Ye Olde Inn

Does anyone here use Parley cards in their games? i.e. viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2081&hilit=parley

I have a deck of these printed out and can't wait to use them for the first time, just not sure when to introduce them. The next Quest for my group is Bastion of Chaos - on one hand it seems silly to offer my players a chance to parley with lone monsters when the whole point of this quest is to kill as many as possible, for a dirty cash reward. On the other hand, I'm hoping the Hero's split up due to greed, and might need to parley at some point to stay alive; i.e. do they parley if running low on BP or do they get really greedy and still try to go for the kill.
The Quests i'm running after that are a Fire Mage variant and then into the Barak Tor trilogy. Maybe best to wait until then? Maybe even wait til' Kellars Keep?

Also, does any one have some nice stories of using these cards?

We use them. I used them with a new group just this week that started on the first quest the trial. although my trial is a little different. I make the map more of a maze and a start each character in the four corners. The characters also start without weapons and find their weapons on corpses by looting corpses of dead heroes that are scattered in the map. The narrative being, that they wake up and are summoned to the this dungeon and trying to figure out what's going on, which is really just a big trial by mentor to determine if they're worthy to be his heroes. As such, since they had no weapons and were often by themselves until meeting up with each other, parlaying was much more prominent. We actually have a Charisma stat as well, so they have to make a parlay roll before drawing from the parlay deck. They can choose if they want to roll charisma or intimidation which is their attack strength. based upon how many heroes are present at the parley attempt, or the strength of the monster, I require a different number of successful rolls if they're trying to intimidate. Or if The narrative suggests that the monster would be agitated, a charisma or smooth talkin role would require more successes then if the monster was alone and not in an agitated state based on narrative of the store you want to portray. The attempt takes up the action phase of the hero attempting the parley

We had one where the group was getting low on health, so they tried to parlay with an orc. It started with just one person present, so he was low on his intimidation and failed his parley attempt, so the monster attacked him. The next round another hero joined him, and again they fail their parlayed attempt by a poor role even though the requirement of success was decreased by one. when the third hero came, narrative stated that the months would be more scared, so it only required one successful dice, at which time they succeeded in the parlay attempt. That said, the parlay card they drew was the monster charging them and hitting them for one bp damage before fleeing.

I should add, I also have a loot deck. The loot deck tends to give more gold than a parlay attempt would, so the heroes don't always want to parley... only when they hope to avoid combat

DullandRusty wrote:We had one where the group was getting low on health, so they tried to parlay with an orc. It started with just one person present, so he was low on his intimidation and failed his parley attempt, so the monster attacked him. The next round another hero joined him, and again they fail their parlayed attempt by a poor role even though the requirement of success was decreased by one. when the third hero came, narrative stated that the months would be more scared, so it only required one successful dice, at which time they succeeded in the parlay attempt. That said, the parlay card they drew was the monster charging them and hitting them for one bp damage before fleeing.

That’s a great story. After all those parley attempts, when the Heroes succeed in drawing a card, it’s the one where the monster charges to attack anyway!
Your system seems a bit more complicated than what I’ll probably end up going for, but it sounds like you are having interesting games. I also really like your idea of the Trial with Heroes starting in the four corners, almost like combining the Maze and the Trial quests! That’s a good option considering a lot of people struggle to decide which starting quest to run.

I use them and think they're fun and add additional flavor to the quests and make things a bit more interesting. It's nice to have different options. I keep the cards as an additional deck beside the Treasure Cards and another deck of Rest cards.

I implement these right from the start of the first quest. In your situation, though, I might wait to introduce them in Kellar's Keep as a new mechanic for a new Adventure.

Spookyhappyfun wrote:I implement these right from the start of the first quest. In your situation, though, I might wait to introduce them in Kellar's Keep as a new mechanic for a new Adventure.

I think you’re right about Kellar’s Keep. I do like that pack, but it does need a few additions here and there to keep it fresh. Offering the Heroes a chance to parley with lone monsters could be a nice new tactic. I don’t have my quest book to hand but I’m assuming Kellar’s Keep does actually have some rooms/corridors with just one monster in them!

Just some thoughts. Bosses, Gargoyle and other strong Chaos warriors cant be bargained with, because of their loyalty. Undead monsters are not susceptible to the parley. So, how about this......."Monsters with Mind Point 0 or higher than 3 cant be Parleyed with."