Sometimes, including elements from another game that your players already know can allow for some fun and memorable encounters.
The first Harry Potter book, the Philosopher’s Stone, has Wizard chess as one of the puzzles that the ‘player characters’ have to contend with, in order to proceed to confronting the ‘boss’ of their game. This works well in a location or milieu where “powerful magic makes you do only X”, or controls reality somehow, so you can control players’ actions within the scope and rules of that game. However, when you incorporate other elements, you can allow them to think “outside of the box” and cheat the rules, like jumping from the back of a serpent onto a nearby ladder, in some kind of weird Snakes and Ladders construction. This can be an enjoyable encounter where a player who knows that specific game can really shine, but also breaks down the traditional rules of a D&D-style game. How you can use this in your games: • A mad wizard’s dungeon is a staple of D&D going all the way back to Gary Gygax’s dungeon ‘Castle Greyhawk’. Adding strange elements like this that don’t really make sense, but have quite tightly controlled outcomes and rules can be very strange but also good. • The Fey are renowned for being strange, and forcing intruders to participate in odd games seems very strange indeed. They may even force players to take very unusual roles, like making a Barbarian take the place of a pawn, while a Mage is assigned to the role of a Knight, just for giggles. • Findiing bizarre demiplanes with strange rules assigned to them is almost required for interdimensional travel, and can actually be used as a filler side-quest (especially if you’ve forgotten to make notes for stuff). Just haul out another old game from the games cupboard (you don’t have a games cupboard? Acquire one, post-haste!) and find some way to awkwardly jam it in! (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 21 January 2019) Comments are closed.
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