Brainstorming about Observation checks

Someone over at the Warhammer Forums was having a problem with Observation checks for clue-hunting in a published scenario. A PC searched a location that had a hidden object, and the adventure called for an Observation check vs 3 Purple dice. The PC failed the roll, and suddenly the rest of the party wanted to dog-pile on it... despite there being no in-character reason for the PCs to suddenly find that particular bookcase interesting. Success rates in Warhammer are generally high, so 3 or 4 players all making the same roll is pretty much a guaranteed eventual success no matter the difficulty.

That GM wanted advice or options, and I gave them 12 possibilities. Cross-posted here:

1. Only allow one check per location or clue, ever. Let the PC with the best Observation check roll it, and all others in the room add white dice for assisting. If they ask to check there again, explain that the consequence of failure was that their characters are now convinced there's nothing there. Just like how failing a Charm roll might actually upset the NPC you wanted to charm. Or like how failing an attack roll means the foe gets to counterattack before your next action.  Or how a failed Athletics check leaves you at the bottom of a ravine with several wounds. Failed checks have meaningful consequences.
2. Only allow one check per day or per act. This is the less extreme version of the above method. You're temporarily convinced there's nothing there,  but you can come back later with a fresh perspective after thinking about it for a while.
3. Allow additional attempts on the spot, but make each subsequent roll have escalating difficulty.  Ever have that experience of looking for your lost keys and you search the same room again and again only to eventually find it in plain sight somewhere you just could not think to look at? So frustrating, right? You can simulate that by adding +1 purple per check that preceded it. Eventually the banes and chaos stars will start to look daunting.
4. Allow the rolls, but award Stress and/or Party Tension for each one after the first. "I all ready looked over there, Johann, I'm tellin' you it's not there!"
5. Make each subsequent search take longer, or make more noise. Eventually an NPC will hear them or walk in on them. Can be combined with methods #3 or #4.  These are great bane and chaos star consequences, for example.
6. Make your rolls per room instead of per sub-location within the room. The scenario says there's a 3-die test for checking the shelves. Don't roll when they check the shelves, roll when they check the room in general. Difficulty is 4 dice if they don't go into detail, reduced to 3 dice (or even 3 purple plus 1 white) if they specifically mention the shelf. EDIT for context: The original forum post had this extra complication that the scenario notes called for a roll only if the PCs examined the shelves.  I originally didn't mention it here, as it's mostly beside the point.
7. Use the die roll only if the PCs search the room but fail to mention the specific part of the room the clue is in. If they specifically check the shelf, they automatically find the thing that's hidden there. If they just toss the room, they roll the 3-dice.
8. Reduce all search difficulties everywhere to some standard number you're okay with, probably 1 or 2 purple. Use that same difficulty whether the hidden thing is plot-critical, trivial, or completely nonexistent. It's a bonus to the GM in that the PCs can't metagame the difficulties, but also a bonus to the PCs in that the hardest difficulties have been reduced. Everybody wins.
9. Make all searches have a difficulty of exactly 1 purple, but with a variable (hidden) number of successes needed to reveal the clue. Similar to the mechanics the game uses for First Aid checks, and the recovery rolls from Diseases/Insanities/Criticals. The 1 purple is so there's a chance of stress or location-specific consequences. If the scenario notes call for a 3-difficulty die roll, translate that to mean they need a net of 3 successes to actually find the clue. Tell the players that this is the way you're handling it from now on, but never tell them the actual number of successes needed to find a specific clue in a specific place.
10. Base the difficulties on who hid it, not how well they hid it. An NPC who's very careful and secretive sets a 3 or 4 die search die difficulty on his bedroom and office even if there's nothing there. Let the PCs know that's how it's going to work. They still get metagamy info, but it's more about the personality of the NPC instead of revealing "the clue is on this shelf somewhere". It's worth noting that "NPC is private and detail-oriented" does not mean "NPC is hiding an evil secret" but either could result in high purples on the search.
11. Take the approach that the Gumshoe RPGs use: Clues are meant to be discovered, they exist to advance the plot. Make clue discovery automatic if the player's search the right places. No rolls at all. Fast and simple, and it favors the players so most of them won't complain. One small problem is that Intelligence and Observation are slightly devalued this way, so it might not be an ideal method if a PC has invested heavily in those stats. (As those with low Int + Obs will steal scenes that would otherwise be his spotlight moments.)
12. Make clue discovery automatic so the plot doesn't stall out, but still roll the normal number of dice just for the bane & chaos-star results. If you technically failed the roll, you still get the clues, but it means you've left evidence of your tampering that the villain will later notice. This keeps the plot from stalling out (which can often happen if the PCs miss a vital clue) but it still rewards players for investing in Intelligence and Observation. 

To that, I could have easily added a 13th option: "Ditch those players and find yourself some new players that can keep out-of-character knowledge compartmentalized for the sake of the game." I decided to keep that one off the forums, since it's a little incendiary.

Personally, I've been using method #1 in my campaign. Reflecting on it this morning, I'm now inclined to use methods #9 and/or #12 in conjunction with it.

compliance with stupid laws

White Wolf has posted new rules for fan sites.

As such, in order to keep posting content here about my Scion campaign, I'll need to provide a link to White Wolf, and some basic legal text...

Copyright White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

© [year] CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. White Wolf and Scion are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. Scion, Exalted, Vampire: The Masquerade and World of Darkness are trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP hf.

Overall, I'm none to happy about this development. Since I blog about a lot of RPGs, not ALL characters "herein" are copyrighted by CCP hf. Obviously, any vampires, demigods, or the like probably are. But trying to clarify what is and isn't is going to be a big pain in the ass. Even when I'm talking about Scion, it's not like White Wolf has an exclusive copyright on Thor, Zeus, and Tlazteotl, since all 3 are drawn from mythology and tradition that's at least several hundred years old. Certainly, white wolf has it's own unique flavorful take on those three characters, and some portion of it has and will influence my own thinking about them. So, yes, within the confines of Scion any reference to them is within the domain of white wolf's copyright. But if I were to blog about how I used Thor in my heavily mythological alien-grey film noir detective game "The Case Of The Stolen Thunder" that I ran more than a year before Scion released, his depiction would therein would have had nothing to do with White Wolf and owed rather more credit to Douglas Adams than to White Wolf. There's some grey areas (pardon the pun) there that the required legal text isn't flexible enough to parse.

I think this policy is a bad mistake on White Wolf's part, and a dangerous route for game companies to travel down. It's just going to generate ill-will amongst the players and fans, and reduce the number of fan sites out there, which in turn reduces the quality of gaming. Unlike the OGL, this legal notice doesn't let someone sell unofficial books of their own design. Instead, it just requires that if you want to blog "Man, I had so much fun playing in my Scion campaign last night" you have to include a copyright statement.

Personally, that seems unreasonable, yet White Wolf's site implies heavily that their lawyers will be contacting you if you make even passing mention of their products and fail to comply with this legal directive. Why spend the money on getting a lawyer to draft you a fan site policy if you weren't planning on suing someone. Man, this sucks.

By their very nature, RPGs are intended to be creative inspiration. They are not like a novel that you can be expected to "just" read - the rule book is intended to provoke you to tell your own stories. Overall, the regulation of fan sites flies in the face of that. Chances are, Larry Lessig or the ACLU could win a case against this, if either felt so inclined. Such a lawsuit, however, would probably be largely detrimental to the roleplaying hobby, so I hope it never happens.

I wish to maintain a friendly relationship with the industry which provides my primary means of entertainment, so I will comply with White Wolf's request, even though it strikes me as ridiculous that they requested it in the first place.

In an ideal world, White Wolf would drop this nonsense, and no other game companies would try anything like this again. But this is not a reasonable world, and as such we should expect the internet to become even more tightly constrained in future years. It, like so many other elements of our society, is rushing to a bottleneck that will result in Fascism, Revolution, or one proceeding the other.

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?

MOCking one's self

"Ears" Petrov was the CP2020 character of mine that Jeremy mentioned at his blog. To Quote Jeremy:

"Rolfe's character has less social skills than the fence, no real combat skills to speak of, and didn't otherwise stand out in the crowd."

The following will be as painful to write as that was to read, but I'm pretty sure it will be cathartic.

My concept was actually quite the opposite of how it played out. His back story was that "Ears" Petrov was the guitarist of a band called "Eyes, Ears, Nose and Throat," which had a number one hit as recently as a year ago and then broke up suddenly when the lead singer went cyberpsycho and killed the drummer. He had failed to invest in his brief flash-in-the-pan, and was now slumming it while trying to figure out how to make a name for himself again. The other band members had been the ones with ambition - he had oodles of talent but no taste for marketing.

This could be seen as an obvious parallel to my situation in regards to the gaming industry - I'd been a bit of a force for the last six months to a year before Wargames West Distribution suddenly went out of business (due to emotional complexities on the part of owner), and then I vanished completely. My work was emulated (and in at least one case plagiarized) by other Distributors, but my name was no longer associated with it. Despite having been really good at marketing games, I was a total flop at marketing my own talents once that Industry Giant fell off it's beanstalk.

The dice then conspired with Rob and Sarah to completely hammer this metaphor home.

My character, Ears Petrov, was intended to be the face man, since no one else had any such desire during the big character-creation session. I was a Rockerboy with totals of (attribute + skill) of 16 to 18 on Charismatic Leadership, Wardrobe & Style, Social, Perform, and Human Perception. I could solve most difficult tasks in that niche by rolling a 3.

Sarah, as GM, felt it was important Charismatic Leadership (exclusive to Rockerboyz) not replace skills such as Leadership, Oratory, or Streetwise. Sadly, she told me this several sessions after character creation. I ended up rolling Charismatic Leadership once in the entire campaign. She also favored Persuasion / Fast Talk over Social, and favored rolls of Personal Grooming over Wardrobe & Style. This all cut into my character's effectiveness. Sarah had yet to establish her style as a GM, and her self-confidence was lacking, as such I wouldn't question her judgment or rules calls, not even in private.

Rob, missing the first session and character creation, asked what roles we had, and then built a fixer. Having never played cyberpunk before, I thought fixer was some sort of techie, so I didn't speak up about already being the faceman. Via cyberware and a more efficient distribution of points (stemming from years more experience at CP2020 in high-school campaigns where point-weaseling was encouraged) had totals of over 20 in Human Perception and Persuasion / Fast Talk. To further strip me of my spotlight, every time we both rolled for either of these skills, his die would be a 9 or 10, and I rolled far more than my fair share of 1's.

Despite the fact that I'd known and gamed with Rob for 5 years and never known him to be at all dishonest, I started getting irrationally paranoid. Eventually I started asking Sarah after sessions "did you see any of his dice rolls tonight, or just hear totals after modifiers?" which didn't help the situation at all. My being so accusatory of her high-school chum was rude, even if it was behind the scenes. I was pissing off my wife and GM, by repeatedly making an ass of myself out of jealousy over Rob's dice karma. Sorry. Had I just asked to revise my character to match the skills she found pertinent to social interactions, she probably would have said yes.

I feared the dice, and tried to avoid rolling them. This was doubly true for things my character should have been good at. After about 4 or 5 sessions of that, I was so fed up with it, I just changed my character concept to match my die-rolls. It was easier for me to play a burned-out loser than to get yet another critical failure on a skill I was practically maxed out on. I started cracking jokes about how bad his band was, and how he was nothing now that Eyes and Throat were dead. When Sarah asked me to make some item cards for cool low-value stuff we could find as random loot, I presented her with the card on the right.

I even badgered an NPC to shoot me with my own gun at one point. Everybody was shocked, so since it was my gun I claimed OOC that I knew what I was doing and the math of it guaranteed she couldn't hurt me. This was a lie - a critical hit on a head-shot would have meant a new character and a great tale about fateful last words. Yet despite all this, I really loved that game. I am a truly complicated individual.

preventing Me Too -ism

One of my pet peeves in RPGing is systems that encourage "me too"-ism. In other words, systems that encourage everyone rolling for the same thing, one at a time. Specifically in situations where it was one player's idea to do *action* and they have the best die pool for it, yet when they fail everybody else grabs dice and tries it, too, hoping dumb luck and law of averages will succeed where character creation failed.

The classic example is heavy lifting by means of a strength-check. Hercules and Einstein are standing see their escape route is blocked by a massive boulder. Hercules tries to roll it out of the way. He botches the roll, and fails. Einstein's player says "I'll try!" and rolls a critical success. (In D&D it's Herc gets a 1, and Einie gets a 20, but most dice systems have their own version of this disaster.) While on the surface both players are happy because they're escape route is clear, the truth is that Hercules' player is secretly resentful. He built a character designed to do this sort of brutishly heroic stuff, but he just got upstaged by a another character whose very concept stands at odds to this.

A good GM can reduce that pain - in this case, I'd narrate that Einstein didn't just push, he used physics and leverage to figure out the way to apply the least amount of force for the greatest payoff. While Herc was pushing the first time, Einstein was running equations and figuring the center of gravity of the object. But that kind of narrative smoothing-over doesn't always work, and often comes to mind 10 minutes after the point where you needed it.

So the first house rule I implement in any campaign is to take the existing cooperation or "aide another" bonuses of a game and double them, even if that stretches credibility slightly. The goal I'm aiming for is to make player's reactions be "can I help him?" instead of "can I upstage him?".

I've even been known to tell players "I'm sorry. You can't roll. We all know he's at least twice as strong as you, so you fail automatically." I don't like doing it that way: it's heavy-handed and manipulative. But generally speaking, I don't want the game to ground to a halt while everybody tries (in sequence) for a 1-in-a-million roll that lets them do the impossible at the expense of the one PC that was built to be in the spotlight this moment.