The relationship between story and RPGs is a complicated and often painful one. It's been popping up on my radar lately since I've been hearing "story" used as if it means "Railroading" or "Fudging Dice Rolls" and that bothers me a little. Not that I have any objection to people having strong opinions about specific topics like that - it's just jarring to me to see them lumped under story, a categorization which is almost nonsensical to me.
The thinking is something like this - there are players out there who view RPGs as a means to tell the story. In some cases it's the GM telling a story to the players, in others it is everyone at the table collaborating to create the story. Whatever the model, telling a story is the priority, and unless the rules explicitly support the creation of a story, then the rules take a back seat to the needs of story creation. As such, behaviors like dice fudging, railroading and other tricks are fair game because everyone is on board with the priority of story.[1]
If this was the only role of story in games, I'd understand the confusion. While these "pure story" games are (in my experience) a small but vocal minority, it is easy to buy into their principals and try to treat story as something additive - that by taking one of these techniques like railroading, you can improve your game through the inclusion of story. The fact that numerous published adventures have bought into this idea has contributed to muddling the waters further, but I'll state it as plainly as I can: that is not all that story is. And I'll go a step further to add that's not even the important part of story, at least with regards to games.
"Story" (as differentiated from a story) is a set of techniques used to tell, you guessed it, a story. They're used in every media imaginable, and while some elements are specific to specific media (such as the act structure of television), others seem universal (such as rising tension and the necessity of conflict). This is a huge toolbox, and it can be used for everything from structuring an 27 book epic just as easily as it can a 55 word short story. There are more tools in this box than you will ever use, and no two people's toolboxes are the same. You find things that work or sound interesting, even things which are contradictory, and you add them in over time. Some become well-worn form use, others never come out of the plastic wrap.
So, given this, let me look at RPGs. There is a school of thought that asserts that the GMs role is solely that of referee, which is to say that the GM should effectively just serve as an intelligent, dynamic rendering engine for the setting.[2] In this worldview, the fairness of the GM is the most critical issue - the GM has material (adventures, setting etc) which he needs to present and use as written to the best of his abilities. If there is a gap, he is expected to fill it, but he should hew as closely to the original material as possible, and his creative satisfaction should come from running antagonists[3] and playing existing NPCs.
Setting aside that I would go watch TV or read a book before I'd want to run a game under those sorts of strictures[4], that thinking simply doesn't hold up outside of tournament play or other specialized environments. GM creativity and judgment calls are not fringe elements to an RPG and there is no way to open that door just a little. And I think that's great, since the alternative is by-the-numbers play, which might make for a decent fight scene in 4e, but makes for an unsatisfying framework.
And this is where we come back to story. See, once the GM starts creating his own material (from a single encounter or NPC, to a huge mega-campaign), he is in a position to start using tools from the story toolbox. This does not mean he's telling a story, rather that he's using elements that make a story interesting to make play interesting. Making characters sympathetic or unsympathetic? Story. Having villains take things from bad to worse? Story. Menacing things that are important to the character? Story. Many of the important decisions and designs that will go into creating satisfying play can be improved by understanding the tools of story.
Now, it's obviously going to be a personal decision on how much this shapes play. You might just use the tools of story to craft a satisfying encounter with a hateable villain, but draw the line at using "story logic" to impact play. For example - the decision regarding if and when the villain flees, and when any meta currency (such as fate or action points) might be spent on his behalf can be made for any number of criteria. The GM might use strict Morale rules, he might have a fixed number at which the bad guy flees, he might eyeball the situation and base it on which way the wind is blowing, or he might opt for a dramatically appropriate moment. Any or all of these can be used to make the decision, but personal taste might remove some of them from consideration.
And that's fine. We all need to find our personal level of preference. But for all that, it is a very rare game indeed that cannot benefit from the toolbox story provides. Certainly, people may use different tools in different ways, or use more or fewer tools, but they're the tools for drama, for making events personal and compelling. I genuinely can't imagine someone wanting to play RPGs (as opposed to other games) and not wanting those things.
1 - All of the games I'm discussing here are going to assume full buy-in from the table. Every single model of gameplay can break down if the table doesn't buy into it, and if things aren't communicated clearly. So for argument, we're going to assume people communicate and think a bit.
2 - A rendering engine is the part of a program that turns all the bits and bytes into pretty pictures, like the terrain of World of Warcraft.
3 - This is, BTW, a reason you end up with killer GMs. If this is the limit of your expression within the game, and that is frustrating, and adversarial relationship can jazz things ups.
4 - I'd play but solely on the understanding that we're playing a boardgame, not an RPG. And I like boardgames fine.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Not Amber - Coincidence and Communication
In the realm of curious coincidence, my ramblings about not-amber coincide with someone else's much more focused thoughts about the same. The ever talented Jason Durall made his contribution numbers to create Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, using the Erick Wujcik's Diceless Roleplaying system. For amber fans, this is pretty fascinating in more than a few ways. So far as I understand, EWDRP is basically the system from the ADRPG with all references to Amber and Zelazny copyrights removed.[1] So bear that in mind and realize that if you know the ADRPG, you probably know Jason Durall's name as a luminary strong associated with the previous game. The man is clever as hell, and the quality of his AmberCon Northwest games (which I never had the pleasure to play, but heard about unendingly from those who did) was one of the things that set the bar high for Evil Hat when we ran ours.
So with that in mind, Lords of Gossamer and Shadow looks like his not-amber, and I am excited to see this product when it comes out, and regret I missed the window to contribute some money to the project (though I'm told they nailed their numbers early). I'm avoiding looking at it during development because I've got my own not-amber to work through, but rite publishing has forums where I suspect the curious can find out more.
So, back to my own not-Amber.
One of the most powerful things in Amber are trumps. I don't speak in terms of in-game power (though in some games that's true) but in terms of gameplay, they're a perfect tool. When you have strongly empowered characters who are capable of haring off in different directions at a moment's notice, you absolutely want them to have an easy way to communicate and get back together. In Amber, that role is filled by trumps; tarot-like cards with the images of people one them which, if focused on, allow you to communicate with, travel to, summon or attack the person depicted.[2] Zelazny had originally conceived them as portraits, but ended up liking the card idea better, which is good because it's cooler and much more gameable.
The thing about this idea is it works best when it feels meaningful. Cards tap into tarot imagery, and while I want something that serves a similar role in my game, I don't want to just lift trumps wholesale. The problem lies in finding something that could equally feasibly be used for communication that also carried a fair amount of meaning, in the way cards do. I found it in an unlikely corner.
When I was originally pondering this problem, I was listening to the audiobook of David Shenks' The Immortal Game, a history of chess, and I was struck by an image of someone playing on half a board, and using that as a means of communication. Thus, in Argent, every member of the royal family has several king chess pieces (sometimes called keystones) which are identical, though each set is uniquely reflective of the subject[3]. They gift them to family members and they can be used to initiate communication over a chessboard, by setting up the board, using you and your target's king pieces. The subject knows the game has started and can set up the pieces on their end, at which point they may see and speak to each other over their halves of the chessboard.
I love this image, and it opens up the setting to the use of chess imagery which is, I think, underused outside of Wonderland. I'm still undecided on movement. Stylistically the thing to do is say if both sides have both kingspieces, then the players may castle (switch spots) but that's inconvenient for play, since you want to bring people together. Instead, I'm tempted to say loser gets pulled to the winner ("captured") unless both opt to pause or end the game, since that adds back in a certain element of risk.
In the grand scheme of things it's a very small matter, but I think it's one of those small matters with large repercussions for playability.
1 - I could swear there had been a page with just the rules somewhere, but I can no longer find it.
2 - That last added an element of risk to trump use, which was nice, but it also opened the door to most of the really stupid mind-warfare stuff in the DRPG.
3 - While not quite as cool as describing your trump image, describing the design, style, color and material of your keystone is still kind of a fun thing.
So with that in mind, Lords of Gossamer and Shadow looks like his not-amber, and I am excited to see this product when it comes out, and regret I missed the window to contribute some money to the project (though I'm told they nailed their numbers early). I'm avoiding looking at it during development because I've got my own not-amber to work through, but rite publishing has forums where I suspect the curious can find out more.
So, back to my own not-Amber.
One of the most powerful things in Amber are trumps. I don't speak in terms of in-game power (though in some games that's true) but in terms of gameplay, they're a perfect tool. When you have strongly empowered characters who are capable of haring off in different directions at a moment's notice, you absolutely want them to have an easy way to communicate and get back together. In Amber, that role is filled by trumps; tarot-like cards with the images of people one them which, if focused on, allow you to communicate with, travel to, summon or attack the person depicted.[2] Zelazny had originally conceived them as portraits, but ended up liking the card idea better, which is good because it's cooler and much more gameable.
The thing about this idea is it works best when it feels meaningful. Cards tap into tarot imagery, and while I want something that serves a similar role in my game, I don't want to just lift trumps wholesale. The problem lies in finding something that could equally feasibly be used for communication that also carried a fair amount of meaning, in the way cards do. I found it in an unlikely corner.
When I was originally pondering this problem, I was listening to the audiobook of David Shenks' The Immortal Game, a history of chess, and I was struck by an image of someone playing on half a board, and using that as a means of communication. Thus, in Argent, every member of the royal family has several king chess pieces (sometimes called keystones) which are identical, though each set is uniquely reflective of the subject[3]. They gift them to family members and they can be used to initiate communication over a chessboard, by setting up the board, using you and your target's king pieces. The subject knows the game has started and can set up the pieces on their end, at which point they may see and speak to each other over their halves of the chessboard.
I love this image, and it opens up the setting to the use of chess imagery which is, I think, underused outside of Wonderland. I'm still undecided on movement. Stylistically the thing to do is say if both sides have both kingspieces, then the players may castle (switch spots) but that's inconvenient for play, since you want to bring people together. Instead, I'm tempted to say loser gets pulled to the winner ("captured") unless both opt to pause or end the game, since that adds back in a certain element of risk.
In the grand scheme of things it's a very small matter, but I think it's one of those small matters with large repercussions for playability.
1 - I could swear there had been a page with just the rules somewhere, but I can no longer find it.
2 - That last added an element of risk to trump use, which was nice, but it also opened the door to most of the really stupid mind-warfare stuff in the DRPG.
3 - While not quite as cool as describing your trump image, describing the design, style, color and material of your keystone is still kind of a fun thing.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Not Amber: Stats
I'm not attached to stats, and I think games can do just fine without them. Too often they're taken for granted as a must-have without a lot of thought regarding what they actually mean within the system. As marginal bonuses in arbitrary categories, they can add unnecessary complication, and if they're just really broad skills, that calls into question the need for them at all. There's a reasonable case for them in truly combinative systems (white wolf, cortex) but even then they can just as easily be swapped out for almost anything else.
This is not to say stats are bad, just that they are an unexamined habit. The question should not be whether you exclude them from your game design, but rather why you feel you need to include them.
LUG's Aria was a brilliant and nearly incomprehensible game that did something clever with it's stats. There were something like 12 stats, but you only had ratings in 10 of them. the other two you were just assumed to be normal, neither good nor bad, and they didn't come up. This struck a spark with me that ended up influencing the design of aspects. One thing they were going to replace was stats, with the idea being that your stats, whatever they were, were all normal unless you explicitly called them out with an aspect like "Strong" or "Slow".[1] I admit this is about the sweet spot for me, but as with all things that are player defined, it has some complications.
Stats are incredibly important to the old Amber DRPG, in that they are really the heart of the character. There are 4 stats (Strength, Endurance, Warfare and Psyche) and each is effectively a super-skill, with all conceivable activities covered between them (unless those abilities are explicitly in the powers system). The ways in which this system was broken would probably make its own post, but that worked to the game's advantage because it encouraged homebrewing, which is a robust part of the ADRPG culture.[2]
So while not-amber should absolutely not include those four stats, the four stat model itself works very nicely, so the questionis what the stats should be. There's an instinct to fix the ADRPG list, but that seems overly derivative, and it fails to address the underlying issues. Thankfully, I already had to solve this problem for the Road to Amber MUSH and I am more than content to steal from myself.
The trick with the RTA stats is that they do not have any influence on what you can do, and only tangentially speak to how well you can do it. Characters in this context are assumed to be broadly competent and unless a particular task is constrained by system (like magic) or common sense (like flapping your arms to fly) then it's assumed they can go about it competently. With that in mind, the RTA stats speak to how you do things.
The stats are Force, Grace, Wits and Resolve and it's entirely possible to use any stat in any situation, depending upon how you describe doing it. Swordfighting, for example, is easy to break down. Do you go in swinging?(force). Do you dance around nimbly? (Grace). Do you wait for your opponent to tire or make a mistake? (resolve) Do you study your opponentes moves, lookign for an opening ?(wits)
Certainly, some actions gravitate more towards some stats than others. It's hard to read a book with force, but then, it is rare that reading a book merits bringing in stats. If the book is so exceptional as to merit that, there's a good chance the exceptional circumstances also invite broader stat uses.
Now, this is implicitly a combinative system, in that when you enter a contest, each side chooses the stat they're using, and each sides's effectiveness is determined by combining the two stats in question (So if I use force and you use grace, the winner is decided by the higher force+grace).[3] In MUSH, this makes for a nice guessing game, as you want to use your strong stat, but you might be incented to use a stat you think your opponent is weak in.
Translated to the tabletop, this changes a bit, at least in part because challenges will not be with other players (at least as often), but may be against the environment or NPCs, which is to say against challenges set by the GM. Provided that there's some way to handle blind betting (so to speak) when appropriate, the system works just fine with inanimate challenges and NPCs by t GM simply assigning them stat equivilancy. That door might have a high Resolve and Force, but negligible grace and wits (it's a door after all) and it always uses Resolve (because, again, door). That mean breaking it down (force & resolve) is harder than picking the lock (Wits & resolve) but either approach is doable.
Ok, don't take this as cast in stone, but let me illustrate this with a sample system.
If I was inclined to express the stats as dice, I' go with something influenced by the new designs in the Cortex system. Normal/Negiligble is d4, with values going up to d12. Fast and dirty chargen is to give 4 d8s (or d6s, depending) with the rule that you can drop a die one step to increase another die by one step. Minimum d2 (indicating an active problem with the stat), maximum d12.
Combine that with the Baselines from earlier in the week and you quickly get a character sheet that perhaps looks like:
Force: d6
Grace: d10
Resolve: d8
Wits: d8
Scion of Argent: d6
It's still not quite there, but the bones are starting to emerge.
1 - From that point we realized th emechanic could just as easily handle "Drunk" and then we were off to the races
2 - It is genuinely a terrible game, but only in the same way that raw sirloin makes a terrible meal.
3 - There are other elements that enter into this in the actual game, but as an abstract, that will suffice.
This is not to say stats are bad, just that they are an unexamined habit. The question should not be whether you exclude them from your game design, but rather why you feel you need to include them.
LUG's Aria was a brilliant and nearly incomprehensible game that did something clever with it's stats. There were something like 12 stats, but you only had ratings in 10 of them. the other two you were just assumed to be normal, neither good nor bad, and they didn't come up. This struck a spark with me that ended up influencing the design of aspects. One thing they were going to replace was stats, with the idea being that your stats, whatever they were, were all normal unless you explicitly called them out with an aspect like "Strong" or "Slow".[1] I admit this is about the sweet spot for me, but as with all things that are player defined, it has some complications.
Stats are incredibly important to the old Amber DRPG, in that they are really the heart of the character. There are 4 stats (Strength, Endurance, Warfare and Psyche) and each is effectively a super-skill, with all conceivable activities covered between them (unless those abilities are explicitly in the powers system). The ways in which this system was broken would probably make its own post, but that worked to the game's advantage because it encouraged homebrewing, which is a robust part of the ADRPG culture.[2]
So while not-amber should absolutely not include those four stats, the four stat model itself works very nicely, so the questionis what the stats should be. There's an instinct to fix the ADRPG list, but that seems overly derivative, and it fails to address the underlying issues. Thankfully, I already had to solve this problem for the Road to Amber MUSH and I am more than content to steal from myself.
The trick with the RTA stats is that they do not have any influence on what you can do, and only tangentially speak to how well you can do it. Characters in this context are assumed to be broadly competent and unless a particular task is constrained by system (like magic) or common sense (like flapping your arms to fly) then it's assumed they can go about it competently. With that in mind, the RTA stats speak to how you do things.
The stats are Force, Grace, Wits and Resolve and it's entirely possible to use any stat in any situation, depending upon how you describe doing it. Swordfighting, for example, is easy to break down. Do you go in swinging?(force). Do you dance around nimbly? (Grace). Do you wait for your opponent to tire or make a mistake? (resolve) Do you study your opponentes moves, lookign for an opening ?(wits)
Certainly, some actions gravitate more towards some stats than others. It's hard to read a book with force, but then, it is rare that reading a book merits bringing in stats. If the book is so exceptional as to merit that, there's a good chance the exceptional circumstances also invite broader stat uses.
Now, this is implicitly a combinative system, in that when you enter a contest, each side chooses the stat they're using, and each sides's effectiveness is determined by combining the two stats in question (So if I use force and you use grace, the winner is decided by the higher force+grace).[3] In MUSH, this makes for a nice guessing game, as you want to use your strong stat, but you might be incented to use a stat you think your opponent is weak in.
Translated to the tabletop, this changes a bit, at least in part because challenges will not be with other players (at least as often), but may be against the environment or NPCs, which is to say against challenges set by the GM. Provided that there's some way to handle blind betting (so to speak) when appropriate, the system works just fine with inanimate challenges and NPCs by t GM simply assigning them stat equivilancy. That door might have a high Resolve and Force, but negligible grace and wits (it's a door after all) and it always uses Resolve (because, again, door). That mean breaking it down (force & resolve) is harder than picking the lock (Wits & resolve) but either approach is doable.
Ok, don't take this as cast in stone, but let me illustrate this with a sample system.
If I was inclined to express the stats as dice, I' go with something influenced by the new designs in the Cortex system. Normal/Negiligble is d4, with values going up to d12. Fast and dirty chargen is to give 4 d8s (or d6s, depending) with the rule that you can drop a die one step to increase another die by one step. Minimum d2 (indicating an active problem with the stat), maximum d12.
Combine that with the Baselines from earlier in the week and you quickly get a character sheet that perhaps looks like:
Force: d6
Grace: d10
Resolve: d8
Wits: d8
Scion of Argent: d6
It's still not quite there, but the bones are starting to emerge.
1 - From that point we realized th emechanic could just as easily handle "Drunk" and then we were off to the races
2 - It is genuinely a terrible game, but only in the same way that raw sirloin makes a terrible meal.
3 - There are other elements that enter into this in the actual game, but as an abstract, that will suffice.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
More Not Amber - A Very Special Episode
I dig broad skills, whether freeform (like Over the Edge or Risus), structured (like the forthcoming Leverage RPG) or somewhere in between (like yesterday's still-awkwardly-named baselines). Their benefits are obvious: you cover a lot of territory with very little in the way of rules or text. You get shorter character sheets that are usually easier to read since broad skills are usually written in plain language rather than expressed as arcane combinatiosn of skills, advantages and disadvantages. Plus, they tend to give themselves over to fast character creation. Compare the effort involved in creating a GURPS black op with just writing "Special Forces: 4d" and the benefit is obvious.
But that also speaks a little bit to the flaws of the approach. The most obvious is that you are sacrificing a certain amount of differentiation between characters if everyone on yous special forces squad has the same mechanical representation. This is less of a problem than it looks at first, though, since the creation of similarity usually serves to highlight differences more clearly. To use one of my favorite examples, all of the four musketeers have the common trait "Musketeer" but their differences (expressed in other traits like "Former Churchman," "Disgraced Nobleman" or "Ambitious") are all the more clear as a result.
More subtly, you can have problems with what PDQ calls the "penumbra" of these traits - the scope of actions and activities that fall under their auspices. To use the "Special Forces" example above, that probably covers a number of things, including fighting and sneaking, as well as knowledge of military procedure and protocol. But how does it differ from "Ninja"? There are color differences, certainly, but there is so much penumbra overlap that there's a danger that the color will get overwhelmed. The trick for dealing with that is, of course, to make sure the color stays important - so long as the traits are also suggesting game elements (special forces draws the military into the game, ninja draws in ninja clans, and in both cases the relationships complicate things) then it works out.[1]
The last and perhaps most persistent problem is edge cases. Specific skills that MIGHT fall under the auspices of a trait, but also reasonably might not. For example, can our special forces guy fly a helicopter? It's conceivable, sure, but that's a pretty specialized skill, so it's also perfectly reasonable that he cannot. Making decisions about things like that on the fly can end up hurting a game if the GM has no external yardstick to use to make these decisions.
To solve this, we can breath some life into a very tired old chestnut in game design, specialization. Historically, specialization rules have existed for one reason: to make combat characters more scary, by allowing them to specialize in their weapon of choice, and thus deal disproportionate death upon all who oppose them. This is sufficiently lame that it's tainted the whole idea, but games with broad traits can benefit from the, but not in the usual way.
See, the first thing to do with specializations is to make sure the bonus they provide is small. They might make you a little better, but that bonus should be small enough that any min-maxer worth his salt would turn his nose up at it. And that's good, because the real purpose of the specializations is not to add a bonus, but rather to explicitly say "When the issue comes up, this skill falls under the auspices of this trait".
This becomes even more critical in a game with a fixed set of traits, like Leverage[2] because that introduces a second issue. While some skills (like helicopter piloting) might fall outside any of the roles (Hitter, Hacker, Thief, Grifter & Mastermind) unless explicitly called in, you also have certain skills which could fall under multiple auspices. Take demolitions for example: it could equally reasonably fall under the purview of the hitter (it's military), the hacker (it's gadgetry) or the thief (blowing up safes, duh). The GM may make decisions about which role is appropriate on a case by case basis, but if a player wants to be good at demolitions under all circumstances, then a specialization under his role of choice effectively locks it down. That is to say, if thief is your best trait/role/skill whatever, you might specialize in demolitions under thief, not because it gives you a big bonus (it doesn't) but because it guarantees that when demolitions come up, you'll get to use Thief rather than some other value.
This also ends up giving a spin on some of the other problems, since you can now differentiate between the same trait with specialization without it being terribly abusive. We might all be special Forces (4d), but if the specializations around the table are medic, ECM, artillery and so on, it starts getting a little more G.I. Joe, and that's a good thing. That also speaks back to the cultural baselines from yesterday. This is still a half-idea, but if traits represent a broad culture, specializations can represent subcultures. That is to say, if you used earth as a baseline, a specific nationality might be a specialization, and in doing so would make the crazy Star Trek approach that earth equates to America a little bit less necessary. Yes, that introduces the idea that specialization might also be a limiter, (some cultures may not suggest the ability to drive a car, for example) but I doubt there's any strict need to adhere to that since, almost my definition, we're talking about interesting people. Such limits need be applied sparingly, if at all.
To bring it back around, I'm still very fond of broad traits, but using them definitely requires a firm grasp of their failings as well as their strengths. With the right tools, those failings can be smoothed over, and that in turn allows for a lot of power in very little space, which absolutely supports my particular flavor of GM laziness.
1 - More problematic is the difference between "Soldier" and "Special Forces" because the color difference is much smaller. The trick here is that the descriptors are implying a skill progression, much as if the traits had been "Warrior" and "Awesome Warrior". Since the actual awesomeness is usually in the trait values, this is one of those points that merits a conversation with the player to see if the distinction between their trait and another one is clear to _them_, and if so, have them explain it to you.
2- *Whistles innocently*
But that also speaks a little bit to the flaws of the approach. The most obvious is that you are sacrificing a certain amount of differentiation between characters if everyone on yous special forces squad has the same mechanical representation. This is less of a problem than it looks at first, though, since the creation of similarity usually serves to highlight differences more clearly. To use one of my favorite examples, all of the four musketeers have the common trait "Musketeer" but their differences (expressed in other traits like "Former Churchman," "Disgraced Nobleman" or "Ambitious") are all the more clear as a result.
More subtly, you can have problems with what PDQ calls the "penumbra" of these traits - the scope of actions and activities that fall under their auspices. To use the "Special Forces" example above, that probably covers a number of things, including fighting and sneaking, as well as knowledge of military procedure and protocol. But how does it differ from "Ninja"? There are color differences, certainly, but there is so much penumbra overlap that there's a danger that the color will get overwhelmed. The trick for dealing with that is, of course, to make sure the color stays important - so long as the traits are also suggesting game elements (special forces draws the military into the game, ninja draws in ninja clans, and in both cases the relationships complicate things) then it works out.[1]
The last and perhaps most persistent problem is edge cases. Specific skills that MIGHT fall under the auspices of a trait, but also reasonably might not. For example, can our special forces guy fly a helicopter? It's conceivable, sure, but that's a pretty specialized skill, so it's also perfectly reasonable that he cannot. Making decisions about things like that on the fly can end up hurting a game if the GM has no external yardstick to use to make these decisions.
To solve this, we can breath some life into a very tired old chestnut in game design, specialization. Historically, specialization rules have existed for one reason: to make combat characters more scary, by allowing them to specialize in their weapon of choice, and thus deal disproportionate death upon all who oppose them. This is sufficiently lame that it's tainted the whole idea, but games with broad traits can benefit from the, but not in the usual way.
See, the first thing to do with specializations is to make sure the bonus they provide is small. They might make you a little better, but that bonus should be small enough that any min-maxer worth his salt would turn his nose up at it. And that's good, because the real purpose of the specializations is not to add a bonus, but rather to explicitly say "When the issue comes up, this skill falls under the auspices of this trait".
This becomes even more critical in a game with a fixed set of traits, like Leverage[2] because that introduces a second issue. While some skills (like helicopter piloting) might fall outside any of the roles (Hitter, Hacker, Thief, Grifter & Mastermind) unless explicitly called in, you also have certain skills which could fall under multiple auspices. Take demolitions for example: it could equally reasonably fall under the purview of the hitter (it's military), the hacker (it's gadgetry) or the thief (blowing up safes, duh). The GM may make decisions about which role is appropriate on a case by case basis, but if a player wants to be good at demolitions under all circumstances, then a specialization under his role of choice effectively locks it down. That is to say, if thief is your best trait/role/skill whatever, you might specialize in demolitions under thief, not because it gives you a big bonus (it doesn't) but because it guarantees that when demolitions come up, you'll get to use Thief rather than some other value.
This also ends up giving a spin on some of the other problems, since you can now differentiate between the same trait with specialization without it being terribly abusive. We might all be special Forces (4d), but if the specializations around the table are medic, ECM, artillery and so on, it starts getting a little more G.I. Joe, and that's a good thing. That also speaks back to the cultural baselines from yesterday. This is still a half-idea, but if traits represent a broad culture, specializations can represent subcultures. That is to say, if you used earth as a baseline, a specific nationality might be a specialization, and in doing so would make the crazy Star Trek approach that earth equates to America a little bit less necessary. Yes, that introduces the idea that specialization might also be a limiter, (some cultures may not suggest the ability to drive a car, for example) but I doubt there's any strict need to adhere to that since, almost my definition, we're talking about interesting people. Such limits need be applied sparingly, if at all.
To bring it back around, I'm still very fond of broad traits, but using them definitely requires a firm grasp of their failings as well as their strengths. With the right tools, those failings can be smoothed over, and that in turn allows for a lot of power in very little space, which absolutely supports my particular flavor of GM laziness.
1 - More problematic is the difference between "Soldier" and "Special Forces" because the color difference is much smaller. The trick here is that the descriptors are implying a skill progression, much as if the traits had been "Warrior" and "Awesome Warrior". Since the actual awesomeness is usually in the trait values, this is one of those points that merits a conversation with the player to see if the distinction between their trait and another one is clear to _them_, and if so, have them explain it to you.
2- *Whistles innocently*
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Not Amber: Chargen Baseline
For the not-Amber game in my head (let's call it Argent) i have been pondering the baseline element of character creation. For light systems (and it should be light) one of the most powerful things you can do is establish the baseline for what a character can do, specifically what they can do before they start training or specializing or pursuing other things. As an example, if I wanted to do a modern game with American protagonists, I would assume everyone can drive and read and has some familiarity with American history and culture. If the game was more specialized (college students or soldiers) I might assume basic computer skills or combat training. Establishing that baseline makes the rest of design much easier since you don't need to come up with a skill system to represent each of those things. Instead you just assume basic competency (whatever that happens to be in the system) and make note of exceptions, so if a character is illiterate, you note that, not that everyone else is literate.
In a multi-world (and multi-genre) game like Argent, this gets a bit more interesting. Certainly, you have a local baseline, "Scion of Argent" or whatnot, and it probably covers all the basics of a courtly fantasy upbringing - swordplay, horsemanship, poetry, chess and so on - but that's not the only case. Some characters grew up on other worlds, or have spent enough time in them to go native, and the baseline for such places is likely quite different. A child who has grown up on the neon-lit streets of a cyberpunk city probably knows very little about riding horses and has a very different idea about poetry, but he can also probably drive and operate a computer and a gun.[1]
This is not mechanically hard to represent. The creation of new baselines is a simple enough act of bookkeeping, and even games which don't explicitly call this out mechanically can do it implicitly by simply respecting backgrounds. However, I think it's underutilized for one simple reason - every single one of these new baselines is a powerful bit of worldbuilding.
One of the classic problems in Amber, which I anticipate also being true in Argent, is where the opposition comes from. If you establish a place as the center of the universe and give it maybe one comparable power, you've undercut some of the awesomeness of supporting every reality. In many games, powerful groups or individuals come from the infinite spread of worlds in order to liven up games. The problem is that usually those are born from the GM's mind, and they don't necessarily fit the game as the players envisioned it because they had no way to envision this element.
With that in mind, the GM should look to any new Baselines[2] as the places for this opposition to come from. The laws of drama and metaphysics both favor the idea that places become more important from visitation by scions/princes/whatever, so the trick is to extrapolate a power in shadow that uses that baseline.
A good example of this can be found in a comic I like, Invincible. Among its many features is a world-spanning government organization that deals with serious threats, something akin to S.H.I.E.L.D.. It's role in the setting is interestingly gray, and if a character comes from this sort of setting, that organization might be a great element to bring into the game. They find out about other worlds ("dimensions", as they see it) and their agenda of protection and info/power gathering starts extending on those lines.[3]
The bottom line is that whatever makes that world interesting to the character should also make it interesting to the game as a whole. Sure, it creates the possibility of direct ties to the problem, and that's great, but it doesn't necessitate them. The personal relationship to the problem can take any number of forms.
As a bonus, this can also be turned on its head by GMs who already have ideas they want to bring to bear. All the GM needs to do is write up the baselines for the appropriate world. It won't do anything to necessarily warn them of the coming threat, except perhaps in the broadest of terms, but it puts the idea on the table early, turning it into a point of collaboration, not dictation. And players can always say no, but if the GM wants to sweeten the pot by making his baselines a little bit more appealing, mechanically speaking, well, that's just good fun.
This is also a fuzzy idea, but it's also not unreasonable to tie baselines to powers, especially if they're based on a firm understanding of the underlying concepts. This is equally true if powers are mystical things as it is if they're educational. Computer science is powerful magic if you can apply it to things outside of its normal sphere, for example.[4]
1 - This gets a little more hairy when the new baseline is "better" than the normal one, such as a world of courtly aristocrats AND computers.
2 - Need a better name
3 - It doesn't hurt that Invincible, like most supers, already has the idea of multiple worlds, but the model could work just as well with the NSA.
4 - Curiously, this lens also makes the Merlin chronicles make more sense, if you view it as a means to make ideas from our earth (Computer Science) dangerous to the universe.
In a multi-world (and multi-genre) game like Argent, this gets a bit more interesting. Certainly, you have a local baseline, "Scion of Argent" or whatnot, and it probably covers all the basics of a courtly fantasy upbringing - swordplay, horsemanship, poetry, chess and so on - but that's not the only case. Some characters grew up on other worlds, or have spent enough time in them to go native, and the baseline for such places is likely quite different. A child who has grown up on the neon-lit streets of a cyberpunk city probably knows very little about riding horses and has a very different idea about poetry, but he can also probably drive and operate a computer and a gun.[1]
This is not mechanically hard to represent. The creation of new baselines is a simple enough act of bookkeeping, and even games which don't explicitly call this out mechanically can do it implicitly by simply respecting backgrounds. However, I think it's underutilized for one simple reason - every single one of these new baselines is a powerful bit of worldbuilding.
One of the classic problems in Amber, which I anticipate also being true in Argent, is where the opposition comes from. If you establish a place as the center of the universe and give it maybe one comparable power, you've undercut some of the awesomeness of supporting every reality. In many games, powerful groups or individuals come from the infinite spread of worlds in order to liven up games. The problem is that usually those are born from the GM's mind, and they don't necessarily fit the game as the players envisioned it because they had no way to envision this element.
With that in mind, the GM should look to any new Baselines[2] as the places for this opposition to come from. The laws of drama and metaphysics both favor the idea that places become more important from visitation by scions/princes/whatever, so the trick is to extrapolate a power in shadow that uses that baseline.
A good example of this can be found in a comic I like, Invincible. Among its many features is a world-spanning government organization that deals with serious threats, something akin to S.H.I.E.L.D.. It's role in the setting is interestingly gray, and if a character comes from this sort of setting, that organization might be a great element to bring into the game. They find out about other worlds ("dimensions", as they see it) and their agenda of protection and info/power gathering starts extending on those lines.[3]
The bottom line is that whatever makes that world interesting to the character should also make it interesting to the game as a whole. Sure, it creates the possibility of direct ties to the problem, and that's great, but it doesn't necessitate them. The personal relationship to the problem can take any number of forms.
As a bonus, this can also be turned on its head by GMs who already have ideas they want to bring to bear. All the GM needs to do is write up the baselines for the appropriate world. It won't do anything to necessarily warn them of the coming threat, except perhaps in the broadest of terms, but it puts the idea on the table early, turning it into a point of collaboration, not dictation. And players can always say no, but if the GM wants to sweeten the pot by making his baselines a little bit more appealing, mechanically speaking, well, that's just good fun.
This is also a fuzzy idea, but it's also not unreasonable to tie baselines to powers, especially if they're based on a firm understanding of the underlying concepts. This is equally true if powers are mystical things as it is if they're educational. Computer science is powerful magic if you can apply it to things outside of its normal sphere, for example.[4]
1 - This gets a little more hairy when the new baseline is "better" than the normal one, such as a world of courtly aristocrats AND computers.
2 - Need a better name
3 - It doesn't hurt that Invincible, like most supers, already has the idea of multiple worlds, but the model could work just as well with the NSA.
4 - Curiously, this lens also makes the Merlin chronicles make more sense, if you view it as a means to make ideas from our earth (Computer Science) dangerous to the universe.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Day off
For those of you having a holiday, I hope you enjoy it. For those who are not, you have my sympathy. This was a well timed three day weekend.
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Other Thing
A little while back I talked about the 5 critical decision in making a 4e character: Race, class, style, paragon path and epic destiny. While mostly self explanatory, style kind of is the oddball. It represents the choices within a class that distinguish, say, one fighter from another. The choices that make up style lack the clear mechanical support that the other choices do, and are instead aggregated from various feat, power and equipment choices. This means styles are greatly varied, but it also means that different ideas for style have greatly different levels of support.[1]
I was talking about this at Origins, and about shorthanding 4E, and suggested that chargen really only needed race, class and style, since the other elements came later. The problem was that even as I said it, it sounded flat to me. It was a functional list, but it fell short of what I would really _want_ out of such chargen. Upon some thought, I realized that what i was missing was The Other Thing.
See, race, class, style and those other choices all form a coherent whole. Race and class form a tidy pair, style modifies class and subsequent choices expand that framework. That's great, but it's incomplete. Characters that really pop do not exist purely within those bounds. That extra element they have may be some background, a strong goal, a tangential interest or something else, but whatever it is, it's something which could survive the change of all these other choices. Consider, for example, revenge. If we made Inigo Montoya a Dwarven Sorcerer rather than a human fighter[2], that would change out all the mechanical bits of his character, but the only changes to his quest for revenge would be names and places (and perhaps trappings - his father's masterpiece sword might become a wand).
4e has a few elements that hint at this Other Thing -power source can speak to it, especially for Divine and Primal characters - and there are a few feat families that lean in this direction, but by and large this is not mechanically supported. And that's fine. By and large, this element is one that can be handled without mechanics, since it usually speaks most strongly to how the character is played. There are situations where mechanics might be useful (such as representing connections, privilege or scholarship) but by and large those are areas where 4e is not strong to begin with.
Personally, I like giving The Other Thing some mechanical support, but that's a personal bias. But even if you don't want to, it's still worth calling it out as something of note, if only to confirm its there. Because there's no mechanical element to it, it's easy to make a character without thinking about The Other Thing, and that's a shame.
And with that in mind, I propose that there are not five, but six choices every player must make about a character, and they all deserve equal consideration.
1 - There's a case to be made that class is actually style applied to role, but I think that falls short of the reality. Roles are fuzzy at best, and you can get weird disconnects when you think about things like the Barbarian.
2 - Or rogue, or some as yet undetermined class.
I was talking about this at Origins, and about shorthanding 4E, and suggested that chargen really only needed race, class and style, since the other elements came later. The problem was that even as I said it, it sounded flat to me. It was a functional list, but it fell short of what I would really _want_ out of such chargen. Upon some thought, I realized that what i was missing was The Other Thing.
See, race, class, style and those other choices all form a coherent whole. Race and class form a tidy pair, style modifies class and subsequent choices expand that framework. That's great, but it's incomplete. Characters that really pop do not exist purely within those bounds. That extra element they have may be some background, a strong goal, a tangential interest or something else, but whatever it is, it's something which could survive the change of all these other choices. Consider, for example, revenge. If we made Inigo Montoya a Dwarven Sorcerer rather than a human fighter[2], that would change out all the mechanical bits of his character, but the only changes to his quest for revenge would be names and places (and perhaps trappings - his father's masterpiece sword might become a wand).
4e has a few elements that hint at this Other Thing -power source can speak to it, especially for Divine and Primal characters - and there are a few feat families that lean in this direction, but by and large this is not mechanically supported. And that's fine. By and large, this element is one that can be handled without mechanics, since it usually speaks most strongly to how the character is played. There are situations where mechanics might be useful (such as representing connections, privilege or scholarship) but by and large those are areas where 4e is not strong to begin with.
Personally, I like giving The Other Thing some mechanical support, but that's a personal bias. But even if you don't want to, it's still worth calling it out as something of note, if only to confirm its there. Because there's no mechanical element to it, it's easy to make a character without thinking about The Other Thing, and that's a shame.
And with that in mind, I propose that there are not five, but six choices every player must make about a character, and they all deserve equal consideration.
1 - There's a case to be made that class is actually style applied to role, but I think that falls short of the reality. Roles are fuzzy at best, and you can get weird disconnects when you think about things like the Barbarian.
2 - Or rogue, or some as yet undetermined class.
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