Day 15 and about half way through the RPGaDAY 2025 Challenge. Today our topic is ‘Deceive’ and it’s another one that’s just a little too vague. I was even talking with the geek wife about this as we were driving home from a date hoping to get an inspiration for an idea. I’m going to twist this one on it’s Vulcan pointed ear for this post.
Sometimes the best play comes at our RPG table when the characters have to stay within certain boundaries of the character. One that was self-imposed or set within the game itself. The characters can and will find ways around the boundary while not crossing it directly. A common trope on this is the Star Trek race Vulcans and their reputation for not lying. For example, check out this page from the Star Trek novel, Collision Course.
There are numerous examples in the show where a Vulcan had to deceive another in order to accomplish a goal. Consider the following quotes.
“It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself.” Spock- The Enterprise Incident, Stardate: 5027.3
“Names, Lieutenant.” Kirk “I do not remember.” Valeris “A lie?” Spock “A choice.” Valeris- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Stardate: 9521.6
As you can see, there were ways to work around this in different situations. Don’t be afraid to place these boundaries on your players. They will look at them as a challenge to get around.
Additional Feedback: I received the following from LexTenebris on Mastodon in response to my Darkness post.
@TardisCaptain There are two things that are important to know about ShadowDark. Firstly, it is a very old-school design with high lethality, but a surprisingly light mechanical touch. Secondly, the real-time torch mechanic is something they tout very aggressively. Now, as I remember, the default time span before the torch burns out is 30 minutes of real time. He may have been going easy on you as newbies. Personally, I don’t particularly care for the real-time connection because it feels not just gimmicky, but like it gets in the way of doing things in the game that would make sense but don’t really connect up with time as it passes. You absolutely have to be hardcore about demanding time be one-to-one between the dungeon and the players for this to hold together. It’s just too fiddly, in my opinion. A better implementation of pressure from oncoming darkness is found in the Ironsworn supplement, Darkest Delves (https://jaderavens.itch.io/darkest-delves). It uses the already extant weak hit and miss mechanics in Ironsworn to essentially be one of the things that causes the torch counter to tick down. You have a lot more connection with what’s going on in the game space that way.
What do you think? Have you experienced a challenge such as not being able to lie and deceive? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.