Aetrimonde

Last week I introduced some of the guidance the Aetrimonde Game Master’s Handbook provides for creating and running non-combat encounters where the focus is on the characters’ abilities and skills and their ability to apply them creatively to a problem. In that introduction, I focused on resource encounters where the challenge stemmed from a need to achieve success before running out of time or some other resource. Today, I’ll be providing an excerpt from the GMH talking about a second kind of non-combat encounter: contests pitting the PCs against opposing NPCs or some other force that actively competes with them.

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Contest Encounters

A more complex kind of non-combat encounter is a contest, which pits the PCs against an opposing force, which might be a person, a group, or even an impersonal force. To win a contest, the PCs must find ways of using their skills more effectively than the opposition.

Basic Implementation

In the simplest implementation of a contest, the PCs and their opposition are both trying to achieve the same goal, which requires them to succeed on a certain number of skill checks.

• The players, and the opposing team, roll initiative and enter a turn order like they would in combat.
• On each turn, characters in the contest must describe how they work towards their goal, then make a single skill or ability check of an appropriate type and Difficulty to represent their efforts.
• Whichever team first achieves a set number of successful checks wins the encounter. However, requiring more checks actually makes a contest easier, because (as discussed below) the PCs should generally have the advantage in a contest if they apply their skills with imagination and strategy. Requiring fewer checks increases the influence of chance on the contest, thus making strategy and imagination more important for the PCs. As a rule of thumb, the required number of successes should be a multiple of the number of PCs in the party: 3 times the number of PCs for an easy challenge, 2 times for a medium challenge, and 1 times for a hard challenge.

Example: Race to the Ruins

The PCs have one half of an ancient map to the ruins of a lost city, and their rivals have the second half. They must work out a route to the ruins and then beat their rivals there with enough time to find the artifact they seek.

This is a medium-difficulty challenge, requiring 2 successes per PC (so 10 total) to win. Useful checks might include:

• Consulting a library for a full version of the ancient map (History).
• Spying on the rival party to get a glimpse of their half of the map (Stealth and/or Perception).
• Plotting a route to the ruins that accounts for changes in terrain since the map was made (Nature).
• Calling in favors to make the journey easier (Charisma, benefiting from a Contacts perk).
• Making a desperate forced march (Endurance).

Complications

Depending on the context of a contest encounter, there are ways to increase verisimilitude by adding to the complexity of the encounter. Some of these will be familiar from resource encounters:

[The first two complications discussed are essentially a repetition of two discussed in the context of resource encounters, and I’m omitting them here for brevity.]

Running Interference

If the PCs want, they can attempt to interfere with the opposition’s efforts instead of trying to achieve a success directly. On their turn, a PC can describe how they intend to interfere with the opposition, then make an appropriate check. The next time the opposition attempts a check that the PC’s efforts would interfere with, the Difficulty of the check is the PC’s check result.

This allows the PCs an alternate way of contributing if they have no skills that they can use to directly achieve a success in the contest, by making it harder for the opposition to achieve their own successes. It can be particularly effective if the opposition has a limited range of good skills, and the PCs can work out a way to interfere with many of them at once.

If any of the PCs take this option, make sure that they see signs of how it mattered: either have the opposition attempt a skill check and suffer from the interference, or narrate how the opposition notices the interference and is forced to use a backup plan instead.

Individual Efforts

If there can only be one winner of a contest, and the PCs are judged on their individual performance rather than as a group, then a contest should track successes separately for each participant. As a rule of thumb, victory should require 4 successes by a single participant for an easy challenge, 3 for medium, and 2 for hard.

Chase Scenes

A chase scene is a variation on a contest, where the PCs are not so much trying to beat their opposition to a goal but trying to catch up to or outpace them.

• The players, and the guards, roll initiative and enter a turn order like they would in combat.
• On their turns, each character in the contest must decide how they either catch up or get away. They can attempt to aid an ally or run interference, as described in the complications on the previous page, or they can just attempt to aid themselves.
• At the end of every round, each character on the pursued side of the contest must make a relatively easy (Difficulty 10) Endurance check. (The most helpful way to aid an ally is to give them favor on this check.) If all the pursued characters succeed, they collectively accumulate one success. If any of the pursued characters fail, the pursuers accumulate one success instead.
• One side wins the chase when their accumulated successes exceed the other side’s by a target amount. As a rule of thumb, this should be 4 successes for an easy challenge, 3 for medium, and 2 for hard.

The basic framework of a chase scene can be adapted for other types of contest where the PCs, collectively, need to stay ahead of the competition in a different sense, such as a social conflict where they need to maintain greater favor with a powerful patron, or an academic conflict where they need to maintain better grades or the favor of the funding committee. Applying the chase scene framework to these contexts is largely a matter of changing the required check to a more appropriate type (Charisma for a social conflict, or some Intelligence-based check for an academic one).

Example: Pursuit Through the Streets

The PCs have stolen something, or killed someone important, or just been accused of such an act, and the guards are after them! The party needs to get far enough ahead of the guards to hide somewhere and lie low long enough for the heat to die down.

This is a hard-difficulty challenge (because whatever the PCs did, it really got the guards worked up…), requiring them to accumulate 4 Endurance check successes more than the guards. Useful checks in this contest might include:

• Putting on a good burst of speed on a straightaway (Athletics).
• Fleeing through a crowded street or across rooftops (Acrobatics).
• Frightening bystanders out of the way (Intimidate).
• Directing the chase to a street where the locals are on good terms with the party (Society, benefiting from a Contacts perk).
• Talking a bystander into swapping hats or coats to confuse pursuers (Persuasion).

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Up Next

I think that’s enough on the topic of contest encounters for now. The GMH goes on to discuss some other applications and variations on contests, like eliminations where participants are eliminated for failing checks until only one is left, but I’m saving that content for the actual book.

Next up, I’ll be discussing the third and most complicated format of non-combat encounter that the GMH will discuss: the nodal encounter.