Fri 21 Jan 2022, 09:22
quick question, as I am new to GMing/LMing in general
Personally, my quick answer would be: you are playing a game, to have fun (with friends).
So, if something seems to become boring or tedious, avoid it ; or if you feel something might bring more fun, go for it. Whatever the rules say.
Secondly: sometimes you end up having Real Life time constraints (only 1 hour left to play etc.), and I feel you can then make choices beyond the rules to speed things up skipping some less interesting things to go for what is important, vs. having to end without having time to really finish etc.
More specifically for your question:
"rules state that the exploring character can make one roll every hour. It sounds like the players could fail to find Otho altogether"
Yes, you are right--
Based on the information in the Core rules about timelines, it seems like I can give the characters ~7 hours to find Otho
--and I guess that's about right too (they have the night to do this before miners return etc.).
So, yes, you could end up not getting a 6.
I would see two 'answers' to this problem:
1. The rules read "to determine whether they find Otho, the Loremaster rolls a Success Die once for every successful ExPLORE Skill roll, adding 1 to the result for each Success icon rolled by the Player-hero."
"Adding 1 to the result for each Success icon rolled" could be seen in two ways: each Success icon rolled for that last roll ; or each Success icon rolled by the Player-hero since they started rolling (if you go for the 2nd option you add more and more to your d6 Roll, giving you a lot more chances to have them find Otho
2. What I did, for whatever it is worth, was roll the d6 and when I did not get a 6 (counting the +1s) I did not read the entry of that number, but 1st read entry 1, then entry 2 etc. (my idea being to scale things, have them see the lighter things first, then worse etc.). And, that way, I would have had them find Otho on the 6th roll at the latest (I think they got it on roll 3, or 4).
Playing in France, and online