How to prevent one of Talakeal's Gaming Horror Stories: PC Edition

[Quertus]

So, I've been thinking about this skill challenge, and how poorly it modeled in-game reality.

You're on a sinking ship. By default, the condition track should not sit still - it should degrade every "turn"/action phase/whatever.

Character actions should almost never make the ship sink faster. It should almost never be optimal for someone to say, "nah, you guys have got this, I would just be underfoot, I'll sit this out", as was the case for Talakeal's character. This was quite literally an "all hands on deck" situation. More hands should have made the work lighter.

So, at the simplest, I might try… every "turn", the ship degrades 2 steps. Every turn, every character (and zombie!) can attempt a relevant ship check to improve the ship 1 step.

A more advanced system might allow really good rolls / more critical actions to increase the maximum number of steps gained (or even change the rate of progress lost!), or to limit the maximum number of gains from certain repeated actions (you can bail water infinitely, but there are only 3 patchable holes, for example). And to better model how long different actions take.

Thoughts?

Try have a conversion with the rest of the party to see if they agree that they are supposed to engage with what the GM has prepped or not. It looks like they don't, and that's fine. It just means that it's not worth it to prep for these people and the GM should just expect improvise instead.

+1 this.

Although I might use words like "linear adventure" and "sandbox" and "plot hooks", to try to get all of the players and the GM on the same page regarding expectations for the game. Because, right now, it sounds like maybe 2 people were expecting a high Participationism linear adventure, while 2 people were expecting either a sandbox, or better plot hooks.