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

[Quertus]

Mathematically, this won't really fix the fundamental problem that this kind of 'roll to move along a track' mechanic amounts to waiting for a random walk to reach a boundary. Which means it takes time proportional to distance squared (e.g. if the skill challenge is on a track with 10 states, it takes ~25 steps rather than ~5 steps to get to either end from the middle if it's balanced around a 50% success rate).

"If the mechanics are the same, then it will have the same mechanical issues" is tautologically true. However, if you say that, you must have missed how my mechanics differ.

Add 9 copies of Talakeal's character to the old skill track, and it makes the boat more likely to sink; add 9 copies of Talakeal's character to my progress track, and it makes the boat more likely to survive.

I'd tend to do something more like, stage the failing ship issue relatively close to an island or other nautical feature, and you have a fixed number of intervals during which you can either try to accumulate enough successes to stabilize the ship outright (at a fairly high difficulty), spend successes to secure cargo (so if the ship ends up sinking, you have supplies wherever you end up), save or help crewmembers who are in peril due to capsizing/etc events, put out a fire that is causing cumulative damage/increases in difficulties over time (with a risk that if it goes totally unaddressed, it hits the powder room), or change the ship's heading in the hope that you can e.g. beach it before it sinks entirely. These different actions would depend on different methods of contribution - not just skills, but spells/etc could give automatic successes if they're appropriate to the specific sub-situation (say, you get to add your skill check to the total pool needed to repair the ship, but a Repair spell grants a fixed +5 per spell level)

So in 5 rounds, the situation will be definitively resolved one way or another. But the players have to basically make judgement calls - is it feasible for us to go all-in and try to salvage the ship entirely? Or do we need to go for the lower-risk goal of directing the ship to the nearby island? In that case, how should we prioritize the various things that are going wrong along the way?

I mean, what I would actually do would be very different, too - I was just aiming to stick with the "track" tech (in case it mattered to Talakeal's system), and see if it could be implemented better.

Is that irrelevant? Should I explain how I would handle it in general?

Possibly, but I think it's also a case of unrealistically high expectations. Sure, if the GM enjoys and have time to make a heavily prepped sandbox and is good at making plot hooks, that's cool. But a more fair to the GM approach is to help find reasons for why your character wants to engage with what the GM has had time to prep if you want prepped content.

That's… within the zone of what I intended my comments to encompass.

Based on previous threads it seems like some of the players have mutually exclusive expectations; a mix of "don't tell me what my character should do, then I'm going to do something completely different" and at the same time expecting fair, perfectly balanced encounters and adventure days. If you do your utmost to avoid the designed challenges then you should also be fine with unbalanced encounters, IMO.

And, if so, that's something I'd like them to get out of that conversation.

Basically, the DM tried to modify the mechanics for a chase scene to represent getting a damaged boat into harbor before it sinks. In a normal chase scene, all of the fancy tricks carry a penalty for failure, and the DM did much the same. Unfortunately, he didn't include a basic run equivalent action (bailing water perhaps?) for untrained characters to do without risking the cost of failure.

That is a very interesting take on ship challenges. Or skill challenges. Either one.

I don't think in terms of a linear progress track, so… I've never considered the necessity of an explicit "run" action before? I guess I've allowed "I (untrained) assist x action" - like, "I carry stuff to them, to make it go faster".

I don't think plot hooks get more urgent / clear than "You are stuck in a small town where everyone is starving, the townspeople think its connected to the missing druid and are looking to form a posse to investigate."

Eh, to play devil's advocate, not really. We don't know the area; they do. We don't know the Druid, or the local spirits; they did. We are intruding foreigners; they are locals. There are so many reasons that the party should not be interfering / should leave this clearly vital quest to those more qualified. It's pure hubris for the party to get involved in local religious matters.

I am kind of miffed at my party members. Originally I wanted to play the "dragon" character, but everybody wanted to play outcasts with no social skills or grand plans, so I remade my character to function as the party leader / face, and now everyone is grumbling about wanting more authority / respect and not wanting to listen to anyone.

Did they tell you that you needed to be the leader / face? One of my favorite parties (my BDH party) would struggle with trivial social tasks, like not being run out of the town that we just saved. It was bloody awesome - literally, on both counts!