Running adventures where a "Competiton is part of it?

[garhkal]

When you run adventures where there is a competition that is a big part of the thrust of the adventure (or gaming module), do you always plan it out that the group is to win it? Or does that depend on how well they roll off against the NPC(s) who are opposing them?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[gavin storm]

I have known GMs to stack it depending on the player involved *cough* I wont name names (namely the name of the group). Though I have know others to base it on rolls and the NPCs faced to be a challange more than simple walk overs.
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Gavin Storm
Causing Imperials headaches, one punch at a time, since 2000

[cheshire]

You mean where they have to win the swoop race to win the prize money to fix their ship and leave the planet?

Never done one. Part of it is because so much can happen on a die roll. I have done things where they're racing people trying to salvage certain components of a crashed ship. But if they don't get those parts, then the next stage of the adventures is just harder... not that it can't go on.

Though if you ARE doing a competition type adventure, what might be interesting is if the players had divided up into smaller groups and were part of two competing teams in such a competition.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[garhkal]

More like say a great race (like that long thread on the holonet about the great hyperspace race), or being part of a cooking competition to get into an imperial high society function, but it does have a very good price money pool.
to me if its the main thrust of the mission, and failing to place (or win) would seriously jeopardize the mission, i can see some DM's deliberately biasing the competition where the PCs will win, but i also see that happen a lot (both home games and con games) when winning it is not needed to complete the mission.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Dromdarr_Alark]

My group enrolled in an underground fighting circuit, and the gunslinger in the party was mortally wounded, while the other two were incapacitated in the last round. So, no, I don't stack things in favor of the characters.

Of course, I found ways to make their defeat helpful to the plot so that they wouldn't feel completely stuck.
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"I still wouldn't have a roll for it - but that's just how I roll."

[Dromdarr_Alark]

I think you shouldn't stack odds in favor of characters, but you should also not have their failures be absolute and detrimental to the campaign. Maybe they lose the cooking competition but they impress one Imperial who offers to sneak them in.
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"I still wouldn't have a roll for it - but that's just how I roll."

[DougRed4]

I just got done doing this, with my "Smashup Speeders" event (see the Death of Liberty thread in "Adventures").

I did not skew things at all towards the PCs. And like cheshire suggested, my players decided to make up two separate parties/groups (though they didn't so much compete against each other as collude and cleverly work so that one side helped the other).

In this case, it wasn't crucial to the plot that they win. Usually, if they're competing in some fashion, be it in sabacc or something else, it's done more for the fun and for flavor, though in this last case the "race" ended up being a perfect finishing moment for that trilogy of adventures (giving us a good "the PCs on stage receiving a trophy" moment for the finale).
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Seghast]

We have a few times before and it never ends well.

Fighting tournaments and because it's a competition, the players ended up fighting each other in addition to NPCs and that led to hurt feelings among the losers (the GM's favored character, in particular, kept ignoring rolls made against him that would incap or kill him the first time we did this, for nearly a dozen rolls before he finally allowed his character to take the bloody KO).

So in addition to the losers being angry (especially him), most of them suddenly perceived their characters as being woefully underpowered and in need of a boost, while simultaneously crying that the winning character is blatantly overpowered.

The only way a competition-type adventure can really work, I think, is if it's the players versus NPCs only; once they're allowed to square off with each other...it's going to get ugly.

[Bobmalooga]

I once played in a game where we had to go and retrieve information for the republic and once we got to the planet and contact in question we were told that there were several people competing in a series of games to gain the information (the contact, who was a criminal was using it as blackmail info) including the Empire and other criminal organizations. We ended doing pod and wild cat races (Imagine riding a barely tame lion through an obstacle course...), challenged combat.

I was playing a Jedi (Who did have affect mind, but I only used it twice in the two years we played and that wasn't one of the times...) who used telekinesis to loosen saddle straps and who was challenged to a duel. As the challenged I was given the choice of weapon type and whatever weapon I wanted to use. I picked Melee and my lightsaber...LOL
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No matter where you go, there you are...

[garhkal]

Did the empire take note of yo cause of that?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Bobmalooga]