Making Use of Waiting

John Bell has a neat talent. Multiple times while playing Necrocarserous, the party would encounter a situation where we just…didn’t matter that much. There would be two or more non player characters talking with one another, or having some altercation, and there was really no room for the PCs to play a part. I suppose we always could have made ourselves relevant. We were, after all, standing right there. But when the brain parasite was awkwardly hitting on the living statue that had been cursed with de-petrification, there really just wasn’t much of a reason for us to say or do anything.

This all sounds like horrible refereeing, but see, that’s John’s talent. It wasn’t. That dude can sit there talking to himself in different voices for 15 minutes straight and it’s goddamn entertaining.

So why in the world is this relevant to you? Well usually these little one-sided RP scenes weren’t just John having fun with his NPCs. They were a tool that he was employing to make the players more aware of the passage of time. It happened during the train robbery, when we said we just wanted to wait for it to be over. It happened again when we MacGyvered a siphon for a vat of poison gas, and opted to sit around twiddling our thumbs until the vat was empty. In general, these scenes happened when we told him we were going to wait around and do nothing.

Using time as a finite resource is a tried and true refereeing technique. Time which the players spend by waiting calls for a random encounter check. But assuming no encounter occurs, time just kinda skips forward. These skips are hardly the death knell of good gaming, but it is a hiccup that always feels a tiny bit awkward for me. Particularly in those situations where an encounter check isn’t appropriate, and the players are free to wait willy-nilly.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I lack John’s talent for artfully talking to myself. In fact, I lack pretty much any thespian qualities at all. But even an artless referee like myself should be able to inject some role playing into moments that would normally be handwaved away.

Do your players have hirelings? Now would be a good time to give them a little character. When was the last time they had to make a loyalty check? Are they still feeling jittery about that? Do they feel appreciated by the PC? Do they think they deserve a raise? Maybe consider rolling a random character trait for them and simply making idle conversation with one of the PCs.

Are the PC’s in any sort of common area? If there are people passing by, maybe they want to sell the PCs some cheap trinket, or maybe they want to know why the PCs are loitering about. Maybe they want to convert the PCs to their religion, or just want to solicit donations to some worthy cause?

Do the PCs have any Intelligent Items? Then hot dang, this is the perfect time to actually do something cool with that Intelligent Item. I don’t know about you; I’ve always thought Intelligent Items were the bees knees, but I never know what to do with them when they’re in play. Well all this standing around probably has them wondering why the PC isn’t spending more time pursuing the item’s goals. Or maybe the item has some suggestions about how the PCs could pursue its goals better. Or maybe it just wants to shoot the breeze.

Is there anything you think your players might talk to one another about? Obviously you can’t force them to role play with one another if they don’t want to. But you can provide them with game information as a gentle prompt. “Character X, as you’re doing all this waiting around you notice that Character Y’s black eye looks pretty bad.” If your party is one that enjoys inter-party deceptions, waiting could even be turned into a tactical liability. Time spent waiting around is time that your companions have to possibly notice that your coin purse is a lot fuller then theirs is for some reason.

This idea is hardly a game changer. It doesn’t really add any meat to your campaign, it’s more like a garnish. Something to make the whole experience a little bit nicer; to cover some otherwise empty space. Little role playing asides are a neat way of drawing the players into a living world, where time doesn’t simply jump forward because they’re not doing anything. It’s something I’m going to be trying to integrate into my own refereeing in the coming weeks.

How should mind affecting spells work on PCs?

Mind affecting spells cast on players are a tricky business.

With NPCs, there are no wrong answers. Can Charm Person be used to turn the bandit into a loyal henchman, or will the spell be broken as soon as you stab his friend? We can argue about one method or another being more fun, but in the end it doesn’t matter which method you use. The NPC isn’t going to feel like they’ve been treated unfairly. But a player might.

Lately, my most consistent D&D game has been Saturday morning Necrocarserous with John Bell. My character, Urlar of Yellow Waters, has been possessed by dragon spirits, dominated by an intelligent item, and affected by a spell which convinced me that my companions had been corrupted and that the only way to give them peace was to kill and eat them. Far from feeling like I was being treated unfairly, these moments where I lost normal control over my character are some of the most entertaining highlights of my time as a cog in the Necrocarserous Program.

My character didn’t turn into a temporary NPC while I sat on the sidelines and watched the game unfold. Nor did John ever tell me what specific actions I had to take. Instead, my character was given a goal. With the Dragon spirits, it was fairly broad. “Act in the best interests of the dragon cult” or something. Being empowered by the dragon spirits, I actually got a ton of boosts to my abilities, and a whole cult worth of people doing my bidding. Unfortunately, the rest of the party was in the process of robbing the dragon cult. Obviously I’m on the side of the party, but right now, Urlar is on the side of the dragons. So I ordered ‘my’ cultists to destroy the stone dome the magic user summoned to protect himself. The MU was the one actually in possession of the cult’s property, and thus should be our primary target. When a hole opened that was big enough to shoot arrows through, I insisted the cultists continue to focus on destroying the dome. A small hole, I reasoned, only allows a single arrow to fire through it, but a large hole can allow a steady stream of cultists into the dome to overwhelm the intruder. Eventually, my intentionally bad tactics allowed the party to withdraw successfully. (I don’t recall how they extricated me, but they did. Once I got back to town I had the tumor that allowed me to see dragon spirits removed.)

Being mind controlled in Necrocarserous isn’t something that happens to you. The player is not a passive participant. Mind control is a puzzle that can be solved. The player knows what their goal is, and they are obligated to pursue it. (John often tells me ‘no,’ and clarifies the nature of my goal when I try to deviate too much.) But any path to the goal that makes sense will be accepted. And thus can a mind controlled player minimize the damage they do to the party’s goals. Or even work towards the party’s goals if they are particularly clever about their reasoning.

This is how I want to run mind affecting spells from now on. As a complication which forces the player to stretch their ingenuity to the limits, rather than a buzzkill that bums the player out.

The solution to running chases.

“Chase Scenes” in D&D are unsatisfying. For a few years now, I’ve been content with LotFP’s 1d20 + [Mov/10] rule. But that’s a stopgap. It gets the job done, but it doesn’t satisfy. Escaping from combat should be more variable.

Retired Adventurer is a criminally underrated blog. John Bell is a phenomenal world builder, rules designer, and game referee. He’s good enough that I drag myself out of bed at 5:30 AM every Saturday to play in his game.

This most recent Saturday, the party was leading a rich tourist around some ancient ruins. The dude was a fucking asshole who seemed intent on pissing off every monster he came across, but he was paying us 2500 obols each, so we gritted our teeth and took pictures of him posing with a statue of a sphinx. Then three real sphinx appeared, he made some racist comments. John said he was rolling initiative, and the rest of us said “we run.”

That’s when I encountered John’s rules for routs. Presented here in a modified form, based on some modifications by John, and a discussion about it on google+. I should note that I’ve altered the rule shown here to suit my own needs. It differs significantly from John’s original, so you should check that out as well.

Routs

Each round, each group of fugitives and pursuers rolls 2d6.

If the face value of a die in the pursuer’s roll matches the face value of a die in a fugitive’s roll, then the pursuers can make missile attacks at the fugitives.

If the pursuers roll a “7”, then they get close enough to each make a single melee attack at +4 against the fugitives.

If the fugitives roll a “7” then they have evaded sight long enough to make a stealth check. If the stealth check is successful, the fugitives have escaped. If the check is failed, the chase continues next round.

If both dice in a pursuer’s roll show the same value, then they have cornered the fugitives. The chase is ended, and regular combat resumes. The fugitives cannot continue to flee unless they make an opening for themselves, such as by slaying one of their pursuers.

If both dice in a fugitive’s roll show the same value, then they have escaped.

In the event that both the pursuers and fugitives roll one of the options above, only the fugitive’s roll counts.

If one party is faster than the other, then for each 30′ of difference in the two party’s speeds, the faster party gains 1 “Die Bump.” After each chase roll, a die bump can be used to adjust one die up or down by 1. (So a 3 can become a 2, or a 4). Multiple die bumps can easily turn the chase into a trivial thing. Dangerous for over-encumbered characters.

Of course, if the fugitives throw food / treasure, the pursuers should usually make morale checks as in LotFP standard. And the GM should keep track of the character’s random movements through their environment, so that once the chase ends, they have to deal with being lost.