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View Full Version : DM Help Need help planning a session.



KnotKnormal
2019-02-26, 08:36 PM
The concept of the session(s) is that the city the party is in, is being held hostage a few mid level wizards, that are specifically targeting the guild that the players are apart of. so far I know I know I want to use glyph of warding to kick things off, and things like sky write to deliver messages to the party as well as officially hold the the city hostage.

My problem comes, I've never been great at pacing these kind of puzzles. either I make it too easy and the game is over in half the time or I put too many red herrings and dead ends in to make it difficult to solve.

so I'm calling upon the members of Giant In The Playground to help me with pacing as well as a few motivations and sneaky plans that these wizards might have.

Thank you in advance for everyone that reads this, and doubly so for those that reply.

username1
2019-02-26, 09:04 PM
You need to first think what your group would want. Are they willing to spend an hour debating over clues, interrogating witnesses, and solving puzzles? Or would your group get bored of that quick? You have to think what your group wants. If you do make a big puzzle case make it simple and straightforward, no red herrings. Instead let them move through each problem in a straight forward fashion. To many red herrings and the players will feel lost. Just make the strait case full of puzzles and other clues, but always with a simple solution. Good luck!

MoiMagnus
2019-02-27, 10:47 AM
Something that works pretty well if you are bad at designing puzzle, is to design "skill challenges".

Here is a "puzzle":

DM:
You find a magical gate with the following inscription, written in old common. Does someone knows how to read old common?
PCs:
Yes!
DM:
The wizard translate it and read "It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening. What is it?".
PCs:
A human!
DM:
The door opens.

Here is the same presented as a skill challenge:

DM:
You find a magical gate with an inscription on it. It seems to be in an old language.
PCs:
I try to read it.
DM:
Make a [Insert Skill] check... Partial Success. It is in old common. It looks like a riddle, or at least something expecting a answer. Do you have any skill you could use to try to solve it?
PCs:
Well, I don't know. I've History, if that's a famous riddle, I might be able to remember the solution. Or we can use some divination spell.
DM:
Please roll for History... You think you have the answer. Do you test it?
PCs:
Yes
DM:
The door opens.

In the case of your problem, here is what I would advice:
+ You have a very rough plan of the city, to track the positions of the PCs. (and by position, I mean "market place, port, ...")
+ Every time the PCs do some actions that take some times, add a blue token (visible by the PCs), showing how time passes. If you feel like the PCs are taking too much time, change the color of the new time tokens to black without explanation, it gives the feeling of "something is happening and we need to act NOW".
+ Every time the PCs do actions that are good (interrogate someone useful, ...), they have a SUCCESS (that you can represent with green tokens). You can give multiple SUCCESS at once, if the action is really good.
+ Every time they do something bad, or fail a very important skill check, they have a FAILURE (that you can represent with red tokens)
+ If they have too much FAILURE, they get caught in an ambush, or something similar that mostly forces the end of the skill challenge, and you can now start the sequence of fight until the boss fight (or the PCs running away, or losing)
+ If you feel like they have enough SUCCESS (you don't need to chose how many in advance), the plot advance, and they are going toward the resolution (either immediately, either after few other SUCCESS).
+ If they don't know what to do, send to them more problems to solve, if possible related to what they need to do, so they get more inspiration. (like when the bad guy in films cause its own defeat by sending assassins to kill the hero, allowing the hero to understand who is the bad guy)

However, I do understand that some DM/Players don't like at all this way of handling investigation (this is a very 4e way of seeing skill challenges), so maybe it's not for you.