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Grizzly Rant: The Target 10 Room

The purpose of this post is to make an argument, based on experience, for designing all Rooms (especially first session Rooms) with a Target 10, using the EASY/HARD rule on the fly to adjust difficulty as needed.

Note: If you are reading this, I am assuming that you either A) play ICRPG or B) know the concept of a universal target DC for an encounter. Terminology used here will be from Index Card RPG by RUNEHAMMER GAMES, LLC.

I have been playing, designing and GM'ing adventures in ICRPG for a little over a year now. During my brief attempt (and subsequent failure) at launching my own business making adventure supplements, I designed and playtested multiple adventures for entry level, 6 point builds to extreme, high-powered late-game characters with 8 point builds, extra milestones and Epic Loot to start. More recently I ran the Doomvault with for my wife and sister-in law. I also played in several different games with the Ultimate Effort group GM'ed by Mike, Matt and Alex.

Here were my experiences.

Ultimate Effort Games:

3 different games run by 3 different GM's, all great and unique experiences. 6-point builds, mostly unique starter rewards. Rarely continued past the first session. Therefore, while milestones were rewarded, they were not used. Targets usually began at 10 in the first Room, then escalated to 11 and 12. They rarely went above that, as these were first sessions. Failure was just as common as success in any given Room due to diversity of characters and the brutality of the d20.

GMGrizzly Product Playtest: A Wild Affair. 

This was a beginner-level adventure. Targets 10-12. Failure/Success experience was very similar to the Ultimate Effort games.

Playtest: The Rotting Wood. 

Now here is where things got interesting. 4 players, custom builds. Characters were extraordinarily high powered, with attempt bonuses of +9 or greater. Some players even complained of being "OP" before we began playing. Targets were 11, 12, 13 and at one point, 14. It was rare that HARD rolls had to be made in the 11, 12 and 13 rooms. However, failure was very common. In the Target 14 room, many tasks took multiple attempts for success. People nearly died, and we had 4 characters with 2-3 hearts EACH, one of which a healer. Complaints of being overpowered were rare after the first Room, but stopped after the Target 14 Room.

Doomvault: 

2 players, 8 point builds, one Milestone and one random Epic Loot item. Players finely tuned their characters for their roles, and they are very good at what they do. We have a Hillman Mage and a Hillman Blade, a rather interesting combination. This was when I adopted the Target 10 rule for the entire dungeon from start to finish. However, failure was common enough that we employed the Exploding Dice Rule from the Core Manual. Particularly challenging Attempts were made HARD, an instant 15% increase in difficulty. It was perfect, it was fast, it was simple. They always knew what they had to beat, and the math was lightning quick.

Conclusion: 

Having recently read the SRD to Dungeon World myself, this should come to no surprise to most of you. Stressing over the Target of an encounter is not necessary. A Target 10 Room is perfectly adequate for mid-high level characters in ICRPG given the HARD/EASY tuning system. It is also easy to modify in the midst of a session: simply increase the Target of the next Room to 11 if players are breezing through everything. Have a monster or environmental Threat that increases the Room Target on a Timer or as an Ability, either permanently or temporarily. Use status effects that make things HARD. Increase the Hearts of your monsters or increase the Effort of your challenges. 

Or, instead of slowing the game down by increasing the amount of lost player turns due to constant failure, increase the danger of deadlier enemies by multiplying their Effort. Add Consequence and use the now potentially rarer moments of failure with high-powered player characters as key story-telling moments. Remove the requirement to re-roll for a blunder on a 1, making Backfires common and dangerous. Use Checks and Attempts of all the stats to keep the party on their toes and validate the players who made out-of-the-box build choices.

But all of this is one Game Master's opinion. Most importantly, have fun designing and running your games!

Happy gaming.
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