It wasn't an epic clash with a dragon or a siege on a keep. The single greatest combat encounter I've ever run was a mundane, random encounter with a couple of bandits. The table has retold it excitedly several times since then, and it's become clear that this will be one of those tales told for years to come. Setting the Scene Before we go into why this was amazing, let's set the scene. We have two players engaged with a pair of bandit archers. The players have taken cover behind the ruins of a shed in a field at a farm. The bandits are circling around both sides of the shed, and the players are aware that next turn they will be in the crossfire. They are also aware that the bandits have bows drawn and ready to fire the second the players are visible. The hope is that they can take out one of the bandits so they can continue to circle around the shed, maintaining cover from the other bandit. The fight goes from lost to won in a single turn. From a mundane and forgetta...
I've got some miles on my Shadowdark book. At the time of this writing, I've easily run a fairly absurd 300+ sessions. Which is to say, I'm pretty familiar with that system. Recently, I ran Cairn and found... well... Not what I expected at all. Oh, I had heard of it, but I'm an OSR guy, and I don't run "story games," I run dark survival horror the way my first DM did in 2e when I was a teenager. Which is to say, I was uninformed. What I found when I dug in has changed how I run games, even in Shadowdark, and I wanted to put some of that down here for the benefit of the wider community. The Game Interface Rules First Typically, a player will interact with a TTRPG at the table through the rules system. I don't mean theater of the mind vs. maps and minis, or VTT vs. meatspace. I mean, they announce some type of Action, be it a move, an attack, or some sort of skill, the GM Adjudicates an outcome, and the Fiction state is updated as a result. We don'...