How do you handle it when an iron vow seems to map closely to a process handled by other rules?
How do you handle it when an iron vow seems to map closely to a process handled by other rules? Like, killing a beast or making a journey? Do you make all the progress from the process translate exactly into progress for the vow? What if the process and the vow resolve differently? How do you set difficulty levels? Like, if you make a vow to kill a wyvern, do you count the difficulty of overcoming the wyvern into the difficulty of the vow? Wouldn't that mean that you go through all the trouble of killing the wyvern, and then you've only made one progress toward the vow? Or do you just make the vow easy, reckoning that the difficulty of the fight makes the vow difficult to make progress on?
If you have a vow to kill a beast, you wouldn't track progress in the fight as progress towards your vow. Instead, you'll want to consider the obstacles you must overcome to be in a position to fight the beast.
ReplyDeleteFor example, do you need to Gather Information to determine the beasts whereabouts? Learning what you need to know would count as a
milestone. Will you then Undertake a Journey to the beast's hunting grounds? Such a journey would be a milestone on your quest. Do you need to gain the help of an expert tracker? If so, gaining support from that NPC would be a milestone. Are you suitably armed and armored for the fight, or will you need to establish some leverage in order to barter for suitable gear? Doing so is a milestone. Is there some force or faction working against you in your quest to slay the beast? Why? Overcoming them would count as a milestone.
Now, if you envision this as relatively straightforward, set the rank lower. The rank won't necessarily have any correlation to the rank of the beast. If it's simply a matter of go there and kill the thing, that's probably a troublesome quest. But, there's an argument that a proactive character is going to work to ready themselves for a fight against an extreme foe, which gives you an opportunity to set up some obstacles as milestones.
If a quest is a journey, you can follow a similar line of thinking. Do you know how to get there? Do you need a guide? What obstacles will you face en route? Who opposes you? Some of this can spring naturally out of the fiction, and some of it can be you introducing complications to "hit the pace" of your quest's rank.
When you successfully Reach Your Destination or End the Fight, you'll need to roll to Fulfill Your Vow. You might have a bit of a narrative challenge if that roll suddenly goes sideways, but just consider what sort of discovery might unravel this momentary success .