The Great Hunt: Hunting Red eye (Spoilers)

[skulldixon]

This past week in my game one of my players participated in the Great Hunt. Below I'm going to describe how I handled it in my game and how we made an epic moment for one of the PCs - improv the scene the whole way.

From what I could find out about the Great hunt, both from reading and from asking around, the great Hunt is a 3 week ritual event where participates solo hunt and live capture animal(s) and bring them back to the ceremonial grounds where the Yinkin and Odayla High Priests or Priestesses award points based on what was bought forward to them.

I left it open for any of my players to participate in this event, but only the Yinkin cultist joined. Anyway he set a high bar for his character though, he wanted to Live capture Redeye. the groups has encountered the Giant Boar twice before and survived each time. Now this one player wanted to try and live capture the beast. He had his character spend a few weeks leading up to this point trying to gather any information that his character could use in order to succeed at this monumental task but often came up with very little information. As the event was upon them, he decided to reach out to Yinkin for some guidance on the task that they had set for themselves. Everything up to now had suggested that the task was outside their capability. 

Using Divination, the player asked Yinkin how they would they be able to bring Red eye to heel or win the beast's respect and since the roll for Divination was pretty low, I made something up on the spot.

the Vision:

The player saw their character standing in the forest, their feet rooted to the forest's floor. Redeye came charging forth from the forest, running directly at the hero, but pulle dup short - testing the heroes resolve to remain unmoving. 

Then Redeye tried to intimidate the hero by thrashing it's tusks before them and stomping and running around in circles around the hero before charging the hero a second time, missing the hero with a second faint.

Then Redeye approached the hero a third and final time, each standing only a number of meters away from the other, staring into the others eyes, into their spirit trying to intimate each other through sheer will and force of being. They could see waves of beastial energy coming off of Redeye and crashing against similar waves of energy from the hero, this continued until one of them won and all faded to black, the character unsure who won the contest in the vision.

 

They then went into the forest a few days later and tracked Redeye to his lair where the events they saw in the vision happened.

When Redeye tried it first Faint, to test the hero's resolve, I had the player roll their Stasis Rune. With a success they were able to remain unmoved. However, the player barely failed so their character took a step back from Redeye's first test. 

In the next test Redeye tried to intimidate the Hero and because the player lost the last test, redeye got a bonuses to this; +20%. Since Redeye didn't have the intimidate skill, I just gave him one at 80%. The player got to make an opposed roll against Redeye's intimidation and since the hero had received this the vision from Yinkin, they used their devotion to Yinkin to overcome this attack - believing in what Yinkin showed them. This time they were successful.

In the final test , the hero made an opposed roll against Redeye's Beast Rune against the Character's Beast Rune. In preparation for this, however, the player used the last of their rune points and changed themselves into a Shadowcat - hoping that this would give them an edge. I thought it was a good idea so I gave the player a +20%. They rolled 5 times for this staring contest. Each time they tied. on the fifth time the player rolled a critical successes, but then Redeye also rolled a critical success. 30 minutes had passed and as such I had them both make CON checks to see if they can continue the test. The player failed this roll and blinked breaking the contest. Redeye charged, this time he was going to hit the PC but luck was on the hero's side and Redeye missed.

 

At this point the player had the option to run away but instead decided to reinitiate the 3 tests instead. So we went through the whole ordeal again. When we got to the rolls for the beast runes, I gave both parties a penalty and in the end when they both failed in to roll a success for their beast rune, Redeye turned and left the area, giving the PC a bit acknowledgment and a small amount of respect by leaving them alive.

 

So the Great hunt ended with a great story that no one will believe whenever the PC tells others about it. All the players really loved this battle and got them all pumped even though most of them could be apart of the event. I honestly had no idea what the player was going to decide to do but was able to improv something that none of us will forget for some time.

Edited April 28, 2021 by Scotty
Spoiler Tag added as it contains Redeye

[Psullie]

This is great example of even in failure you can get epic stories. 

[Pentallion]

Tying an opposed roll five times in a row...that's 1 in 100 each time, ten zeroes....10 billion to one!

[Arcadiagt5]

9 hours ago, Pentallion said:

Tying an opposed roll five times in a row...that's 1 in 100 each time, ten zeroes....10 billion to one!

Not if the tie is measured by success level only. If they both had 100% stats then the normal success range is 21-95 or 75%. The chance of both getting a normal success at that point is about 56%. Two specials adds about another 2%, two crits is negligible. 5 ties in a row is still a  small chance but I think it’s roughly 6% chance based on the above. 

[skulldixon]

Sorry, I should have made that more clear. Yes, the ties were measured by Success levels and not by the actual numbers. 

[Pentallion]

Is that the correct way of doing it?  I though in an opposed roll, if both got the same level of success, the high roll won it?

[jajagappa]

Just now, Pentallion said:

I though in an opposed roll, if both got the same level of success, the high roll won it?

No, that was clarified subsequently by Jason that same level of success is a tie.

[Pentallion]

Spirit combat is going to take a LOT longer that way. 

[skulldixon]

7 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

Spirit combat is going to take a LOT longer that way. 

The GM can make the call in the end. if you want you can do it a few ways. But overall it works just like Dodge and parry does for attacks.

Edited April 29, 2021 by skulldixon

[jajagappa]

32 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

Spirit combat is going to take a LOT longer that way. 

Ah, but Spirit Combat doesn't work exactly the same!  On a tie with two successes (or better) in Spirit Combat, both do Spirit Combat damage.

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, Pentallion said:

Spirit combat is going to take a LOT longer that way. 

See Spirit Combat Results table

[Bren]

What a great story! I love what your player tried to do as well as how you chose to handle it. Also I find what you did a good example of how to make the Rune affinities behave more like the Pendragon traits. (Conceptually I find Pendragon traits easier to wrap my head around than the sometimes similar yet sometimes different Gloranthan Runes.)

[Lordabdul]

On 4/27/2021 at 11:11 PM, skulldixon said:

So the Great hunt ended with a great story that no one will believe whenever the PC tells others about it

That's a great story, thanks for sharing!  Very good improvisation on your part with these Divination visions!  The mythic law of threes strikes again!

[skulldixon]

10 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

That's a great story, thanks for sharing!  Very good improvisation on your part with these Divination visions!  The mythic law of threes strikes again!

I work in film, so i think that's why i stuck with three. its a good storytelling tool for most media. lol