine (as describe in another thread).
Okay, that's the setup. The way I resolved this was I made each of these five tests a linked test to a 6th "central test" which represented the actual breakout (which one of the PC's became the focus for as a big Stealthy test). In the heat of the moment I wasn't sure if multiple but separate tests could each (in parallel) link to another central test (if you think visually, instead of imagining 6 boxes in a row with each feeding to the next one imagine 5 boxes beside each other with them all having a separate arrow to the 6th). This morning I read the Linked Test rules and I can't find anything that says either way, but it seems like it would be okay. Each of the 5 parallel tests had their own narrative weight and their own excellent potentials for fail forwards. The final Stealthy test I set at Ob 4 and each of these linked tests had the opportunity to either add a die or increase the Ob by 1. That all seems cumulative.
It worked fabulously. It was TON of fun. Everyone felt really involved 'cause we did a pretty good job of setting up interesting tests for how each character was contributing the caper. The logic of how all the tests fit into the plan made enough sense that it worked but we didn't waste a bunch of time on planning.
You might think I was too easy on them though 'cause each PC made their test. But in every case there was at least one Ob 3 test and in a couple of cases a couple of tests. Thing was, each PC was so worried about being the weak link in the chain that there was no way they were going to fail their particular piece of the mission. Also, in almost every case, the fail forward related to being caught or blowing their cover. Help dice, FoRKs, and Artha were flying.
So the final test was almost anti-climatic 'cause Argent had 5 bonus dice from the 5 linked tests, plus everything else he could monger. I think he got up to 16 dice versus Ob 4 but even then I managed to add some narrative tension by saying, "Well, if you fail this roll, I'm going to have no mercy whatsoever." Of course they made the roll and much merriment ensued.
And I gave this group their first deeds point.
Any comments on the parallel tests linking to a central test? Canon or drift?
Last night's session: Time to bust them out!
The party decided they'd have a better chance of organizing a prison break for the two elves during the games, at the coliseum, with all the chaos and excitement of the event than trying to break into a fortified ludus. Immediately the players got very excited and started to throw out ideas related to a big caper.
Now at this point there was a temptation to get very detailed, with maps, and timing, and a big plan --- the old D&D-style method of play. Instead I jumped in and said "let's not spin a bunch of time trying as players to create an elaborate plan. Let's just assume the characters have spent a bunch of time working out the details of the prison break and let's create one vignette for each player that represents his or her character's key moment in the caper.
We came up with a great list of how each character was contributing. The dwarven tinker had to modify his cart to hide two elves and had to use a circles and persuasion to get his cart situated in the right spot. The surgeon alchemist sorcerer had to make knock-out poison and get in position in the cages under the coliseum. The elven bard had to get on the performance list to sing a spellsong in public (and rolled excellently, gaining a Reputation out of the deal). The elven ranger had to take care of two guards the old fashioned way. And Argent had to get some guards to drink the poisoned wine (as describe in another thread).
Okay, that's the setup. The way I resolved this was I made each of these five tests a linked test to a 6th "central test" which represented the actual breakout (which one of the PC's became the focus for as a big Stealthy test). In the heat of the moment I wasn't sure if multiple but separate tests could each (in parallel) link to another central test (if you think visually, instead of imagining 6 boxes in a row with each feeding to the next one imagine 5 boxes beside each other with them all having a separate arrow to the 6th). This morning I read the Linked Test rules and I can't find anything that says either way, but it seems like it would be okay. Each of the 5 parallel tests had their own narrative weight and their own excellent potentials for fail forwards. The final Stealthy test I set at Ob 4 and each of these linked tests had the opportunity to either add a die or increase the Ob by 1. That all seems cumulative.
It worked fabulously. It was TON of fun. Everyone felt really involved 'cause we did a pretty good job of setting up interesting tests for how each character was contributing the caper. The logic of how all the tests fit into the plan made enough sense that it worked but we didn't waste a bunch of time on planning.
You might think I was too easy on them though 'cause each PC made their test. But in every case there was at least one Ob 3 test and in a couple of cases a couple of tests. Thing was, each PC was so worried about being the weak link in the chain that there was no way they were going to fail their particular piece of the mission. Also, in almost every case, the fail forward related to being caught or blowing their cover. Help dice, FoRKs, and Artha were flying.
So the final test was almost anti-climatic 'cause Argent had 5 bonus dice from the 5 linked tests, plus everything else he could monger. I think he got up to 16 dice versus Ob 4 but even then I managed to add some narrative tension by saying, "Well, if you fail this roll, I'm going to have no mercy whatsoever." Of course they made the roll and much merriment ensued.
And I gave this group their first deeds point.
Any comments on the parallel tests linking to a central test? Canon or drift?