Yeah Destiny Points are your "Spend this to make cool stuff happen" buttons.
So for the mercenary company my PC's are running it's made up of 3 layers:
1) Automated stuff, which in this case includes support staff and the operating crew of their capital ship. People that only have stat lines vaguely and should not be expected to be dynamically taking part in stuff.
2) The combat minions. Various low powered minions that the PC's can have supporting them in conflicts using the game's squad mechanics. There to die and soak fire in big fights. Costs money to replace. The merc company can have up to 15 of these per Duty level (they just hit level 2)
3) The big Rival NPC's which are more restricted (one or two per duty level) and who are legitimately bad ass equals to the PCs at what they do. Their general gameplay use is to be leaders on side missions and ventures so there's a bigger face to the squad and not big, active participants in the action.
The idea with the destiny point spend would be to have a button the PC's can push to have the NPC do something dramatic and cool, like calling in an assist in a fighting game.
Yeah Destiny Points are your "Spend this to make cool stuff happen" buttons.
So for the mercenary company my PC's are running it's made up of 3 layers:
1) Automated stuff, which in this case includes support staff and the operating crew of their capital ship. People that only have stat lines vaguely and should not be expected to be dynamically taking part in stuff.
2) The combat minions. Various low powered minions that the PC's can have supporting them in conflicts using the game's squad mechanics. There to die and soak fire in big fights. Costs money to replace. The merc company can have up to 15 of these per Duty level (they just hit level 2)
3) The big Rival NPC's which are more restricted (one or two per duty level) and who are legitimately bad ass equals to the PCs at what they do. Their general gameplay use is to be leaders on side missions and ventures so there's a bigger face to the squad and not big, active participants in the action.
The idea with the destiny point spend would be to have a button the PC's can push to have the NPC do something dramatic and cool, like calling in an assist in a fighting game.
Spend a Destiny point to have the NPC arrive on scene immediately. The NPC may only arrive via crashing a vehicle onto the battlefield. The crashing vehicle removes any enemies at 50% or less health that are in the path of destruction/blast radius. The NPC must perform either a Charm or a Cool check. Treat this check as a Stress attack against one PC, resisted by the PCs Discipline. The Cool check occurs if the targeted PC is annoyed by the NPC. The Charm check occurs if the targeted PC admires the NPC. If the stress attack would render the PC unconscious, the NPC poses while the PC gets hit in the head by debris from the crash. The NPC upgrades one difficulty die on any attacks made against them until the PC regains consciousness.
Finally, a violin that can be carried in a belt holster
In appearance, the body looks like it was a tiny silver birch branch grown into shape, with corresponding bow. It was created by Titania as a gift for her favourite musician, and the bow is infused with the power of the Feywild, making it suitable for use as a Warlock's arcane focus - especially one who thinks that his power comes from wherever Bards get their power
Now I want to come up with a campaign where all Bards are actually unwitting Warlocks, and their patrons have finally decided to make themselves known
Just started playing AI dungeon 2.
It's an advanced nueral net dungeon text adventure game.
It's rad as fuck and free to play in your browser, tho it requires an email. https://play.aidungeon.io/
Here is my story so far under the setting of wizard fantasy
You are Wait, a wizard living in the kingdom of Larion. You have a staff and a spellbook. You finish your long journey and finally arrive at the ruin you've been looking for. You look around and see that it's not much different than when you left it. The only thing is now there are several undead roaming about the place.
The first one to attack you is a big black shadow with glowing red eyes.
> Invoke the dead gods, this shade will perish as they did
> Invoke the dead gods, this shade will perish as they did
> Cast the undead into the stars. There is much to do
You turn back to face the remaining two creatures. One is a large humanoid covered in spikes who swings his claws at you. He hits you with enough force to cause some minor damage but he doesn't kill you right away.
> Cast cosmic retribution, send the wounds upon my body unto my spiked enemy. They shall suffer for their arrogance.
You focus on the pain and channel it through your magic. As you feel yourself being burned by your own flames, you unleash a blast of negative energy towards the creature. It explodes into pieces, burning them all to ashes.
> Gather the ashes, and prepare a healing ritual for my burnt body. The moonlight will be my healing focus in regenerating destroyed flesh.
You walk over to the bodies of the fallen and pick up the remains. You toss them into a pile nearby and begin gathering more ashes. You then proceed to burn them in a fire pit.
A few hours later, you hear a noise coming from outside.
> Join the entity from the outside in song, the healing of my burnt skin shall be a celebration
You join the entity in singing a song of joyousness. You sing as loud as you can while still maintaining your concentration. The entity sings along with you and dances around you. Soon, you both fall asleep.
> It is in my dream that I build upon my body with the outsider. We construct a temple of flesh where once was ruin. I awake renewed, covered in the ashes of my foe.
Your dream ends as you awaken. You are covered in ashes and you are rejuvenated. Your new found strength allows you to perform feats that would have seemed impossible just moments ago.
You spend the rest of the day building a temple of flesh where once was ruin.
Eclipse Phase 2 planning: stole the plot of a John Le Carre novel and found it basically worked perfectly for the first act.
Now I'm probably just going to steal the plot of Roadside Picnic or something for act two. Gatecrashing baby. Unless your players are screaming in terror on the dark side of a nightmarish exoplanet you ain't playing EP.
Finally, a violin that can be carried in a belt holster
In appearance, the body looks like it was a tiny silver birch branch grown into shape, with corresponding bow. It was created by Titania as a gift for her favourite musician, and the bow is infused with the power of the Feywild, making it suitable for use as a Warlock's arcane focus - especially one who thinks that his power comes from wherever Bards get their power
Now I want to come up with a campaign where all Bards are actually unwitting Warlocks, and their patrons have finally decided to make themselves known
Oh wow I like that take. Bardic Colleges become part institution of learning, part fraternal order. So there's the College itself, and then there's the magic frat that "secretly" sponsor, and the investiture ceremony is actually a pact.
Can you tie each College cleanly/neatly to one particular Patron? Or vice-versa?
Finally, a violin that can be carried in a belt holster
In appearance, the body looks like it was a tiny silver birch branch grown into shape, with corresponding bow. It was created by Titania as a gift for her favourite musician, and the bow is infused with the power of the Feywild, making it suitable for use as a Warlock's arcane focus - especially one who thinks that his power comes from wherever Bards get their power
Now I want to come up with a campaign where all Bards are actually unwitting Warlocks, and their patrons have finally decided to make themselves known
Oh wow I like that take. Bardic Colleges become part institution of learning, part fraternal order. So there's the College itself, and then there's the magic frat that "secretly" sponsor, and the investiture ceremony is actually a pact.
Can you tie each College cleanly/neatly to one particular Patron? Or vice-versa?
I feel like I won't be mapping the Colleges to existing Patron examples, for the simple reason that they would just engage the services of regular Warlocks
They'd be similar to the existing patrons, but not as powerful, and possibly in conflict and hoping to use their Bards to overthrow the major patrons
So Asmodeus wouldn't have any Bards, but one of his Archdevil underlings would be sponsoring the College of Swords
Finally, a violin that can be carried in a belt holster
In appearance, the body looks like it was a tiny silver birch branch grown into shape, with corresponding bow. It was created by Titania as a gift for her favourite musician, and the bow is infused with the power of the Feywild, making it suitable for use as a Warlock's arcane focus - especially one who thinks that his power comes from wherever Bards get their power
Now I want to come up with a campaign where all Bards are actually unwitting Warlocks, and their patrons have finally decided to make themselves known
Oh wow I like that take. Bardic Colleges become part institution of learning, part fraternal order. So there's the College itself, and then there's the magic frat that "secretly" sponsor, and the investiture ceremony is actually a pact.
Can you tie each College cleanly/neatly to one particular Patron? Or vice-versa?
I feel like I won't be mapping the Colleges to existing Patron examples, for the simple reason that they would just engage the services of regular Warlocks
They'd be similar to the existing patrons, but not as powerful, and possibly in conflict and hoping to use their Bards to overthrow the major patrons
So Asmodeus wouldn't have any Bards, but one of his Archdevil underlings would be sponsoring the College of Swords
Orrrr
Maybe the Patron is just, like, The Muses, as a group? Or something roughly analogous?
With bards as the source of their own power their personality fits with their performance, but I’m now imagining a naïve half-elf that wants to be a travelling minstrel, but their muse is The Maiden of the Heaviest Metal and keeps making them scream the house down.
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GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
Patrons of the arts would commission paintings of themselves right? The bardlock's songs can only ever be about them, so they have to get creative with metaphor and allegory to avoid getting samey and appeal to a wider audience.
The more I think about Bardlocks, the more I think that they are tools of the Feywild itself, spreading stories that give the inhabitants power, and generating stories which the Fey can inhabit in the minds of the audiences
It doesn't matter what the stories are, just that they are told, as with each retelling more people know the tale of Bombin the Trickster Fox, or Dave the Brave, or The Young Man From Nantucket
Every time somebody thinks of the story, it's like water on a prayer wheel, generating glamour to be absorbed by any local Fey who is seeking a story to inhabit
Each Bardlock is followed by an invisible cloud of Fey energy, infecting their minds and inspiring their art
College of Glamour Bardlocks are the obvious result of this arrangement, but there are other denizens of the Feywild who have found their niche in the minds of Bardlocks, like how finches evolved different beaks depending on the local food source
Some are parasites, seeking to inhabit the ancient stories that many have forgotten (College of Valour)
Some prefer to feed off raw emotions, like the fear created by the College of Whispers, or the inspiration caused by a College of Lore Bardlock's satire of the local lord
Some Fey find a Bardlock they themselves wish to inhabit in the minds of others, rather than play a role in another story. These look for performers like dancers and acrobats, as everybody remembers where they were the day that they saw Fire Juggling Jimmy, and will tell others about the trick he did with three torches and the bag of flour. This is the best I can do with the College of Swords who are more about acrobatics and stuff
Eventually, the combined power of the story in the minds of all who know it creates a bubble in the Feywild where the Fey can tell the story again and again, and maybe entice unwitting mortals into playing roles within the story
This is basically Pratchett's Small Gods mixed with the Faerie rulebook from Ars Magica
With bards as the source of their own power their personality fits with their performance, but I’m now imagining a naïve half-elf that wants to be a travelling minstrel, but their muse is The Maiden of the Heaviest Metal and keeps making them scream the house down.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Hey friends who know what's what with Dungeon World (or other PbtA, really), I've got a question for you that came up over the weekend.
How would you handle an ambush? The specific scenario was the party walking down a road that had a highwayman trap set upon it, but really in a general sense I feel like the proactive nature of the player characters in PbtA can make this sort of thing difficult. I could see using an ambush as a consequence for a failed roll or something like that, but one that was deliberately set up in advance (and heavily foreshadowed, honestly) doesn't really work with that.
The GM ended up just calling for defy danger (wisdom) checks, as a sort of passive perception idea, with a full success being aware of the enemies and where they were, a partial success being aware of them but not their locations, and a failure being an arrow in the shoulder. But she was also asking me after the fact about it, as I'm the person in the group with the most experience with PbtA stuff, and I didn't really have a better answer for it.
I think you are generally right.
it's just one of those things you foreshadow, (a friend of the party warns them that things are motion and to watch their nexk.) and make as hard of a move as you want, when they flub whatever roll.
"as you attempt to pick the lock / Pathfind through the forest / convince the guard troll to give safe passage.
an arrow shaft strikes. Bob roll a d6 of damage
It's an ambush. The assailant must be somewhere close. What do you do? "
If you have it planned out well enough you can even give some hints the party is being watched or hunted with discern realities.
Throwing a weird situation priot to the ambush could be a prompt for the players to learn about the unrelated hunters
Hey friends who know what's what with Dungeon World (or other PbtA, really), I've got a question for you that came up over the weekend.
How would you handle an ambush? The specific scenario was the party walking down a road that had a highwayman trap set upon it, but really in a general sense I feel like the proactive nature of the player characters in PbtA can make this sort of thing difficult. I could see using an ambush as a consequence for a failed roll or something like that, but one that was deliberately set up in advance (and heavily foreshadowed, honestly) doesn't really work with that.
The GM ended up just calling for defy danger (wisdom) checks, as a sort of passive perception idea, with a full success being aware of the enemies and where they were, a partial success being aware of them but not their locations, and a failure being an arrow in the shoulder. But she was also asking me after the fact about it, as I'm the person in the group with the most experience with PbtA stuff, and I didn't really have a better answer for it.
Defy Danger/whatever it's broad equivalent is.
The ambush is a hazard to avoid, on a 10 you are fully aware of it when it's sprung and suffer no problems. On a 7-9 you are in a worse position or injured in the initial volley, on a miss you fully fall for it.
Admittedly this is something that flows much more organically with codified positions Blades in the Dark style.
Roll+Stat covers anything, but I like to make moves as proactively as the player’s own on occasion.
The Blachen Boys have the drop on you!
Double-Hammer the Dwarf, roll+Wis to access the situation!
On a 10+, choose 3.
On a 7-9, choose 1.
- You know who’s the most dangerous.
- You know who’s most afraid.
- You know who doesn’t want to do this.
- On a 6-, you don’t see it right.
Regardless, you’ll get +1 if you follow through on what you accessed.
Dainty Waifson the Elf, roll-Dex to dodge and weave!
On a 10+, you’ve got your rapier out and enough space.
On a 7-9, say what you’ve got: space to manoeuvre away or your blade in hand.
On a 6-, you’ve got a dagger in your gut.
Gothicarl the Vampire, you can deal your damage right now to a highwayman, but that’ll open you up to the rest of them in one go, what do you think?
Endless_Serpents on
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I was just thinking about that myself, and I think in retrospect, that's how I would have handled it differently if I had been the GM.
I still would have thrown a Defy Danger (Wis) or a Discern Realities at the ranger who was leading the party, but I wouldn't have given everyone else that option. Given that the ranger fucked up his check, everyone probably would have had some sort of Defy Danger coming up, but I would have tailored it to their reactions on seeing the ranger get shot.
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GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
having multiple people roll at once isn't really conducive to the fiction of a sudden ambush, especially if there's then differences in information for each character that they can then just share. like you said, better to have the most attentive character roll then snowball from there.
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
my very favorite thing is to make one player roll a perception check
sometimes I do it when there's nothing there to see, just to keep them on their toes
I got my familiar last night, and we decided it would just be in the background of every scene, unnoticed, until a party member rolled high enough perception to spot it, at which point I insisted I had always had this owl hanging around, don't you remember?
He certainly does not possess eyes that glow with an eerie light, nor a shadow that grows strangely large and dark for such a small bird. He's my friend!
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I have a player who unknowingly has a cursed magic knife. The first hit of the day i have her roll a con save after everything is resolved to see if she resists it. Just a simple “roll a con save...oh ok” at the result though, no context. She is a circle of moon druid so the knife doesnt get used all the time. So far she has passed all the checks, and no one has asked me for context about the save. I love it.
In other news, i have a group in place for King’s Dilemma but have to find the game at a decent price. Wish me luck.
The ultimate big bad of my campaign is the embodiment of entropy. The knife is going to start subtly channeling those desires for recklessness and destruction on a deep emotional level. Ill talk to the player about it when it happens, she is super on board for shit like this. Eventually she’ll be contacted by an agent of entropy, and we’ll go from there. Im keeping it vague until it actually happens.
Gonna DM a one-shot Friday and it's my first time DMing ever! Just going to be a simple hack and slash, and it's a return to a dangerous island we've used for one-shots before. Mostly we run these because someone has to bail on our regular session for the week, and it gives us a chance to try new characters out and the DM gets to throw random shit at us in an attempt to murder us! Hooray! Spoilers for what I was thinking of, and any advice or opinions y'all have on it would be welcome.
It's going to be a party of 4-5 level 3 characters with one extra feat. I think I'll let them get to the dungeon mostly unmolested, maybe just a few goblins leftover from our last trip. Gonna play up the "everything is suspiciously empty" angle to make them paranoid. Once inside it'll be more goblins and hobgoblins, a trap or two, then a room with a rack containing some clubs and a wooden maul and a ballista facing a makeshift wooden palisade in the corner. Behind that wooden palisade is a tunnel leading downwards to an open cavern with a pool in the center. On the wall directly above where the tunnel opens up will be a carrion crawler, and once it starts attacking two rust monsters will approach from around the pool. I was thinking either they could use the wooden weapons from earlier if theirs get ruined, and/or they run back and use the ballista on the chasing monsters? If they survive that then I'll have some cave tunnels with some other monsters, I dunno what, and I was thinking of ending the cave system with a treasure room with two phase spiders in it, but I'd have them attack the party one at a time so they think there's just the one spider, until at some point I have both out of the ethereal plane at the same time. That should be pretty tough, if not deadly. If it looks too tough I can just only have the one spider, or if it looks too easy I can even add a third. Any thoughts or ideas on all this? I'm going to be using the Kobold Fight Club website to try and balance some of the earlier encounters, but other than that, some basic maps I've sketched, and everything in this post I don't have much else. I guess I should have monster stats ready at hand, and possibly a list of what each encounter will entail?
Side note: through my fast talking I have committed the party to working for most of the cults in Baldur's Gate in their efforts to wipe out all the other cults in town and to be honest I'm not at all sure I can resolve this to everyone's satisfaction
Side note: through my fast talking I have committed the party to working for most of the cults in Baldur's Gate in their efforts to wipe out all the other cults in town and to be honest I'm not at all sure I can resolve this to everyone's satisfaction
Get paid on a per-cult basis. Wipe out one cult, collect payment from the rest. Repeat until only one cult is left, then use your ridiculous amount of money to buy super powerful magic items and wipe out the last cult. Collect payment from ghosts of other cults because the contracts were binding after death.
I'm getting the itch to design a campaign again which...will probably not go anywhere, given how I'm going from playing in zero games to playing in two games over the course of two days
Yeah, I was just thinking about that myself, and I think in retrospect, that's how I would have handled it differently if I had been the GM.
I still would have thrown a Defy Danger (Wis) or a Discern Realities at the ranger who was leading the party, but I wouldn't have given everyone else that option. Given that the ranger fucked up his check, everyone probably would have had some sort of Defy Danger coming up, but I would have tailored it to their reactions on seeing the ranger get shot.
I think part of the problem you are having is, for me personally, this is a sort of backwards way of running the system, at least if I'm understanding the scenario right. In Dungeon World the GM should never be calling on characters to do Moves.
If I (the GM) know the players are walking towards an ambush, I would perform a Soft Move. The players are "looking to me to see what happens" so I will "Show signs of an approaching threat" ("you advance down the dark woodland road. the wind rustles ominously. The noise of animals seems strangely absent." something like that). Set the scene, and say "what do you do?"
The players then do not say what Moves they do, they describe what they want to do in the fiction. If the Ranger says they want to scout ahead, or look for signs of other travellers on the road, or smell the wind or any other kind of investigating, that triggers Discern Realities. If they roll a 6, surprise! Hard Move - 'Reveal an unwelcome truth': "An arrow is flying towards you, what do you do!" (or you just Deal Damage if its that kind of game and you foreshadowed it well enough that you think you can get away with it). If they roll higher you follow the move text, and just about any of the questions will give them a clue or outright warn them of the ambush and then they get to decide how to handle it.
I guess for me the thinking is you as the GM have to always be thinking of your Agenda, Principles, and Soft Moves for when the players look to you to set the scene. If theres an ambush thats already set up in the fiction or your Fronts, you can't just describe the road the players are travelling on and obfuscate the danger because the characters wouldn't know about it. You have to Fill Their Lives With Adventure and Think Dangerously, and when they 'look to you to see what happens', you should show signs of an approaching threat ("you hear a twig crack up ahead. probably nothing!"), or present riches at a cost ("there's a shortcut here that bypasses thick brush. a narrow, muddy road hemmed in by high walls. it would shave a day off your journey..."), or Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities ("you Undertook a Perilous Journey, right? and the ranger took the Scout role, right?"). I could riff all day on all the GM moves but hopefully that makes sense.
Basically TL;DR, theres lots of way to go about it but you should basically always do some sort of Soft Move to hint at an ambush (or at least describe the scene such that it prompts the players to attempt actions that might discover an ambush), and if the players dont take the bait or if they fail at their attempt to investigate it or preempt it then you make a Hard Move.
Side note: through my fast talking I have committed the party to working for most of the cults in Baldur's Gate in their efforts to wipe out all the other cults in town and to be honest I'm not at all sure I can resolve this to everyone's satisfaction
Nothing on earth would stop me from starting up Fantasy Descent, or Flight Ascending, if I had a team of like-minded folks and the company was going under.
Posts
Yay! I'm so happy that they were found.
So for the mercenary company my PC's are running it's made up of 3 layers:
1) Automated stuff, which in this case includes support staff and the operating crew of their capital ship. People that only have stat lines vaguely and should not be expected to be dynamically taking part in stuff.
2) The combat minions. Various low powered minions that the PC's can have supporting them in conflicts using the game's squad mechanics. There to die and soak fire in big fights. Costs money to replace. The merc company can have up to 15 of these per Duty level (they just hit level 2)
3) The big Rival NPC's which are more restricted (one or two per duty level) and who are legitimately bad ass equals to the PCs at what they do. Their general gameplay use is to be leaders on side missions and ventures so there's a bigger face to the squad and not big, active participants in the action.
The idea with the destiny point spend would be to have a button the PC's can push to have the NPC do something dramatic and cool, like calling in an assist in a fighting game.
Spend a Destiny point to have the NPC arrive on scene immediately. The NPC may only arrive via crashing a vehicle onto the battlefield. The crashing vehicle removes any enemies at 50% or less health that are in the path of destruction/blast radius. The NPC must perform either a Charm or a Cool check. Treat this check as a Stress attack against one PC, resisted by the PCs Discipline. The Cool check occurs if the targeted PC is annoyed by the NPC. The Charm check occurs if the targeted PC admires the NPC. If the stress attack would render the PC unconscious, the NPC poses while the PC gets hit in the head by debris from the crash. The NPC upgrades one difficulty die on any attacks made against them until the PC regains consciousness.
Finally, a violin that can be carried in a belt holster
In appearance, the body looks like it was a tiny silver birch branch grown into shape, with corresponding bow. It was created by Titania as a gift for her favourite musician, and the bow is infused with the power of the Feywild, making it suitable for use as a Warlock's arcane focus - especially one who thinks that his power comes from wherever Bards get their power
Now I want to come up with a campaign where all Bards are actually unwitting Warlocks, and their patrons have finally decided to make themselves known
It's an advanced nueral net dungeon text adventure game.
It's rad as fuck and free to play in your browser, tho it requires an email. https://play.aidungeon.io/
Here is my story so far under the setting of wizard fantasy
That went places
Now I'm probably just going to steal the plot of Roadside Picnic or something for act two. Gatecrashing baby. Unless your players are screaming in terror on the dark side of a nightmarish exoplanet you ain't playing EP.
Oh wow I like that take. Bardic Colleges become part institution of learning, part fraternal order. So there's the College itself, and then there's the magic frat that "secretly" sponsor, and the investiture ceremony is actually a pact.
Can you tie each College cleanly/neatly to one particular Patron? Or vice-versa?
I feel like I won't be mapping the Colleges to existing Patron examples, for the simple reason that they would just engage the services of regular Warlocks
They'd be similar to the existing patrons, but not as powerful, and possibly in conflict and hoping to use their Bards to overthrow the major patrons
So Asmodeus wouldn't have any Bards, but one of his Archdevil underlings would be sponsoring the College of Swords
Orrrr
Maybe the Patron is just, like, The Muses, as a group? Or something roughly analogous?
Second twist is that they aren't so much muses as sirens. Where are they leading you?
I sing of my patron, Ta'Ylor, she who alights, and her song of ascension...
It doesn't matter what the stories are, just that they are told, as with each retelling more people know the tale of Bombin the Trickster Fox, or Dave the Brave, or The Young Man From Nantucket
Every time somebody thinks of the story, it's like water on a prayer wheel, generating glamour to be absorbed by any local Fey who is seeking a story to inhabit
Each Bardlock is followed by an invisible cloud of Fey energy, infecting their minds and inspiring their art
College of Glamour Bardlocks are the obvious result of this arrangement, but there are other denizens of the Feywild who have found their niche in the minds of Bardlocks, like how finches evolved different beaks depending on the local food source
Some are parasites, seeking to inhabit the ancient stories that many have forgotten (College of Valour)
Some prefer to feed off raw emotions, like the fear created by the College of Whispers, or the inspiration caused by a College of Lore Bardlock's satire of the local lord
Some Fey find a Bardlock they themselves wish to inhabit in the minds of others, rather than play a role in another story. These look for performers like dancers and acrobats, as everybody remembers where they were the day that they saw Fire Juggling Jimmy, and will tell others about the trick he did with three torches and the bag of flour. This is the best I can do with the College of Swords who are more about acrobatics and stuff
Eventually, the combined power of the story in the minds of all who know it creates a bubble in the Feywild where the Fey can tell the story again and again, and maybe entice unwitting mortals into playing roles within the story
This is basically Pratchett's Small Gods mixed with the Faerie rulebook from Ars Magica
How would you handle an ambush? The specific scenario was the party walking down a road that had a highwayman trap set upon it, but really in a general sense I feel like the proactive nature of the player characters in PbtA can make this sort of thing difficult. I could see using an ambush as a consequence for a failed roll or something like that, but one that was deliberately set up in advance (and heavily foreshadowed, honestly) doesn't really work with that.
The GM ended up just calling for defy danger (wisdom) checks, as a sort of passive perception idea, with a full success being aware of the enemies and where they were, a partial success being aware of them but not their locations, and a failure being an arrow in the shoulder. But she was also asking me after the fact about it, as I'm the person in the group with the most experience with PbtA stuff, and I didn't really have a better answer for it.
it's just one of those things you foreshadow, (a friend of the party warns them that things are motion and to watch their nexk.) and make as hard of a move as you want, when they flub whatever roll.
"as you attempt to pick the lock / Pathfind through the forest / convince the guard troll to give safe passage.
an arrow shaft strikes. Bob roll a d6 of damage
It's an ambush. The assailant must be somewhere close. What do you do? "
If you have it planned out well enough you can even give some hints the party is being watched or hunted with discern realities.
Throwing a weird situation priot to the ambush could be a prompt for the players to learn about the unrelated hunters
Defy Danger/whatever it's broad equivalent is.
The ambush is a hazard to avoid, on a 10 you are fully aware of it when it's sprung and suffer no problems. On a 7-9 you are in a worse position or injured in the initial volley, on a miss you fully fall for it.
Admittedly this is something that flows much more organically with codified positions Blades in the Dark style.
The Blachen Boys have the drop on you!
Double-Hammer the Dwarf, roll+Wis to access the situation!
On a 10+, choose 3.
On a 7-9, choose 1.
- You know who’s the most dangerous.
- You know who’s most afraid.
- You know who doesn’t want to do this.
- On a 6-, you don’t see it right.
Regardless, you’ll get +1 if you follow through on what you accessed.
Dainty Waifson the Elf, roll-Dex to dodge and weave!
On a 10+, you’ve got your rapier out and enough space.
On a 7-9, say what you’ve got: space to manoeuvre away or your blade in hand.
On a 6-, you’ve got a dagger in your gut.
Gothicarl the Vampire, you can deal your damage right now to a highwayman, but that’ll open you up to the rest of them in one go, what do you think?
I still would have thrown a Defy Danger (Wis) or a Discern Realities at the ranger who was leading the party, but I wouldn't have given everyone else that option. Given that the ranger fucked up his check, everyone probably would have had some sort of Defy Danger coming up, but I would have tailored it to their reactions on seeing the ranger get shot.
sometimes I do it when there's nothing there to see, just to keep them on their toes
He certainly does not possess eyes that glow with an eerie light, nor a shadow that grows strangely large and dark for such a small bird. He's my friend!
In other news, i have a group in place for King’s Dilemma but have to find the game at a decent price. Wish me luck.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
The ultimate big bad of my campaign is the embodiment of entropy. The knife is going to start subtly channeling those desires for recklessness and destruction on a deep emotional level. Ill talk to the player about it when it happens, she is super on board for shit like this. Eventually she’ll be contacted by an agent of entropy, and we’ll go from there. Im keeping it vague until it actually happens.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Get paid on a per-cult basis. Wipe out one cult, collect payment from the rest. Repeat until only one cult is left, then use your ridiculous amount of money to buy super powerful magic items and wipe out the last cult. Collect payment from ghosts of other cults because the contracts were binding after death.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
But the thinking about it part is always fun
Hey, yo, this fucking sucks.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I think part of the problem you are having is, for me personally, this is a sort of backwards way of running the system, at least if I'm understanding the scenario right. In Dungeon World the GM should never be calling on characters to do Moves.
If I (the GM) know the players are walking towards an ambush, I would perform a Soft Move. The players are "looking to me to see what happens" so I will "Show signs of an approaching threat" ("you advance down the dark woodland road. the wind rustles ominously. The noise of animals seems strangely absent." something like that). Set the scene, and say "what do you do?"
The players then do not say what Moves they do, they describe what they want to do in the fiction. If the Ranger says they want to scout ahead, or look for signs of other travellers on the road, or smell the wind or any other kind of investigating, that triggers Discern Realities. If they roll a 6, surprise! Hard Move - 'Reveal an unwelcome truth': "An arrow is flying towards you, what do you do!" (or you just Deal Damage if its that kind of game and you foreshadowed it well enough that you think you can get away with it). If they roll higher you follow the move text, and just about any of the questions will give them a clue or outright warn them of the ambush and then they get to decide how to handle it.
I guess for me the thinking is you as the GM have to always be thinking of your Agenda, Principles, and Soft Moves for when the players look to you to set the scene. If theres an ambush thats already set up in the fiction or your Fronts, you can't just describe the road the players are travelling on and obfuscate the danger because the characters wouldn't know about it. You have to Fill Their Lives With Adventure and Think Dangerously, and when they 'look to you to see what happens', you should show signs of an approaching threat ("you hear a twig crack up ahead. probably nothing!"), or present riches at a cost ("there's a shortcut here that bypasses thick brush. a narrow, muddy road hemmed in by high walls. it would shave a day off your journey..."), or Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities ("you Undertook a Perilous Journey, right? and the ranger took the Scout role, right?"). I could riff all day on all the GM moves but hopefully that makes sense.
Basically TL;DR, theres lots of way to go about it but you should basically always do some sort of Soft Move to hint at an ambush (or at least describe the scene such that it prompts the players to attempt actions that might discover an ambush), and if the players dont take the bait or if they fail at their attempt to investigate it or preempt it then you make a Hard Move.
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Sounds like your a real Johnny Constantine...