We’re going to digress for a moment to let you in on one of the best-kept secrets in gaming; the rules of the mini-games (such as combat, chases, social conflict, and vehicular combat) within a roleplaying game are all completely optional. They provide a helpful way to keep score and determine when certain types of interaction have ended, but they aren’t essential and should be dropped whenever you have a good reason to do so.
Combat, a chase, a social conflict, or a bi-plane dogfight high in the sky are all simply means used by the players to achieve an objective. Combat etc. occurs when the players (or the NPCs) attempt to achieve their goals through violence. You can always resolve the situations dealt with in the mini-games by using the standard query, adjudicate, resolve pattern above. The mini-games themselves could, in this way, be dispensed with entirely.
So why are the mini-games included? They provide a scoring mechanism and a means to model certain actions at a higher level of abstraction. In short, they provide a useful administrative tool for the GM, one that identifies the conditions of success and failure in a way that is seen to be both clear and fair by most players.
The mini-games also, however, represent a speed-bump in your game. They slow things down substantially, usually breaking what would, in real-world terms, be a fairly quick exchange into something that takes considerably longer to play out at the table.
For this reason you, want to ensure that you are always aware of the following; even within a mini-game players are simply declaring and resolving actions, the rules are optional, and reference to the rules should be avoided wherever possible (don’t slow things down further by opening the rulebook to look things up unless you absolutely have to).
Further, you want to ensure that you transition into and out of each player’s turn with narration while you are in the mini-game.
Because narrative is what drives the game forward, you need to ensure that each player’s turn in the mini-game begins and ends with narrative. You need to move the focus of attention from player to player, turn by turn, using short narrative transitions.
These transitions should only be about a sentence long but should accomplish the same things that they do when moving between player actions within a scene.
The narration at the beginning of a players turn must locate the player in relation to what is happening around them (either establishing the situation or recapping the current circumstances) and acquaint them with those things that are clamoring for their attention with the greatest urgency.
“To your left and right your companions are locked in desperate hand to hand combat with the pirates. One large, burly pirate with a red sash is charging towards you swinging his cutlass, and it appears that another is attempting to swing one of the cannons around to point at your group. What do you do?”
“The mayor appears to be considering your arguments carefully, but there is still doubt in his eyes, and you can also see the growing impatience of his secretary as she watches the clock tick ever closer to his next appointment. What do you do?”
After the action has been declared (remember that even in the mini-games you need to identify both what the player wants to do and how they want to do it) and resolved, you need to reset the scene and narrate the outcome and consequences.
“You stab the charging pirate in the stomach, neatly sidestepping his lunge and sending him, lifeless, to the deck. Your companions are all still occupied with attacking pirates, and the cannon is now aimed directly at you. Worse, it looks like one of the pirates, not currently engaged in the fight, is about to touch off the powder.”
“Commenting on how the bandits have negatively affected the tourist trade, causes the mayor’s brow to furrow with frustration. He has heard this many times from different townsfolk. He’s not interested further analysis. He needs solutions.”
Lastly, you need to transition to the next player’s turn.
“Sally, you see all this but are currently grappling with a swarthy pirate of your own – one who is pressing in and trying to grapple with you for control of your pistol. What do you do?”
“Sally, you see the mayor’s increased frustration and sense his need for a solution. What do you do?”
This process of transitioning into and out of each turn within the mini-games (whether the game concerns combat, social interaction, or a chase etc.) is one of the keys to keeping the game flowing.
You create a sense of urgency by emphasizing the greatest threats within the current location and by demanding that players state their actions quickly in order to avoid losing their actions because they are being indecisive.
Chases
Chases, like combat and other scenes, can be improved with planning. In a pinch, rolling obstacles on a randomized table will work fine, but a little bit of preparation will go a long way towards increasing the enjoyment provided by the scene.
To begin with, determine what sparks the chase. What prompts the chasers to pursue the chasee? Are they looking to assassinate their quarry? Did the quarry take something they want? Have they been given a grievous insult? Be sure of what the chase is trying to achieve. In most cases, the chaser is trying to catch or kill the chasee, but in some, the chase is about recovering an object from the chasee or something else. As for the chasee, they are usually trying to escape. But ask yourself where to, and whether they are leading the chasers into a trap or away from something else etc. Be clear what the objective is for both parties and what, if anything, would cause them to abandon the chase.
Specify the conditions that end the chase. The combat board has a chase track on it. Perhaps your chase ends with the quarry being lost after 8 spaces on the board have been traversed. Perhaps you need to make the track shorter. Perhaps another circumstance triggers the end (such as discarding the golden idol the heroes are carrying). Be clear about when the chase will finish.
Okay, now treat it as a scene where obstacles arise in series to interfere with the players’ chances of achieving their goals. As noted before, you can randomly determine the obstacles, but if you have time it is almost always better to plan them out to suit your specific scene.
Lastly, prepare your resolution. What happens if the heroes are caught? What if they escape? What if the bad guy escapes? What happens if the police get involved, etc.? If you know the answers to these questions you won’t have any trouble running your chase scene.
Combat
Designing a fun combat experience is an art form. The key to it lies in the design of the environment. Wherever possible populate the environment with things the players can use. If the battlefield is a garden, then make sure there are abandoned rakes, pruning shears, wheelbarrows, sacks of horse manure etc. around that the combatants might make use of. If it’s a cave fill the space with dangling roots, stalagmites, and stalactites, mud pools, shards of crystal etc. Add obstacles that both hinder and help the heroes. Be creative. You can even impact the mood of a scene by your placement of objects and enemies. If the heroes are standing on a ridge looking down at the enemy, the mood is quite different from one in which they stand at a low elevation looking up at a cliff wall bristling with spears.
Your selection of opponents is the next thing to consider after the environment. In order to keep things balanced, we have some general guidelines to apply when throwing opponents at your heroes.
Henchmen are the weakest level of opponent. They are usually intended to function as the hapless fools who rush our heroes guns and get mowed down in droves. Essentially they make our heroes feel heroic and competent.by not providing too great a challenge. They tend to be used exclusively in the first half of any given adventure.
Henchmen are represented by a wound pool. Don’t think of them as a group of individuals so much as a swarm that tries to lay some smack down on each of the heroes every turn. Every successful attack by the heroes results in a kill (or a bad guy being put out of the fight if the heroes are trying to be non-lethal). When the pool of wound points reaches zero the bad guys have fled or died.
Henchmen need not be humans. They can be anything that the plot calls for (alligators, psychic squid monsters from another dimension, gangsters, mutated chimpanzees, etc.). The important point to note is that they are relatively weak but plentiful.
Give them a generic description (one that will bring them to life) but don’t bother differentiating them from one another too much (or at all).
If you want a balanced fight, give the henchman a pool of wounds equal to the total wounds belonging to your group of heroes. This will keep things pretty even during the fight. But, DO NOT FOR A MINUTE THINK YOU MUST BALANCE FIGHTS. It is perfectly acceptable, in a world full of obstacles of varying strength, to hit your heroes with an occasional bunch of weak opponents.
Set the NPC modifier to novice (-2) or standard (0). Generally, henchmen do not undertake targeted attacks. They either fight using standard or frenzied attacks.
Named Servants are significantly tougher (and fewer) than henchmen. They tend to appear in the second half of an adventure when the stakes are starting to rise. When adding Named Servants your descriptions will want to be more personalized. Differentiate them from each other, the henchmen and the boss villain.
Let’s say you are throwing a tribe of intelligent alligators at your heroes. The general horde (of henchmen) should be virtually indistinguishable “green, scaly, ranging in length from 5 to 9 feet, with sharp claws and gleaming teeth through which they huff their fetid breath”. The lieutenants of the horde (named servant) are three in number. All are 15 feet long. One has a large scar over one eye, another has a hump, and the last is unmarked but unusually quick.
To give them wounds, take the total of the heroes’ wounds and divide them in half. Apply the number to each of the named villains in the adventure. Each of the named villains gets that many wound points each. Because this generally puts a lone named villain at a disadvantage, field them in groups or singly but in combination with a horde of henchmen.
A well-armed group of heroes will usually make short work of a lone villain, regardless of how strong, unless the villain can do multiple attacks each phase. By adding more villains or giving the villain more attacks you even the odds.
Named servants should be given NPC modifiers of skilled (+2) or expert (+5) and, don’t forget, they can earn action points by using the environment in their actions just like the heroes can. They can also use targeted attacks, trying to strategically damage weapons or disable characters.
Villains are the big bosses of the adventure. There is usually only one (though there is no reason the villain could not be a cabal of sorcerers if you so choose). Be sure to give the boss extra attacks (or supporting numbers) to keep the fight a challenge. Your villain should have wounds equal to twice the total of your team of heroes. Give your villain the best description you can. “The chief of the alligator tribe is twice the size of the others. and 6 feet wide. It is old (possibly one thousand years) and shares more in common with its dinosaur ancestors than its more recent offspring. One eye gleams redly with predatory intelligence while the other is milky. Its bellow is enough to cause rockslides on the distant hills and cause flocks of birds to take to the air. Armored hide and foot long razor sharp teeth grin wickedly at you as it positions itself for combat with frightening speed.”
Villains should always have expert NPC modifiers (+5) applied, can make targeted actions, and can earn action points by making use of the environment in their actions.
Just as it is perfectly acceptable to hit the heroes with a weak opponent from time to time, it doesn’t hurt to remind them that the world is full of things far stronger than they are as well. If you do throw certain death at them, however, make sure you telegraph that the fight will not be survivable. Players are often poor judges of when it is time to run away so be sure to give them plenty of warning (coming across the corpses of the uber-marines who kicked their butts in the practice ring yesterday or something similar is a good signal).
If you do construct your own opponents then give a little bit of thought to how they might coordinate (or not). A team of soldiers might try to hold the entrance while runners go for reinforcements or raise the alarm. A group of sandworms might strike and attempt to down and drag away victims to eat leaving their compatriots to the fight.
When vehicles are involved don’t forget to apply the damage to the vehicle’s armor before applying it to any occupants. The occupants can only be hit after the armor has been dealt with. Likewise, targeted actions cannot be used to blow the gas-tank while armor still protects the vehicle.
Are social actions different?
The simple answer is no. Player actions and GM adjudication is no different when a social interaction takes place than when any other interaction is occurring. The player wants to achieve something, they attempt to achieve it in a particular way, and the GM is called upon to adjudicate the outcome.
A character may wish to get information from the witness to a brutal murder. That is the thing they wish to achieve. They then may choose a number of means of achieving that end. They may threaten, persuade, bribe, etc.
The complicating factor with regard to social actions is that, unlike a door or wall, the acted upon can react in a broader number of ways in return. Determining whether the action is likely to achieve a desired result, figuring out whether to roll the dice and adjudicating the outcome can seem complicated as a result… but they aren’t.
To adjudicate this kind of action you need to know whether the NPC is favourably disposed towards the player characters, whether there is a reason for them to withhold their aid, and what that reason is, whether they can be influenced one way or the other, and what sorts of actions will likely move them in one direction or the other, and, significantly from a dramatic point of view, what’s at stake in the outcome.
Armed with this knowledge you are able to adjudicate the situation easily.
For example, in the case of our murder witness, if we decide he or she is basically an upstanding citizen who sees the players positively and wants to do the right thing but is terrified that by speaking out his/her loved ones will be put at risk, you can more or less adjudicate the outcome fairly easily. All the elements for an interesting scene are present.
The characters have an aim: they wish to gather information from the witness.
There is a conflict: The witness is afraid and does not wish to provide that information.
There is an obstacle: The level of fear the witness has regarding the safety of his/her family.
If the players approach with threats, the NPC might respond by stubbornly clamming up, or maybe they are timid enough to capitulate (that’s up to you), but the threat will need to be pretty strong if it is going to overcome the fear they are already experiencing. The NPC may be extreme enough in their responses to make the outcome an easy decision (no dice rolls), or you may call for a skill test (intimidate perhaps). Regardless of how you choose to respond, the NPC is likely to no longer be positively disposed towards the characters.
If the players approach with persuasion, the NPC might be won over (no dice roll required) or maybe it doesn’t seem so clear (roll the dice). Perhaps the NPC is persuaded but still won’t help until the characters provide some guarantees regarding the safety of the NPCs loved ones.
If the players approach with the offer of a reward, or witness protection, etc. it may be that these will entice the NPC into providing the information they are looking for.
With or without a dice roll (and whether to roll depends on how certain you feel the NPCs response will be) you can tell fairly easily whether a player’s actions are likely to overcome or strengthen the obstacle between them and cooperation. It may take some teasing out to uncover the player’s aim in an interaction (don’t be afraid to ask) and see what is taking place. It may be helpful to think of the action as being encapsulated in the conversation fragment that reveals the aim and method of the action.
This volume relies heavily on the work of Scott Rehm, Justin Alexander, Brian Christopher Misiaszek, Mike Bourke, Blair Ramage, Saxon Brenton, Robin Laws, John Wick, Wolfgang Baur, Ken Hite, Monte Cooke, Kevin Crawford, Phil Vecchione, and Walt Ciechanowski.
This chapter of the Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama RPG and all associated content (except where noted above) is © copyright weirdworldstudios.com and Philip Craig Robotham 2016 and may not be reproduced or distributed without the written permission of the author.
HYOOTRD Roleplaying Game – Game Master’s Guide – Part 1 – Running a Game
- Chapter 1: The Job of the GM (gathering a table, player types, and ensuring fun)
- Chapter 2: Preliminaries (the three fundamental skills, and your first session)
- Chapter 3: Advanced skills – Part 1 (the opening scene and narration)
- Chapter 3: Advanced skills – Part 2 (querying and adjudication)
- Chapter 3: Advanced skills – Part 3 (resolving actions, managing tropes, transitioning, concluding, and preparing future sessions)
- Chapter 4: Managing the Mini-Games (combat, chases, and social actions)
- Chapter 5: Maintaining Pace and Tone (managing time and policing the tone)
- Chapter 6: Improvising (improvising the story and the rules – for all the times the players do something unexpected)
- Chapter 7 & 8: Getting Feedback and Conclusion (improving your game)
HYOOTRD Roleplaying Game – Game Master’s Guide – Part 2 – Designing Games
- Chapter 9: Scene Design
- Chapter 10: NPC, Monster, Faction, and Villain Design
- Chapter 11: Dilemmas, Obstacles, Exits, and Clues
- Chapter 12: Plot (scenario, sandbox, critical path, and the interaction between story and choice)
- Chapter 13: Structures: The five-room dungeon (and variations)
- Chapter 14: Structures: The sandbox (the town or city)
- Chapter 15: Structures: The sandbox (the wilderness)
- Chapter 16: Structures: The Scenario
- Chapter 17: Structures: The Campaign
