More non-lethal, but board based ideas.

[CardDiceian]

*I'm wracking my brain for non-lethal / Non- combat ideas to play within my town setting*

I will be re-writing some of my previous adventure with easier adversaries - (less ST / less well armed / lower DX etc) - Perhaps a couple more minor pub brawls, and less getting set upon by large gangs of hardened thugs.

I want to add in a bit more variety to game with - (not just rolling dice on a blank table and coming up with results) - ie hunting as per a discussion earlier.

I'm working on a gameable fire breaking out, and the players need to work together to extinguish it. (Play tests have been OK, although the fire does tend to get out of hand)

I've also thought about a scenario where the players horses escape and need to be re-captured - (or something similar) -which will involve maneuvering on the board, and using some sort of herding mechanic. Not sure how to do it yet.

I have devised a gambling game played at the taverns, which leads into a storyline - We tested that game within a game on holiday and it works well

I need to encourage them into knowing that not all battles need to be a fight to the end.

[Mike P.]

[QUOTE=CardDiceian;2206117]
I'm working on a gameable fire breaking out, and the players need to work together to extinguish it. (Play tests have been OK, although the fire does tend to get out of hand)

Hi CardDiceian! Love the town setting ideas! Dark City Games has an adventure called Fire in the Streets, that starts off with the party responding to a fire in the city. They see a suspicious figure fleeing the scene, and immediately have to choose between battling the blaze or pursuing the suspected arson. The party could choose to split up, but then they are less effective at both tasks. I love adventures that give the players several options where there is no definitive right choice!

Happy Gaming, Mike

[Mike P.]

Originally Posted by CardDiceian

I need to encourage them into knowing that not all battles need to be a fight to the end.

Most town ruffians would probably either try to flee or beg for mercy once half of them have been killed/incapacitated, or they have lost half of their combined STR in wounds. In fact most fights in town might not be to the death. Capturing villains who have surrendered can further your story line and introduce new higher powered villainous NPCs as the captured thugs may "flip" on their bosses, reveal their hideout, or shed light on there nefarious schemes.

Of course if the party persists in killing even after the opponents have thrown down their weapons, your storyline could take a different route. Slaying opponents who have surrendered probably results in losing experience rather than gaining it (unless the player character was truly evil). Perhaps the party makes themselves enemies of the local thieves guild after mercilessly slaying some of their street level thugs. Or perhaps a witness tells the town guard that the characters have slain town-folk who had thrown down their weapons. Now they are in trouble with the law!

[zot]

Originally Posted by CardDiceian

*I'm wracking my brain for non-lethal / Non- combat ideas to play within my town setting*

I will be re-writing some of my previous adventure with easier adversaries - (less ST / less well armed / lower DX etc) - Perhaps a couple more minor pub brawls, and less getting set upon by large gangs of hardened thugs.

I want to add in a bit more variety to game with - (not just rolling dice on a blank table and coming up with results) - ie hunting as per a discussion earlier.

I'm working on a gameable fire breaking out, and the players need to work together to extinguish it. (Play tests have been OK, although the fire does tend to get out of hand)

I've also thought about a scenario where the players horses escape and need to be re-captured - (or something similar) -which will involve maneuvering on the board, and using some sort of herding mechanic. Not sure how to do it yet.

I have devised a gambling game played at the taverns, which leads into a storyline - We tested that game within a game on holiday and it works well

I need to encourage them into knowing that not all battles need to be a fight to the end.

I made very simple rules for research and knowledge that were super effective for a detective story I ran. The part I felt clever about was that the players ended up becoming my unwitting collaborators in writing the story! I used their questions as guidelines to write the story at the table, as we were playing. This mechanic has had the largest effect on the game out of any that I've made :).

[luguvalium]

Originally Posted by CardDiceian

I need to encourage them into knowing that not all battles need to be a fight to the end.

I was thinking of situations along to same lines, you are free to use this idea:

Its market day, the adventurers need to haggle with one or more vendors there. While there a young thief shoplifts, the adventurers can try to run down and tackle the thief, gaining favor with a vendor

OR, depending on their nature, help the thief escape and gain an ally in the thief.

[CardDiceian]

Originally Posted by luguvalium

I was thinking of situations along to same lines, you are free to use this idea:

Its market day, the adventurers need to haggle with one or more vendors there. While there a young thief shoplifts, the adventurers can try to run down and tackle the thief, gaining favor with a vendor

OR, depending on their nature, help the thief escape and gain an ally in the thief.

I have a similar situation set up for inside the tavern - while the players are involved in a gambling game (*which conveniently requires the GM to roll 3 dice behind a screen*) - There is a pickpocket in the audience - depending on what the rolls for the in game, game are - will also be a secret roll on the thiefs' DX to see if he manages to swipe the players money pouches -or of course he may be spotted red handed if the roll doesn't go his way.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by CardDiceian

*I'm wracking my brain for non-lethal / Non- combat ideas to play within my town setting*

I half-wrote an adventure once which was set in a market town just before the big sheefalo festival. Sheefalo were like sheep crossed with bison. The PCs were hired to watch someone's prize flock of sheefalo, which she suspected would be nobbled if the competition could get away with it. The adventure was a series of vignettes - bad guys attempt to put laxatives in the feed, bad guys come and mock how ugly your sheefalo are and you have to outmock them or be embarrassed, bad guys try to make sheefalo stampede, sexually compatible people with relevant talents come to chat and you'd like to talk them into socialising, children throw stones at the sheefalo, etc. Lots of encounters were "I'd like to be here dealing with this but maybe it's a distraction."

If you got nobbled it was possible you'd be hired to go nobble the bad guys in revenge though I never wrote any of that.

In no case was it reasonable to kill or seriously injure someone, or to hurt one of the prize sheefalo, and if they did the characters would at best lose the gig. But the other side was equally restrained.

I never quite finished and then I didn't have a group to run it with. The PCs were supposed to be more like village folk than townies but I guess it would work just as well if they were fish out of water.

[Tenex]

Anyone interested in a city setting needs to snap up one of these post haste!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000FM7H7M

Circa when TFT was originally found in stores, the Thieves World series of fiction books was quite popular. Check them out on Amazon for the back history of this city.

The city was a colorful border town on a bay and populated by all the characters in this long running paperback series. It was really a great series and all focused on in-city escapades.

Chaosium put out a RPG supplement for the city including maps, encounter tables etc. The whole shebang had 3 books and numerous maps. The link above is for book 2, the Game Master's Guide. This is the critical book of the three I think. Numerous maps can be found for Sanctuary in PDF form on the internet.

I still have my complete set and am refamiliarizing myself with it for use in a campaign I'm going to run my kids in. It hasn't been published in forever and this was a core of my campaign back in the day. IMO (and I'm NOT selling mine!) the encounter tables and business generation tables alone are worth the price.

Here's what's in book 2, for sale at link:

Framework for Bribery at different levels of government.

Legal system at thief/underclass/informal level; cult/priest/religious law and authority and consequences; legal at formal Empire level as implemented locally. Players can run afoul of all three types of legal systems.

16 pages of encounter tables broken out by Major vs. minor street, Day/evening/night, 7 neighborhoods. These are very cool encounters giving lots of role play opportunities that can lead to combat or not. Players will definitely find they have to dig into their character's personality to react to the encounters. The encounters aren't just "thief", but rather they include adventure seeds. For instance, the encounter Slave Coffle/Workgang is further broken down into 9 sub-types. One of these 9 sub-types is:
"Character correctly recognizes worker/slave as:
- relative
-enemy
-recent acquaintance
- childhood acquaintance
- close friend
- mistakenly as 1-5 above"

Business generation charts for approximately 60+ distinct businesses (perfumer, public bath, wineshop, private residence broken out by profession of owner, engraver, glassblower, chandler, physician, etc.). The likelihood of a particular type of business varies by which of 7 neighborhood types you are in. For instance the personal residence of an educated professional type has a .3% chance of occurring in a red light district, but a .75% chance of occurring in a residential or professional business area. These charts let you rapidly fill in a few shops around the players when they have a street encounter. For instance, if they are wanted and the town guard is approaching they may want to get off the street. Make the skanky illiterate thief role play why he just barged into a fine and rare bookstore.

The rest of the book, approximately 28 pages, is devoted to floorplans and descriptions of major businesses that occur in the Thieves World series. If you are going to use this it is very helpful if you have read one of the Thieves World books, but it is still incredibly useful even without that backstory.

The Vulgar Unicorn might be one of the best fantasy bars ever!

[CardDiceian]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I half-wrote an adventure once which was set in a market town just before the big sheefalo festival.

I absolutely love the sound of this idea. Do you still have guides on how to herd up released Sheefalo etc?

It sounds like a great 'reason' for the players to be in this new region, and a great idea to build stories around too - All sorts of possibilities for legal and criminal activity.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by CardDiceian

I absolutely love the sound of this idea. Do you still have guides on how to herd up released Sheefalo etc?

I doubt I have the documents and anyway it was never play-tested. They tended to wander off in a straight line and turn randomly. You could bop them on the nose with a stick and make them turn 60 degrees as you chose, and if one sheefalo was going to run into another sheefalo it would turn to avoid it so they sort of herded a bit. Some versions of the rules had dominant members of the herd that attracted others into following them. There was a cliff or bog or something nearby you didn't want them stumbling into. It was inevitable some would get away but you had to save as many as you could and not lose the special one.