The Old World: Grim and Perilous

placement will therefore be necessary. Surely
you have your own ways of introducing new
characters to the party, so our only suggestion
is that the new character should have similar
goals to the rest of the PCs, and preferably know
at least one other character in the group. This
will avoid the often unproductive internal friction
between the group and allow the story to
run more smoothly. It can be a great idea to use
the aforementioned family members, especially
when the new character has already appeared
during the game and is well known to the PCs.
Maybe their goal would be to avenge a deceased
PC or finish what they started. Or maybe make
sure no family secrets see the light of day...
Environment
and Time
This section covers ideas how to better control
time and city environment during games focused
on investigation and city exploration.
Controlling time
In many adventures that take place over just
a few days, the passage of time is very important.
Characters often race against time and
often split the party, but it's hard to reflect it
without properly structuring the game. Therefore,
we propose to divide the day in the game
into periods of time: morning, noon, evening,
night. During each of these periods, players may
play up to three short or one long scene, and
then proceed to the next part of the day. Players
who do not participate in any of the scenes
during a given period, can declare what their
characters were doing at that time "off screen",
however these should not be any extremely important
actions. You must determine by yourself
whether the scene will be long or short, but
the general rule is that scenes with no more
than - checks can be considered short, while
complex encounters requiring a lot of checks
are long scenes. During each day, PCs should
spend at least one period for rest, otherwise
they will not recover strain during that day and
instead reduce their strain threshold by .
Threat Indicator
A common problem with adventures, especially
those based on an investigation (but not exclusively)
is that the opponents, important NPCs
and game environment in general do not react to
the actions of the PCs. The characters move freely
around the city, ask uncomfortable questions,
get to know people and stick their noses in other
people's affairs, or just neglect their own social
life, but it does not provoke any reaction. And if
there is a reaction, Players may perceive it as an
arbitrary decision by the GM aimed solely at disrupting
their plans. To solve these problems, we
propose the Threat Indicator mechanic.
A threat indicator is a tool that allows you and
your Players to track how the PCs affect the environment
and how their actions can cause additional
problems for them. Except when absolutely
necessary, the threat indicator should be
visible to Players (but keep it hidden until PCs
do something that moves it for the first time),
and usually also have a general name meaning
what the given threat relates to, such as "Enemy
interest" or "Social unrest", but its effects should
remain hidden until activated. This makes the
Players feel the tension building up around
their characters as they know something will
happen, but have no idea what it will be.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Creating a Threat Indicator
To prepare the indicator, draw a straight line
and divide it into equal segments. The number
of segments should depend on the complexity
of the thread the PCs are involved with - for
simple problems - segments are enough,
for more complicated situations there may
be even or more of them. Your line should
now resemble a slider.
Then determine activators - designated places
on the slider where the plot will twist and
the opponents will react to the players' actions.
Mark the first such point approximately
one third of the length of the line - when the
slider reaches this point, something small will
happen or the opponents will make a careful
move. Perhaps someone will follow the PCs,
someone will whisper in their ear that they
are in danger, or will gently threaten them.
Or maybe the wife of one of the PCs will start
complaining about him wandering at nights.
202 The Old World: Grim and Perilous