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ref's notes: knaves of the earth 200322

This is a letter I wrote in Discord for the gang after our session today, which was highly rated, if imperfect. I'm trying to grow and develop the game, keeping it fresh and fair, so I try to keep open communication.

__**on Stunts & Paladins**__

I'm enjoying stunts in all their Apocalypse World-derived glory. They're from the blog Buildings Are People, source of many of our house rules. I got into RPGs through PbtA, not D&D, so they appeal to me.

I think they're a flexible way to handle outside the box requests. I hope you're enjoying having the hit/mix/miss sketched out beforehand, to make the stakes clear. Please offer other suggestions, or yes-and mine, as seems appropriate.

Something I'd like to look at more explicitly is specifying our intent. Burning Wheel is big on this: before rolling, players and ref always discuss intent behind the action. We could probably explore this more directly.

With the paladin example, reaching out to Prospero, Entropus, Nergal — hell, even Sorg — could be handled as a stunt I think, if we negotiate the intent. Maybe a series of stunts, to progressively grow closer to a patron.

Perhaps we were on the way there today, even, with the rays of sun. If we're all more explicit about our thinking and desires, I'm sure we can build something.

__**on Hunters & Men-at-Arms**__

Not sure rolling a CHA save w/ ADV is the right move here. I'm leaning closer to something like:

Labourers will not fight, but they'll hold and carry stuff, maybe touch the odd object or architecture that's been proven safe already. If things break bad, they flee, cower, surrender, etc. unless their employer makes a CHA save.

Trained Hunters will fight at range as normal for as long as the situation is under control. If things break bad, they flee, cower, surrender, etc. unless their employer makes a CHA save.

Trained Men-at-Arms (or Knights etc) will fight at range or in melee as normal for as long as the situation is under control. If things break bad, they flee, cower, surrender, etc, unless their employer makes a CHA save.

I take "break bad" to be context-dependant and negotiated. The save can take ADV/DIS as any. Thoughts?

__**on Hunting & Foraging **__

Slight revisions to **foraging**:

The party has a 1 in 6 chance of finding edible berries, mushrooms, small game, etc, per day. They find enough for d6 creatures.

Each trained Hunter raises this chance by 1, to a maximum of 6 in 6. (6 in 6: roll 2d6, fail only on doubles.) If food's found, each Hunter increases the food found by 1, to a maximum of 10.

__**on Campaigns More Broadly**__

Where I struggle I think is the persistent game world. Jumping deep into the earth — then clear across it — probably didn't help matters, and we even switched base towns! That was a natural outgrowth of my own plothook machinations, but hey, fair is fair, ha. I'm trying to adjust.

I'd like to weave some of our ongoing narrative into barrowmaze but I'm not sure how. There's a cult, for sure, but you guys haven't encountered it really. I have some ideas we can explore in-game.

If you got this far, thanks for reading. Please share your thoughts, here or in private message. I feel we have a good group here, and I want to make it work as best it can for all of us.

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