Post by Capt_buck in Pit of Mirrors (Spoilers)

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Hey I ran this in a session for the second time a bit ago and I have a few comments/questions/ points of confusion. I'm about to run it again so I'd like to keep improving it.

Something I only realized after my second running is the "The Adventurers" is not a reference to the goblins, but a reference to the NPC adventuring party that is entering the temple! I think I'd only read the lowercase adventurers as the NPCs for some reason.

I don't understand the pacing, in terms of how many actions should be attempted. The group very quickly entered the tower by breaking and window, looked around each room, but kept going down. They successfully broke or picked the door to get down. By the time they were down with the spider people it was probably only turn 3. They also made it back up by turn 5. Perhaps I wasn't throwing them enough obstacles, but it seemed like they wanted to go up or down steps in a room really shouldn't be an issue or even a roll.

Also a more general question is how should we treat fairly simple actions that have the chance of not working? I ended up mostly saying they risked breaking it, or the item they were using, but that felt very uncreative after a few times. It also because confusing whether they could reattempt things. Particularly in the firey lab, they kept failing to escape, but it felt silly to just kill them for failing to leave a room, but there wasn't any other way out. I ended up saying they had to burn away an item each time, and then the fire died out. I guess I could have injured them, but I think that would have wiped the whole party.

As a twist/ mistake I made the orb a bit more magical and the ooze was a bit afraid of it when they waved it or the replica. They didn't linger long, but I think if they messed with the ooze it would have attacked the item it was once afraid of. In the moment I couldn't describe the runed chamber well, so the orb became the most important device for containing the ooze.

As a funny note, one of the goblins drank the ooze in the runed bottle. I had to talk to a friend not in the game to figure out something for the next session. We decided to cause the stomach ooze to drag the player to the big ooze. That ended up being funny. A leg was lost.

Thanks for your creation by the way! I've been enjoying it and trying to get more people to play.

Narrative Dynamics3 years ago

Hi Capt_buck!

Good questions, and it's cool to see you really diving into the system.

In terms of scale, I've found that the Pit of Mirrors can vary a lot. Sometimes actions spiral out of control and twists introduce new dangers that need to be resolved. I've had folks get lost on the way there or stalked by the jungle cat, or caught in the vines. I've also seen groups come up with clever ways to avoid problems and they fly through it in a few turns.

One thing that can slow the pace of a game without adding obstacles or forcing a roll: taking more time for questions and descriptions. Really dive into the sounds and smells of the abandoned lab, ask about goblins past experience with weird creatures, about how they do something, about what they want out of a situation. I find that spending more time 'in the fiction' can add a lot to play.

When players fail an action more than once, it can be useful to add new threats. The danger for fleeing a burning lab could be that the acting goblin gets pinned under falling debris, or the adventurers come down the stairs to attack. Ideally failing means that you aren't in the same position as you were before the roll. That can keep a desperate scene lively and dynamic.

I agree that small things, without meaningful stakes (like going up and down stairs) doesn't need to be a roll. Save it for the big stuff.

The orb making light/ the ooze being harmed by light is an intentional relationship. Cool to hear you found a dramatic moment there.

I love the image of the tiny ooze dragging a goblin around from inside its guts.

itch.io

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