Help me with my mission: GM vs Player's turn

Okay, so I need help with exactly how my mission will translate into the GMs turn and the player’s turn, since I can’t figure out how it fits.

Here’s what I got. This will be the PC’s 1st Spring mission.

Gwendolyn summons the PCs to her chambers and explains that she’s received word from Gilpledge that something has tainted a good lot of their food stores, so she’s sending a caravan down with supplies to help out. The PC’s mission is to protect the caravan on its journey. The idea is to take the fastest route possible, since each day goes by leaves mice in Gilpledge hungry.

My obstacles: Weather & Mice
(1) Spring rain starts to fall heavily shortly into the journey: health check or get Tired condition. Rain makes travel slow going.
(2) Conflict: head of caravan wants to stop over in Copperwood to dry off, get a good meal, and rest for the night, maybe even wait for the rain to cease (it’s not going to stop for a few days though). I figure a compromise will involve some sort of stop off in Copperwood, how long will be determined by the size of the compromise.

That’s the end of the mission, but then I had an interesting idea about what’s going on in Gilpledge. When the party arrives with the supplies, the PCs find a good number of mice in town are sick. Three mice have died already. No one knows the source, but the town healer thinks whatever tainted the food is making the mice sick. In truth, this is incorrect: the food was not properly stored, ruining it, but the mice are sick because Gilpledge is ground zero for a new sickness. The party knows the standard protocol is to not let anyone leave to prevent the sickness from spreading to other towns, but the food shortage is causing lots of mice to want to leave, and the party will hear that one family has already left for Sprucetuck (but they appeared healthy).

So, the mission ends when the PCs get to Gilpledge, so I turn the game over to the PCs. Do they deal with keeping people from traveling in their turn and tracking down the family that’s already gone, or is this a new mission? Perhaps I should run this as an extended mission? I figure the PCs, if they’re not careful, will have a riot on their hands: the mice who are healthy want to leave before they get sick, and there’s not enough food for them anyways, but the party cannot be certain mice won’t get sick, so they’ll probably want to keep everyone from leaving.

Thoughts on how to organize this in terms of GMs turn and Player’s turn?

That sounds fine. It will likely be over quite quickly, though.

Are the Guard mice going to protest at this? You’ll need to ensure their Beliefs, Goals and Instincts will give you the negotiation conflict you’re looking for. Otherwise, they might say “Sounds good. Let’s stop at Copperwood.” If they do, check Enemies and Friends and see if you can create a Mice hazard out of those.

Hmmm… Based on this, why not use the Weather hazard to twist to the negotiation conflict about stopping off in Copperwood, then have this second Mice issue be the second hazard of the mission?

Otherwise, the players aren’t likely to use their checks on this seemingly-random occurence, though they might. You could make the Gilpledge disease part of the GM’s Turn with a bit more elaboration and ability to interact with it.

Just some thoughts. Might be fine as you have it, and if the Players’ Turn is short, hop right into another GM’s Turn with the Gilpledge stuff.

How does this situation fit into the players’ Beliefs, Goals, and Instincts? Are there Relationship characters in Gilpledge that are threatened by this situation?

Depending on the time and pacing of the session, you could add another GM’s Turn and Players’ Turn. That way, the players could prepare for the forthcoming obstacles with their checks in the first Player’s Turn, then you could hammer them with some Obstacles related to the situation in Gilpledge, and then they could wrap up everything in their second Players’ Turn.

Or, like you said, just make it an extended session. Either way, lay out as much as possible for the players at the end of the first GM’s Turn, so they can make informed decisions about how to spend their checks, and then go from there.

I just wanted to pipe up and say that if your weather obstacle seems short, you could make it a complex obstacle and tack on a Survivalist test to build shelters if the caravan’s spending the night out amid open, rocky terrain. Besides the mice keeping themselves dry in the downpour, they’ll want to ensure that the provender remains edible! Plus it lends itself easily to twists.

-B

Thanks for the replies everyone. :slight_smile:

I don’t know if the PCs will mind stopping in Copperwood, but I figured I’d describe how the rain is slowing the caravan down, they are behind schedule, and Gwendolyn will stress at the outset that time is of the essence. I suppose if the PCs want to lallygag, they’ll suffer some penalty (maybe more mice will die or have left Gilpledge…someone will say “if we only got the supplies a day or so sooner, we could have saved these mice”).

I like the idea of a survivalist check to build shelters for the caravan as they sleep out in the open. The conflict with the caravan leader could be a good twist if they fail: the caravan members are wet, tired, and want to stop off.

Then I could use the sickness as the second obstacle, but this is less than ideal because I wanted the journey to Gilpledge to be difficult (i.e. overcome 2 obstacles) since that’s the mission: escort the caravan safely to Gilpledge. I guess once they’ve arrived, I can let the PCs use their turn to prep for the problem of the next mission: keep the mice of Gilpledge from spreading their sickness. Might be a good way to end the game too because it’s sort of a cliffhanger. Again, I’m stuck with this problem of fitting my general ideas into the GMs turn and player’s turn. Maybe I need to simplify things.

Any other thoughts?