Since I have a large game group with players who shift in and out week by week I've been experimenting a little bit with what you might call solo side-quests.
The idea is they keep players up to date when they miss a session or two, plus they deepen that players' connection to some part of the game world relevant to their PC.
For instance:
A few weeks back, Dave's cleric of the Black Grip-Olaf--lost his arm. This is a big deal as spellcasters need to be able to gesture freely and that's hard with one arm that isn't actually, like, there. He asked if there was a Temple of the Black Grip nearby that could regenerate his arm.
The standard choices would be:
-Mean DM says No
-Nice DM says Yes
-Make Dave try to convince the whole party to go on a Quest For Dave's Arm even if Dave won't be there for weeks at a time in the middle of the entire continent being invaded
Instead, one monday evening I set up some miniatures on a table and just texted Dave this:
I further texted some details on the tactical situation:
The general mechanic I'm using for this mass battle is: 2 guys square off and each roll a die, high roll wins, so big dice are good, small dice are bad.
Dave texts back:
Dave further elects to hide his D30 giant skeleton guy underneath the giant skull thing on the left of the map and have it spring out only when goblins roll up.
Further, once the fight starts, he carefully deploys some Fog Cloud spells to confuse the goblin advance and channel them into places where they're easy to take out.
We can watch the battle progress round by round, with the goblins (mostly on square white bases) coming up from the bottom:
The Grip sends the bulk of its forth to the left of the screen and a few elite units go right:
A detachment of goblins probes to the right and gets wiped out by the elite forces. A fog cloud covers the goblin left.
This channels all the goblins through the center...
And they get wiped out as undead pour in from both directions!
The Black Grip wins!
Olaf gets a new arm (but it's a skeleton arm).
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27 comments:
he should be able to upgrade the arm to it being stronger and stronger undead as he levels up, like now it is a skeleton arm, but down the line he gains a lich arm
I am shamelessly stealing this system for quick mass battle. If I have to alter it heavily because my players keep breaking it, I'll let you know.
"but it's a skeleton arm" haha.
Very fun read. I think I should incorporate something similar in my solo games. Sometimes ask a random friend to chip in battle ideas as if 'in character' for a faction. And If I understood currectly, the battle mechanic, roll die, larger number kills smaller number ?
@DVAR
Yes,
Nice way to do solos! I was also going to ask about mechanics but I see you've answered that. I like it, imagine it would yeild quick group battle resolutions, allows for tactics and will get the naration moving to the next story point.
Simple and effective combat rules - I would have complicated that up in un-fun ways, so like Dauvois I am going to steal this idea.
i've always wanted to do something like this. maybe if the players hit domain level...
Used to do single side quests all the time back in the day when it so happened that no one else could make it to the table. It is nice that someone is using this new fangled technology for something good.
This is very interesting and I'll have to try it out. I've been running games once every couple of months for a group in another city and I am trying to come up with ways to inject some kind of remote gameplay from time to time. This could definitely be interesting for the players and actually a lot of fun for the DM to resolve. Thank you for the great idea!
Great way to keep players involved even though they can't make it to the game night. Do you run solo skirmish games like this often? I've been exploring some of the solo war game systems recently. Five Parsecs From Home and Fallout Wasteland Warfare stand out.
Having a 1 on 1 session with your players in order to achieve a personal goal is awesome! And taken to such an extreme level of dedication!
I've been wanting to do something like this once the opportunity presents itself. Hopefully that will be soon...
"Olaf gets a new arm (but it's a skeleton arm)." Yes! I have a funny arm story to share. One of my players had an arm severely mangled during a white crocodile attack. He made do for a while, but the group ran into a local healer who knew where to find 'limb seeds' among the local flora. She bandaged him up with a limb seed, and it took several days to heal. What he hasn't discovered yet is that his arm is now detachable. The first time he gets hit for 5+ damage, it's going to fall off. I'm sure he'll get used to it and figure out how to keep it on. He may even eventually find it handy (ha ha) to have an arm that he can control when it's not attached to his body...
@chris baratz
I don't often but i might do it more
@regina hart
reminds me of Adventure Time--i think Finn loses his arm and gets a grass replacement for a while, right?
@zak sabbath, aw man, I dunno! I've never watched. Now I have one more 'to watch' in my queue.
A skeleton's hand? He was lucky, it could have been a goblin's hand!
A funny and interesting retelling. I haven't thought about solo games in this format, I'll have to try it when I get a chance.
I like this - I may also adopt a similar approach of play-by-text but with the whole group for certain things, as my group often has big gaps in time between sessions and that'll be a good way to keep them all engaged.
This should work. Tempted to give it a go, though I usually avoid mass conbat
A great way to make missing a session fun, and keep engagement.
Have you seen the graft rules they made in 3.5? Iirc, there are some in the Libris Mortis and I think in the Fiend Folio. 3.5 had too much detail, but there are some good ideas to mine.
@JordanE
I haven't
Play by Text. This is a great idea. the evolution of Play by Post. I will have to start using to do "downtime" quests and other tasks. Very Cool!
I'm curious. Do you have hundred of props (like the boat) to cover every situation, was it sheer luck to have one or do you orient your players' actions toward a possible use of the props ?
@arnaud
I have a small collection of things that come up a lot in D&D (a boat, a castle wall) and a bunch of random knickknacks
this post has been living in my head since the writeup, as i really would like to try something similar for my players, just for the hell of it. plus it's an honestly awesome way to conduct a sidequest, and by taking pics you can in theory dismantle the piece if the thing takes too long and space is a concern, to then reassemble it when needed. out of curiosity, how long did it take to resolve?
@Adrian the Bard
It took about a half hour to set up then about a half hour to an hour to make all the rolls and resolve it
i would have expected less overall but it's still not that long, i would expect that taking pictures along the way also had the process drag out a bit longer than if you just wrote out the results. i think 'd do the same as the pictures help with overall clarity
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