The Gods Must be Crazy
The playtest version of The Gods Must be Crazy is ready. It is a game for four players to play in one session. Each game starts with the creation of the gods that will define your characters’ world. There are three distinct stages of game play; preparation, questing and battle. Will your group slay the dragon and save the village or will you loose faith and die horribly while their village burns?
Download the PDF and give the game a try! Let me know what you think of the game and how it played at your table. You can contact me with any questions you have at jmhpfan at gmail dot com. Any suggestions on how the game might play better or how the text could better explain how to play are also welcome.
Speeding up Combat
Skill Challenges Part 3
In my last Skill Challenges post I wrote about making Skill Challenges (SCs) more like combat by adding penalties. In this post I am going to address the other side of that concept and talk about adding rewards to your SCs.
I feel that if you are going to add more difficulties to your SCs then it is only fair to balance that with rewards equal to the potential for damage. Again, this balance of carrot and stick is similar to how combat feels. Players know going into combat that at the end of it they are going to have a nice XP boost and probably some treasure to share out. If your players know that they will be receiving similar rewards from a SC they will involve themselves just as much as they would in a combat.
Just because the players deserve an equal reward in SCs does not however mean that you need to hand out the same rewards. Experience points are always a good way to go and you should hand out the XP that the DMG suggests at the end of a SC but it hardly makes sense to hand out gold for successfully discovering that the evil cultists hideout. A better alternative is to give the PCs some special bonus that will help them in the next combat.
The simplest bonus you could give your players is a +1 or +2 to combat rolls. A small bonus like this is good for low DC SCs. For more difficult SCs you may want to give your players a one encounter special Power. An example of a good one encounter special Power might be to give a party the At-will Power to deal 1d6 fire damage on top of their normal melee attack as they were given containers of liquid fire by a merchant who wants them to stop the thieves who stole from him. Another example of a special Power might be an Encounter Power that will cause any undead the player touches to immediately disappear owing to an amulet of power that a priest gave them to help end the undead threat.
The rewards you hand out for completing a SC should reflect both the goal of the SC and the PCs actions during the SC. Who noticed what the PCs were doing while they were trying to accomplish their goal and might be willing to lend a helping hand? What knowledge did they obtain while doing the SC that would help them prepare for what lay ahead? Give the PCs things that will help in the short term and help them win the encounters that will lead to long-term rewards.
This is the end of my Skill Challenge posts for now. My next article will be on adding tension and speed to your combats by making them more like Skill Challenges.
-J.B. Mannon
Skill Challenges Part 2
In my last Skill Challenge post I talked about my personal use of Skill Challenges (SC) and how they can be used to cover most non-combat situations. That post assumed you were using the rules listed in the DMG, which covered SCs and simply expanded on that section. This post will be expanding beyond the core concept by adding penalties during a SC. I will again be referencing the 4e rules to help guide you, the DM, in adding to your SCs.
To give SCs the same level of importance that a fight would have you need to borrow some things that a fight does to and for the PCs. The first thing is to assign consequences when a player fails a roll in the SC. The consequence should in some way reflect what the PC was trying to do when they failed their roll. The most obvious thing to do is to damage the PC like an enemy in combat and if the PC was trying to beat information out of a contact or trying to disarm a trap then damaging them would make sense.
Other methods will be needed to cover other consequences however. For instance a PC might try and get the same informant drunk but end up drunk himself. If that is the case then you could still use HP loss but it would be far more interesting to put a condition like a poison on him until the end of the next combat to represent how sorely hungover the character is.
Another idea might be to slowly increase the DC of the SC to represent how the PCs actions are making their job more difficult. An example might be that the PCs are asking nosy questions around town and the townsfolk are getting suspicious or as the PCs are working their way through a dungeon they are making too much noise and putting the denizens on their guard.
You may also use fines, bribes and other monetary and wealth based consequences. These financial consequences are best dangled in front of players as a way to remove failed skill tests from a given SC. At most I would offer only one such opportunity per SC. A good amount to ask for is the players level plus the starting DC of the SC times the number of failed skill tests up to that point. If your players really want to pass a given SC then offer them the removal of all failed tests in exchange for a prized or valuable item but don’t do so often.
If you use these suggestions in your game to add combat like weight to Skill Challenges you should also read my next post on adding rewards.
-J.B. Mannon
Penny for My Thoughts
Paul Tevis has just started taking preorders for his new game A Penny for My Thoughts. Penny has players taking on the role of patients in a fictional mental institution called the Orphic Institute for Advanced Studies. The players have all lost their memories and are participating in this support group to try and regain some of those lost memories. I will do a full review of the game when the book lands on my door step. Until then you should check out The Orphic Institute website for information on the preorder.
At the Table 