So. Last night was game night. It was … frustrating for me as GM. My players rescued the kidnapped girl, simply declined to engage in any fights with the lizard priests whatsoever, and then kept making such insanely good rolls that they made it back to the girl’s village without anything or anyone standing in their way.
Sure, it was great fun that they then decided to throw an epic mega party for the entire village (Carouse!), which lasted until the wee small hours, with everyone in the party either getting laid, or drunk, or both. Definitely fun to narrate and see played out (PG-rated, I hasten to add :-)).
My problem as GM is my usual one with this group: by deliberately and successfully avoiding all conflict, my players ended up with another session of mostly information-gathering and talking to NPCs a lot, leaving me scrambling madly to provide said information.
As none of my fronts, dangers, and portents were even remotely concerned with the village, there was very little I could do to tie it all in with the rest of the campaign (which, despite their evasive manoeuvres this time, the players are still keen to tackle next), so now there’s a whole new set of information tidbits (“watch out for the order of the green cloak!” — wtf was I thinking…) that need to be given a place somehow.
Oh well, back to the drawing board!
Leo Breebaart, this IMO is where fronts and dangers shine the best (if you do them correctly, and I have stated in the past that I don’t lol).
All of the other stuff you planned is ticking away. Yes, they made it back safely with the kidnapped girl, but the stuff going on in the other fronts went on unimpeded! Tick off one of your grim portents. THAT has happened, and it changes the fiction accordingly. Make sure they know and understand that it happened BECAUSE they didn’t do anything about it.
Also, it’s all fluid, so don’t worry about having to rework some or all of your fronts a little.
Finally, if your group has a history of intentionally avoiding conflict, maybe you should try using your moves to initiate conflict. Even when they roll 10+ you can still make a soft move to make something else happen.
Presumably the lizard priests kidnapped the girl for some reason. Since the PCs didn’t do anything to the priests, that reason still exists. What do they do now? Do they try to get the girl back (everyone is drunk, after all)? Do they just grab someone else from some other village? Do they ignore the girl and get on when their real plan?
As Brian Holland said, this is where Fronts and Dangers come into play. Something is still happening in your campaign world, and as the PCs left the lizard cult alive and operational, they’re still going ahead with their nefarious plan as Lester Ward points out.
Have you figured out what the lizard cult is doing? What’s their next step towards achieving that goal? Whatever that step is, the PCs should feel it’s effects regardless of where they are. Either directly or indirectly, the PCs and the players need to be made aware that the threat they faced is still out there causing problems.
it seems like your players like them some intrigue, have you thought of making a more social/conspiracy based front? something to sate thier needs of gatharing info and talking to npcs? (because “they” cover everything up, and you dont exactly know who “they” are, so trust no-one)
could be cool if you’re into that
If you have to scramble to make interesting NPCs, prepping some of them would be ideal. Keep some names on hand, but also short descriptions, jobs, it secrets. So you can glance at a list and pull up: Thirm, the middle aged wheelwright who has recently repaired many wagons for the lizard cult, as if they were planning a great journey.
You can still make things interesting in non-combat situations. Avoid combat is not the same as avoiding conflict. That’s what Parley and Defy Danger with Int/Wis/Cha are for.
This is something that I have discovered as a flaw with DW, at least for me. It may be because I don’t understand fonts well or that I am not being agressive enough or something.
My problem is exactly what you experienced: Good rolls make for less action in the game and less drama, in some cases. In old school games or other rpgs (ones with initiative) the bad guys get a “turn” and the PCs get a “turn” meaning that on the purely mechanical side: PCs roll, bad guys react and resist AND then the bad guys roll with the PCs resisting. With DW it is all wrapped up in one roll. Failure to accomplish what you are doing has consequences BUT the bad guys can only rely on the consequences. Sure there is the eminent loop hole of making a move when the Players are looking to you as to what is happening. But with good flow that doesn’t happen much. So the GM has little opportunity to introduce more. This again is on the purely mechanical side of things. Beings it is fiction first, I have found that this is manageable and makes WHAT is being done more critical and WHAT the description of what the players are doing more critical. Both the players and the GM need to take a lot more care in how they approach the problems, and more importantly, how they describe their actions. Often times there is a disconnect between what the players say and what they want their character doing and a bit of a disconnect when not enough description is given to them from the GM. Just a personal Observation. When that happens, it can derail and make for some arguments as to what the player said that they were doing and how the GM should have indentured it. It also makes the normal roleplaying seem a bit slow or nonexistent when the GM is constantly pushing for action or actionable consequences.
Sorry for hyjacking the thread. But I have found this aspect of the game frustrating as well. It can be very frustrating for the GM when everything goes right for the PCs and they have an awesome rolling night.
Matrix Forby that’s not true. You can also make a move when the fiction demands it.
“There’s two orcs pressing you back against the wall, you’re not going to be able to take them both on. What do you do?”
“I Hack & Slash with my sword.”
“OK but you’re only going to be able to fend off one from this position. You can fight defensively if you want and keep it at a stalemate, but if you fight your way out, you’ll be vulnerable”
“Fine! Rolled a 12! Woo, hit that orc for 7 damage.”
“He reels back, holding his injured sword arm. You feel pain in your side, and realize you’ve been stabbed. The second orc is smiling, dagger covered in blood. Roll d6 damage, and he’s still coming at you, what do you do?”
…
You know that the GM can take a turn whenever it makes sense to do so, right Matrix Forby? Making a GM move on a missed roll is a common time to take your turn, but it’s hardly the only time.
Ok, Yes, I understand. A move can be made when: 1. Fiction demands it, 2. The players are looking at you for what is happening, 3. When the players roll a 6 or less (hard move) or 7-9 (soft move or set up move)
I just find the game a bit..reactive. I find it is hard for me to interject stuff that the players are not prepared for and just hit them. It seems a bit crewel to do so. So, I guess that I am needlessly restricting myself.
Aaron Griffin In your example a few notes and questions.
Note: “I Hack&Slash with my sword.” I rarely allow the player to put it in this way. I often ask them what they are specifically doing.
Question: The game treats groups as one individual in many cases, just dealing a +1 damage per extra opponent. Meaning that you are fending them all off when you act. True, they can only kill one at a time, with a clever description more than one. But if a character is surrounded (even with back to the wall) by 8 orks that when he does his move and even if he succeeds does that mean that the other 7 get to damage him? Or with a good fiction, only a few can damage him? It seems like you are trying to have it both ways. I understand that the fiction trumps BUT in the official examples and many others the successful roll will, at best, trigger another soft move, not a hard move. So, this comes at a lack of understanding here. A dissonance.
Chris Stone-Bush Yes, I do understand that. So basically it sounds like the need to set up the fiction to be able to make extra moves that are not a part of the player’s roll/action. That seems to be to be more background stuff or “off screen”. It can be useful but, I have trouble doing some of this. I occasionally have trouble pushing the narrative to get the effect that I want. A challenge to the players. The challenge that can overcome constant good rolls from the players.
Maybe it is that I am just used to making adventures in the old way. A general outline with some specific encounters in specific areas. Then customizing as I go to fit the fiction. But the constant push for action can get tireing. The need to think in terms of danger, That it is not if they succeed or fail but HOW they succeed or fail and HOW to push it into another move that the player must take. The need to keep pushing forward.
I don’t know what my solution is going to be, yet.
Matrix Forby the “I Hack and slash” part was a demonstration of a player “doing it wrong” and was merely for example. It was supposed to illustrate a new or unfamiliar player.
As to the rest – you’re being too strict with the rules. No where does it say two orcs count as a group, no where does it say fighting as a group is the only way, and even more so, I told the consequences and asked. If the PC instead said, “can I maneuver around to get these two to group up, maybe letting me fight my way out” then yes, absolutely! That sounds awesome – Defy Danger or something to do the maneuver.
Don’t treat monsters like some very specific set of rules written in a book, they are just obstacles that can fight back. Dealing with two orcs, getting across a chasm of snakes, or talking your way into the temple is all the same stuff.
Quickly, as it’s late here, the game treats the damage from multiple attackers as a single die roll plus bonuses. I don’t believe groups of similar NPCs must be treated as a group.
Adding on to what others have said, one of the things to remember is that your job is to fill their lives with adventure. If they are avoiding combat, then the adventure needs to follow them. Maybe after a night of carousing, they wake to a lizardman army just outside their city, and their high lizard priest demanding a dozen sacrifices. Good things are awesome, but they almost always set up a worse condition.
In one of my recent adventures, the players had to spring a dwarven inventor from an orc dungeon. They whipped up a distraction using a custom move, and with the 7-9, an unexpected result would occur. Thus, while inside the dungeon, the distraction triggered and was much more… explosive than they anticipated. Due to some lucky rolls and good calls, they ended up destroying the orc stronghold and escaping with both the dwarven inventor and a heart from a dragon.
Awesome. Huge success for them.
Except the next morning, the entire orc army was looking for them, and their heroic actions the night before had only served to rile them up.
Remember that the game isn’t a move-countermove scenario. It’s a conversation. You as the game master are telling the players what happens. They might roll beautifully, which means they are doing their part to succeed. That doesn’t stop the bad things from happening. Those things will continue to happen because the world is alive around them.
What you know is that the players aren’t combat-y. That’s okay. “Adventure” doesn’t have to mean any specific thing. If they’d rather stealth their way to victory. DO THAT. Don’t stop filling their lives with adventure. Just make the adventure theirs.
Are there any portents from the temple that are still resolving themselves? Will the lizard priests not just go kidnap another girl to try and perform their Ritual? Also, if they didn’t fight them, is there a lizard priest that resents them for rescuing the girl? I think you could build on their decisions to leave them all alive.
Chris Stone-Bush +Brian Holland Oh, I am going to Front and Danger the beejeebus out of my players, don’t worry! The Lizard Priests are definitely going to want the girl back, and they will definitely still want to manifest the bloodgod Groth — I am already finding that Fronts are indeed helping me with my prep. Having your NPCs have motivations and take actions on their own outside of the players’ direct story, as it were, is the best.
My frustration was in last night’s session itself: we still had about 2 hours of game time to go, and at that point I had nothing really left to throw at them. Portents weren’t really necessary: my players (logical engineers that they are) knew that bad shit was going to go down, and that they had (willingly) made a choice that would have consequences. But on the other hand they had also escaped fair and square with their good rolls, and it would have felt like cheating to me to just manufacture danger out of thin air.
So instead I improvised completely new story elements out of thin air that I will now have to fit in the rest of the story somehow. Ah well. Play to find out, eh? 🙂
Michael Weil That’s a really good point. I feel I’m not a good enough improviser yet to handle a social/conspiracy Front, but I definitely think my players would react well to something like that. I just need to be able to handle that sort of thing better on my end, and not break into a wild panic every time they ask a question of an NPC I hadn’t anticipated them asking, which happens only all the damn time. 🙂
Scott Selvidge I kind of painted myself in a corner with the temple front. The lizard priests need a magical doohickey to complete their ritual, and it’s been established that our heroes know where that doohickey is, but the priests don’t. And the doohickey is very far away. So, unfortunately, the temple front was stalled last night because the heroes just walked away — yet the cult can’t really proceed without them, so the front can’t advance!
But, and this is indeed true, the cult also needs a vessel for the manifesting of the blood god, so the fact that the girl was taken away from them should definitely lead to some further conflict!
I also got lucky in that my wizard wants to perform a Ritual, and I told him I’d let him know the conditions next session. So I think I can use this to nudge them a bit in a certain direction. (“You want to create a Holistic Vision spell that will tell you why the equinox ritual is so important? [Note: I really meant it when I said that my players are information-gatherers, not fighters. 🙂 ] No Problem! All you have to do is find the magical doohickey yourself and disenchant it.” Something like that.
I would think if the lizard priests know that the party knows then they might try to kidnap one of them or spy on them for the info. Or with your wizard scenario, follow them when they go to look for the doohickey.
Leo Breebaart From what you describe, I see a few possibilities, story-wise.
1. The Lizard Priests wanting to get another vessel
2. The Lizard Priests REALLY wanting to get back at the party.
3. The Lizard Priests wanting to get information out of the party on where the dohickey is.
So you wizard is wanting to know: Don’t have him disenchant it. Have him cast spells on it to reveal it’s nature. This can send a clarion call to the Lizard Priests and send them running. Remember you want to keep the Font as a danger. Removing the doohickey will end the threat. So Disenchanting it will be bad…unless the act of disenchanting it releases the magic and it attaches to some other object or person. Hmm, I like that Idea. Boom, no more doohickey but NOW the Wizard is hunted by the Lizard Priests because he is their key now. Oops. And now the Lizards know where their magic is calling them to..The Wizard. Double Oops.
Time for lizard priests to call for reinforcements!
If I was an angry lizard priest and my intended sacrifice to the great crocodile god of warm-blood had been taken away by marauding smooth skins, I would be pissed!
I’d definitely be praying for a visitation from a chosen of the great devourer.
Leo Breebaart I would not have Fronts that only advance if the players do something since they will always,stall which means you are not filling your players lives with danger.
There are other people that know where the doohicky is and the lizardmen will try to pursue those avenues. Players hear rumours about raids in other towns from the Lizardmen.
See how that is more interesting then Lizardmen just sit there doing nothing because everytime they try to attack the players they are thawarted?
To echo what james day said, Grim Portents shouldn’t include things that the player characters do. They should only be about the Danger in question or the outside world. It’s pointless to predict what the player characters will do, and putting it on the list starts feeling rather railroad-y.
Chris Stone-Bush To be fair to myself, my front did not really include something the player characters do — I’m aware of that basic rule. It was definitely the Lizard Priests who wanted the doohickey, but who wanted the players to go get it for them, and were therefore putting on a show of being superfriendly for the last two sessions or so. In the previous sessions (when the players were in the priest’s abbey), those ulterior motives worked really well because they indeed gave the priests a hidden agenda that I could advance and that the players could react to. It’s just when this week the players suddenly decided to opt out of that whole location/situation altogether that the rug was sorta swept out from under my feet.
But yeah, there was indeed still a hidden dependency on/expectation about the players in the Front that I hadn’t fully realised the ramifications of and that I will certainly try to avoid in the future.
Leo Breebaart Sounds like you did everything well tbh, and sometimes the players will do things you don’t expect and that will ruin the flow. I think that is perfectly natural and yeah sometimes you will need another week to go soo what do I do now.
Because you know there eill be seasions that will be the opposite and you get exciting and breathtaking opportunities that last the whole seasion. You also get it all in the game time and have a cool cliffhanger.
Im sure those will happen.
To be fair to you Leo Breebaart I didn’t see anything in your comments that made me think you had planned a “When the PCs do X…” style Grim Portent. My comment was more general, and followed from the comment above mine. Sorry for the confusion.
That being said, I’ve had some of my Grim Portents be worded in such a way that they unintentionally require PC action. They do slip through sometimes.
As for what to do now? You mentioned that you had to improv the last half of the session right? Write down all the things you had to come up with and treat this like another session one. Flesh out some things the players seemed interested in so that regardless of which way they go, you have something planned.
And the Lizard Cult? They’re still searching for that doohickey. Whatever the players do, they should continue to hear rumors or see the effects of the cult’s progress. Just because the characters aren’t involved doesn’t mean the cult disappears. Portray a living world and all that.
Brian Holland You actually spelled out what is probably my biggest problem with fronts: The fact that they happen because the players didn’t do anything feels railroad-y. I have great difficulty attempting to run my games as a railroad conductor. Fronts/grim portents/whatever are actually something I want to try to avoid.
Josh C In my view it just shows a evolving and changing world. If the players decide or even just doesn’t find the Lizardmen they are still out there doing there plans and they will probably encounter them if they go in the swamps of swampening.
Having stuff that is always connected to the players I would say is railroading. For example if you had the Lizardmen constantly finding the pcs and hounding them it would get old for the players and it would feel like you were tugging there arm sayimg Lizardmen, lizardmen you got to defeat them.
Hmm… I feel the definition of rail roading involves not allowing the players to make meaningful choices, or forcing them to take certain actions. I don’t see how a chain of events that occur if the characters don’t get involved equals railroading.
Actually wait. I do see how characters not getting involved in a Front can be railroading. Correct me if I’m wrong here, Josh C.
A Front being in play means that the players are interested in it. Even if the characters aren’t currently involved in it, the players still want that Front in the game and the campaign world.
If the players are absolutely not interested in a Front though, the GM continuing to advance it can feel like railroading. A “Hey, remember that thing you are completely uninterested in? Here it is again!” sort of thing. Constantly throwing it into the players faces can make it seem like the GM is forcing them to deal with it.
So yes. I see how characters not getting involved in a Front can seem like railroading. But unless the players are completely uninterested in it, it shouldn’t be railroading. So sometimes it might be worth the GM stepping back and directly asking the players if they are interested in and enjoying what is going on.
Chris Stone-Bush not allowing the players to make meaningful choices, or forcing them to take certain actions Except rescuing whatsherface /was/ a meaningful action to them, and they still face a consequence for it (or at least that’s really the only way I can see some front still going forward even with the players being proactive). Because even if they do rescue whatserface, something bad is going to happen, because they didn’t take the action that stopped the front/portent from happening. Do enough of these, and you have no game, or you have a situation where the players are contrived to do whateveritisyouwant so the game keeps going, even if it goes counter to the intent the players initially had. I’m sure my opinion is influenced by the fact that I sandbox too much and usually end up doing what amounts to “generating fronts in play.”
Chris Stone-Bush You got it right with your post I didn’t see you add before mine posted.
I think what I’m trying to say is that if the players did SOMETHING that slowed the advance of the front, then maybe it only deserves a soft move instead of an outright advancing of the front.
Josh C, yeah it’s kind of a fine line, but I don’t feel it’s railroady. If the players understand “this is what’s going on” and they choose not to do anything about it, then yes, I’m going to tick off a GP. if they say “we really need to do that, but this is more pressing” I won’t automatically mark off a GP (although I might).
Think of it this way…
You have the weekly meeting with the other departments heads.
You decide you’re going to stay home and play video games instead.
You’ve delibererly chosen to embark down the path of “getting fired”, and I mark off a GP leading to that doom.
Now instead of video games, let’s say you have to stay home with your sick son.
Missing the meeting for that reason may still lead to the “getting fired” impending doom, but I’m less likely to mark off the “Josh misses the staff meeting” GP under those circumstances.
Leo’s players intentionally decided to play video games instead of going to that meeting.
Lame example… sorry lol
Brian Holland It illustrated what I was trying to say well enough 😀
Also my biggest issue was the direct laying of blame, even though they did something.
“Because even if they do rescue whatserface, something bad is going to happen, because they didn’t take the action that stopped the front/portent from happening. Do enough of these, and you have no game, or you have a situation where the players are contrived to do whateveritisyouwant so the game keeps going, even if it goes counter to the intent the players initially had.”
But that’s not how Fronts are meant to work, Josh C. The bad thing only happens when all the Grim Portents are ticked off. That’s when the Impending Doom comes to pass.
Before that last Grim Portent gets ticked off though? Maybe the Front keeps advancing. Maybe not. It all depends on what the players did and how the Danger responds.
It seems like you’re assuming the GM smacks the players with something really nasty whenever a Grim Portents gets ticked off. That is not the case. It also seems you think the GM had one specific way in mind for the characters to stop the Front. Again, that shouldn’t be the case. A Front just lists the steps in a Danger’s grand plan and it’s ultimate goal. It says nothing about what needs to be done to stop that Front.
I was responding to a post that seemed to make that assumption, and my problem wasn’t so much that assumption specifically, but the mere appearance of the post I responded to made it clear to me it’s an easy assumption to make.
That’s not me disclaiming having made the assumption either. Just me saying why I don’t like fronts. Which is in short: I’d rather let the game make its own fronts
I don’t really understand how that would work. But it seems like it works for you Josh C.
Well, it doesn’t work in the sense that DW has conditioned its readers to expect, but it does work in the opposite manner. Which is to say it minimizes the possibility of forcing a front the players don’t want.
But doesn’t building the Front from the elements the players tossed out in the first session also minimize the players being uninterested?
Go where the adventure takes you. My players have gotten so embroiled in the local politics, that I just shifted the fronts to adjust to what they’re doing.
Leo Breebaart Also, unless I misunderstood something, can’t the lizard priests just… waltz right back into town and reclaim the girl? I mean, if they didn’t do anything to actually stop the lizard priests, then the lizards just have to wait until the heroes leave town to resume whatever it was they were doing in the first place, right?
There’s nothing wrong with letting that come back to smack the players in the face. It’s rather like transitioning a soft move to a hard move; they left the threat in place, so the threat continued to act.
You need more improv skills?
If players are not interested in a front, make it personal. There is always a way to cause conflict between the front and the pcs.
A Front is nothing more than the evolving plans of the rest of your world. As others have already mentioned, they’re fluid in nature. The key question is always, “What happens if the PCs do not respond to the approaching threat(s)?” These threats should originate from your pre-play discussion, but, as I am finding, more often spring from player actions.
For our campaign, my original Fronts involved an impending war between a defeated, nor regrouping nemesis (still active), and then another, more world shaking event (release of an ancient evil). The players focus, however, is what drives things now. The first Front proceeds apace, mainly because the party hasn’t really dealt with it much. I tweaked the second front to fall in line with the players finding a magical artifact, then turning it over for study to a “Mages College.” Their personal goals, however, have turned to circumventing what they perceive as the impending tyranny of their local lord, who really has screwed them over in various deals. They are also pursuing a tangential threat related to the Ancient Evil front (though they haven’t made the full connection yet).
What we’ve ended up with is a great deal of political intrigue, where I’ve followed their actions to generate the story. However, the bottom line is this: My initial Front ideas are not nearly what I thought they’d be. In most ways, they’re better and deeper now, as I’ve followed what the players are invested in, and attaching the ideas to that. This makes it easy to adjust to and accept what they want to do, which is really the point of this system.
So, long story short: you just go with what they’re doing. Your Fronts will move with regards to what they do. If you follow the recommended course in the rules, then, the bad thing should happen if they do nothing. But they shouldn’t be surprised by it, if you’ve dropped enough bread crumbs for them (always a difficult balance, as you don’t want to hand over the mystery).