Donjon -- first try and questions

[elgorade]

Nice game Clinton!

The group I play in had a free month since one of the main characters in our usual game was out of the country.  So I filled in with a few sessions of Adventure! and one of Donjon.  I wanted to DM some, give our usual DM a break, and try to move us all away from depending on the DM for all the creative input in a session.

Adventure! went OK.  There were some good bits, and some parts that dragged.  Donjon was excellent!  It gave people such great opportunitities where they were supposed to create something.  It gave really good feedback about how long players were interested in a scene.  In the end, it even gave us a great way to end the game early without it feeling like the DM forced a quick, lame wrap-up.  (Two of the players needed to leave before we were at the "end" of the adventure.)

We didn't hit any major problems with the system, but I did run into some questions.  Before I try it again -- and it looks like something that should remain near the top of the pile -- I thought I would ask for advice here.


1)  Most everyone thought Discernment was an uber stat.  It gives you many chances to define the world, it defends you against mental magic and it is important to fighters.    No real fighting came up, so virility and wherewithal were perhaps less importan then they would be in another run.  Is the uberness of Discernment something others have run into?  Is it mostly a function of being 1st level?  

I didn't really see it as as much of a problem as some of the players, so my reaction so far is simply to make sure no character ends up with a 1 discernment.


2)  I did wonder about sociability.  Mostly because one character took Trickster as his main ability, meaning that he lied well.  (Basically 'con man', but trickster sounded better.)  Mechanically it seemed like this was a social interaction, so the defense was Sociality.  But that meant that he could generate a prettty good number of successes pretty easily then use them to tern neutral encounters into trusting friends.  "I tell them I am a long lost Elf Prince, cursed to look like a frog." (rolls, 4 successes)  By the success they believe the story.  Then he goes on to state that the Elf Guards trust him, and want to take him to there leaders.  (And keeps 2 dice for later use against the real Elf Prince.)

For the one shot, it worked; we had fun.  But for a longer game, it seemed like it could get tedious.  What prevents him from pulling such a story on almost any encounter that doesn't start fighting immediately?  Also, he had an ability, but most NPCs and Monsters wouldn't have an appropriate abiltiy for a defense.  Should the defense include 'Save vs Confusion' just so that there is something level related on both sides?


3)  They were finding magical colored orbs (it was run on Easter and I didn't want to get too religious).  At one point a character searched for a treasure chest in a cave.  She found it and stated that it contained an orb.   It is a similar situation to saying that a Monster has healing potions except that there was no Monster here to use the orb.  I gladly gave them the find, it reinforced that stating facts is good, but I wondered whether that might be a bad precident.  If you find a treasure hoard by a Discernment roll, can you use facts to state that something specific is there?  Should that stand as is?  Or should you need to use successes on your discernment as bonuses in a looting roll to find the object?  I lean towards the later.

Thanks for any insight.

Elgorade

[The_Tim]

I know the answer to the last question.  Specific items have a higher dice pool to roll against to find them and that might put them outside of the scope of what is being looked through.  This keeps people from scrounging around in a junk heap from Excalibur.

As for social skills I'd personally turn it into a kind of combat in a long game.  Give people social defense skills, including social counter attacks.  Sharp Repartee seems like a perfect donjon skill.

[James_Nostack]

In regard to the first question: couldn't you get away with creatively interpreting other stats?  

Like, instead of noticing with your Discernment that there's a trap up ahead, you could use your Cerebrality to establish that this hallway was built by that famous donjon corridor designer Ugmo the Dwarfish, who's fond of placing acid traps at the fifty foot mark.  Or, you could use Virility to kick a stone, knock apart a weak part of the wall, and expose a trap in the works.  

I guess that doesn't solve the connection with Initiative or mind-resistance, but with the right cockeyed scowl the other stats can define the world too.

The funny thing about Donjon is that the shared imaginary space isn't the exact opposite of "set in stone.  It's not solid, it's almost like a liquid or a gas.