Maps as opponents

From: Stephen McGinness <stephenmcg_at_...>
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 14:00:36 -0000

In a session last night I had failed to produce a treasure map for my players as I'd promised. I knew what I wanted to be in it, I knew the things I wanted them to work for but had a complete creativity failure with respect to producing a prop for the game.

But I blagged it.

I told them that HQ is a fantastic system for this kind of thing and that they should consider the map as an opponent. Whenever they wanted to do something based on information from the map they'd have to do a simple contest against the map. Their success level would determine the results.

It worked really well and I'm not sure that they worked out that I hadn't planned to do it this way from the start.

This method allowed me to add information as I decided the story needed it and allowed the abilities of the characters to determine how much information they gathered from the map rather than the actual players scrutiny of a piece of paper.

Anyone else done anything like this??