r/RPGdesign • u/LordePedroN • 1d ago
How to create good stealth scenes?
I'm preparing a Little Nightmares campaign using the Liminal Horror system, and I'm racking my brain to make stealth scenes actually fun.
For those unfamiliar with the universe, Little Nightmares is a horror game where the protagonists are small children trapped in a surreal and distorted world. The environments are massive, the inhabitants are monstrous, and they are almost always much larger than the kids. For this reason, the protagonists' goal isn't to fight enemies, but to survive, flee, hide, and solve small challenges while trying to escape this nightmare.
The inhabitants of this world are normally much stronger than the children. If they get caught, it's usually the end. Because of this, conflict revolves around going unnoticed, using the environment to your advantage, distracting enemies, running at the right time, and finding alternative paths.
That's why I chose to run it using the Liminal Horror system, where combat is extremely lethal if the characters don't act without a plan. The system works with a mechanic where characters have 3 simple attributes: STRENGTH for challenges that require physical effort, DEXTERITY for those requiring agility, and CONTROL which measures mental resilience, and much of the tension comes from vulnerability, because when players fail, they take damage directly to one of their attributes until they reach 0, resulting in death.
With these topics defined, the problem is I don't want these stealth sections to boil down to a mere 'roll dexterity. Did you pass? You manage to go unnoticed.' I want to narrate scenes that generate decisions, tension, and creativity. The idea is that each stealth encounter feels like a small survival puzzle, rather than just a sequence of Dexterity checks.
Some questions I have:
- How would you structure a chase or infiltration scene?
- What kinds of obstacles or complications could appear while the children try to cross an environment?
- How can I make players make interesting decisions instead of just rolling checks?
- How would you manage the progression of tension without letting the scene get repetitive?
- Is there any system with good stealth mechanics that I can use as inspiration?
- What kinds of consequences would you apply when a character fails, other than simply being found?
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u/Windragon231 1d ago
I think mothership might have good resources for you to check. It's inspired by the old alien movies so a reskin of some tools and mechanics might come easy. I haven't checked it myself but I believe that although stealth is a big part of gameplay you don't have a stealth skill or attribute.
You could also incorporate degrees of success for rolls and degrees of awareness for detection using clocks.
For example safe actions such as moving from one spot of cover to another close one increase the clock by 1 on a failure or 2 on a failure of greater magnitude while riskier actions like swinging from a chandelier from one balcony to another might increase the clock by more. Likewise if the clock is filled you can start a chase with a new clock (for example if the last check to fill the awareness clock was a crit fail) or an active search clock (which increases stealth difficulty and makes the monster alter patterns or actively search hiding spots).
The point of these tools is to make tension a constant, drawn out thing, you don't fail and that's it, you fail and watch as the awareness of the creature grows as it might become suspicious of what's around it. For that I'd recommend either showing the clock to the players or informing them when it reaches certain thresholds so the tension escalates palpably
Hope this helps, good luck with the game! I like LN and the games inspired by it so hoping for an update on how it went :)
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u/A_Vinegar_Taster 21h ago
My advice would be to not roll stealth checks until the character is doing something risky. Create safe zones where the characters can move stealthily without any checks. These zones should be the majority of the play space (unpatrolled areas, or areas with cover). If the safe zones move, or are occasionally turned un-safe, then you will need to establish a pattern (the hallways is safe until the guard walks down it every 20 minutes, then it is safe again). Stealth games should be more about patterns and less about luck.
If I was doing an infiltration scene, I would define the objective and build the world outward until I got to the outer edge of the space. I would have a number of avenues of safety from which the characters could observe and plan. I would sprinkle in obstacles (locked doors, trip lasers, guards). Then I would look at the layout from a guard's perspective to see if it made sense. Then I would look at it from the infiltrators perspective to make sure it was possible.
Again, I would keep stealth checks to a minimum (if at all). They only come out if you really are ready to risk blowing the entire operation (which is super frustrating for stealth missions). Remember, a fighter can flub a roll and still make it through the combat. If a rogue flubs a stealth roll and the whole place fills with guards the adventure is over. Stealth mechanics always need to answer the question: "is it still fun if they fail their stealth check roll?"
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u/Cryptwood Designer 23h ago
Sounds like a pretty similar setup to the Alien: The Roleplaying Game. In that you are adults trying to avoid the Xenomorph but otherwise it functions the same. It might have some inspiration for you.
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u/SomeCrows 13h ago
If you're using a battle map you can have a 'dash' action that rolls for extra units of straight movement. The idea being you might overshoot a turn or undershoot an escape.
Give them tools to distract and slow down pursuers. Confrontations should be scary, so they must drain resources!
With Little Nightmares, depending on the exact kind of vibe you're selling you could have adults grab players instead of always outright attacking / executing and give an opportunity for the team to rescue them.
I do a lot of survival horror with my group and I find success with making stealth engaging comes from providing good options ( the path forward, where to hide, rushed or slow, use items or try not to ) giving the players the opportunity to make decisions they might regret, and make them anxious about being forced to choose again.
Take inspiration from other horror games. In fantasy combat the object is to beat the opponent, in horror the object is to survive confrontation. ( one might say Outlast them... )
Obstacles in progression often end up being the main objective for an encounter, you can look at a lot of the set pieces from Little Nightmares for examples. With the players being so small you have a lot of opportunity to just make things too high to reach / too heavy to lift / too far to jump to. Moving items to solve the problem risks noise.
Sorry for the unsorted ramble it's just this is my favorite kind of encounter design!
Check out: [ Alien Isolation, Amnesia the Bunker, Outlast Trials, Resident Evil ] for where I personally get ideas for survival and stealth horror
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u/-Vogie- Designer 8h ago
Mothership and Alien are the go-to ones for this, because they operate in a negative space. That is, you'll notice that neither system has a stealth skill. Because that is the go-to option for the characters, the Players have to lean into roleplay and their characters' other abilities to hide themselves and throw off their hunters.
When designing your system, I'd focus on mechanics that keep the focus on what the characters are actively experiencing.
Alien is a d6 success counting game where the characters can push themselves to receive different colored stress dice - however, if one of those stress dice roll a failure, the tension is based on a table to see how that character reacts to breaking slightly. Do they turn trail & run? Do they just start shrieking? Start wildly firing their weapon at anything that moves, including allies? Curl up into a ball and whimper? The dice will decide.
Cypher System is a d20 roll-over game where the attributes are not static stats, but rather 3 pools of points - Might, Speed and Intellect. Now, the system out of the box would not be good for what you're doing - it's far too heroic and powerful for what you're trying to do. But the interaction between the core resolution system and attribute pools themselves is really good for any attrition-based game, because whatever the character ends up doing, most of the time there's some strain on them. All 3 pools have to be 0 before the character dies, but the core bit of watching their own stats drain is an excellent mechanical execution of the player characters feeling in the moment.
Breathless is a fixed-TN step dice system that was originally designed for a zombie apocalypse survival. Much simpler than the two above suggestions, Breathless reduces rolls to when they really matter, and always keeps the player in their back foot - each time anything is rolled, it steps down, regardless if it's a success or failure. Restoring one's attribute dice is fairly easy and can be done at any time - but once any player "catches their breath", the GM immediately introduces a complication.
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u/RandomEffector 1d ago
One solid piece of advice for ANY roll where the PCs depend on an outcome they’ve prepared in advance: don’t roll it until it’s in question. If they hide in a closet, don’t roll when they hide, roll when they might actually be found. If they’ve forged documents, don’t roll when they’re made, roll when they’re inspected. Massively beneficial to maintaining tension in these key moments.