>>6063792>>6063792ah I see, this
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/XomThank you very much for that clarification!
>tension meter? threat>ambushesReading that game wiki, I am interested by the "tension" mechanic from the Dungeon Crawl game, a calculation based upon threat of surrounding enemy monsters.
I have been thinking about including an element of that in ttrpgs, a visible "danger/threat meter" mechanic / item, showing risk of death.
It is sort of what HP basically is signifying in a crude ex post basis, lol those naked no armour dark souls runs / 1 hit instadeath, this idea of "telegraphing the threat" in ttrpgs, because the essential element is how believable / credible is any damage/threat in any fictional world game when you can just use your mind imagination to invent something make-believe to get out of it (I drink healing potion, all fine now etc).
I am interested in not the ex post HP damage (ie you get hit by enemy, laugh at the tiny sliver of hp shaved off, or it is Halo, you just hide for a bit, wait for your shield recharge noises) but the ex ante OMINOUS ENVIRONMENT IMPENDING LURKING UNSEEN THREAT type tension meter.
Usually I don't explicitly mention the threat in the text, I convey it through increasingly sinister images. So for instance in my most recent game UPYR, the Dead Mall sequence here:
>>6038787>>6038791>>6038793>>6038794>>6038795This was me deliberately invoking a "Mines Of Moria" moment (when the Fellowship enters and the hobbit kicks a bucket down a well alerting hordes of goblins) I was wondering if any anons would notice the previous environmental images, ie these
>>6038169>>6038304>>6038306and react in a more cautious / paranoid way hehe. I thought about the Dead Mall being actually not deserted at all, swarming with lurking hordes of hunters/looters but I guess I went slightly easier this time, I did a MATT MERCER hehe and did not spring any horrifying ambushes or instadeath type penalties nooo.
The sort of feeling I was going for, it is this hard to describe danger situational awareness thing, if you play extraction shooters like Arena Breakout you know this feeling of AMBUSH INSTANT DEATH, it is sometimes just a paranoid sense of incredible quiet / stillness (eg, all the AI enemies are gone... they were shot by high gear enemies with best tier armour assault rifles in full stealth mode with suppressors, they KILLED EVERYONE EVERYTHING, cleared out the whole area, now everything is peaceful and still and calm, they are just lying in wait, completely hidden, just to see who else walks past...)
The opposite of that is the "shock attack in safe area", I remember Dead Space had that moment where you get attacked in a lift (traditionally, elevator sequences are the hidden loading screens in games, you assume you are safe in them) or that dead body ambush near the savepoint in Dead Space, those were both very clever.
>pic related depicts ideal DM-player interaction in roleplaying games 