And I don’t mean posts about monsters. The last couple of subjects have turned into large posts. I’m working on a big one right now, but its not going to make it out tonight. Check back tomorrow when I should have a post about running skill challenges more like combats (including making unique powers for the challenge to “attack” the party and other madness.)
In my first post we discussed porting Dual of Wits from Burning Wheel to 4ed. In this post I will supply some powers, feats, and permutations to flesh out and add depth to the system.
Burning Wheel features some interesting mechanics for staging a debate as if it were a combat. The system is called Dual of Wits and seems like a very fun and gameable idea. Some of its core concepts can be extrapolated and applied to 4ed. I realize debates can easily be covered by skill challenges, but this provides an alternate way to engage the players–especially when something would otherwise rely heavily on a single skill, like Diplomacy for a debate.
Over the past week I managed to catch a couple episodes of League of Super Evil on Cartoon Network. (If you haven’t seen the show and haven’t put it together yet, that acronym is LOSE.) It inspired me for a wonderful game. Take your favorite super hero system. Have players generate super villains, but give them extremely low points to create their characters and/or make their powers weak and ridiculous. Don’t run adventures about stealing lots of money or trying to take over the world. Instead, run adventures about petty things like trying to steal cable, or ordering a pizza and deliberately delaying the delivery guy so that you get the pizza free.
The primary idea here is that the characters should be pathetic enough that even minor things are difficult to accomplish for them. This would obviously be a light-hearted comedy game. I’m sure you could take lots of inspiration from Paranoia, Hol, and other games with a lot of ridiculous comedy and seething sarcasm.
I’m not much to get “political” or join in on any internet warfare, so I will keep this brief:
So I did it. I played a player narrative game of Don’t Rest Your Head. I used the system from my previous post and it worked wonderfully. It was very fun and definitely a learning experience. Here are some of the things I learned:
