Re: How to stage this scene

From: Kmnellist_at_...
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 14:02:14 EST


John Hughes:
<< This reminds me of a scene we played in Russ Hoyle's campaign, where we were
 in the Rubble, ahem Real City, tracking a vampire to its tower, and Russ  made the tower itself - its strangeness, its darkness, its power to generate  fear, the way its shadows mislead and deceived - the main focus of our  attack. >>

This in turn reminds me of a scene I ran where the Heroes needed to overcome three "foes" in a Marshy part of Prax: the terrain itself, the location they were trygin to find, and the magic of the Morocanth Shamans. So there were three foes in a group extended contest for a scene that took, in game time, several days of wandering around a marsh, ignoring the pain of the brambles, finding secret paths, leading the way with the brightness of Elmal, etc etc. It gave me, the narrator, a chance to describe some of the hazards of marshy travel, and the players the chance to come up with nifty ways to use their abilities.

For the Crumbling Cavern Krarshtkid Catastrophe conundrum one could use a similar technique. Crumbling Cavern being one threat to overcome, one foe, that always seems to do multiple attacks on everyone in the cavern, and the Krashtkids. One could consider making the "cavern" two identities: maybe "Crumbling", and "Difficult to find way out of" . Once one of the threats is driven to zero AP then the heores have found their way but they just need to get past the rock fall, for example.

This example brings me to a more general point to do with pre-planning how to run scenes. Part of me wants to decide on the spot but I have often thought that, with hindsight, I should have run a simple contest, an extended contest, started with different abilities, etc. More and more I am spending time thinking exactly how to resolve a specific scene contest. Does anyone else feel this way and is it just good practice to think about contest resolution before a session, or is it my lack of practice resulting in me picking the "wrong" contest if I do not think before I narrate.

Keith  

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