| Mechanics |
In the Silly Adventure Game for Anyone (SAGA), a pick-up game is an adventure in which the players sit down, choose from a few pre-defined characters, receive a short description of their predicament, followed by a commencement of play and an immediate beginning to the action of the plot.
Self-consistency in the adventure setting is far more important than adherence to any particular rules of play. There is no need for the dramaturgist to be an expert on the rules of the game. All conflicts in the game, and all questions of chance, are decided by die rolls. Under SAGA's rules, the players together decide what those dice rolls should be. If they want to follow the guidelines in the Rules of Play, that's fine. If they want to use some other system for deciding the probability of an outcome, that's fine too. What's important is that the probabilities should seem reasonable to the players. The probabilities should not be seen to favor the players, nor should they be seen to punish the players.
Pick-up games must start quickly. We do not want to spend more than a few minutes deciding to-hit rolls or damage rolls. We want to simplify combat and decision-making by assigning the characters a limited set of equipment. If we can avoid including wizards in the party, we should do so, because wizards are complicated to set up. We should include wizards only if they will be played by people who are familiar with SAGA's Rules of Magic.
Each adventure will consist of a problem that can be solved only by combat. It is not easy to compose a problem that can be solved only by combat, but it is the responsibility of the dramaturgist to provide such a plot. If the problem can be solved without combat, there may be no combat, and the game will be less enjoyable. All players participate in combat, which means that a pick-up game can include many players of diverse character. Games that involve negotiation and extended debate exclude those who speak less.
The players must cooperate with the spirit of the pick-up game. If the plot is well-conceived, there will be combat. The players must determine who to fight, when to fight, and how to fight. The players must not invest time trying to figure out how combat might be avoided. If the plot is well-conceived, all such efforts are bound to fail, and will serve only to prolong the game. It the plot is imperfecly-conceived, such efforts will not only prolong the game, but deprive it of excitement.
Chris Goodnow has this to say about managing a pick-up game. "What you want is for the players to jump right into action, so have them each create a 3rd level character. All you need is to make up the striking accuracy (SA) damage roll and dodging points (DP). Give them each 15 hit points (HP). Make the basic damage roll 2D10 (1-10 doubled, you can find apps to "roll dice" for free). Let them choose to add +4 to damage (stronger) or +1 to SA (faster) if you want. Give them all 10 points of armor (ring mail). Now tell them they are soldiers in the midst of a time of war. They lost the rest of their unit after it lost a skirmish against superior numbers, and are alone in the woods in the middle of a of a foreign country miles from the nearest town. They were being chased by (u make it up, but a few 1st level fighters, with slightly lower SA and DP at a time gives them a fighting chance!) from the south, and see a (again, u can make it up, but could be an old fort, a trapdoor down into an old mine, deep cave system or any other dungeon scenario you want) to the north. (More woods and random soldiers east and west?). Keep it simple with all enemies being soldiers, or peak into the "creature guide" and pick low-level monster like kobolds or orcs (still tougher than a 1st level human (sapien in the rules)).
"You get two HP back when you sleep, but don't regain DP until you are safe, can relax and don't feel you need to post a guard while you sleep. Like at home, or in a hotel. At that point, you get DP back all at once. Maybe you give them a chance to find safety, if they work together well and make good choices (give them a chance to avoid some combats, maybe). And if they die, it's ok, it's not a character they've leveled up for years and got attached to. Basic combat is: roll a die to see who gets first attack each round. Roll 20-Sider "to hit". They need: an 11 - the difference between their SA and the enemy's (so if they = 3 and enemy 2, they need 10 or higher. 10 over that, and they get double damage. If 2 on one each get +5 on their to-hit roll. If hit, roll damage, but subtract any reasonable enemy armor (if they have ring, enemy might also) before taking off HP. Use a DP to escape all damage if it's a lot. Lose all HP and you can't fight or walk even, go to −15 (if you start with 15) and you die from wounds."
We can apply Chris's simplifying logic to the missile combat as well. At range zero, a shooter with firing accuracy zero needs to roll 1 or higher on a d20 to hit. For a longbow, the required roll goes up by one for every five meters of range to the target, and then we subtract the shooter's firing accuracy. For throwing knives and stones, the roll goes up by one for each meter of range. Damage for a longbow is 2D10. You can make up the damage rolls of other weapons.
A pick-up game drawn up during an hour in a coffee shop. This adventure provided three hours of delightful play with three generations of players. Here are hand-written notes describing the Jaws of Redemption scenario.
The adventure takes place on Clarus towards the end of the Dark Ages. The final century of the Dark Ages is a good setting for pick-up adventures because there is constant war between sapiens and orcs, and there is enough available historical and geographical background for the setting to have depth with comparatively little effort.
And here are seven characters. Each has striking accuracy, a damage roll, firing accuracy, hit points, dodging points, weapons, and special abilities. Some of these characters are half-animal, half-human, otherwise known as calipanti. Others are black-skinned sapiens. One is a midget who can control a sparrow and a grisly bear, and see through their eyes. This midget can use his dodging points for his animals if he chooses.
The characters are chasing after a party lead by the black-orc woman Deathdealer, consisting of herself, a half-orc Gregor who loves her, a sapien Oren who will die for her, and three white-orcs. They are running up into the mountains. The loot turns out to be the stuff the black-orc party is carrying with them. Behind the player characters are a bunch of other soldiers who are chasing after the orcs for the same reason: to take their stuff. The action begins immediately because the players are running, and the orc party is occasionally shooting from above, or doing anything else they can think of to slow down their pursuers.
In the cavern beyond the Jaws of Redemption is a space bridge, through which the orc party can escape, but it will take a few minutes from the time they arrive in the cavern to the time the bridge can be tuned to molecular class to let them through. The bridge is in a frame on the back wall, looking like a two-meter high oval mirror at first, but then folding into a view of another, similar chamber on another part of Clarus.
Deathdealer's companions have want to make sure that Deathdealer escapes through the space bridge. If they can follow her, they will do so gladly, but none of them are prepared to let Deathdealer be caught. Deathdealer will take some risks to defend her comrades, whom she loves, but she has promised them she will not be caught, so that they will not die in vain. Once she is through the gate, the others will try to escape their pursuers in any way they can: through the bridge or into the mountains.
This adventure is suitable for between two and ten players and takes between three and six hours of playing time to complete. The dramaturgist will fill in many details, depending upon what choices the players make. But there are several key elements to the setting, which we will provide after describing the opening of the plot.
The protagonists are political prisoners. They are mixed in with genuine murderers and thieves. They have been in prison for between one and six months. At least five years remain of each of their sentences. Their penitentiary lies at the base of steep sandstone mountains. During the days, they travel in groups of twenty to one of six stream beds in the mountains, where they spend their days panning for gold, both above-ground and in subterranean passages. To reach the stream beds, they are taken north along a road that skirts the mountains. They travel in carts with sturdy bars for walls and roof. Their pick axes and shovels hang from hooks on the outer walls. The mountains rise up to the west of the road. To the east, cultivated fields slope down to a wide river where there is a town called Selden. A bridge crosses the river. Beyond the river the land slopes up through olive groves to a six-meter high stone wall. Beyond that is a hard-packed sand desert. Forty kilometers into the desert there is an outcropping of hills. The protagonists know that within those sun-baked hills is a sanctuary for political prisoners like themselves, which goes by the name of the Rat's Castle.
On the morning the adventure begins, the protagonists are riding in the prison cart, and are a few hundred meters from the turning to Seldon, when four other prisoners somehow manage to open the door of the barred enclosure. These four jump out, grab shovels and pick-axes, and within moments kill the two guards driving the cart. It takes them a few minutes to strip the guards of their armor, weapons, and valuables. They unhitch the four horses and ride away north up the road. The remaining prisoners are left in the cart wondering what do to. They have no armor, no money, only prison clothes. The protagonists are entitled to sit tight and do nothing but wait for another cart to come along, and so remain in prison. Or they can flee. The non-player characters are going to sit where they are. They have a healthy fear of the prison's governess, they are all hopeful of release one day, and none of them are adventurers.
Iron in this world is worth $100 per kilogram. A pick-axe is worth $500 and a shovel $250. The people in Seldon are sympathetic to the prisoners. But it is a crime to give aid to an escaped prisoner, so whatever deal the protagonists make in the town, it will have to be secret deal. The olive groves are patrolled by twenty velociraptors. These travel in packs of three or four. They are trained to stay away from anyone wearing a purple robe and a red hat. The groves are tended by several old men and women who go about in purple robes and red hats. The wall is hard to climb in most places, but in some places it had deteriorated. There is no water in the desert. Beatrice, the landlady of the Rat's Castle, rides a hippogriff and is a formidable warrior. Her sister Eleanor is equally formidable, and is the governor of the prison. The sisters will not confront one another. The prison has fifty guards at its disposal, as well as six hound dogs.
Vampire Island contains no vampires. The island is visited regularly by one or more people for hunting, but there are no permanent inhabitants. There is a ruined keep at the summit of the island, and within this keep, persistent exploration and some expert excavation by a team with pick-axes and shovels will reveal an ancient crypt. In the crypt, everything has rotted away except several articles of gold jewelry, an adamantine chain mail shirt, and an adamantine longsword. Together these are worth tens of thousands of dollars. The ruins and crypt are a thousand years old. The locals have no knowledge whatsoever or its origins, and no reason to believe there is any treasure buried under it. We included this island with its exotic name to act as a delaying temptation that would lead to recapture. But when we played the adventure, the delay combined with some fog lead to confusion that permitted the protagonists to escape.
The player characters should be third-level fighters with varying striking accuracy and striking power when armed with a shovel or pickaxe. Let each player choose three skills from such as: swimming, climbing, juggling, singing, crochet, basket-weaving, hiding, pick-pocketing, tracking, cooking, healer, riding, and carpenter.
This adventure is suitable for three to six protagonists, each a third-level adventurer.
Sally Grensham wants to buy a couple of horses. She wants a paddock for the horses. The protagonists have been building the paddock fence for the past two weeks in exchange for plenty of food and accommodation in the Grensham barn. Sally owns a sheep farm of about four hundred hectares, upon which she raises roughly a hundred sheep. She is about forty, George is about twenty-five, and exceedingly handsome. The adventure begins at two hours past midnight on the night of a full moon. The sheep are in their spaceous pen a hundred meters from the barn. They start making unhappy noises. The protagonists wake up. A sheep bleets in terror. They hear a long, deep-noted screech. The terrified bleeting recedes. One of the sheepdogs outside barks twice.
A hippogriff has flown down in the light of the full moon and stolen a sheep. There are mountains to the west, but the hippogriff has flown east. A river emerges from the mountains and flows east, through dry, rolling hills dotted with sandstone mesas up to sixty meters high and hundreds of meters across. The river cuts a canyon ten to twenty meters deep as it goes. Where the river emerges from the mountains is a town, twenty minutes walk from Sally's farm. When the protagonists and the Grensham's investigate by daylight, they count one sheep missing and they find footprints thiry centimeters across, like the footprints of a bird of prey, at one place in the pen. There are eight prints in all, four left and four right. There is no track leading into the pen or out.
Sally says she knows sheep have been going missing from neighboring farms. She walks to town and returns a few hours later with three young men in leather armor who carry swords and bows. These are Arcturus, Mandrake, and Silas. They are sons of landowners in the mountains. Sheep have been going missing at a rate of once a week. The village is offering a 100 gp reward for the capture of the beast or poacher who is responsible. The three young men are hoping to solve the case.
The creature stealing the sheep is a hippogriff. This griff belonged to a wealthy man from a city two hundred kilometers away. On one flight, the griff and owner encountered blast of wind that knocked him from the saddle. The griff became lost. She was pregnant. She stole sheep. She grew bigger. Her saddle tormented her. She chewed through the straps with her beak and tore it off and dropped it on top of a tall mesa by the river canyon, some five or six kilometers from Sally's farm. Later deposited her egg on the same mesa and sat on it for a month until it hatched. She has been feeding her baby for the past six months, taking sheep from a fifty-kilometer radius, striking whenever there are no people in sight, and searching at such a high altitude she looks like an eagle, or on nights when the moon is bright.
Arcturus, Mandrake and Silas have nothing to do with the sheep thefts. But they are aggressive, violent young men who have seen combat in two recent battles to the west of the mountains. The protagnists are foreigners. The three young men see the foreigners as people they can bully. When it becomes apparent that the foreigners intend to solve the crime and claim the reward themselves, the three young men look for an opportunity to attack the foreigners in an isolated spot, out of view of any locals, and kill them all. Following the successful murder of the foreigners, they will claim they were attacked and defended themselves. Mandrake has the brilliant idea that they should first let the foreigners fight the monster, then kill the foreigners and take the treasure, when the foreigners are weakened. The three young men think this is a brilliant plan. They want to make a living killing things, so the plan suits them well.