Mythusmage Today

Introduction

That’s essentially what you do when you fight, you get busy. This is an introduction to fighting in Dangerous Journeys and it will cover the essentials.

The First Thing

That being what other engines call “surprise”. When you are surprised you are essentially caught unaware. When you get right down to it, when you are caught unaware you didn’t notice something. So in DJ the mechanic for this is; every now and then the JM will ask you to roll against your Notice sub-area under either Mental or Physical Perception. He of course will be doing that for his people. Now should you succeed in your roll the roll will let you know that you noticed something, usually the most obvious. Should you fail in your check then you noticed nothing. Now should your roll be rather low, then you will most likely notice less obvious things, but that’s up to the JM. Though I’m starting to think that I maybe should come up with a mechanic covering such an eventuality. Maybe a range of items that get noticed by a roll, with the more difficult to notice coming to the Persona’s attention the lower his roll.

But noticing or not noticing is not a matter that needs to be handled just once. For in DJ, as in life, it is quite possible to be surprised repeatedly. As most anybody in the military or the police can tell you. So your JM will from time to time ask you to roll against you Notice sub-area under either Area to see if while you were engaged with one party another did or didn’t sneak up on you. In short, while you were triumphantly bashing the foe right in front of you his buddy snuck up and got you by surprise. Happens all the time.

Example

JM: Everybody, roll against your best Notice.

Player 1: I got a 56.

JM: You notice a squirrel angrily chittering at you.

Player 2: I got a 24.

JM: You however notice that the squirrel in question is not chittering at you, but at something just under his tree.

The JM then rolls the bones a couple of time and then say, “Drat.” A perceptive player rolls his dice and tells the JM, “I got an 18″ for my Notice.”

Chuckling a bit the JM tells his players, “Seeing that somebody has noticed him a goblin rises to his feet to stand under the tree in question. With a bit of chagrin on his face he tells you, ‘If it weren’t for that damn squirrel.'”

Final Note

So there, in a fashion, is your introduction to fighting in Dangerous Journeys. In the next post we’ll be dealing with initiative.