I’m struggling with how to handle traps, hazards and area effects in World settings (in particular, World of Dungeons style systems). For example, you enter a room which shoots poison darts if you hit a trigger. Does everyone roll? How would you handle that? Similar topics: landslides, radiation, and hand grenades. Thanks in advance for any tips!
I’m struggling with how to handle traps, hazards and area effects in World settings (in particular, World of…
I’m struggling with how to handle traps, hazards and area effects in World settings (in particular, World of…
Sure, they fail a roll to find the trap or disable or whatever then you get a hard move. Make everyone roll a +dex to avoid .. or maybe +con for particularly hardy folk. A hard move doesn’t necessarily only affect the person who failed.
[pedant]It should all follow from the fiction[/pedant].
If the darts shoot out everywhere in such a way as to hit everyone in the room, and they were being careless, I might make a hard move and hit everyone in the room. If they were being cautious, I might describe the trigger : “A flagstone sinks underfoot. What do you do?” and allow whoever triggered it to do something before the darts fire. In other situations I might be a fan of the characters by, say, allowing only the Thief to roll to defy danger, or having the darts break harmlessly on the Fighter’s shield/armor.
For me it’s all about imagining the situation and making a call that makes the most sense based on the fiction.
A landsllide would work the same way as the poison darts — are they paying attention or being careless?
Radiation is probably just a hard move — they go there, they suffer the consequences.
Hand grenade, I would say, “a live grenade lands nearby, what do you do?” and whoever says something first gets to do it, but if they hesitate for even a second it goes off in their faces.
Let me just say I totally agree with Jason Lutes and probably should have been more clear – you can totally do a thing if it follows the fiction 🙂
While I agree that a hard move doesn’t only affect the person who failed, I still usually hit that person harder than the others. 🙂
Sometimes, but really there is nothing holding you to that. Sometimes when someone else fucks up it ends up hurting someone else. Really just depends on what makes sense in the fiction.
Overall though with all PbtA games I’ve moved to just taking a token for each hard move that I get and then spending them out over the course of the story when it has the most fictionally dramatic impact.
Steve Wallace, I’ve arrived at the “doom token” approach as well. It really helps keeping the flow from jamming up whenever I can’t come up with something good on the spot.
Yeah, exactly why I’ve gone to it. I implemented in the last game of #nocountryforoldkobolds I ran at origins and it worked so well I’m writing it into any game I design going forward 😀
Agreed, Steve Wallace. I said “usually”. BTW, I do a similar thing to your tokens when the timing isn’t right or there’s lots of fails within a chunk of time: I have my MC sheet with all the PCs stats & basic deets on it, so I put a slash next to the PC’s name whenever they fail a roll. Then when I “pay it back” by making a hard move, I cross that slash with a backslash, turning it into an X.
In D&D, you usually have a 1 in 6 chance of spotting a trap, and I don’t think I’ve ever played an RPG of any genre where the GM just foisted a trap on us without some kind of warning. If a character hasn’t read a situation because, say, there was no charged interaction and no announced future badness to give them a reason to think they should read a sitch then having them notice the trap before they set it off is probably a good idea.
I’ve thought about doing this as an MC and would basically treat it as acting under fire but it uses +sharp instead of +cool. Keep in mind you could also announce future badness explicitly (“You heard Haystack got killed trying to break into Dremmer’s car, set off some kind of bear trap on the window.” and “There are some blood stains around the edges of the door frame.”) and if they still take no action to look for the trap or be cautious then simply spring the trap on them and you can say “Well, I did warn you.”
All great comments! Thanks folks! 🙂
And remember that sometimes your best hard move is “Give them what they want, no strings attached” Especially if it entertains you to do so and might mess with their heads XO, your MC
Meguey Baker I wish I could plus that comment more!