Entertaining Environmental Challenges

[angelfromanotherpin]

So, how do we make long wilderness hikes, spelunking, snowstorms, etc. into gameplay that is engaging, interesting, and mechanically robust? That sort of thing has been good cinema for decades, but I rarely see it as good table material.

[RobbyPants]

Make it matter. In terms of 3E D&D, that stuff really only matters for a couple of levels. Then, people find faster ways around the stuff.

Skill checks can be a decent way of handling things. You could model an environmental hazard similar to how you'd model a combat if you wanted, having it overcome with skills instead. This is sort of what 4E had in mind with skill challenges, but you wouldn't want to implement it like that.

Some of the hazards (like snow storms) are things you deal with for a while. That can just be done with dealing out status effects to make other challenges more difficult. That sort of thing works better in a race-against-the-clock scenario.

[Chamomile]

That sort of thing works better in a race-against-the-clock scenario.

At very low levels, the "race against the clock" can be "we don't have a whole lot of spare food." Part of the problem is that wilderness challenges start getting mooted at around level 3 or 4, which is around when a lot of games start.

[hogarth]

So, how do we make long wilderness hikes, spelunking, snowstorms, etc. into gameplay that is engaging, interesting, and mechanically robust? That sort of thing has been good cinema for decades, but I rarely see it as good table material.

Frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of a movie where a "man vs. environment" activity like a long hike or a spelunking expedition or a snowstorm was the focus of the film. As opposed to "horror film (in a snowstorm)" or "action film (on a long hike)", for example.

Interesting encounters are way more important than the environment those encounters take place in, although the environment contributes as well.

[RobbyPants]

That sort of thing works better in a race-against-the-clock scenario.

At very low levels, the "race against the clock" can be "we don't have a whole lot of spare food." Part of the problem is that wilderness challenges start getting mooted at around level 3 or 4, which is around when a lot of games start.

Well, yeah. If the PCs abilities surpass the challenge, then it's just a speed bump at best.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of a movie where a "man vs. environment" activity like a long hike or a spelunking expedition or a snowstorm was the focus of the film.

Really? You missed the media blitz around 127 Hours? I envy you.

That said, the man vs environment need not be the focus of the movie (or indeed 'story') as long as it's the focus of a good scene. The Man in Black vs Inigo Montoya isn't even close to the focus of The Princess Bride, but that duel is awesome.

Lawrence of Arabia crossing the Nefud is intense. Thorin's company starving in Mirkwood is brutal. Traversing the Fire Swamp is short but pithy. I don't see any reason that can't translate.

[TarkisFlux]

You'd need to start out writing an actual exploration minigame that was engaging instead of "make a few checks, cast a few spells, check off a few boxes, proceed to actual adventure". So you'd probably want to start with making a system that provided incentives and benefits for success on top of the random attrition / delaying that you currently have. Winning or failing needs to mean more than just determining how many resources you went through to get where you wanted to go if you want me to care about it, else it's just an adventure tax that I want to get over with. I don't think there's a reason you can't do that for most levels of the game, but some obstacles will simply stop being relevant at some point. It would probably also benefit from being somewhat abstracted to account for the various protection, discovery/divination, and travel abilities in the game.

[virgil]

It also needs to have choices with branching results along the way, because if crossing the desert is simply "walk, drink the optimum amount of remaining water, walk some more", then there's no engagement; it's a painfully simple checklist.

[hogarth]

Frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of a movie where a "man vs. environment" activity like a long hike or a spelunking expedition or a snowstorm was the focus of the film.

Really? You missed the media blitz around 127 Hours? I envy you.

Wasn't the challenge there not being able to hike?

(I read the book, but I haven't seen the movie.)

That said, the man vs environment need not be the focus of the movie (or indeed 'story') as long as it's the focus of a good scene. The Man in Black vs Inigo Montoya isn't even close to the focus of The Princess Bride, but that duel is awesome.

That's exactly my point -- an interesting encounter can be made more interesting through the environment. Environment alone is pretty boring in fiction (IMO).

Lawrence of Arabia crossing the Nefud is intense. Thorin's company starving in Mirkwood is brutal. Traversing the Fire Swamp is short but pithy. I don't see any reason that can't translate.

Seriously, how long do those scenes take in a movie? A couple of minutes?

By the way, I've read The Hobbit as recently as a couple of years ago, and I remember nothing about Thorin and his band starving. I remember they fought some spiders, though.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Environment alone is pretty boring in fiction (IMO).

That's a perfectly valid opinion, but the question was not 'if' it was interesting but 'how' it could be made interesting. So contribute something besides 'no' or butt out.

You'd need to start out writing an actual exploration minigame that was engaging

Obstacles:
• Pathfinding: You might not know the way, or you might need to know a better way.
• Supplies: When you have half left, do you turn back or press on? Can you waste time foraging?
• Time: Trading caution for speed will come up a bunch.
• Hazards: Avalanches, lightning sand, big holes; multiple valid methods of engagement needed.
• Enemies: Sometimes screwing up gets you attacked by wolves or shit.

[Prak]

One way that comes to mind is to treat it combat. Treat the environment as an enemy and hazards as it's attacks. There are two ways you can do this, one is to actually give the environment stats (the preferred way, I'd think), the other is to make all the hazards save or die/sucks

[Maj]

As far as I see it, environment is a problem story-wise because the plots are largely internal and D&D just can't handle that.

You could always also go the Xanth route and make the environment strange/random/interesting.

[Chamomile]

That sort of thing works better in a race-against-the-clock scenario.

At very low levels, the "race against the clock" can be "we don't have a whole lot of spare food." Part of the problem is that wilderness challenges start getting mooted at around level 3 or 4, which is around when a lot of games start.

Well, yeah. If the PCs abilities surpass the challenge, then it's just a speed bump at best.

Well, yeah, but the problem is that this just isn't going to be worth worrying about at all if the only time it will actually be important enough to bother rolling these things is a time that almost no one actually plays long enough for it to matter.

[TarkisFlux]

Those are the obstacles we've already got angelfromanotherpin, what we need are rewards and a structure that balances those rewards against the risk of those obstacles. Right now the minigame is just doing everything you can to minimize those obstacles, and that's one of the big reasons I don't want to engage with it if I can avoid it.

So if there was an Enemy obstacle, the player's choices and successes determine whether they get ambushed in a box canyon, fight the enemies on an even footing, ambush the enemies on patrol, or gain the option to send them on a wild goose chase so that they don't have to deal with them at all. If there's a Pathfinding obstacle, their choices determine whether they find the front door, the poorly guarded back door, the forgotten about hidden side door, or the ultra secret escape shaft that leads directly where they wanted to go. You'd probably want to determine these obstacles before the exploration game even started, so that their choices would determine whether they walked right into something unpleasant or got into a better position for it.

Supplies and Time are too closely related to treat separately. Once you're out of Supplies, you're out of Time. Time is also something that they'll be spending on actual actions to gain benefits, so it's already a dwindling resource. So you'd probably want to just link the two, and then your maximum Time is determined either by your supply situation (be it food, fire resistance, or oxygen supply) or external deadlines (finish by X time or it doesn't matter). It would also be a good thing to set it up a benefit for finishing with extra Time on the clock, so that there's not just an incentive to spend all the time they can afford before charging in to finish up. I'm not really sure what to suggest here though.

I don't really know how to make Hazards work in this sort of setup, except in the same form as enemies. You do some recon or prep and are better able to survive the hazards essentially. But that means that they exist already, and you're just trading time instead of other consumables.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Go watch a few episodes of Man vs. Wild, and then realize that normal environmental challenges are low-level only.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Go watch a few episodes of Man vs. Wild, and then realize that normal environmental challenges are low-level only.

If you can't come up with higher-level versions of environmental travel problems, that's just a failure of imagination. And a lot of games never make it out of low levels.

But in any case, a lot of games aren't D&D and tend to cluster around human scale challenges anyway.

[Stubbazubba]

While WoF gets a lot of flack, I think it could actually make terrain effects more interesting for the same reason it offends people; events are triggered by an invisible entity which can be described no better than fate (thus the name). While that frustrates a lot of people for combat, it's exactly what you want to model for environmental encounters. If, based on what terrain you're in, you draw cards which tell you whether or not something happens, and then you have to make a save, or whatever, you have that feeling of suspense, and some cool scenes that don't take up too much time.

If you're climbing up a cliff-face to reach the evil Vizier's secret laboratory, there is a deck of cards with things like 'Gust,' 'Rocks Fall, See if Everyone Dies,' 'Lose Your Footing,' interspersed with a healthy amount of , 'Nothing to Report, Move Along.' Overcoming the environmental encounter would be more like combat; you have four rounds' worth of climbing to get to the top, and on each turn everyone draws a card, which either lets them go through easily or puts forth an obstacle.

So long as it's more than just "you fail to reach your destination, roll more dice until you do," it'll be much more interesting.

[RobG]

Ive always thought of it as context rather than the gameplay itself. Where as opposed to what. Other than changing the feel and difficulty of a random encounter I dont find environment all that interesting

[RadiantPhoenix]

If you can't come up with higher-level versions of environmental travel problems, that's just a failure of imagination.

You mean, like the planes? "There's a voidsand-storm. Make a DC 25 Fortitude save or be annihilated each round until you find cover. You're flying through the empty void of the negative energy plane -- good luck with that."

[virgil]

I was thinking more like the planes, but instead of just bigger mountains and hotter winds, you must navigate through literal dreams in a process of association and shapeshifting, while dodging attacks from yourself outside of time...on fire.