Gamemastering Tips and Miscellanea

When there is no other penalty for failure, a roll may be attempted only once. This is because of short-term exhaustion or perhaps a tool breaking. If the PC fails to do it the first time, they have to find another way to accomplish their goal.

**A Note on Vision**

Even though light sources list a given radius, the transition from light to dark is gradual. Creatures may be able to see beyond the radius, perhaps only in moving silhouettes or vague figures, depending on how far away it is from the light.

**A Note on Cubic Meters**

Cubic meter measurements can’t be divided into units smaller than a cubic meter. For example, if a spell effect creates a wall of 10 cubic meters, the wall can’t be 20 meters long and half a meter wide because the width is smaller than one meter.

**Player Action**

What are the PCs capable of? As a baseline, you can assume that every character is capable of attempting something if the players themselves could attempt it. Yet, more actions may be allowed at your discretion. For example, it might make sense that an engineer could quickly create a mechanical contraption, even if none of the players would be able to do that. When trying to determine if such an action is possible, consider three questions:

1. Is it clear what “success” and “failure” would mean for this action?
2. Is there certainty and clarity what the effect would be? (There is no ambiguity in how effective this action would be.)
3. Is there a penalty for failure?

If the answer to all three of these questions is yes, then the player can make an Attribute check to attempt this action. Otherwise, you and the players together narrate a reason why the action cannot happen. Maybe the engineer doesn’t have the right tools, or the rope that they need isn’t strong enough to do what it needs to.

### **Tips for Smooth Narrative**

**Encouraging Player Speech**

Recall that players can narrate gestures, facial expressions, and feelings. Ask questions like “What is Varun thinking about right now?” and “What is your posture and facial expression like when you say that?” to prompt for more descriptive narratives from your players.

**Direct All Questions at Specific Players**

Each question that you ask for player input should be directed at a particular player. Instead of asking the party “Where do you go next?”, try asking “Where does Melgor want to go next?” and let that start the discussion of each person’s opinions.

**A Note on Degrees of Success and Failure**

Sometimes an action doesn’t clearly succeed or fail, but rather there is a gradient to its effectiveness. To add this to your narrative, consider the following approach:

* Rolling below DL - 3 is a great failure
* Rolling 3 or less below the DL is a narrow failure
* Rolling 3 or less above the DL is a narrow success
* Rolling above DL + 3 is a great success

**A Note on Lulls in Gameplay**

There will be times when the players spend 15 minutes talking to each other deciding what to do. This is normal, since each person brings a different view to the table. But when the conversation seems to have the theme of “we don’t know what to do,” it’s your job as the GM to nudge them along. Remind them what objects they haven’t investigated and what areas they haven’t explored yet. Or, if they have all of the clues but need to put it together, ask if they want to make a Wisdom check or spend a Hero Point for a bit of inspiration. As the master storyteller, you control the pacing of the narrative and should help the players find the story again when they’ve turned themselves around.

Note that players will get stuck more frequently if “finding the plot” requires them to take very specific actions or roll very well. As a rule of thumb, if an action is critical for the story to continue, it always succeeds. Similarly, if finding something is critical for the story to continue, it is quite obvious based on your description when you set the scene.

**A Note on New Players Mid-Game**

If a new player joins your group after the rest of the PCs have already gained a significant amount of XP, it’s important that the new player can jump right in and join in the fray. There are two options for how to do this.

> **Veteran**
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> If the player is familiar with the rules of Vennt and their character has a reason to have earned XP before, then the new PC gains as much XP as the highest level PC in the group. For example, if the old PCs have 3500, 3400, and 3650 XP respectively, then the new PC gains 3650 XP.
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> **Novice**
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> If the player is unfamiliar with the rules of Vennt or their character is new to adventuring, then the PC doesn’t gain any XP, but gets a Narrative Boost instead. This Boost is equal to the level of the highest level PC in the party (in the previous example, this is Level 3) minus the new player's Level, which begins at 1. This Boost is added:
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* > Whenever the new player gains Heroic Creativity
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* > Whenever the new player invokes a Tide
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* > Whenever the new player gains Hero Points
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> For example, suppose the Boost is 4. Heroic Creativity and Tides now reward +7 instead of +3, and whenever the player would earn a Hero Point, they instead earn 5 (1+4) Hero Points.
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> The Boost is always determined by the Level difference between the new player and the highest level PC - the Boost may change from session to session.
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**A Note on Unbounded Play**

The creativity of your players will always impress you if you give them enough opportunity. They will find clever uses for their abilities that have nothing to do with the rules as written, and then you are left with a difficult choice. Do I let that work? How much does it work? What if there’s another ability that does exactly this thing, and they are breaking the game by using this other ability to get the same effect?

As a rule of thumb, **let everything work once**. If there is room for interpretation in how powerful the effect is, try to make it slightly better than an average turn, but not game-breakingly so. For example, if a level 1 player finds a way to cause the ceiling to collapse on the big bad boss, maybe it deals 3d6+6 damage and the boss survives with some health remaining. It’s still a powerful attack, but it didn’t lead to a cheap victory.

If a player tries to use this same effect a second time, now you need to decide whether to allow this effect all the time. Have a brief conversation with all of the players and decide together whether you want to allow this effect or not. If you decide against it, collaboratively invent a reason why it doesn’t work anymore. Maybe the effect consumed some material components that the PC ran out of. This also opens the narrative up to new side quests, like acquiring more of this component.

The most important takeaway is that you decide together whether to allow the effect. This is group storytelling, and your players will appreciate the decision more (no matter what is decided) if everyone discusses it together.

**A Note on Stopping to Look Up Rules**

Don’t do it. If there’s a question about the rules, play it out in favor of the players for the rest of the game session, and then between sessions you can consult the rules and decide with your players what the final judgment should be for the remainder of the campaign. See the note on Unbounded Play.

**A Note on Persuasion**

Often, conversations between a PC and an NPC are entirely done through roleplaying. However, if there is a final decision that needs to be made based on how persuasive the PC is being, this is a Spirit check versus the NPC’s Wisdom check. Normal narrative bonuses and modifiers may apply to this. Only one PC may make this check, even though multiple PCs may be involved in the conversation. Between two or more PCs (within the party), conversations are always roleplayed only and no checks can be made - any decisions are between the players themselves.

**A Note on Costs and Transportation**

Tracking mundane living costs and transportation costs is boring. If you are playing in the canonical setting, the Three Rivers Guild will pay for all such costs.

**A Note on Clever But Fruitless Solutions**

Sometimes players come up with a clever answer to a problem which ultimately doesn’t benefit them, such as circumventing an obstacle they didn’t need to deal with anyway or accessing and searching a hard-to-reach location that doesn’t have anything interesting. In this situation, those who invented and executed the idea should each gain 1-3 Hero Points for their ingenuity as compensation for the anticlimactic result of their efforts.

**Getting More Downtime**

Sometimes the party is not ready for the next adventure and want to spend more time in Downtime. In this case, the GM should introduce a complication to your progress. This complication becomes a new Story, and once the complication is resolved, you gain more Downtime.

**Example Complications**

 Building/inventing
 Researching
 Training

### **Narrative Jumps**

Sometimes you’ll want to skip ahead in your story, giving the player characters XP that they didn’t earn from gameplay. Likely, the characters earned some money during this time as well. For every 200 XP gained from a narrative jump, each player rolls 1d6 and gains or loses wealth by the table below depending on their Level (L). Players can choose to “take 4” on this roll instead of rolling (replace “1d6” with “4”).