Plot Blocks

This was written two years ago, and it wasn’t the thing I was hoping it would be.

So I wrote this. It’s what I was hoping it would be. Having read it over, it feels a lot like what skill challenges were really trying to be.

One Page Role-playing Games

My friends and I like to come up with crazy game ideas all the time. Once in a great while, I'll throw down the gauntlet and challenge people to actually write a goddamn game. Not like, a seven hundred page monstrosity, just a wee little one-page or 24-hour game design. It doesn't have to be great, it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be a role-playing game, and you have to finish it. 

So now I'm issuing the challenge to the rest of you: write a role-playing game in less than a thousand words and put it up on your blog. The Rules are only this: It has to be less than 1000 words, it has to have a mechanic I've never seen before (or a kick-ass variation of a mechanic I have seen before), and you have to send me a link, either in the comments here or to my e-mail at friggert@hotmail.com or to my twitter at @warpgames. Go create!  

Wee Little People 

A Role-playing Game in One Page

The Point: You and your friends play the tiny people that live inside your house. Your characters are roughly mouse-sized and must overcome many challenges to simply survive. Also, you must never reveal the existence of your people to the humans, as they will kill you or eat you or something. Humans are terrible.

Tell a Story: One of the players is the Storyteller. He or she describes the situation in which your Wee Little People find themselves. The rest of you play Wee Little People and try to do stuff while the Big People in the house are clumsy and oblivious. Doing Stuff can include collecting food, thiefing things, fighting with the cat, disposing of garbage discretely, pilfering Tim’s weed stash, moving dice to where they will be most likely to be underfoot, building shelters under cupboards, finding water, defending your home against cockroach attacks, invading mouse holes for their supplies… You’ve got options. Alternatively, you could try and tell an epic tale of adventure on a tiny scale. But you already know how to do those.

Character Creation: Choose a thing you are good at, a thing you are bad at, a skill you have learned, and an item you possess. None of these may be the same thing (for instance, you cannot be good at climbing and have that also listed as your skill). When you attempt an action that relates to the thing you’re good at, get a +1 bonus to the roll. When you attempt a thing that relates to the thing you’re bad at, take a -1 from the roll. When you attempt to do a thing that relates to your skill, once per session you can succeed on the roll automatically. When you attempt a thing that relates to the item you possess, you ignore any penalties on that roll unless that penalty comes from the attempt relating to a thing you are bad at.

Rolling Dice: Whenever someone attempts something and the outcome is in doubt, roll a six-sided die. If you roll five or higher (counting all bonuses and penalties), you succeed. If the result is four or less, you fail.

Failing is Bad: Whenever you fail at a thing, mark it off on your character sheet. You are only allowed to fail at something six times over the course of a single session. If you fail more often than that, Bad Things Happen. The Bad Thing is decided by the player to your left, and you are out of the game until the next session.

This is Your House: Wee Little People is set in whatever place you happen to be. The setting is whatever is already around you. If you’re in your living room, for instance, that might include your couch, coffee table, TV stand, bookshelf, and the half-eaten pizza in the box on the floor. The antagonists are you. The Wee Little People cannot make their existence known to you, so whatever it is they’re going about doing, they have to try and sneak around you and your friends to do it. When Jim gets up to grab a soda, the kitchen is no longer a safe place. Scatter!

  

Discovery: If Bad Stuff happens to all of you, you’re discovered. If you are discovered, it can be safely assumed that you and your friends have cashed in on the existence of the Wee Little People and have left them to be tortured by scientists forever. You sick fucks. Or, you could spend the rest of the evening arguing about what you and your group would ACTUALLY do if you found leprechauns in your underwear drawer. Up to you, really.

On Skill Challenges that Suck

Sometimes, skill challenges suck. I'm not one of those people who thinks that they need to be stricken from the game forever, but I have certainly run skill challenges that were not at the top of their form. In fact, I ran one on Monday, and it was mostly terrible. The challenge was getting across the Tibean Wasteland. For the most part, the development of the challenge wasn't as important as the act itself, which should have been my first clue that the challenge wasn't even needed in this case, and I would have been better off making it a series of role-playing moments, a combat encounter, and some investigation. Honestly, I think an investigation skill challenge would have been more fun in its place, and now I'm a touch sad that I didn't run one. I'd offer to do one this coming Monday, but I have different plans for this upcoming session. Maybe when we reach the Spine of the World, or the city of Sternum...

I think that's probably the one thing that differentiates skill challenges that are awesome and skill challenges that suck: what they're for. I understand that some players hate them in general; the math is screwy, or they believe that the challenge would be better left to good role-playing. Personally, I disagree, but I'll admit that when a skill challenge isn't going to clearly effect things, it's pretty stupid to have a skill challenge at all. Whether they passed the skill challenge or not, my players would have crossed the Tibean Waste. Making it a skill challenge didn't add any tension or drama to the act, and if it had, I think I would have failed as a DM. That's not a thing that should invoke tension, it's a simple act and it should just get done. Travel, meet some people while you're travelling, fight some bitches what get up in your grill, then be done with it.

When you're crafting a skill challenge, it has to mean something. I think that's part of what made the Night at the Opera skill challenge such a success; the players knew that if they did not make their show a success, they would have to come up with a different (probably much more difficult) way to get into the Mayor's house and get the information they need to open the Dungeons & Dragons Inc. Lodge. That is a damned fine skill challenge. Development for that makes a big difference. If you succeed, you get to go to a fancy party, and when the guests are all unconscious or fucking, you can do what you need to do. If you fail, you have to bust in the door, deal with the guards, find a way to subdue the mayor and his guests, and get done what needs doing. The first way is much more fun, much less trouble, and is better for role-playing and story-telling purposes. The second way involves a lot of combat, a bunch of unwanted attention, some trouble-shooting and an uphill battle to get to your goals.

And I think that is what a skill challenge should really be about. When you're planning these things, keep your goal in mind. And your goal should be fun. What would be the fun way to get this goal accomplished? What would be the less-fun way to do the same thing? Now, make the fun thing the reward for accomplishing the skill challenge. Make the unfun thing the penalty for failure. Set this up from the beginning, let your players know what is at stake before they start trying to figure out how they're going to roll this, and make them think about the actions they'll be taking to use those skills effectively. That will add tension to the challenge, make it worth doing, and make the whole experience a lot more fun to play through.

Penalties in Skill Challenges

I really like running Skill Challenges. I like how dynamic and different they are from normal combat encounters. I love how they represent a story complication rather than Yet Another Battle. I love how much role-playing goes on during one, and how players come up with new and creative ways to use their skills ("I'm going to use my Thievery to try and 'steal his heart.' Kay?"). They get players invested. They get players thinking. Most importantly, they're fun.

They also a ton of fun to write. Trying to think about how a particular skill may relate, especially skills that are peripheral to the challenge, is an interesting mental exercise for me. For instance, in Social Encounters, I've come to reorganize Intimidate in my head. It isn't just about scaring people; I mean, it's really good at scaring people, but that's not the whole of it. Where diplomacy is about the art of persuasion and bluff is the art of conversational jujitsu, Intimidate is about force of personality. From now on, Intimidate is the skill I go to for performance, for stealing a crowd, for being a force of nature that people just cannot ignore. I expect that, as I delve deeper into the system, I'll begin to do likewise with other skills as well.

Part of the problem in dealing with a skill challenge, though, is coming up with new and interesting penalties for skill checks. DMG2 gives us some ideas for penalties on a failed skill check, but they're pretty narrow, really. Coming up with a penalty for failing the whole challenge is actually pretty easy ("That thing you wanted, you don't get it."). Making each skill check hold different weight in the challenge is pretty important. It makes failure carry a consequence beyond being one step closer to failing the encounter.

I've been trying to come up with a list of penalties for failure that I can throw into a challenge as I'm writing them. Below, you'll find what I have so far.

From the DMG2

The first set of penalties I want to look at are the ones covered in the published material already. The second Dungeon Master's Guide goes into pretty deep detail on skill challenges and how they can fuck with your players, which is nice. On page 87, they talk about "stages of failure," which is something that I think should be in every skill challenge forever. They suggest the following as ways to penalize players during a skill challenge:

Lose a Healing Surge: This is pretty intense. This is what made me fall in love with Skill Challenges during D&D Encounters. I mean, I'd used them, but I didn't make them nearly as important as I have in recent adventures. The basic idea is that, if a character fails the skill check he or she is attempting, he or she takes damage. That damage is healed with a Healing Surge, so we're just going to do damage directly to the Healing Surges.

Spend Time or Money: So you failed at a thing you were trying to do. You went down the wrong path, talked to the wrong bookie, took an hour examining runes that had nothing to do with what you thought they did, or just hit up the wrong sheriff for information. Now you're going to need to backtrack, maybe grease some palms, and get back on track.

You Broke the Skill: For the rest of the encounter, no one can try to use that skill. You broke the last beaker in the lab, used the last of the gauze, none of the drug dealers will talk to your crew anymore because they think you're a bunch of snitches, whatever.

Take a Status Ailment: This is usually for in-combat skill challenges; you're dazed or immobilized or stunned or helpless or blinded or something. You fucked up, and the thing you fucked up fucked you up even more.

Take a Penalty: You screwed up, and the fact that you screwed up makes the next attempt at the skill even harder. You pissed off the mayor and now you're going to have to convince him to like you again, you sprained your ankle on that last somersault, you pulled a muscle in your arm and still have to lift this thing, your attempt at stitching your buddy up made him bleed more, etc.

My Own Additions

Now, these are pretty solid, but I like a little more variety in the ways I fuck with my players. So I'm going add to this list the following:

Extra Failure: When you fail at this skill check, it counts as two failures against the skill challenge. This effectively cuts the number of possible failures in half, assuming they try (and fail) this skill multiple times. I usually use this on a "limit 1 success" secondary skill, but it's still scary when you lose an extra failure.

Time-Delayed Failure: Failing doesn't actually count against the skill challenge, but the next time you fail a skill check, you accrue an extra failure. If you don't fail again, there's no downside. If you do, it becomes extra-devastating. Again, I usually put this one on secondary skills that normally don't count against the skill challenge when you fail.

Everyone Takes a Pentalty: Rather than just fuck things up for yourself, your failure at this skill check fucks with everyone. Nothing makes people hate you faster. ^_^ This one I usually reserve for primary skills that you can succeed on a few times, with a pretty low DC. It gets frustrating if it's used too much, but it's fun to watch players squirm when they give all of their friends a -2 on their next skill check.

Defense Penalty: For the rest of the day, you take a -1 challenge penalty to your AC, Fortitude, Reflex and/or Will. Failing this skill weakens you, slows your reactions down, frustrates you, and makes you more vulnerable to attack. This lasts until your next Extended Rest.

Speed Penalty: Until the end of the day, you take a -1 challenge penalty to your speed. You have honey on your shoes. You're moping. You're lost in thought or caught in a crisis of faith, and you're just not moving as quickly as you normally do.

Initiative Penalty: As above, except that instead of hindering your mobility, you're just not reacting as quickly to danger as you usually do.

Lose a Daily Power: Daily powers are massive feats of awesome. Sometimes, when you screw something up, it shakes you to your core. Your awesome isn't there, you just can't call on it to get the job done. If you fail this skill check, lose one of your daily powers as though you've used it (and hit with it, in the case of Reliable daily powers).

Lose an Action Point: Like most of the resource-deprivation penalties I've listed here (and that's pretty much the theme of these penalties; you're losing access to a thing you're usually able to rely on), this one steals something from you for failing. In this case, it's an Action Point. If you do not have any Action Points to steal, it will take a Healing Surge instead. I feel like this one should almost always be attached to Arcana for some reason.

Attack Penalty: For the remainder of the day, you take a -1 penalty to hit. This is devastating, people. Don't over-use it. Probably related most often to Acrobatics or Athletics. You've hurt yourself trying to do that cool parkour thing you saw that guy do the other day, and you just aren't as good at hitting people as you could be.

Grant Combat Advantage: For the rest of the day, you grant combat advantage. To everyone. I have a feeling that this one should be attached to Stealth and Streetwise. You've failed to be sneaky, and now the sneaky people are taking advantage of that for the rest of the day.

The Airship Skill Challenge

So I'm a huge fan of skill challenges right now. I hadn't had much of a chance to use them previous to the D&D Encounters mini-campaign, and having seen them work there, I'm pretty much all about them now. I want to use them for everything. In my Eberron campaign, I'm the captain of the Mourning Glory, a fantastic little airship. The DM hasn't really focused on this aspect of my character at all, which is a bloody shame, because I think airships are one of the best things about the Eberron setting. So I wrote up a huge note to my DM about the kick-ass things that could possibly happen between Breland and Karnath on an airship, which I will share with you here:

We're going to be travelling back to Karnath, I assume, in the course of the next couple of sessions. After all, we have a king to kill. Getting to Karnath by airship seems like it would be pretty easy, but having easy things in a session of D&D is never as much fun as having HARD things to fight against while playing. So I figured I'd offer some suggestions for making the whole airship thing a little more crazy.

There are two "safe" passages to Karnath from Sharn. Both go around the Mournland, because the Mournland is fucking terrifying. The first is to fly over Thrane and through Aundair, the second is to fly through Darguun, over Valenar, stop to restock in the Talenta plains and move up through the south-east. Another option is to swing _around_ Darguun, over Zilargo, out in to the sea, up through Valenar and then through the Talenta plains. Each of these routes has it's own dangers, dangers that Aeral knows about. They also probably house things Aeral has never seen before, which is also for the good.

For the sake of ease, I'll be calling these Route 1, Route 2 and Detour.

Going through Thrane is not something Aeral is going to be thrilled about. As a paladin of the Sovereign Host, the Silver Flame and its followers make him pretty uncomfortable. The biggest bonus to travel through Thrane is that the Houses don't have much sway there, meaning they have a pretty piss-poor air force. We'd be unlikely to run into any of the Silver Flame's groupies, and the worst we'd run into would be rejects from the Eldeen Reaches flying over.

Aundair is exactly the opposite. House Lyrandar keeps their headquarters on a small island just north of the country, there are flying islands everywhere, and air traffic is a daily occurance. It's impossible to get through Aundair without notice, and given that we came through the airborne nation right before King Boranel's children reappeared in Breland, and given that I'm now Sir Aeral d'Lyrandar, Knight of Breland, I have to assume Esravash knows what's going on. It would be a safe bet, says my 14 Wisdom, that _everyone_ knows, and that we are currently a target for the entire nation of Karnath and her allies.

The threats in Aundair run the gamut from air pirates to flying whales to dragons to anything else that would enjoy the nation-wide manifest zone. Aundair also knows about these threats and is armed to the teeth with the most impressive air force in the world. There are balistae on every floating island, a well-established port-authority, an airborne "coast guard," the whole nine yards. One does not fly into Aundair in secret, and it would be silly to think we could get through there unscathed.

Route 2 has us flying over Darguun. Mountains are tough to navigate by air, and flying over them would be terribly uncomfortable in a non-pressurized, non-climate controlled airship. Even flying _through_ the mountains is going to be cold and uncomfortable most of the time, and the Goblin empire here knows the terrain far better than Aeral does. They aren't friendly and they know how to take down an airship if they want to. Balistae, catapults, nets, arrow launchers, bows and arrows with rope attached for boarding; these guys are fucking terrifying. Add to that spiked-chain-weilding psychos, and we have ourselves a rough day.

Valenar houses the second-largest Lyrandar population in the world, having been granted large parcels of land for raincalling services and agricultural assistance. This means crazy Arab-themed elves on airships, air pirates, flying carpets, flying monkeys and all sorts of crazy air traffic. Also, religious tension between the Keepers of the Past, my own Sovereign Host worship and Tyson's worship of the Blood of Vol could be interesting.

The biggest thing to worry about in the Talenta Plains is dinosaurs. And pterodactyl-riding halflings of doom. And boomerangs. And halfling barbarians, and the fact that halflings have the Mark of Healing, making them damned near impossible to kill. Also, flying jelly swarms, dust storms, giant bats, giant birds, huge prehistoric insects and whatever other untamed goodness you can think up.

The Detour is a lot like going through Darguun, but with more civilized antagonists. The gnomes of Zilargo make for the crazy, and I'm sure it would be more fun for you to come up with how they'd fuck with our world than for me to offer suggestions. ^_^

Hope this helps a bit. I know running a campaign with a form of travel that circumvents land-based encounters can be a huge pain in the ass.

He didn't use any of it, which is totally justified because he is the DM and there are things he wants to focus on that are not, necessarilly, flying. Looking at the above, though, I'm thinking "Well shit. Let's make this a Skill Challenge."

So flying. There are a few things that go into flying a giant fucking airship. Most of those things are the same things that go into sailing an old sailing ship. This skill challenge assumes that your characters are 7th - 9th level and in a position of authority over the crew.

The airship slides into the air with a low whoosh of flame, climbing steadilly in altitude as the crew scrambles to finish last-minute preparations. As the docking tower shrinks against the horizon, the ship reaches a cruising altitude hundreds of feet above the ground. The journey is under way.

Flying an Airship
Level: 7
Complexity: 5 (12 successes before 6 failures)
Primary Skills: Athletics, Diplomacy, Endurance, Intimidate, Perception
Secondary Skills: Acrobatics, Nature, Thievery

Athletics DC 19 (limit 4 successes)You haul on riggings and set booms, ensuring the airship stays well on course. Failure on this check counts against the skill challenge, and the lead player suffers damage equal to twice his or her level as the booms crash into, or the rigging lashes out at, him or her.

Diplomacy DC 19 (limit 3 successes)You speak to various members of the crew, building synergy and helping them work together as a cohesive unit. Failure on this check counts against the skill challenge, and each member of the party suffers a -2 penalty to their next roll.

Endurance DC 17 (limit 2 successes) The rigors of daily life upon an airship wear at you, but you find reserves of strength and willpower that help you suffer through. Failure on this check counts against the skill challenge, and the lead character loses a number of healing surges equal to half his or her level. If healing surges are reduced to zero, that character takes damage equal to three times his or her level as well.

Intimidate DC 17 (limit 4 successes)You push the crew beyond their normal limits, barking orders and throwing your weight around. Though you may have earned the crew's ire, you also have their respect. Failure on this check counts against the skill challenge, and the lead character takes damage equal twice his or her level and loses healing surges equal to half his or her level. All other characters involved in the skill challenge take a -3 penalty on their next roll, as the crew is resistant to help them.

Perception DC 23 (limit 2 successes) In the distance, you see a landmark you instantly recognize, and notice that your course is a few degrees off. With a whispered word to the captain, you set the course aright. Failure on this check does not count against the skill challenge.

Acrobatics DC 23 (limit 1 success)You scamper up the riggings like a monkey, fixing a block that's come loose, saving hours of work. Success at this check grants a +2 bonus to the adventurer's next skill check. Fialure means the participants each lose one healing surge.

Nature DC 23 (limit 1 success)The country slips underneath you, and your intimate knowledge of the lands below help you avoid a next of gryphons. A few hours of detour save the lives of half the crew. Success on this check grants a +2 bonus to each of the participant's next skill check. Failure means that each participant loses one healing surge.

Thievery DC 23 (limit 1 success)Your knowledge of ropes and knots comes in handy onboard the ship, as new rigging is needed to replace the old, shabby ropes above. Success on this check grants you a +2 bonus to your next Diplomacy, Athletics or Endurance check. Failure means you lose a healing surge.

Development
No matter whether the players succeed or fail, they will eventually reach their destination. However, failure carries with it a terrible price.

Success:After the adventurers have twelve successes, they reach their destination unmolested, and well ahead of schedule.
Failure: If the adventurers fail the skill challenge, they run afoul one of the world's many flying terrors. In this case, a huge swarm of flying jellyfish! They have no chance for a short rest before the encounter begins.

Flying Jellyfish Swarm
Level 9 Skirmisher (400xp)
Gargantuan natural beast (swarm)
Senses: Perception +12, low-light vision
Swarm Attack aura 5; the Flying Jellyfish Swarm makes a basic attack as a free action against each enemy that begins its turn in the aura.
HP96; Bloodied 48
AC 22; Fortitude 20; Reflex 17; Will 21
Resist half damage from melee and ranged attacks; Vulnerable 5 against close and area attacks.
Speed 0; Fly 12 (hover) overland flight 15
Swarm of Tentacles (standard; at will; melee)
+14 vs. Ref; 1d6+7 damage and the target is immobilized.
Alignment Unaligned
Languages -
Str 9, Dex 24, Wis 17, Con 16, Int 8, Cha 10
Equipment None