Simple Montages
This is my little system for running "montage" style challenges, mostly used for travel and traversal segments but also applicable to other stuff like social events or heists.
When the players enter the montage, establish what the party's goal is and set out a number of obstacles that they must overcome to achieve it. 1 + the number of PCs is probably a good amount, but you can modulate it based on scenario complexity/desired difficulty. Make all the obstacles known to the players.
An example set of obstacles for a party traversing a dangerous, mist-shrouded swamp.
Each obstacle describes the problem to be solved and the threat of a consequence for not solving it. The threat is applied to the whole party if that obstacle isn't dealt with, giving players a reason to not just ignore them. They can also be applied to an individual PC as a cost of a failed attempt, if contextually appropriate.
Inspired by Disco Elysium's skill checks, obstacles are color-coded into white and red:
- If a PC fails vs a white obstacle, it can be re-attempted, usually by a different PC. These are regular or long-term hazards.
- If a PC fails vs a red obstacle, the threat immediately triggers, and can't be re-attempted. These are more dangerous or time-sensitive problems, often with an encounter as the threat.
With the obstacles in front of the players, let them come up with how they want to deal with them. This could be via skill checks, usage of character abilities, equipment, or simply clever and appropriate ideas. For example, some solutions to the above swamp traversal could be:
- The druid uses their herbalism kit to create insect-repelling incense
- The hunter uses their keen navigation skills to chart a safe route through the sinkholes
- The party decides to spend some money (retroactively) on special rain-repellent clothing
- The knight cuts a path through the thickets with their magic sword
- The sorcerer spends a spell to create a fierce wind that clears away the shrouding mists
Most obstacles can be dealt with in any order, and don't necessarily need to follow in a linear time sequence. You could even allow players to "flashback" to do some retroactive preparation. Incorporate the players' solutions into your narration of the montage as the party traverses the scenario. The goal here is to show off what the party is capable of and prompt the players to come up with effective and/or characterful solutions to the problems they face.
Once all the obstacles are dealt with (successfully or not), the montage ends, and the party achieves their goal. It is assumed by default that the party can't fail, at worst they will suffer the consequences of the individual obstacles (which could be an encounter where they all die, in which case the montage is no longer relevant). This keeps campaign momentum moving forward even if the PCs fail a lot, though the party may come out the other end worse for wear.
Failure
A simple way to add failure is to start a Clock at the beginning of the montage, with a declared failure condition like "the Dragon finds you" or "the Cops arrive". Each time a PC fails an attempt vs an obstacle, tick up the clock. You could also have the Risk of obstacles be "the clock ticks up". When it completes, the failure state of the montage occurs, which usually means the rest of the obstacles are no longer relevant.
Hidden Obstacles
By default, all obstacles and their threats are shown to the players. This might give them a bit of meta awareness, but I find it really helps to telegraph to the players what they need to deal with in the scene.
To spice things up, you can add a hidden obstacle or two, that are only revealed when the players complete a previous obstacle or make a certain amount of progress through the montage. I like to show these as cards labeled "Hidden Obstacle: ???" to show the players that there's more going on that they're not yet aware of.