Mon 26 Oct 2020, 17:20
So, I've ran the Spire and used your ideas for the labyrinth like parts of the site (the actual labyrinth, the burnt downed town and the garden). It went really well, I believe. Rather than making a lot of intricate labyrinth maps myself I googled a few interesting pictures that suited each part and put them on my VTT (we use Roll20 since me and my group of players are scattered around the country since some 20 years). It took us about two sessions to complete that part of the adventure and to my delight, all of my players seemed to enjoy themself all the time. It can be hard to immerse one self for hours on end on the VTTs but they really seemed to stay focused throughout. We will definitely be using these rules again.
Some lessons learned.
I made the three part labyrinth quite big, with a lot of "rooms"/interesting sites. The result was they didn't explore more than half of it. I will continue to build on this to have the right mix of rooms and then perhaps having some pictures to draw from when they end up with the random encounters instead.
It was hard for the players to know how much time they had so they pushed most rolls and never took their time investigating or resting. Now, this was due to the fact they just knew they where in a rush, they didn't know exactly how much time they did have. We found it more interesting if they would have som kind of sense of urgency, thus their choices would be more interesting. Do we stop to rest now or do we need to press on? So, in order to give them the chance of balancing their choices, pace, rest and investigation, I rolled a D4 in front of them and said this is your sense of urgency. If you know you make good speed for a few turns I'll nock off a figure or two from the die but if you linger, rest or have a hard time making up your mind I'll add a figure instead. I told them they wouldn't want it to go higher than four or they'd be too late. So a quarter day rest would increase the dice two or even three numbers, thus they could argue amongst themselves if it was worth the time to search an interesting site, take up a fight, rest or if they had to hurry along. It made for much interesting discussions amongst the players.
A lot of rolls! I let my players roll for themself in all instances except after a fight, when they would argue over which way they came. (It was also an amusing discussion to listen to) So we quickly found out there was a lot of rolls and a lot of pushes in order to make their way through the labyrinth. It got quite boring after a while, especially since they didn't know exactly how much time they had before it was too late to finish this labyrinth. So for our next session I made the players roll for each new site they tried to reach but then I told them what the target number was and they could decide if it was worth to push the roll. If they did reach the successes necessary, I'd tell them the travel took 15 minutes. For each additional success they would have needed in order to get to the new room, it would take them another 15 minutes. Also, if they rolled one or more "1" on any dice, that would make me roll on my own "random encounter table". The more "1"s, the worse the encounter. So, they knew if they succeeded or how many more successes they'd need and could then argue if it was worth the risk of damage to themself and the risk of random encounters. Also, each "line" travelled was finished with only one roll instead of rolling multiple times till they made it. Worked really well. It takes some getting used to, setting the right amount of successes needed to advance to the next room/site though.
So, I'll definitely be using this rule again. Thank you for sharing!