MOC Sequel: The Sequel

Last night I ran the second session of the MOC sequel. Totally improv. Players rolled up a Morton's List challenge was very quiet, homey and intellectual - they were supposed to explore artful writing. They, of course, gave this the MOC-gang spin, breaking into a building along the moderate zone / corporate zone divide, and reprogramming the businesses big digital sign so as to make it deliver a 30-foot tall message that would no doubt end in general mayhem and some level of fiscal disaster. And then there was this improvised sideline miniplot about a passing courier and the Solo who jumped him.

3 players (plus GM), with 2 out of 3 playing (someone else's) premade characters from the original campaign back in Albuquerque. Normally, we would have played Scion, but Kevin had a crappy day at work, and needed something short, fast-paced, and carrying no long-term consequences if he just blew off steam, so MOC it was. An hour or two into the game, I'd had the PCs witness a hit/shooting just to reinforce the random violence of the 2020 setting.

Instead they turned it around and visited some random violence on the shooter. Kevin played Jeff(who'd only shown up for one or two sessions of the original)'s old fixer character, "El Gato", and nearly got the cat killed. I rolled minimum damage on the head shot. If he'd been one range category closer (and therefore taken a second die of damage) it would have been "game over" for El Gato. Instead the grenade stayed focused on the NPC solo he picked a fight with.

The Courier's Briefcase: After the PCs kill the Solo, they decide to loot, not just him, but also the bleeding-out Corp courier he'd ambushed. The Corp had a briefcase chained to his wrist, and the Solo had blasted it free. The Corp also had a baggy of chocolate candy in his jacket pocket, which the PCs took as well. They make off with the briefcase, and trying to open it, they set off it's alarm and gas-dispenser defenses. Whatever was inside must be important. They crack it open, and find it just has more bags of the identical candy.

Now, in any other Cyberpunk campaign, the fixer would contact a scientist he knew and have them run a full suite of tests on the candy in the briefcase vs the candy in the jacket. That would be the lead-in to a clever mystery plotline about the dastardly schemes of some corporation making addictive / brainwashing / poisonous / nanite-laced / microfilm-filled candy. But this is MOC we're talking about, so instead, the PCs just pigged out.

"I'm a sub-poverty-level hoodlum. I don't care about corporate corruption, and this is better chocolate than I could ever afford!" How true.

Quoting Mr Dancey

Interesting post from Ryan Dancey at the RPG site from October of 2007. This does a really good job of explaining GN&S theory in positive terms, while simultaneously pointing out the biggest flaw of such theory. I think his point is that GN&S theory identifies three reasons people game, but that only one of them is best satisfied by RPGs. The other two categories (G & S) are best served by other types of games.

in true "Big Model" theory, G, N & S refer to people, not games.

"Gamism" refers to a state of play where competition is the dominant value. Poker is a pure "gamist" game; nobody is narrating or simulating anything. The only thing you do is try to beat other people.

"Simulation" refers to a state of play where the point is to create a simple system to model a complex system, and then explore how that system responds to different kinds of inputs. Sim City is a nearly-pure "simulation" game; you have no opponents, and no victory conditions, and the point of playing the game is to see how many different results you can obtain using the toolset.

"Narrativism" refers to a state of play where the point is to create an interesting story. MOST RPGs strive to be narrativist games. Few have victory conditions. Very few have competition. Most use their rules mechanics to simulate the bare minimum required to facilitate the story, and abstract as much as possible.

Our market research did not find any significant clusters of people in the TRPG player network who expressed strong preferences for "gamist" or "simulationist" RPGs. They are all basically Narrativists. Our 2-axis graph serves to further subdivide the Narrativists, not to separate Narrativists from other kinds of gamers, or other kinds of game experiences.

Ryan, of course, has worked for Wizards of the Coast (and a few other gaming companies). The market research he references is no doubt the most widely sweeping and most thorough such research that has ever been done in the industry.

Personally, I think GN&S is really interesting and illuminating, as long as you take it with following grain of salt: Most gamers fall into all three categories to one degree or another.

Cyberpunk 2020 Resources

Cool site to check out - or rather a map to cool sites to check out if you like Cyberpunk 2020:
http://top100.cyberpunk.co.uk/index.php

Also of note (for setting inspiration, but not RPG mechical info) Reactable musical "instrument" and Capsule Inn aka "Sleep Coffins". I love the internet.

Spotlights and Me-Too-ism

From the comments of another post:

Me: "In the past couple years I've learned that me-too-ism bugs me..."
(bla bla paradigm shift bla, roughly a paraphrase of this post from December where I say I only let one person roll and everyone else assists)

SiderisAnon: "I think they'd be disappointed with the idea that all they get to do is help on something. With some people, the idea of being the one who rolls high is important, and I think they'd be disappointed with the idea that all they get to do is help on something."

I agree. However, that disappointment is a minor one. Further, it's one gamers face every time someone else is in the spotlight:

• Another player is interacting with the NPC: I'm disappointed.
• Someone else is making their attack roll: I'm disappointed.
• The cleric is casting curative spells: Unless they're casting it on me, I'm disappointed.
  
• The GM is talking, and I have to quietly listen: I'm a tiny bit disappointed.

It happens all the time, so it's not a huge deal and people get used to it. If they've been gaming for over a year, they've probably already learned to deal with it.

Weigh that against the opposing disappointment: You created a character who was good at basket weaving*. You maxed your basket-weaving skill. We're fifteen sessions into the campaign, and basket-weaving has never come up. Tonight, though, Lucifer has challenged the party to a basket-weaving contest. If the party wins, the party gets a +5 golden basket, if Satan wins, the PC of his choice dies. In the real world, the party would have it's best basket-weaver tackle it, possibly with one or two assistants. In gaming, it's generally best for everyone to roll - especially in systems with a large random element. So all the players roll, and you get a critical failure, whereas someone else in the group gets a critical success. The party just won - you should be happy - but are you?

Every time I've seen something even remotely like this happen, the player who built his character to basket-weave has instead gotten all quiet and sullen**. In one case, a player told me she felt like she was being teased for her odd but flavorful skill choice (because somebody who didn't spend 20% of their skill points on goofy basket-weaving out performed them), when the truth is the GM (me) tried to give her a cool little chance to shine and make her basketry matter.

Clearly, their disappointment (of having lost the one/rare oddball spotlight that they spent precious resources on) is a deeper one than the general regular disappointment of "it's someone else's moment in the spotlight".

As an alternative, if you give everyone a die roll to boost the main persons action, they'll be happier with this. Here's suggestions for two games I know Siderisanon plays:

• For Scion, I let every helper roll two dice (the book says one) to assist (as in, to add to the main roll that a single player makes). Lately, I've been thinking of making it dice equal to Legend, or dice equal to dots in the relevant Epic. Two dice worked great at Hero level, but it's a bit underwhelming for Demigods. That of course, assumes the assistant has the skill - if they don't, they can boost it by only a single die.
  
• D&D already requires a skill check or attack roll vs DC/AC 10 to give +2. If that's not enough of a sense of participation (and it might not be at high levels where the DC 10 is a gimme), you could let them add +1d4 instead of +2. At epic levels, you could probably do +1d6 without it impacting balance too adversely.

* = This doesn't require something as kooky as basket-weaving skills. It could be your character is really good (on paper) at lifting heavy objects, or conducting occult rituals, spotting traps, brewing potions, surfing the net, administering first aid, etc. The reaction can happen from anything, though it's more true the goofier and less common the skill or specialty involved. Deep down inside, you always knew you were sacrificing character effectiveness to indulge in some flavorful sideline that distinguishes your characters personality. You put points into basket-weaving that could have been put in to sword-smithing or even sword-swinging. To have the best sword-swinger of the group rub it in your face by out-weaving you is just plain sad.

** = Most of this post I've been talking from a third-person "omniscient GM" point-of-view saying "I've seen players get all upset", but clearly it's also a personal issue for me as a player. While I have seen players get upset, I never knew how deeply it bugged them till the exact same thing happened to me - for an entire campaign. That's when this became a big issue for me.

How often do you House-Rule?

To all GMs reading this: How often do you implement house-rules, and to what extent?
Those are the questions, and I'd appreciate answers in the form of comments to this post.

I ask because of the thread on the Scion forums about house-rules. Ginormous lists of house-rules from several of the sharpest frequent posters. I had been feeling bad about all the house-rules I've been implementing. Now I know that I'm not alone, at least in regards to that RPG.

Please share with me how often you house-rule, to what extent you do so. Also, do you house-rule as the game progresses in response to issues that come up, or do you pro-actively analyze a system pre-campaign and hunt for things you'll have to change?

Today's Challenge = Decisions

Today, I wrote up a nine-part exploration of challenges in RPGs, and specific mechanics that challenge the players to make decisions that alter the course of the campaign. Parts one through three should be of interest to all GMs, and the parts thereafter address particular game systems.

Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Why challenge is important to RPGs, and why challenge has little to do with high target numbers.

Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Defines the difference between flavorful decisions and mechanical decisions. The nature of challenge lies mostly in hard decisions.

Part Three: Documenting and defining 5 issues that often mar otherwise brilliant resource-decision systems in RPGs.

Parts Four through Nine: Specific examinations of resource decision systems in a variety of RPGs. Luck Points in Cyberpunk 2020, Action Points in d20 Modern, Spell-slots in D&D, Drama Dice in 7th Sea, Graces in Continuum, and Virtues, Deeds, Legend and Willpower in Scion

resource decisions in Scion

Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.

Scion has multiple types of resource-boosts, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I really like this multilayered approach that Scion takes to PC mechanical resources, though I have house-ruled a bit to smooth out issue 5. What I'd really like to see is this multilayered method applied to a game system that wasn't so damn fiddly.

Virtues have issue 2 and 5 - for most characters it's better to take the automatic success granted by a Willpower expenditure instead. Also, the successes granted by Virtues are huge at the Hero level, but fairly minimal at God levels.

Legendary ReRolls smack into issue 2 in the early campaign, and issue 4 in the late campaign. A mere Hero-level PC can rarely afford the reroll, but stands to reap great rewards from it when they do. A God-level PC has the resources to spend a legend point to reroll every failure, but finds them to rarely mean the difference between loss and victory.

Legendary Deeds, on the other hand, only trip over issue 5, being a pain in the butt to track between sessions. They scale in power as the character grows, so as to not have the long-term potency issues that the other Scion resources face. Overall, Legendary Deeds are my absolute favorite resource-decision from games I've played or run.

Graces in Continuum

Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.

Graces in Continuum mimic resource decisions, but don't really count. Either you're doing your part to support the Continuum (and thus have +10% on all rolls) or you're a screw-up. It's like a resource perpetually plagued by issue 4. On the other hand, it falls victim to issue 5 if you piss off the wrong NPC or get fragged too far.

If I ever run a Continuum game again, I suspect I'll house-rule in some way to make Graces a challenge-raising resource-decision mechanic. Not sure exactly what the details will be yet, but it's cooking on the back burner.

Drama Dice in 7th Sea

Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.

Drama Dice in 7th Sea have problem 3. Specifically, the best option was almost always to save the Drama Dice for the extra XP. As a player, it quickly became clear that it was only worth spending them on die rolls if someone's life rested on this one roll.

The GM could easily create situations that you could only solve by spending Drama Dice, and that lead to players feeling robbed of advancement points. Few things suck like blowing the big roll, and then contemplating that the three extra "ones" you rolled could have been +50% XP for the session if you'd held on to them.

The solution I implemented to this was to allow each Drama Die spent to give 1 XP that could only be used for the skill or attribute which you rolled as you spent it. That way, there was a small benefit to hoarding your drama dice (since you could spend their XP on anything that night) but you'd have no regrets when rolling a drama die on a knack that wasn't maxed out. Knacks that were maxed out rarely required drama dice to be successful.

Spell-Slots in D&D

Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.

Spell Slots in D&D add a lot of mechanical weightiness to the system, making the game very complicated. However, in the process, this largely avoids most issues. All but the weakest spells avoid problem 1. Only "save or die" spells really run afoul of problem 2. The only real resource-decision issue for the classic "Vancian" spell-system of D&D is problem #3: some spells are clearly the best option at their level.

A clever party can avoid issue 5 by resting often. Issue 4 only comes up if the PCs make camp after every encounter, which can be solved by a GM merely creating quests that have deadlines.

While individual spells could use a tweaking, the system as a whole has a certain (slightly complicated) charm. Rumor is things will be revised heavily in 4th Ed.