OMINOUS ANOMALY

Here’s a bit of a write-up and exposition from a Reddit post on handling risk averse play patterns. 

During our game last night we got to a point where two players simply stayed in position as they did NOT want to risk making a jump . . . and failing the jump.

The Mothership Warden’s Operation Manual has some really excellent advice on when to roll, as well as how to fail forward, keep roll results interesting, and make rolls matter. But putting it all into practice is not easy until you’ve got a substantial number of sessions under your belt. And even then, it will always take a bit of creativity to read the dice, and the room.

The quick and clean solution given the above circumstances would be: “You’ve spent enough time contemplating the jump to figure out a safe way to do it/avoid it if you want to.”

That said, if the only way to advance is for all five of your players to attempt the jump by making five speed checks during the session, something’s gone wrong . . .

1. Odds: Given how stats work, on average 3 of 5 crew members will fail any given roll in the game. All five might fail, and you’re almost certain that one will fail. About 1 in 4 times there’ll be at least one critical failure. Are you ready for the consequences of those odds, and can you make them interesting? This leads back to my original point–“Seeing so-and-so fail gives you advantage/a free pass” is a way of picking up the pace in the heat of the moment and sidestepping bad odds.
   
2. Agency: The players stayed put because they wanted to play like that. I think you need to meet them halfway. While throwing an alien at them might force them down the hole, they’ll resent it if it’s sloppy. Instead, what if an NPC shows up at the top in need of help? They hear the sound of a crying child at the bottom? Perhaps there’s something that the players at the bottom need the players at the top to fetch and bring down?
   
3. Design: When prepping or designing the adventure, you need to consider the scenario that none of the players jump down the hole. Are there any alternative routes? Can the mission survive this content being skipped? If not, ask yourself why not, and don’t facilitate a situation where that might happen. On the flip side, if the hole was part of the intro setup, you could start your players at the bottom already.
   
4. Boredom: I try to control the amount of screen-time I give to “routine stuff” like climbing ladders, patching a spacesuit, or eating a salad when there’s other more important stuff to get to. I also allow things to become mundane–it could have been a challenge initially, but the crew eventually master how to handle minor hiccups over time.
   
5. Trust: After a campaign has been going for some time, it’s natural for players to get attached to their characters. Now would be a good time to check in and acknowledge that and make clear the terms of engagement. Being open about roll consequences is part of the equation, but your players may also need to touch base in terms of trust. Outside the session, come out and say explicitly above the table: “Your characters have come a long way, and are not going to die or get messed up by anything dumb. Of course the environment is dangerous and you need to take it seriously, but we’re here for a good story, not to punish a bad roll – the bad roll should be the good story.”
   

Wardening is a tricky balance. On some level in horror RPGs, you need to have times when the stakes are high and it’s fine to enjoy making the players squirm within the agreed upon boundaries, which means they also should have a good time when they’re on the hook. If you’re going to put “You fell and you died” as a possibility for long-term characters, it better be the most epic fall of all time. And if not, keep it off the table for now, and wait until they have to make the jump while carrying the artifact they stole as its owner thunders toward them. Oh dear, did you just say . . . 99?

– Kris