Forum

The layout makes it easy to miss this:

A subsection of STATIONARY PLAYERS Ref, pdf page 15.

HIDDEN CAMP: If the PCs make no attempt to hide their camp, approaching NPCs will automatically spot it. If the
PCs do hide their camp, roll RECON as described on page xx of the Players’ Manual. If the NPCs fail to spot the camp, the PCs can choose whether to stay undetected or make their presence known.

Player pdf page 48

RECON (INT)
Use the RECON skill to spot concealed enemies, avoid ambushes, move silently and avoid being detected. Make an opposed roll (page xx) against your adver- sary’s RECON. If you win, you manage to avoid being spotted.
The person or group trying to stay hidden is always the active party in the opposed roll, i.e. they must roll more than the opponent to remain undetected, and only they can push the roll. Read more about stealth and ambushes on page xx.
You can also use RECON when traveling, to spot an- other party on the trail before they spot you. See chap- ter 6.

It's not totally unambigious, but it can be interpreted as if the enemy needs a succesful RECON if the PCs are hidden

Edit: still doesn't make sense why encounters becomes more severe over time. and why enemies discover that they have been spotted etc

This is another place where the game aspect bumps into reality. I gather that the intent is not to let the PCs become comfortable for too long, to always have them a bit on edge.

But, it is of course a roleplaying game, and your job as the GM is to make the game both challenging and fun for the players. If your players are getting mad about constantly being hounded when they think they should be well hidden, then it is probably time to back off. If you as the GM roll an encounter that you personally don't think is right, then don't tell the players and change it! Or if I roll that nasty group of marauders finding camp, but know that the PCs need some time to lick their wounds already, I might make it a purely non-violent encounter where they just want to barter or talk. Now the PCs can ask themselves questions about "how did they find us" and "where did they come from" and this alone could be the basis for a session or more of games!

The manuals are very upfront about this sort of thing, as they are in every roleplaying game in the past couple of decades. This isn't a CRPG, the GM still has work to do that goes above and beyond. All the encounter tables in the world are only there to help facilitate that. Personally, I never make encounter table rolls public, in any system. It kills the drama and your options.

Of course, being a pre-release we should definitely try to point out wacky outcomes. My own very simple solution to this is applying modifiers to the table roll itself. If it's a particularly quiet or friendly area, or the PCs have justifiably created a place that's super hidden (maybe with excess successes on their camp roll?), a -1 or -2. If it's particularly hostile, then the other way. If the result goes less than 1, then no encounter. If it goes over 10, then escalate what's there. Easy peasy.

While we're at it, some of the "mood" encounters are beautifully written and quite awesome, and while intended not to actually be "encounters" I could see also see them engaging players for potentially quite a while. So it all depends on what your table is feeling in terms of wandering off the beaten path or sticking to the plot. Gotta feel that out, but I think some of that is session zero type stuff.

Yes, PC's can avoid the encounter by avoiding being seen, but there's also the broader question of why we have the encounter in the first place. Why should encounters occur every shift? Why does the likelihood of confrontation increase regardless of whether the PC's hide has been detected? Etc.

Consider a party of 4 people on foot, moving under cover of darkness & setting up a camouflaged hide in a woodlot after walking 2 km off a secondary road following a hedgerow along the edge of a disused field. Why is anyone just happening to wander by such a camp? Or, given that encounter range in woods is 1/4 that of open terrain, why aren't encounters 1/4 as likely in wooded hexes?

I think a stationary encounter table needs to take into account terrain type and allow DMs based on where the camp is set, which affect whether encounters are even likely, and also how often we should expect them. Set camp near a road? Every shift. Set camp away from a main road? Daily. Move by night and enforce strict light and sound discipline? DM -3. It's only after we decide someone comes bumbling along that we can consider how well hidden we are. (And if you have a fire going, you are not hidden.)

I get that the goal is to keep players getting comfortable, and the game is elsewhere doing a great job of this. And I get that referees can overrule any table. It's just that as written, the stationary encounters propel us to confrontation within 24 hrs -- and I would be looking to that table to give me the flavour of what might happen next, absent any overriding plot.

While it is obvious that the GM always should balance the game, even when it means breaking, or just fracturing, the rules — "you are in charge of the pacing of the game, not the rules" — it is preferable if the system can do it right from the start. That way, even beginner GM's — who probably don't have the hours to be able to fly by the seat of their pants — can offer their players an enjoyable experience.

Being not only a pre-release, but an Alpha — and the whole point of an Alpha being to get people to point out what they find is out of whack, one way or the other ... and in that regard, I really like your suggestion:

My own very simple solution to this is applying modifiers to the table roll itself. If it's a particularly quiet or friendly area, or the PCs have justifiably created a place that's super hidden (maybe with excess successes on their camp roll?), a -1 or -2. If it's particularly hostile, then the other way. If the result goes less than 1, then no encounter. If it goes over 10, then escalate what's there. Easy peasy.

Lemon squeezy!

And adding welsh's thoughts into the mix...

I think a stationary encounter table needs to take into account terrain type and allow DMs based on where the camp is set, which affect whether encounters are even likely, and also how often we should expect them. Set camp near a road? Every shift. Set camp away from a main road? Daily. Move by night and enforce strict light and sound discipline? DM -3. It's only after we decide someone comes bumbling along that we can consider how well hidden we are. (And if you have a fire going, you are not hidden.)

...that should put us on the right track, I believe.

For the record, I'm not arguing with you, welsh. I think it's a good catch. Just pointing out some ways it could be mitigated or made more clear in the text itself, both in terms of actual rules and in reminders to GMs who may be new to this that "hey these rules are as always just guidelines."

I do think, for purposes of making life easy, that it's clear the Shift is the default unit of game time on the travel map. And if you have things that are checked every Shift then it becomes a slight nuisance to start doing them instead Daily. You kind of muddy the waters in terms of what the GM has to keep track of by making it less standard. So I think I would still prefer it to be written in the rules as "check every shift," but with the tables (and modifiers that might apply to them) looked at.

There are a couple of questions around stationary encounters:

• Increased severity of encounter for longer stays . (stationary encounters table).
• Does RECON have any effect for enemies and PCs? It has for encounters on the move, but it's not as clear for stationary encounters. It's better to make the rules - and any differences between situations - clear.
• detection rules:

  Allow the PCs a RECON roll to spot the scouts (opposed roll). If spotted, the scouts might attack, retreat, or negotiate, depending on their goals.

  (stationary encounters table). Automatic discovery of the PCs and the enmy know when the PCs have detected them?
• Increased risk of detection just for staying in a spot for along time (separate from encounter severity)
• Some parts implies automatic detection of PCs, other parts says RECON is necessary to spot a hidden camp.

Some ideas:
* Spotter must succeed with opposed RECON to spot target. "Normal" recon rules, moving or stationary.
* Target must spend time and work to maintain cover (branches used for camouflage will wither, paths in area will get more defined). Success with RECON needed to maintain cover.
* A modifier that makes it easier to spot target after a while. The easiest places are found first. (there's an inconsistency here that any new enemy units would search obvious places first). How big that modifier should be is another question...


Edited to add condensed version:
* Risk of discovery increases over time, without maintenance of cover the risk increases quicker. Normal spotting rules (RECON) apply.

I do think, for purposes of making life easy, that it's clear the Shift is the default unit of game time on the travel map

Good point. Probably makes more sense to have tables differ by terrain or just apply DMs based on terrain, precautions, etc.

Personally, I would also prefer the tables simply to define the flavour of the encounter. i.e. it's refugees, it's stragglers, it's a patrol, etc., with the rest always left to the referee, rather than the weirdly specific refugees who heard word you were here, scouts looking specifically for you, etc.

I like that stuff, personally. I can edit or omit it to taste but it jump-starts some ideas at a glance.

Of course, I can also imagine teenage me trying to GM a game and simply reading every word out loud verbatim, even if it's the 2nd or 3rd time we've rolled this encounter...

Couple of excellent point already in this thread - lots of great ideas to pull from...here's my 2 cents.

I think the tables might be a bit aggressive. I think that terrain modifiers are a great idea.

I think that this is a great time to point out the value of recon.

I think that if I was to hole up on the side of the road, I would expect a lot more through-traffic than I would if I was in the woods, off the beaten track, trying to distill fuel or repair a vehicle.

I think that GM's should use these tables as a tool to drive the game forward, but not as a hammer to beat the PC's to death with...

M.