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Post by uncommonman on Apr 8, 2018 23:23:40 GMT -8
Time for a new exercise to see how diffrent GM's handle things in their games, feel free to change things so it is more appropriate for your gaming group and the world/rules you play in.
"Little House on the Wolves Filled Prairie"
After a long time of rough travel your players find themselves in an inhospitable and empty prairie, rain and darkness is close and the only shelter they can find is a small house.
That is when they hear wolves howling...
Premise:
The wolves are to many for the group to fight in a normal combat.
There's no real resources in the house or surrounding area.
The wolves are starving/bloodlusted/cursed and want to kill/eat the PC's.
1. How would you create tension and fear?
2. How and when do the Wolves attack?
3. The rain is starting to become a problem for the PC's how do you simulate this rules wize?
4. One of the players get "a great idea" and starts a grass fire to scare of/kill the wolves (imagine they get a critical hit to start it) , how to you handle this (what do the wolves do, does the house burn down?)?
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Post by uncommonman on Apr 16, 2018 6:01:43 GMT -8
Ok I'm giving this one more shot.
Does anyone want to give an answer?
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Post by Forresst on Apr 19, 2018 1:13:55 GMT -8
Oops I forgot to do this I'm sorry.
First, a little detail tweak I would absolutely use in my own game but nobody else has to give a crap: I'd use coyotes rather than wolves. Their calls are scarier and they're swarm hunters and scavengers so the idea of them being hungry/cursed/whatever and overrunning their prey seems more apropos to me.
1. So, to start, the house and yard/barn are all accessible. The storm is just getting started, it's not completely dark, whatever the justification is. As the players explore a little here or there, I'm going to be introducing blood splashes on stuff in the outside, maybe signs of a fight, animal poop, and definite signs that whatever food storage was in place here, it's been found and eaten by the coyotes. As the session continues, though, I'm going to start making things harder to get to. Night's fallen, you don't have infinite light sources, if we're in a system with magic there's something making your light spell fail after a short time and wowee is it getting hard to keep casting it, so on. Maybe it's also cold. First the barn gets to be too far to get to (or see from the window). Then maybe the well or whatever. Then it's so dark and cold and now there's lightning and when it goes you're starting to see some familiar and terrifying silhouettes past the fenceline/at the porch/etc. As the players get more and more constricted, they're going to be more fearful. The ability to run from a fight is a great soother. All the while I'm going to be describing stuff that make it quite plain that this house isn't a well-maintained bastion against the world: the roof leaks, there's a draft, the fire or whatever that's keeping people warm keeps sputtering, there's creaks in the floor, the interior doors don't close right, all that stuff. Also, there's a fair amount of evidence of whoever lived here before. Pictures, old letters, knickknacks. If it's a depressing, cold, wet old shithole, might as well haunt it, right?
2. The how comes down to what seems right for the group at the time, but I'd definitely put it either right after something breaks that tension, whether that's a joke or some small moment of safety; or the coyotes will attack when the storm hits a point where it blows the door/corner of the roof/a window/some major opening in the house. This would be necessarily improv for me. If I'm doing a horror game, first I want everyone nice and uncomfortable with how long this is taking.
3. I'd probably make it a conditional thing. Dry, wet, sopping. If you're dry, no problem, everything you do is fine. If you're wet, it's mostly no problem, you might be a little more prone to fatigue or there may be a roll when you take a rest to avoid a chill. Sopping is the problem. Everything you do is harder:you have trouble seeing, your clothes are about twice their normal weight, you're cold and shivering all over the show. There's dice penalties. There's a very small list of things you straight-up can't do when you're sopping wet. If you take a sleep break while you're sopping, you necessarily lose an hour of sleep because you HAVE to dry your clothes out a little by the fire and you HAVE to work to make your resting shelter as waterproof as you can.
4. Generally, coyotes (and wolves, for that matter) are quite scared of fire. So is wood. So, our intrepid smart guy has decided to start a grass fire in a storm to scare off cursed coyotes who want to kill them. Ok, so they probably took a coal from their house fire, and (I sincerely hope) threw it somewhere vaguely where the coyotes are, and it managed to light some dry grass that was magically under the wet grass. Cool. So at first, it works REAL GOOD. The coyotes are scared, they all back off, it seems right. But now, that player has to roll for rain and wind. And frankly he better pray the rain holds on til morning. If it doesn't (spoiler alert! It won't!), the fire starts to spread. If he rolls no wind, it spreads in a concentric circle. If he rolls wind from a direction, it spreads in that direction. If the party makes it to morning (in my mind, the curse can't hold in sunlight, and coyotes are not terribly diurnal) they can put the fire out before they leave... if it hasn't spread. If they do, I'll let them have a small win. They can get to a similar shelter before nightfall and it won't burn down on them. If they don't put it out though? Now they have to run from a grass fire. Good luck boys.
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SirGuido
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Post by SirGuido on Apr 19, 2018 18:04:45 GMT -8
I'm going to set this in Rokugan because its what I'm the most familiar with.
The house you find just barely fits the description of shelter. Its old and breaking down. There are floorboards broken and rotted in places, the windows are broken out, and the door moves with every gust of wind no matter how you try to latch it. Its damp inside, not wet but damp. Striking up any sort of fire will be incredibly difficult without some serious work. There is definite evidence that this place has become the refuge for various animals in the recent times. If you look closely you find droppings, desiccated rodent skeletons, and even the odd pile of nut shells and fruit pits that look to have been nibbled upon. You settle down inside and huddle up in your clothes and blankets, but its anything but restful in here. Every time the wind blows hard, the house sounds like it might collapse around you. Off in the distance, or is it close by? You hear howling. Sounds like its from the East, wait no... West, er North? You try to speak to the kami to ask them to calm their storm but something has them in a frenzy and they refuse to listen to your requests at all.
In my case the "wolves" would be maho tsukai(blood shugenja), and they are looking for sacrifices for their evil spells. Their blood magic is what has really riled up the kami in the area and caused them to frenzy. They call themselves the Wolves of the Blood Moon and they howl like actual wolves in the wild while they are hunting. The first thing they will do is cast blood magic to unsettle and weaken these travellers(there are spells in L5R to prevent sleep and to weaken various attributes and such and even create nightmares.) Once they've harried them enough they would attack late into the night, close to morning.
Well between the rain itself and also thunder and lightning any kind of perception checks would be hampered. Sight is limited because of light and rain, hearing is very limited, etc. So I would give it a pretty big modifier. Any attempt to cast spells or commune with the kami in any way are met with a torrent of anger. The only spell that would be at all effective here is Fury of Osano Wo(because Osano Wo is the fortune of Thunder and Lightning, duh) Also the storm and rain would create an uncomfortable sleeping arrangement so I would probably give a general modifier on all rolls for that.
This would depend on a LOAD of factors. How do they start the fire, where do they start the fire, what do they start it with? In the end it doesn't really matter a lot because the wolves are actual wolves, they are people. Plus, the rain is going to put that shit out pretty fast anyway.
Oh and I almost forgot... Taint.
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Post by weaselcreature on Apr 20, 2018 12:06:04 GMT -8
1. How would you create tension and fear? 2. How and when do the Wolves attack? 3. The rain is starting to become a problem for the PC's how do you simulate this rules wize? 4. One of the players get "a great idea" and starts a grass fire to scare of/kill the wolves (imagine they get a critical hit to start it) , how to you handle this (what do the wolves do, does the house burn down?)? 1: The sun is setting, so it's getting dark, in addition to the heavy rain clouds. They can't see the wolves, but they hear the howling all around them, getting closer. Occasionally there's a rustle in the tall grass out of the corner of the eye. It would be very important to make sure they are aware of the house, and that there's more wolves than they can handle in the open (most PCs would just circle up and fight...they're just wolves, right?). As they make their way towards the house, that's when the Chase happens. 2: When the PCs reach the house (as they should; since an open fight is a lost cause it would be shitty to kill them out there), the wolves start circling and grouping up. The PCs should have time to set up a quick defense, since the odds are against them. When the PCs are ready (or instigate something), that's when the attack happens. 3: It's dark, so there's a negative to perception rolls. The house is in bad shape, leaving puddles of water on the floor (chance of slipping if they move through it). Perhaps it's also a violent thunderstorm, making communication difficult. 4: What the fire does depends on how the battle is going. If scaring off some wolves means the PCs are able to handle those that remain, great, but whether those other wolves come back depends on how much of a fight you want them to deal with. Some injuring and killing of some wolves is good as well, as it gives the player a nicer success. If the PCs are ROFLSTOMPING the wolves, I might make the fire spread to the house to make things more interesting, but if the PCs are in a lot of trouble, spreading the fire to the house is a bad move unless there's an obvious way for the PCs to use that to their advantage.
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