|
My first-ever campaign as GM will hopefully kick off sometime this week, standard medieval fantasy D&D 4E fare. I plan to mostly play combat by ear and learn what works as I go, but there's one encounter in store a few sessions down the line I know I'll need help planning. It'll rip a few pages out of Far Cry 2's book for an early-game climax: With very little time to prepare, the PCs will be warned to hurry to either of two nearby towns in order to help mount a defense against impending surprise attacks. Both towns have NPCs in them who are helpful to the party, and the idea is to make the incentive to defend either about equal; there's no plot armor, however, and if a town gets overrun, its residents die. If the party agrees to go to the same town or to flee, great. If they choose to split up between the two, though, I have the scenario I'll need help with. What I figured I'd do was have one half of the split party ultimately lose their fight, and give the characters from the losing mini-sessions detailing their narrow escapes from death (starting from regaining consciousness), a bit of plot exposition, and eventual reunion with the party. I'm looking for ways I could accomplish all this without the encounter seeming overly railroady. Do I houserule away death, send in a neverending stream of enemies, focus-fire the loser PCs into unconsciousness all on the same turn, what? What are some good GM tricks for a situation like this?
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2010 11:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 20, 2024 09:37 |
|
|
TheAnomaly posted:useful suggestions Thanks, I'll definitely try and work some of this in. Let me elaborate a bit, as this "arbitrary town failure" impression everyone has wasn't what I had in mind. Their unwinnable fight doesn't come from picking the wrong location, it comes from deciding to split up the party to try and defend both (they will receive advance, explicit in-character warning that this is a bad idea). My original plan for this scenario was that once the minority split of the 5-man party were all incapacitated (or the majority, if their rolls were awful enough), both combats would fade to black and I'd narrate that it took all night but the other group eventually fought the baddies off. Why prolong the combat if half the players are sitting it out? Focus would then turn on what happened to the losers. As a matter of fact, one of them would come to in a secret passage with a few NPC buddies and be informed that while their defenses got overrun, the party's efforts allowed the handful of them to get to safety. Another member would find themselves stranded in the woods after being mistaken for dead and falling off a corpse cart headed for a mass grave. Etcetera. Each would get some special plot revelations (small bonus for the big risk), a bit of spotlight time and then be put on track to rejoining the main group. So again, what I want help with are ways to make the scenario as convincing/suspenseful as possible. I'm not going to kill or spite characters for taking the heroic route, but at the same time I don't feel like two very long and drawn-out combat scenes, particularly after warning the party that splitting up is unwise.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2010 08:26
|
|