"well, I am not a wolf, but I am pretty sure there will be one around this area soon. so I was walking along trying to make sure no one was being stalked."
"no, I am not a wizard, just a blind man, but for some reason, sometimes I see things that are happening far away, in the future, or just learn something that would be useful, through no way that I can trace. it really isn't as fun as most people think."
“My mom gave them to me so that I'd have something to eat on the way. I have some crescent rolls too, but they're better when they're fresh.”
@BrianBallsun-Stanton (There was a lot of dispute over that – I eventually had to clarify that I just meant that trad games are more similar than different, especially when it comes to social conflict mechanics.)
@BrianBallsun-Stanton (Careful. This thing turned into a huge and long off-topic discussion in that BESW regretted not bringing to a total halt. In fact, could it be moved elsewhere?)
@JonathanHobbs (I certainly won't dredge it up again. But I definitely could've been clearer when I said that. It was just an off-the-cuff remark that got stretched way out of the context I had intended it.)
. . . the two set off down the path toward grandma's house. After a few steps, Kirby feels something small and hard underfoot, which triggers a brief glimpse of the polished stones again.
“Oh. That's not good.” Hank pauses to think. “Wolves are cowards. We should be OK so long as they don't outnumber us two to one.”
He adds: “Or get us cornered or something.”
While the blind Kirby can't see that the trees here actually thin out a bit and get more willowy, he can definitely feel the ground getting softer. Squish.
“Yeah, I think it's from that stream I passed by earlier. It must bog down around here. I haven't been this way before. Every trip is different, very exciting!”
“Be careful, Mister Kirby. The trail goes underwater up ahead.”
(You have some choices here. You can continue through the bog or you can go off-trail and try to pick up the path elsewhere. Also, you should come up with a way to keep the wolves at bay so that you don't get cornered and outnumbered in here.)
OK, go ahead and tell the story for a bit. Describe how you will make it through the bog without the wolves following. Each of those is a Challenge obstacle.
Kirby will instruct Hank to find a way across that isn't hard to cross, but does make it hard to cross in a stealthy fashion, like an open clearing, or a marshy area with less brush and tree cover.
Kirby and Hank pick their way through, taking special care to make sure that stealth will be hard to accomplish, and the wolves slowly start to lose all the cover they need to hide.
As the two proceed through the bog, the water rises up to Kirby's knees – which must mean waist-deep on the boy.
(I'd like to compel Grumpy Old Man. I'm thinking that this bog, along with the stress, must be extra irritating for Kirby, and he might lose his temper. Do you accept?)
On the bright side, the wolves have no interest in following the pair through the deep bog, and the way going isn't all that difficult. Despite the cold, murky water, your spirits rise as the peril of the wolves vanishes.
@JonathanHobbs (Actually I was going to change it to Sense of Accomplishment so they can carry it forward longer.)
Kirby and Hank manage to travel through the bog with little difficulty, and as the wolves lose interest, the pair continue on, with Kirby hoping that his guide actually knows where they are.
The shrubbery only gets clingier as Hank and Kirby try to push through. A couple of times, they get hung up and need to free themselves to continue. And it looks like it gets worse up ahead.
“It's not too late to turn back, if you think we'd do better against the bees, Mister Kirby.”
“I could see the hive, but it was still pretty far away.”
“So like at least eleventy feet.”
“Here, I'll take us back to there.”
With some effort, Kirby and Hank extricate themselves from the clingy shrubbery and make their way back around the fork until Hank can just see the hive again.
"if they get mad at us for getting as close as we do, we run back until they stop chasing us, and wait for them to calm down, if they don't get mad, we will attempt to cross the path as far from their mutant bee house as possible
"and let's try to avoid the individual bee's too, who knows what will make them angry?"
Hank zips through the bees, dodging left and right. Kirby has to struggle a bit to keep up and avoid tripping, but after a few dozen yards, you've apparently made it through without getting stung to death, and you can't hear any bees following.
Hank laughs. “That was AWESOME, old guy!”
He slows down and stops to catch his breath.
“Er, I'm sorry. Mister Kirby! I forget my manners sometimes when I get excited. Mom would kill me!”
Main challenge was inexperience, although it wasn't too bad. Glad I've been reading through everything thoroughly.
I found the online chat thing more troublesome than the game.
I was a little concerned about how to frame the Challenge, but it actually worked out pretty smoothly.
In fact, that whole bit was pretty interesting. I like how it played out, game-wise.
I set it up as a +2, +0, +4 challenge, which worked out great for the pacing.
He aced the first two parts, which gave boosts that he desperately needed for the last part.
Especially because he'd refused a compel.
I'm also glad that I remembered to compel him. First, to set up the story (handy that), the second time to put him in a difficult spot.
@BrianBallsun-Stanton The dead end was the setup for the wolves returning, but I figured it would be mean to pit a blind guy and a kid against a pack of wolves. So I cut scene to allow time for cavalry to arrive, or whatever.
Oh, I asked for a narration and a boost, and you gave the narration and then paused a long time. I wasn't sure whether you were thinking about the boost or forgot it.
I'm unfamiliar with Shadowrun, so can't speak to it.
I find them unusual compared to most action point economies I've seen, in that they more purely represent narrative success/failure and are designed to flow more dynamically as part of the core system.
Ah. Edge is the stat used to represent luck, and it works a lot like fate points: Refresh every session, spend it to succeed after you've failed (although it works better if you spend it in advance), and you can refresh it mid-session if certain things happen.
One thing I like about Fate is that the points are never wasted.
You don't spend them until after the roll, and even in cases where it's spent on something that turns out to be invalid (like compelling an aspect you're only guessing exists) you usually get the FP back.
So using them is never a gamble, which discourages hoarding.
Edge doesn't guarantee success, but characters who specialize in it don't need to hoard it. The biggest difference is that SR4 gives you more edge for accomplishing things, rather than for dealing with complications.
For example, you get an Edge back for the equivalent of success with style.
Usually you either play an Edge specialist, in which case it plays out very much like Fate, or you use it as a dump stat and conserve your 1–2 Edge for emergencies.
Which is sort of like having many stunts and low refresh in Fate.
Yeah, even among trad games, D&D is kind of a holdout there.
Late trad games like Shadowrun and Storyteller usually have at least 4–5 degrees of success.
Hero doesn't, but it has other intermediate results.
In Hero, a solid hit will generally cause some special effect or collateral damage, like stunning or knockback, even if you don't knock out your opponent or whatever.
So you get useful temporary advantages if you do well.
An issue came up in the last session of my Pathfinder campaign - that of chronic PC impatience.
It happens especially when they go to cities and between major adventures. They go into a frenzy of trying to buy and sell and talk to everyone and do everything to the point where I have to start enf...
Context: two characters need to communicate. One speaks a common language. The other is a semi-magical plant person who may have distant memories of that language or may not. - Must be able to be steadily overcome (breakthroughs are acceptable). - Should provide a language barrier some or all of the time which is steadily overcome as above. - ??
