Challenges

A Challenge is a series of obstacles which prevent characters from achieving their Objective.

Climbing a wall is a single obstacle. Climbing a mountain is a challenge.

Defeating a single mook is a simple obstacle. Defeating a horde, lieutenant, or boss is a challenge.

Challenges are composed of an Objective and a Challenge Length (CL). The CL roughly defines how multiple obstacles will be faced in the challenge. You don’t need to identify the specific obstacles until they come up in play. Overcoming an obstacle typically requires a good tale to be spent on “Overcome an obstacle”.

Write a challenge as an Objective with a number of boxes beside it. Mark a box [/] after the players overcome an obstacle.

For ease of reading, groups of 5 boxes are separated with a line or a space. Alternatively, make lines at clear milestones or logical delineations. If a Group of enemies includes a boss, a lieutenant and 3 mooks, it makes sense to place the lines between the logical enemies.

Here’s a few examples:

Sneak into the house (CL2): □□
Sneak into the dragon’s lair (CL8): □□□□□|□□□
Slay the dragon (CL20): □□□□□|□□□□□|□□□□□|□□□□□
Escape the dragon’s lair (CL5): □□□□□
Climb a small mountain (CL4): □□□□
Climb the world’s tallest mountain (CL15): □□□□□|□□□□□|□□□□□
Stay 24 hours in the haunted mansion (CL8): □□□□□|□□□
Defeat the demon, hellhound, and 3 imps: □□□□|□□|□|□|□

The challenge length will be determined by the particular objective the characters want to achieve. “Escape the Dragon” is much easier than “Slay the dragon”. It will also depend on the power-level of your characters and the tone you’ve agreed on. Climb the world’s tallest mountain might be CL50 for a peasant, or only CL2 for an invulnerable, teleporting wizard.

Pause once you’ve written down the objective, and make sure the players agree that the stated objective matches their intentions.

Note: an isolated “obstacle” could be called a “CL1 challenge”: a challenge with only one obstacle.

Overlapping and Nested Challenges

Characters will typically have more than one big objective they’re working towards. There might be a list of 5 or 10 active challenges. That’s totally fine.

Some challenges might overlap. Some might conflict. Imagine these abstract challenge paths to be more braided than linear.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts speed up the challenge by allowing a player to mark more than 1 box.

For example, suppose that the PCs have a Challenge with the Objective to “Get to the top of the mountain”, and one of them has a ring which can magically transport people. That player rolls the dice and spends their Good Tale to activate the ring, opening a portal halfway up the mountain.

That action discovers a shortcut, which means a subsequent good tale can be spent to mark 3 boxes on the challenge track instead of 1.

See also: Approaches: Audacious Actions

Delays (aka subchallenges)

Delays are the opposite of a shortcut. They’re represented as extra boxes on a challenge track or new subchallenges. When a player chooses the narrative option to “discover a new threat”, they can opt for the mechanical effect of: “create a subchallenge or setback/delay”.

Subchallenges can be written below, or tangential to, the current challenge. They must be dealt with in some fashion before the current challenge can be considered complete.

For example: Our players are engaged in an exploration challenge to “Discover the Lost Mines” [/] [/] [ ] [ ]. One of them rolls badly and discovers a new threat. They decide that a chasm separates them and their objective. The GM could add new boxes to the original challenge, increasing the challenge length:

Discover the Lost Mines [/] [/] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ].

But it might make more sense to write down a new subchallenge below the original challenge.

Discover the Lost Mines [/] [/] [ ] [ ]
- Cross the chasm [ ] [ ] [ ].

Note: The GM has authority to set the difficulty and number of boxes for subchallenges. As a general rule, the delay/subchallenge should have 3 boxes (just like a shortcut), unless there’s a good reason within your fictional circumstances to make it shorter or longer.

Detours (aka Changing Objectives)

Premature Termination spawns new Challenges

If the objective can no longer be met, the challenge ends prematurely. That doesn’t necessarily mean you “lost” or “surrendered”, it just means the objective is no longer available, so the challenge is moot.

If your objective was: “Don’t fall into the river”, and someone jumps in the river, that ends that particular challenge right away. This may present opportunities for character development or spawn new challenges, eg: “Swim to safety.”

Here are a few ways a challenge might end early.

The target of the objective no longer exists
The objective as written didn’t match the intention of the players
All the characters “surrendered, passed out, or died”

Even when a character dies, their story might not be over. The remaining characters might come up with the objective: “resurrect them”, or that player might come up with a challenge “defeat death in a game of chess”, or “escape Hel”, or “haunt my murderer and force a confession.” See “Character Death”

Types of Challenges

Challenges encompass a huge range of situations, from marching through the mountains, to fighting demons in hand-to-hand combat, to convincing a king to lend you his aid.

Combat Challenges

Combat Challenges represent life-or-death conflict with other creatures or characters. They are typically very short in game-time, with each Round only lasting seconds, though it might take a few minutes to play out.

Combat usually involves taking Health damage from things like sword-blows or magical fire. Conditions applied through Combat are usually injuries such as Massive Burn, Blinded, or Bleeding Out.

Exploration Challenges

Exploration Challenges are fights against the elements or the PCs environment. They are tests of the PC’s Endurance and fortitude. They may be a grueling march through pouring rain, or a desperate chase after a thief in a city.

Exploration usually result in loss of Endurance and possibly health as PCs fight against starvation and the elements. Conditions afflicted will usually be something of the effect of Winded, Starving, or Frostbitten.

Interaction Challenges

Interaction Challenges are contests of wits, typically against another character or group. These could be academic challenges, debates, singing contests, bartering, attempts at persuasion, manipulation, intimidation, etc. They might also represent attempts to gather information about a topic, like perusing the halls of the great library.

Interaction challenges usually result in loss of Wits and possibly treasure as PCs lose arguments, run into dead ends, and fail to outplan, out-think, or outmaneuver their opponent. Conditions afflicted could include: Uncertain, Confused, Demoralized, Befuddled, Depressed, Awkward, Anxious.

NPC “Challenges” aka NPC Projects

Factions and Iconic NPCs have their own challenges, which we’ll call “NPC Projects”.

If they’re getting too close to reaching their goals, you may be able to cause delays and setbacks for them. If you complete an objective which contributes to their delay, you can ask your GM to remove one or more points from an NPC Project track.

For more about factions, iconic NPCs and NPC Project, see the section on Gamemastering.

Bidirectional (Tug of War) Challenges

This Section is currently in development. It’s likely to change.

Most challenges have the players progressing from the left, all the way to the right, marking boxes as they go. When they reach the end, they reach their objective and the challenge is over.

You can also have Bidirectional (aka Tug-of-War) Challenges, used to represent flexible outcomes. Good Tales fill in boxes from the left and Bad Tales fill in boxes from the right.

The goal could be to reach the middle of the challenge track first, thus capturing an objective before your opponent, like in a race situation.

Or the goal could be to capture as much of the challenge bar as possible, like in a mass combat situation, or haggling with a vendor for a price.

Example:

Objective: Convince the Magic Ring Vendor to give us 3 treasure for our magic locator beacon.

X => [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] <= O

After a bunch of actions, discussion about the merits of magic locators, the risk of being detected by enemies, and the likelihood that it might be faulty, the challenge bar looks like this:

X => [X] [X] [O] [O] [O] <= O

The NPC Buyer marked 3 boxes to the players’ 2. The group decides that the NPC buyer will only give them 2 treasure for the beacon.