Take a crack at crises
Sick of hearing about crises yet? We talk about crisis scenes a lot because we use them a lot. They’re an important part of my game campaigns. I can strip out the combat and run an entire campaign with action crises instead because they are that versatile, flexible, and exciting. Crises give players a chance to use things besides their combat skills and players who play characters that aren’t combat-first get a real chance to shine.
But I’ve gone off about why we use crisis scenes before. And we’ve written about when to use them. But what about how to use a crisis scene?
To answer that, let’s talk about a crisis scene that I ran in my current game. A nest of wererats were executing a long-planned ambush against the local courts in revenge for losing a war twenty years ago. The crux of my crisis hinged on explosives planted beneath a meeting that was being held between courts.
One of my player’s characters is a wererat. He’s also a demolitionist. For my part, this whole setup was to plunge this character right into a conflict of loyalties between his court and his people, and to give him a chance to exercise his skills. The wererat character doesn’t always have the clear space to chuck grenades in combat, so disarming a bomb under tension gave him a chance to shine, and to do something more with being a bomber than just hucking grenades during a fight.
I started with having him examine the bomb, sussing out its trigger and any failsafes built in — though, I guess failsafe isn’t the word — and getting ready to disarm the device. But then I had the bomber appear to throw a monkey wrench into the crisis — not only is she holding the trigger on a death-release switch, but she’s a wererat that the players have met before. Almost a friend.
Now my player is trying to disarm the bomb in a very different way — desperate to talk the other rat out of setting it off. I’ve given my player chances for his character to set some bombs, but this is his first time disarming. Still, I wanted to raise the stakes of the scene! He had rolls to gauge how committed the other rat was. And when he recognized her fanaticism, there were rolls to keep her distracted while disarming the bomb with his tail!
I did screw up one bit of the crisis. I had two rolls for doing the actual disarming, after disabling the booby traps and challenging the bomber in a philosophical debate about revenge. The pair of disarm rolls were back-to-back, which felt repetitive. Wherever possible, I try to vary it and never use the same attribute + ability (or stat + skill or whatever) twice. I had an in-between bit if my PC rat demolitionist failed the first roll, but he didn’t. So in my notes, it looked like there was something else for variety in-between — but in practice, there wasn’t anything there. Whoops.
I gave the rest of the group some skill checks to break things up and draw out the tension, though. When one player is engaged in a crisis highlighting their skills, I don’t want the whole party sitting on their thumbs too much. I try to give them some supporting skill checks.
I had the other players roll to keep things together and not reveal that they knew about the bomb. If they gave away that their friend was disarming the explosive, the wererats might have set it off early. It let me give my demolitions player a roll to disarm — and then before I told him if he set the bomb off, I switched to the rest of the group and left him hanging. I got to both include the rest of the party and use a minor cliffhanger to keep the tension high.
And the little break to check in with the rest of the party came with a dramatic bonus! One of the PCs wanted to call the court off and evacuate all the high-ranked people there, running before the bomb went off. But another PC wanted to give their friend time to disarm the bomb. They faced off — did they trust their friend to stop the bomb or not? Should they stand their ground or run? Dun dun dun!
In the end, they trusted their wererat friend, and he came through. The bomb was safely dealt with and didn’t go off.
I didn’t bother to include the rolls that I gave everyone in this post. You can use whatever skills and abilities that are a part of your favored RPG system. You likely know how to make a crisis by now, so when do you use one?
Use a crisis to add some tension to the game. Combat, by contrast, is often a release of tension. The gauntlet is thrown, the dice are cast, things are now decided by blood. But before they’re decided, will it come to violence? A crisis can crank up the tension until you’re ready for it all to explode into a combat scene! This bomb disposal was followed by a last-ditch wererat ambush — and by now, the players were really ready to throw down.
A crisis can also give a particular character the spotlight, let them stand out, and allow them to use their special skills. This party also has a healer. So in an earlier chapter, she had a crisis scene in which she had to remove a magically-animated sliver burrowing its agonizing way through an ally. That was way more fun than just casting a healing spell!
Players take character skills that they’re interested in, or which are important to their character concept. A musician character who never gets to perform in an important scene is going to be a little understandably disappointed.
This crisis also moved my plot forward. Sure, a car chase adds an exciting element to a game, but plot-points can be embedded in crises, too, or come out of them based on how the characters handle them.
When you think about your game sessions, is there somewhere that a crisis might augment or enhance a combat scene? A chase before the thieves are caught and the fight begins? Or might a crisis scene better serve your story goal than combat, like a dramatic duel in place of a standard fight? Is there a player who has been left in the wings with little to do for a while? Does the player party have any fun skills that haven’t been rolled? Your crises can do all of that.
