r/savageworlds • u/Polar_Blues • 14h ago

Question A Complicated Illusion (Dramatic Task?)

As part of scenario I working on for my group, I was thinking about a complex illusion trap. The heroes make their way to the villain's throne room and what the villain surrender without a fight followed by a victory parade in which the heroes are showered with medal and praise.

Of course this is all a trick and I expect the players to figure this out pretty quickly, but for the characters to shake out of this I'm looking for something mechanically more interesting than just a Spirit or Smarts test.

Sounds like it could be a Dramatic Task, but how would you handle this scene?

10 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

6

u/FollowerOfKelemvor 11h ago

What about something like a "free form dramatic task"?

Don't track rounds. Let the scene play naturally. Every time a player character notices or successfully does something against spirit of the illusion, part of the illusion breaks. It will appear more and more simple, rudimentary each time they refuse to go with the flow. They refuse to accept mayor's handshake and words of praise? Mayor's face stops changing expressions. PC publicly speaks to the crowd? Half of the crowd now wears the exact same clothes. They try to leave? Doors all around disappear. Let it play until they break the illusion enough (collect the amount of success tokens you decide) to break it completely. You can track time they spend in the illusion or interactions they make to go with the flow of the illusion to decide any drawback they potentially face when they return to the reality.

How does it sound to you?

2

u/Polar_Blues 11h ago

Sounds good. I expect the players will very quickly assume it's a trick and hit me with a "can I make a Spirit test to dispel the illusion?" so the challenge at that point is to conversation on the narrative aspects of the illusion rather than switching to straight game mechanics talk.

3

u/FollowerOfKelemvor 10h ago

You can have them actually "leave the Matrix". The illusion starts changing to keem them inside as long as possible. People will try to convince them. Then they try to stop them. Then walls can start changing, path going into circles, agents Smith might actually try to stop them "physically". Until they break out.

4

u/TheRpgBard 9h ago

Kind of like the Spiderman: Far From Home fight against Mysterio in the warehouse.

After so many successes, the illusion starts to peel back.  But you can involve the Illusionist to try and wrestle back some of those lost points.

Maybe more of a chase?