This feature is part of my ongoing True Scenario Designery series about advanced adventure, encounter, and campaign design. If you haven’t followed it from the beginning, use The True Scenario Designery Course Index to catch up.
This particular True Scenario Designery lesson — which is more of an informal discussion — is a direct follow-up to last month’s Momentous and Inertial Adventure Design so you definitely should have read that.
Challenge Or Goal?
Close your books kids; we gotta talk. You see, I was watching some of y’all do your homework and I discovered that we’ve got a problem. Well, by we, I mean you. You’ve got a problem. Me? I’ve got the solution and it’s right in my wheelhouse because it mainly involves calling y’all names and telling you you’re all wrong about everything.
Look, you know this is how I operate. I call a dumbass a dumbass and if I end up making someone cry, that’s just proof I called it right. The risk that I’m gonna call you out for a screwup and make you an object lesson is part of the price of admission. Of course, we all know that the idiot I drag in front of the class to lambast is just the one I caught being wrong. If I’m making a big deal of it, that means there’s lots of you out there I know getting it wrong the same, exact way. I could pick any one of you dumbasses at random and accuse you of being wrong the same way and hit the mark 99 times out of ten.
What happened was this…
Last month — or whenever the hell it was; I don’t even know what month it is right now — last month, I posted that lesson on Momentous and Inertial Adventure Design — the one with the lame-ass goblin cave adventure — and ended by suggesting y’all try your own hand at writing an adventure premise with a focus on inertial and momentum dynamics. Well, one of you took it upon him-or-herself to make a little class project in my supporters-only Angry Discord Server.
Now, I ain’t gonna name names because that took balls, especially given that OP knew I’d be watching and judging and that, if anything went wrong, I’d write at least three thousand words of screed ripping them apart for it. Since I respect that courage, I’m only going to call this brave — but ultimately doomed — soul OP. Some of you will know who they are because they saw the discussion, but you’re going to keep your dumbass noise-holes shut, right? Especially when you post your comment about how you totally saw the error because of how frigging brilliant you are, which, since no one called it out in the discussion — well, one person sorta did, but failed — since no one called it out in the discussion, either means you’re lying or you’re an asshole for seeing a speeding train barreling down the tracks at your fellows and doing nothing.
So, yeah, maybe just skip trying to claim the smartest dude in the comment section trophy this one time since no one’s buying it anyway.
Anyway…
What Proselus did on my Discord server was post this adventure premise he had planned for his home game and then invite everyone to use it to brainstorm momentum and inertia dynamics. And everyone started spitballing and some pretty clever ideas got shared and none of them was worth jack because Proselus totally effed up. One person very briefly came very close to saving everything but then didn’t. So yeah.
On seeing the whole thing play out, I calmly stepped outside to kick a hole in my apartment building and then I… well… actually I went to urgent care and had my foot x-rayed and my broken toe taped. But after that I sat down to figure out how the hell to explain what my unnamed supporter — whose anonymity you will respect — and everyone frigging else got totally wrong.
Getting the Challenge Right
Pre-design is a big frigging deal. I’ve made that clear. Before you design anything, I want you to sit down and think about what you’re going to design and I want you to write that shit down. I’ve even told you, very specifically, precisely what things to think about in your pre-scenario-design phase, right? A scenario — be it an adventure, a campaign, a scene, or an encounter — must have a goal, a major element of challenge, and at least a couple of potential outcomes.
In my big-ass example last lesson, I started with the idea that there were some goblins in a cave raiding a village and the villagers would very much like that to stop. Thus, the adventure required the players to end the goblin menace: destroy them, drive them off, whatever. The major element of challenge was that there were too damned many goblins to kill and so the players would have to launch several attacks, thereby racking up a big enough body count to induce the survivors to flee.
Now, let’s look at OP’s premise. OP said there’s this villain conducting these regular, daily rituals that fuse demons with people — or something like that — and the players have to stop the ritual. Permanently.
Can you spot the difference between those premises? One of them is missing something and it’s not the one that was written by the sexy gaming genius as part of a professional…ish lesson in advanced adventure design. Well, one poster in my Discord server did spot the difference. They very quietly called it out with a single, simple question. When OP gave an answer that was very obviously wrong, that poster just accepted it. Then the group brainstorming began. So they get no points and neither does anyone else.
The question was, “What is the main challenge for the adventure?”
OP replied, “Stop the ritual.”
Now, look, it’s easy to see what I’m driving at. It’s super obvious when you’ve got an angry, sweary me sarcastically pointing out the issue. But this is a mistake that many of you have made — I know; I’ve seen it — in your own premise-writing pre-design. It’s not a big deal with you’re Merely Building an Adventure, but it ain’t the kind of bullshit a True Scenario Designer can get away with.
OP confused challenge and goal. This is something lots of you have done and so you won’t give OP any shit for it. OP is a supporter. He pays me to abuse him, but he isn’t paying any of you for it and none of you are any better at this shit than he is. Trust me.
Anyway…
OP didn’t merely forget to set a major element of challenge, he confused his challenge for his goal. If you read what he said very carefully, what he actually did was skip stating his adventure’s goal and simply provide what he thought was the adventure’s major challenge. If he hadn’t done that, he probably would have noticed something was wrong.
See, if you’re writing an adventure premise — specifically the goal and the challenge parts — and you write the same thing twice, you done effed up. Goals and challenges are very different things. They can’t possibly be the same. If you find yourself repeating yourself, you need to rethink what you’re doing.
Another sign you done effed up is when your major challenge element can be described with a single imperative statement, phrase, or sentence fragment. If it doesn’t take you several words — maybe even a couple of sentences — to describe your adventure’s major element of challenge, something’s wrong.
Notice that I didn’t break my adventure premise down into bullet points like…
- Goal: Drive Off or Exterminate the Goblins
- Challenge: Exterminate Enough Goblins to Drive Off the Rest
Instead, I said this…
That pretty much defines the goal and the major challenge, right? There are goblins in a cave and the players need to destroy them or drive them out. There are too many to kill in one go, so the party will have to make several sorties. Hell, there’s probably too many to kill at all. The heroes just have to build up a big enough body count to demoralize the survivors into fleeing the region.
If I’d done the bullet-point thing, I’d have lost some vital information.
I know y’all think I’m prosaic and wordy out of style concerns — or just to pad my word count — but I’m not. It’s because I’m doing what I do right. The point of this design-statement-and-vision-crafting nonsense is to describe what you plan to design. Not outline. Not list. Not define. Describe.
It’s really easy to confuse goals and challenges. The difference is obvious when I point it out, but not so much when you’re actually doing the work. It’s a mistake everyone makes. Professional adventure designers screw this up all the time. Hell, I’ve screwed it up more often than I care to admit. It’s actually so easy to confuse goals and challenges that I’ve struggled to spell out the difference in a nice, clear, digestible, pithy pair of mutually exclusive definitions. Every time I come up with good ones, I also come up with a premise that breaks them. That’s just part of the nature of tabletop roleplaying games. Narrative and fantasy smear into gameplay, challenges and goals overlap, and everything is a giant mush.
In the end, the clearest difference is that a goal is something the players accomplish while a challenge is something they overcome. But there are other differences too. Goals tend to speak more to the players’ characters while the challenges are more directed at the players. Goals tend to be clear to the players — the players really should be able to state the goal they’re chasing — while challenges are rarely explicitly stated to or explicitly understood by the players. Goals tend to provide context while challenges are more about gameplay. Goals tell you how to win while challenges tell you what’s in the way. Goals are usually brief and concise while challenges require prose descriptions. And so on and cetera and nauseum.
Me? I prefer to remind myself that goals tell the players what they’ve got to do and challenges explain why they can’t just do it. And if I can’t put my goal and challenge into a phrase of the form the players must accomplish X by doing Y and Y is hard because of Z, I probably need to go back to the drawing board.
The players must drive off the goblins by exterminating enough of them to demoralize them, but the goblins have vast numbers and the players will have to make several successful assaults on the goblins before they are finally driven off.
None of those are perfect because, again, scenario design is ultimately a creative art and not a science and the goal is to produce a subjective gameplay experience, but conceptually, they help you see the differences.
Stop the ritual doesn’t work as a challenge by any of those comparisons. It doesn’t clearly describe what the players have to overcome, it doesn’t define any gameplay, and it doesn’t explain why the players can’t just make their goal happen. If the challenge is just stop the ritual, does that mean the players can just walk up to the villain and say, “Right, stop it you!”
Struggling with Momentum and Inertia? Check Your Challenge
Let’s get deep and philosophical and conceptual for a second here…
At the heart of this goal-and-challenge thing is a subtle but important point about the relationship between context — story, fantasy, theme, call it what you want — between context and gameplay. This is why, by the way, in roleplaying games, goals and challenges are easily confused. That shit gets smeared together in roleplaying games.
An adventure’s goal is mostly about context. It’s mostly about the game’s story and fantasy and all that crap. The challenge is where you transition to thinking about gameplay. In End the Goblins, there’s this story about villagers desperate to end the goblin menace and the heroes’ efforts to help them. The challenge is the part where I explain how I make a game of that crap. It’s about how the players bring about the goal by playing the game. More importantly, it’s about how the players will interact with the game throughout the adventure.
Hot take… if you’re trying to design a game, it’s important to bridge the gap between the goal and the gameplay properly. Especially when you’re trying to make a really good game by bringing in advanced good-feeling gameplay dynamics like momentum and inertia. Gameplay dynamics are things that arise as the players interact with the game, right? Challenge is about how the players interact with the game to accomplish the goal, right? So challenge is obviously very close to both momentum and inertia on this deep, fundamental level.
Now, I ain’t gonna say that momentum and inertia are easy things to bring into your design — especially when you’re still getting used to the idea that they exist — but they are easier to evoke if you’ve got a solid grasp on your adventure’s major challenge element. If you can describe clearly what the big challenge in your adventure is all about, it tends to naturally inspire some ideas for momentum and inertia.
The point here is that if you’re having trouble coming up with ways to bring about momentum and inertia, it’s worth giving your challenge a hard look. Did you confuse a goal with a challenge? Is your challenge underdeveloped? Is it unclear? Did you not describe it well enough? Maybe give it another pass.
Speaking of things that might make you want to give your challenge element another pass, let me vaguely tease that x-factor thing again. Especially as that little thing can help you nail down your challenge if you’re having trouble defining it.
Let’s Vaguely Discuss X-Factors Again
Major Element of Challenge vs. Normal Boring Challenges
Remember that an adventure — or a scene or a campaign or whatever — has lots of challenges, but there’s a difference between those challenges and the major element of challenge. In the past, I’ve used the phrase macrochallenge to differentiate them. Maybe I should again.
In an adventure, the players are going to fight monsters, overcome obstacles, survive traps, interact with nonplayer characters, and all sorts of crap like that. Those are challenges, but they ain’t the adventure’s major challenge element. Even the boss fight at the end of an adventure with a boss isn’t really the major element of challenge by itself. In a bog-standard D&D adventure written by the book — specifically the Dungeon Master’s Guide — the major element of challenge ain’t the dungeon’s boss, but rather it’s about getting to the boss strong enough and with enough resources to win that fight after going through his underground funhouse of traps, hazards, and minions.
Don’t lose sight of that, especially because an adventure’s major challenge — its macrochallenge — can emerge from how a series of challenges get strung together.
Last month — whenever — I brought up this thing I called an adventure’s x-factor. I was kinda vague then. I can be less vague today, but I’m still not going to give it a full treatment. That’s for another lesson on another day.
I said that an adventure’s x-factor is the thing the adventure’s primarily about, right? Whatever the hell that means. Well, what it means is that the x-factor describes the players’ primary mode of interaction throughout the adventure. Or scene. Or campaign. Or encounter.
Can I stop tacking that on every time yet?
Players interact with the game through their characters, right? And, broadly speaking, there are several different modes of interaction in tabletop roleplaying games. Players can explore the world, they can interact with nonplayer characters, can fight monsters, can glean information, can acquire items, blah, blah, blahdy-frigging-blah. I’m not trying to build a comprehensive list here — that’d be a dumbass thing to do so don’t fucking ask — but to just get you thinking of gameplay in terms of the players’ broad activities or modes of interaction.
An adventure’s x-factor is the mode of interaction that spends the most time in the spotlight. It’s not the only thing the players will be doing in an adventure, but it’s what they’ll be doing most. Or, at least, the one that’s most directly likely to get them their goal. In End the Goblins, the x-factor was killing monsters. The players were going to do a lot of violence and violence was going to get them the win. They’d also explore and acquire and interact and so on, but violence was the key to victory which, let’s face it, is how it should be. Violence is the funnest and best way to win fantasy adventure roleplaying games.
I mentioned that it was helpful to identify your adventure’s x-factor because it provides a sort of through-line between the goal, the major element of challenge, momentum, and inertia. When we get to the part where we’re thinking in terms of progression — when we start stringing encounters into scenes, scenes into adventures, and adventures into campaigns — this x-factor shit is a seriously awesome secret sauce, but we’re not there yet.
Given that your adventure’s major challenge is the fulcrum around which you pivot to gameplay and this x-factor nonsense is all about the primary kind of gameplay you mean to highlight, it’s pretty clear that the challenge should basically scream your adventure’s x-factor, right? Well, stop the ritual doesn’t really say anything about the adventure’s x-factor. This is another sign you’ve accidentally mistaken a goal for a challenge.
But — as I’m going to show you as I bring all this shit together with some examples — you can actually use this whole x-factor thing to help you define your challenge if you’re struggling.
Let me end this discussion by showing you what I mean. It’ll also let me give you some homework.
Let’s Make Up Some Challenges
It’s Scenarios All the Way Down
I continue to receive some… let me politely call it criticism from folks who think all this game design shit — especially with x-factors and prescribed challenges — takes all the open-ended player choice out of the equation. Which is a load of horseshit. It just looks that way because I’m keeping it really simple so that you can learn the basics. Once you know what you’re doing — especially with structures and progressions — you can build very complex, extremely open-ended — even open-world — scenarios as fractal crystal thingies out of all these simple ideas.
Let me give you one very simple example of a more complex adventure wherein the players get to pick their approach. In my published adventure, The Fall of Silverpine Watch, one of the players’ goals is to neutralize the ghost of a murdered knight. There are two completely different ways to do that. Either the players can gather enough information to solve the ghost’s murder and lay him to rest — kinda — or else the players can upgrade their equipment enough so they can destroy the ghost with delicious violence. That one goal has two different challenges. It is also just one of two different goals in the adventure. Technically, it’s optional.
To illustrate some of this x-factor shit, by the way, I’ll note there is a single x-factor in the adventure that unifies all the goals and challenges. The players’ goals are primarily accomplished by exploring. They either find enough clues to piece together the mystery or they find enough items to threaten Sir Arpaad’s ghost, but either way, they win primarily by exploring. It didn’t have to be that way. I could have had different paths with different goals and different x-factors and I could have different structures and all sorts of things. It’s just scenarios layered on scenarios layered on scenarios.
And yes, you can even use these same tools to build a game out of the players’ own chosen goals if you want to go that way.
To end this, I want to bring all I’ve said together — and prove my genius — by fixing our unnamed OP’s stop the ritual premise. I’m going to come up with a proper…ish challenge that fits the goal. Actually, I’m going to quickly spitball four different challenges. Why? Because I also want to show you this trick to do with x-factors.
Now, I ain’t going to go into a lot of detail here. These are gonna need some fleshing out. They’re just enough to make my point and to show off what I want them to show off. I am, however, going to invite you to add some details to any or all of them. Try picking one — or more than one — to refine and to add some momentum and inertia dynamics to. That was, after all, the point of OP’s little group project. Share what you come up with in the comments or on my Discord server if you’ve got access. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to be anonymously lambasted in a future lesson like our OP Proselus. Won’t that be an honor?
The trick I’m gonna use is actually pretty simple, but it’ll be super useful later when you’re planning scene or adventure progressions. I’m going to pick an x-factor first and then come up with a major challenge element based on that x-factor.
So… there’s this villain and he’s doing a daily, ongoing magical ritual thing that invests people with demons or some crap like that. The players’ goal is to permanently end the ritual. What might the major challenge element be?
Let’s start with exploration for our first x-factor. How might we make this an exploration challenge? The obvious answer is that the villain is doing his thing in a secret location somewhere in a sprawling necropolis. The players can easily capture or kill him if they can find him. The trouble is, there’s a lot of ground to cover and he’s in a secret, hidden, or hard-to-find place. The players can take as long as they need to, but the ongoing nature of the ritual makes time a factor. Thus the players have to cover a lot of ground quickly but thoroughly lest they overlook something.
Also, as noted in some sidebar somewhere above, they will face encounters throughout the ruins. I just feel like I have to keep reminding some of you of that.
Now let’s say the x-factor is acquire. Or maybe gather. The players have to stop the ritual, but they’ve got to amass resources. Suppose they’ve got a relic — or they discover it early on — that can disrupt the ritual or remove the magical shield protecting the villain, but it needs to be charged up with holy power. We’ll move this from a necropolis to a ruined or overrun city. The players need to find sources of holy power and do little ceremonies to gather it. Ruined temples and shrines are the most obvious places to start with. You can think of them — and other sources — as nodes. The trouble is that each node provides a small — and variable — amount of power, so the heroes have to go from node to node, charging up the relic. Once it’s charged, they can confront the villain in the heart of the city at the base of the skybeam and use the relic to break his power. Obviously, the challenge is in finding the nodes and gathering enough energy. There are encounters, as noted above, and some might also allow the players to gather more holy energy. Time pressure, blah blah blah, done.
Now let’s assume the x-factor is interact. To stop the ritual, the players need information. They need to know where the villain is, they need to know how to sabotage the ritual, they need to know where the sabotaging relic is, and so on. His cultists, spread throughout the area, have this information. The problem is it ain’t written down so the challenge is extracting the information from the cultists. Maybe that means capturing and interrogating them — which might include moral dilemmas — or maybe that means disguises and infiltration. Once the players have all the information, they can grab the relic, go to the location, and sabotage the ritual. There’s still a time pressure here and maybe an added level of challenge comes from the fact that the adventure’s in a civilized area and the players can’t just start cracking skulls lest they get into trouble with the law. Or maybe it’s an isolated location but as the ritual goes on, cultists keep turning into demons. Whatever.
Finally, let’s do exterminate. Easy, right? Kill the villain. That’ll stop the ritual for sure. The trouble is the villains at the heart of a sprawling necropolis. He’s not hidden, but the place is crawling with monsters and more keep pouring out of the Abyssal rifts as he conducts his ritual. The players have to cut a bloody swath through the minions while keeping enough power in reserve to actually defeat the villain in an epic boss fight. They can retreat any time they want, rest, and try again, but the outpouring of demons means the gauntlet basically resets every time they rest. They just need to pull off one perfect run.
Now, see what you can do with those ideas. But also keep these examples in the back of your mind. I think I can do something more with this shit. Meanwhile, expect another lesson soon about what the players need to know about their adventures.
I feel like I miss a lot of drama not being in the discord. Not that I mind too much because I always appreciate further elaborations on lessons like these. Especially since the concept of pre-designing has been so helpful for me.
This was such a helpful delineation! Thank you Angry, this was very helpful in my adventure brainstorming for this week’s session 🙂
Choosing an x factor to guide design was cool, and I bet when I have more time to think with a notebook in front of me tonight I can do that and end up designing beyond “choose an x factor” and into what the brainstorming actually links to
That poor rascal who originally stimulated this educational lecture under secrecy!
This made something click for me, thank you.
I’ve tried it and started to have something then realised that it was becoming too complex and not precise enough to be used on D day and ended up not bothering with it, ending up with a good enough adventure but a twinge of dissatisfaction.
I haven’t given up on it yet but it deserves more time to prepare and set carefully. As for everything practice must make perfect but it takes a particular gymnastic of the mind to build up so I wouldn’t expect to have it right until a at least several more tries.
Excellent walk through of something with which I often struggle. Love the way you clearly lable and define all the elements to clarify the thought process that goes into design so what happens at the table appears seamless.
Dunning-Kruger of me perhaps, but…
Why isn’t the challenge simply “Cause the Goblins to leave”?
It’s what would come after “in order to” in those Army orders/plans I used to read.
It’s what you, sir, call(ed?) Intent, opposed to Approach. You’ve always been right. You’ve always been Army.
Because that sentence doesn’t say anything about what the players need to overcome through gameplay. “Cause the goblins to leave” is just the Goal, “drive off or exterminate the goblins.” What stops the players from just doing it (killing them, telling them to leave, etc)? That’s the Challenge.
Maybe it’s the fact that they just keep coming back until you defeat their three leaders, maybe the players have to find a hidden apparatus in a sprawling cave that makes them come back to life, maybe they have to convince one of the competing factions to do something about it in a complex city of political intrigue, or maybe it’s something completely different.
Could you give an example of Intent vs Approach? Without seeing what you mean in depth, my first reaction would be that Intent correlates most strongly to goal, and Apporach most likely correlates strongly to Challenge.
The big clue is that “Cause the Goblins to Leave” has no How built in. That How is the missing ingredient. How is the foundation of what the challenge of the adventure is built on.
Intent: Get past the gate and the guard behind it.
Approach: Talk to the guard and see if they are amenable to a bribe.
Intent: Get the goblins to leave.
Possible approaches (once force proves futile or before it is tried):
Find out their food source and eliminate it.
Meet with the leadership and negotiate a relocation.
Cause an unnatural natural disaster that makes the location unsuitable for continued habitation.
To me, stated like that, that sounds like just another Goal. It doesn’t say anything about what the players will be overcoming during the adventure. What’s so hard about finding and/or eliminating their food source? Is it hidden in the maze-like sewers? Is it at the bottom of a dungeon full of critters? Is it not obvious and the players need to first understand the goblins’ biology and culture by infiltrating and observing? The same goes for the other “approaches.”
I don’t really think this has a lot to do with Intents and Approaches from Action Adjudication; it’s a way of pre-designing scenarios, and it involves a completely different “hat,” if you will.
Or, to really go back to the basics, to achieve a goal:
A: You need an (A)pproach that can work
B: You need to know if there are (B)locks that prevent the players from automatically succeeding. Things that must be overcome to succeed in that approach.
C: You need to determine if there are any (C)osts to that approach. What does attempting it cost?
D: You need to determine the (D)angers of that approach. What goes wrong if it fails?
But here is the issue from where I stand: to make good on this, you need to have a good idea of the players approach ahead of time. While this works for encounters, for adventure design, it can lead to preparing the wrong things. Even if the players share their plan from the start, sometimes midway through parties can have an idea that completely changes their approach to achieving their goal.
It’s why I disagree with Angry on this topic.
Instead of focusing on the overall challenge, I personally feel it’s better to design around the encounters you want to have, and linking them together. Specifcally, I prefer Node Based Design from thealexandrian. I find that setting up encounters that I want to run first, and then connecting them with ‘clues’ gives much more wiggle room for running adventures when players approach a goal from a strange angle. As they hit encounters, there are multiple places where the clues I’ve left can lead them back towards other encounters they might have missed with their unexpected approach.
You don’t actually disagree with me. What you’re calling node-based design is what I call Mere Adventure Building. It’s building without a macrochallenge. It produces perfectly adequate, totally fine, enjoyable, playable games. I’ve explained exactly how to do that kind of crap for years.
But, as I noted in the introduction to this course and multiple times since, True Scenario Design is about aiming higher. It’s for people who want to build beyond mere gauntlets of encounters connected by either explicit or abstract transitions — dungeons or flowcharts — that simply ask players to navigate to the end and survive along the way.
I’m sorry this series just isn’t for you. That’s okay.
Because that’s not a game, it’s a story. Challenge is short for Gameplay Challenge.
Wait, did Angry miss that he totally said the guy’s name in a paragraph in the intro? Normally I’d chalk it up to a joke but the serious reiteration of the secrecy line is making me question things.
It’s a great Joke, proof: I laughed. Was it on purpose? Maybe it wasn’t and then it became, who knows? Who really cares? You’re a player in this and you don’t need to know what’s going on behind the curtains, what’s important is that I laughed. So it was a joke.
Pretty sure it’s a running gag given he says the name of [REDACTED] three times in the article. Either way it’s probably best to avoid mentioning it to make sure [REDACTED] can remain anonymous.
[Angry here. I edited this comment to remove explicit mentions of OPs name. Why the hell would you do that after I made it clear I was protecting OPs anonymity. I even specifically asked that if you recognized the person, you not call them out.]
Oh shoot genuinely thought it was a joke, I apologise to you & OP. I really shouldn’t have said their name in either case. (Just saw the change now)
It was. But now it’s dead. Editing your comment is a thing we in the biz call carrying the joke. You’re the worst straight man I’ve ever seen. I never should have rescued you from those seals.
This lesson inspire me with something i call “Motivational Loop”
Player Motivation – > Character Motivation – > Compatible Goal – > Contextual Challenge – > Player Motivation…
Now, insult me pls XD
Here’s my ideas for the acquire x-factor scenario:
For momentum, when the amount of holy power imbued in the relic reaches certain thresholds, it gives benefits to the party. This could be generic stuff like players dealing extra radiant damage and using the relic to heal. It also could be more relevant things like detecting nearby divine presence, as well as giving the players visions that act as clues for finding high yield holy sites.
As for inertia, the city is dotted with cult hideouts that have been preparing for this very moment. But various priests and clerics have been preparing too, and linked the now-ruined holy sites to make a defensive network to ward off fiends from coming through the veil. In fact, the villain is fusing people with demons to bypass the summoning prevention. When the players imbue holy power from a site into the relic, the old site is drained and now weakens a part of the network, making some section of the city now more perilous/difficult to access due to fiendish incursion, making getting to some nodes harder.
To introduce a bit of push-your-luck play, there are more nodes than the players need to break the villain’s shield, but they can absorb extra to gain even more powers that’ll help them confront the villain. Of course, there’s still a time limit, & the added inertial challenges might make the extra benefits gained not worthwhile if the players pushed too hard.
To set a definitive loss condition as well, maybe once the villain fuses enough people with demons, the cult can shatter the defensive network and create a gateway to The Bad Place, turning the whole city into a hellscape run by the villain. To stop it from being campaign ending, the network could still exist in a very weakened form – insulating the rest of the world from the demons until the party can hopefully end the invasion once and for all.
While I think the idea is cool, I think that basing both the momentum and the inertia on the same metric (unless there are other ways to get holy power aside from draining holy sites) lacks the dynamic interplay that we should be looking for. Regardless of how well or bad the players do, the game will get the same amount of “easier” and “harder.”
I think that maybe inertia could be time based — with the network gradually debilitating on its own — to separate it from the amount of holy sites visited, but I admit it’s not as creative as your proposition.
Okay, so instead of holy power being drained, the cultists are constantly doing rituals attacking the network, putting the adventure on a clock as you suggest. The network near The Time Pool would be a good mechanic to use here, except instead of rolling for complications, go through a list of complications of (wobbly) rising severity. It’d start out small with things like strange noises, a mischievous imp, civilians trapped under rubble. Later complications would be encounter-level attacks from freshly fused demons, and some areas might become extremely time-consuming to traverse unless the players overcome a puzzle or environmental challenge. The last complication would be game over.
Periodically the shield or beam could change noticeably from anywhere in the city to telegraph the timer, and demon attacks and environment changes could be targeted actions by the villain to indicate the cult has noticed the players fighting back.
Here’s my take on the exploration x-factor.
For strong inertia, after a certain number of demons are created, the ritual reaches a kind of climax and brings forth a demon lord or something far outside the player’s paygrade to be able to fight.
For weak inertia, the additional demons are going to make fights harder. In addition, key locations will be more fortified. If I decided to scrap the demon lord game over, I would at least make the demons get stronger over time.
For momentum, I would place hidden resources throughout the necropolis. Some of it would be typical adventure loot, like potions and scrolls to keep them going. I would probably hide a holy weapon that makes fighting demons easier. I would also have some ways for the players to cut the knees of the cultists. First thought is a group of prisoners that the players could free. This would give the players a way to more easily find the leader via information as well as hindering the cultists’ ability to make demons. Since without the prisoners, the cultists have to make demons from their own numbers rather than disposable captives. Perhaps one of the cultist’s is having second thoughts about summoning the world ending demon and could be persuaded to help the players in some way.
If I understand correctly, both of those ideas would be weak inertia. It’s just one of those would have a hard time limit.
Weak Inertia says each section gets harder over time. AKA, tougher fights, more obstacles in upcoming areas.
Strong Inertia says that each section gets harder over time, AND your progress gets undone over time. AKA, tougher fights, more obstacles in upcoming areas and maybe (given exploration) some areas that they discovered might need to be reexplored.
This one was confusing. I can get an x factor easily in a video game but rpg’s really get fuzzy.
Then I realized maybe almost every game of mine used interaction,find a person and talk to him , so I didn’t notice the difference.
I got a sudden idea here: The villian is doing this ritual in an underground maze. It’s too big to conquer in the time limit. However, monsters are generated by the ritual and they wander away from it, so following where a monster comes from almost certainly leads them the right way. The players need to actively look for monsters or tracks of them, and then backtrack to the ritual site for the boss fight, and sustain enough strength to fight the villian. It seems to me the x is find a monster and kill it, because that’s the loop. The monsters can have things stuck on them, or mutate from the enviroment, giving hints to the path that took it here too.
I guess that challenge and goals are still a little fuzzy for me. My idea is:1. why nobody has done this thing yet. 2. The one thing that makes this process special, like a selling point.
Okay, so we have four x-factors to design some momentum and inertia dynamics for. Based on the previous lessons, we want these dynamics to reflect the x-factor the entire scenario is for.
Exploration: we want our momentum dynamics to make it easier to explore and increase the chance of success while and our inertia dynamics should be pushing back against us.
So why not give quicker ways to explore as the ruined city is unearthed. The players could find keys that open doors in this ancient necropolis, or allow them to teleport between loctions, classic dungeon gimmicks that open up new area or let the players cover ground quicker to find the ritual site. For inertial dynamics, ancient guardians could be activated by poor exploration, or the minions of the villian could activate illusions or cover the parties tracks to make it harder to find what has already been explored. As the scenario progresses, empower the parties exploration but also raise obstacles or distractions.
Acquire:
This was my favorite x-factor because it plays into the fantasy of getting stronger and more likely to succeed directly. As the relic is empowered it becomes quicker to charge the relic at each site. The power of the relic also increases, giving the wielder a action they can use in combat against unholy foes to damage or banish them. It also reacts in a larger radius to holy energy around it, allowing the players to find more sacred sites quickly and to know how much power each is imbued with.
I imagine both players and the villians getting some knowledge of where these sites were located but not knowing how much power is at any locations initially.
This means our inertial dynamics could have the villian dispatch cultist and eventually demons to each site to prevent the players from gathering power, but knowing which sites have power and how much from empowering the relic, gives the players the oppurtunity to dertermine which sites are worth the fight and which ones should be bypassed. It might be tricky to let players know they don’t need to collect power from every site though. Even if that is the case, the additional abilities of the relic should allow the players to more quickly defeat the enemies at a site, collect the power there, and find the next site.
Interact:
This one is tricky. How does getting more information build momentum and how does it build inertia? Based on the description, the easiest way to build momentum if the players are required to get the information from the cultist, is to make it so that each cultist they interrogate gives them information that empowers them to find and interogate the next cultist. The cultist could be part of a secret network, each one only knows a few other members. But as the players deceive them and get their information, that can be used to find the next cultist and authenticate themselves as higher ranking members of the cult worthy of additional respect and deference. Meanwhile, the cultists are turning into demons and demanding the players participate in their part progressing the ritual, making it harder for the players to find all the information in time, and stay disguised without advancing the ritual they are trying to stop.
Exterminate:
This feels like the most standard TTRP x-factor. When in doubt, kill it all. The momentum dynamics really could just be treasure. As the players advance, they claim additional weapons and blessings that empower them to more efficiently murder their way through the area. Inertial dynamics could be the same as the goblin waterfall cave, each day the encounters get harder and more numerous and more powerful demons make their way through rifts.
If we want to change it up some, we could add a god’s blessing for the players. As they conquer and drive back the hordes, they could purify areas to give them permenant rest stops or earn additional powers from their patron deity who is resisting the Abyssal invasion. I really feel the forces of light should be involved at some level once demons are pouring out onto mortal soil.
Interact:
I tried them all, but felt most proud of this one.
So, the players have to extract the information straight from the cultists. They can capture, interrogate, deceive, infiltrate, all that good stuff. Unfortunately, they’re in a civilized city, so rolling heads isn’t the easiest option.
Cribbing a little from the End the Goblins example, I would dole out each piece of information to a specific cult member with a high-profile public persona. Guard captain, archmage, guild master, etc. This makes it even harder for the players to use violence and provides ample reason for the cultists to have loads of bodyguards and special defenses. And that’s where I’d implement a momentum dynamic into the adventure.
Once the players extract the necessary information from a cultist, somehow, the cult finds out behind the scenes and decides to eliminate the liability. The next morning, that person turns up dead or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and whatever benefits they gave the cult are gone. If this was the guard captain, maybe the city guards don’t protect the other cultists. If this was the archmage, now none of them know how to reactivate their arcane locks or animated armors.
This could even provide the party with levers to pull in social situations. Cultists without their body guards are easier to intimidate. If the guild master got axed, they might be looking for ways to get some extra coin.
As for inertia, I’d assume the cultists get more suspicious and guarded with each passing day the players’ investigation continues. They hear rumors someone is asking questions, poking their nose into their business, and are on edge. DCs for social checks could increase, they may hang out in harder to access places, and they might heighten security around their mansions or wizard towers to thwart attempts at abduction.
Overall, I think this would help sell the cult as widespread and all-knowing, while also visibly demonstrating the players’ progress. And if they’re good-natured enough to try and save the cultists, then that’s another layer added to the adventure!