It occurred to me last night at a D&D game that stealth gameplay is uninteresting for everyone who isn’t involved. It is nearly always a solo activity. I was thinking of ways around this and plan on using this for my game.
- Get a deck of cards.
- Have two matching monsters in the deck.
- In addition add one non-monster card to the deck for each point of stealth.
- If the character has advantage add three matching monsters to the deck.
- If the character has disadvantage add another pair of matching monsters to the deck.
Process: Overtime the character using stealth wants to do something (even moving) they draw a card. If it’s a non-monster card they succeed. On the first monster card something went wrong, but their cover is not blown but the enemy is now suspicious. Once they draw the second matching monster card they have been caught out and bad things happen. If they have disadvantage they have a bigger chance of being caught as there are two pairs of monsters in their deck to stuff them up. If they have advantage they are less likely to blow their cover as they need to match all 3.
Advantage: It keeps everyone engaged. It is a push-your-luck mechanism so it’s a bit more fun (basically I am gameifying stealth). It is more like a video game stealth where you kind of turn it on as a status affect and your actions directly affect your chances. It is also more interesting than the endless rolling where, no matter how good the stealth is, it will eventually fail due to the law of averages.
I love this idea, and I’m stealing it.
All yours!
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