The Artifact RPG

I’m a fan of Doctor Who and if you’ve ever watched the show, you’ll quickly discover that the main characters run away a lot. In the context of the show it’s exciting because it shows that the threat to the main characters are real and there is no simple way to defeat it. Beyond that, just the scenes of them running are thrilling because you know that any false move means doom.

That is really, really hard to do in an RPG. What’s worse is that if I were able to replicate that in my games, they’d be much better. My players often want to run away but doing so is not well supported in games as to how to resolve it (easily anyway) and it seems like they’re just giving up. What’s more, where are they running to? It’s usually just out of the reach of the danger. In the series it’s usually to some shelter, even if it’s a temporary one.

RPGs were spawned from wargames and have had a hard time shaking off their parentage. In a wargame, running is dishonorable. In a story, escaping can be thrilling and is often the most reasonable course of action. In war, a fleeing enemy is at a massive disadvantage and is easily defeated. Most RPGs focus on replicating this because the fact remains that someone with their back turned to you is not easily able to defend themselves.

So how can a chase scene be made thrilling for the players? The new Doctor Who RPG has a solution but it’s not my favorite kind of mechanic. That doesn’t mean it’s not effective though. The game splits actions into phases, movement is the first phase and combat is the last phase. This gives running away a mechanical advantage, it is a safer bet than fighting. The only problem is that I dislike phased turns. In every game I’ve played I’ve ignored phasing out the action. I know that it’s there to encourage certain actions just like it’s being used here to encourage running away but phased turns make each round into multiple rounds making game play much slower. Players can forget which round they’re in and loose focus.

Enough about what I don’t like, let’s look at some options. First off let’s look at what works with running and what doesn’t. If a danger is based on close combat, running makes sense. All you have to do is out distance the danger. This is often only an issue of a meter or two which can be covered in a few seconds. Of course, then the danger might then give chase but then it’s simply an issue of who’s faster. However the PC that decides to run could be given a one turn advantage in distance because their attacker wasn’t planning on them running. I’ll discuss how to do that in a moment though.

If as a GM you want to encourage escape as a viable option, long chases are not your friend. The players have to have some place to run to, someplace within one to three rounds of running. It can be a flimsy shelter but it should give them at least a few turns of protection while they try and think of a plan. This is important to remember because providing a shelter like a door that they can slam behind them or a tree they can get behind is more of a story choice than a mechanical system.

In modern games there is one significant problem with running away. Guns are faster than the players are (unless you’re a speedster in a supers game). This is where we have to get into mechanics because running has to be given a mechanical advantage (a logical one) if it is to be viewed as a viable option by the players. It is a fact though that a moving target is harder to hit than a stationary target. With this in mind, running away but not directly away, can be given a mechanical advantage. If the player’s opponent gives chase, they should be at a further disadvantage to hit because they are no longer a stable gun platform. (Even old tanks couldn’t drive and fire at the same time because they would never hit their target.) This allows the players to gain a significant advantage by running, they are harder to hit and are likely to gain a good amount of ground before their attackers stop firing and give chase.

In an opposed roll system, the PC’s running roll could be used as a difficulty number for the attacker. The faster they run, the harder it is to hit them. In a system that allows a player to dodge attacks, this ability should not be taken away from a running character. This would give two chances for a character to avoid harm, a significant tactical advantage.

How To Encourage Running

Another significant problem that a GM could run into is the fact that most players are now conditioned that they must defeat every opponent they meet. This is a huge problem because with this mindset, running away equals failure.

In order for the players to understand they are allowed to run away, it has to be clearly communicated. Massing more enemies against them will not work. They are used to the idea that they are supposed to take on armies of enemies and will get the wrong signal. One way for them to understand they are not supposed to fight is to give the enemy an off switch. This doesn’t (have to) mean a literal off switch, it is a win condition where the enemies are no longer willing, compelled to or able to fight.

As an example, if the players get a message through to the opposing general, the war will end. In this situation any fighting they do is counterproductive to ending the war. The enemy is effectively turned off as soon as the general gets the message.

In a smaller scope, if the PCs run past the guards and drop the portcullis they’ll be unable to stop them. Giving the players the ability to render their enemies ineffective is the one clear way to encourage them to avoid an enemy and not engage them.

So now we have a goal of turning off the enemy, how do the players accomplish it? To make the game interesting, there should still be a set of obstacles that they must overcome but the solution to those obstacles will often involve running away from danger instead of into it. If the players can see that there are solutions that they can puzzle their way through, they’ll more readily understand where the challenge of the game is coming from. If they start thinking about fighting, remind them of their goal and give them hints about where they can run to.

You’re within a few feet of a solid looking door, and you realize fighting this guy could hurt a lot more down the line. You wonder if you can make it there safely.

In the last six posts I’ve been exploring the concept that maybe dropping all the cool things you’ve learned to do with RPGs on a new player might not work because it overwhelms them.

Simplicity
Choices
Limit Your Player’s Options but Not Your Players
Clear Player Paths
Take Care of Your Pet
Player Goals To Help Them Grow

There are a lot of suggestions and a lot of questions that I still can’t answer. The one that really bothers me is, does having  a new player mixed in with experienced players automatically break this principal because they need to be handled differently? Alternatively is there a way of GMing a game where simple choices are presented that won’t make experienced players think they’re being held back?

In any event, using this idea will require a drastic change in how I GM. I can envision guiding a player through these stages, but as an “experienced” GM I’ll want to make things fun the way that I’ve come to see it and that won’t work for some of my players. It comes down to more handholding and walking newer players through the game even with things that the other players feel are obvious and simple.

The new players go through stages of development. Some may hit a certain point and never advance past it. Here, to the best of my ability are those stages.

New – this would normally apply to children who don’t know how to play a game at all

Simple Choices – board or video game experience, the player understands making basic strategy

Imagining – learning to imagine simple tactical choices and what an imaginary world looks like, miniatures and maps are helpful at this stage

Connection – the player starts to “reward” his character with better tools.

Pet – the character becomes a virtual entity in the players minds, logically they may have needs.

Goals – the player starts thinking of what the character would want and gives them direction without GM involvement.

There are likely substeps in there. I don’t really know if a player can be sped along moving through these steps, but they do seem to be distinct and they have to be crossed like bridges into the next step.

Now, on to the goals. Once players have connected with their characters it’s possible for them to make in game goals that they care about. At first their goals are likely to be entirely mechanical, maybe a new vehicle so they can go faster or for more protection. These will get you started in a game but after a while, the players will run out of items that they’re interested in acquiring. What do you do then?

Most often a GM will introduce a new sourcebook with new goodies. Other times the players goals may take on a new aspect and they start to explore different locations in the game. This can last for a little while as it’s likely to span several games.

People As Motivators

What can be done in addition to that to keep a player interested in the game? Something that I’ve seen few GMs do well, give the PCs allies. I’m not talking fellow adventurers, that would only limit the PC’s effectiveness (more characters trying to do the same job). The allies that the PCs will want are ones that make them more effective. For example, a town that needs protection actively feeds and houses the PCs when they’re in the area so that they will stay longer and protect them if bandits come through. This is usually presented in the wrong direction in games. The town leader approaches the adventurers crying ‘Oh please protect us from the bandits, we’ll pay you X’.

If you want to make protecting the town the player’s goal (as opposed to just getting paid), you approach the situation more subtly. They can take the same approach gas stations and doughnut shops take. By giving police officers free food, the police are more likely to spend their breaks there. If the police are known to hang out at a scene, they are far less likely to be targeted by criminals.

No one says anything to the players overtly. When they come into town, people are friendly if not a little shy. The shop keepers give the players a discount. Some of the young boys ask if they can carry heavy items for the PCs. The innkeeper pulls them to the side and tells them that if they stay out of trouble, they can stay here for free.

The first thing that’s going to do for the players is freak them out completely. They’ll be looking for a downside, some plot to trap them. Don’t give them one. If the players ask the townspeople why they’re being nice to them they’ll come clean. They know that by having adventurers that aren’t causing trouble in the town they’re less likely to be targeted by bandits. You allow this to go on for a while, let the PCs get to know the townsfolk by name. Little touches can be huge here. Have a boy that comes up and tells them stupid jokes for no reason. A widow that comes out and gives them a small amount of food. Eventually, when the players decide they want to help the townspeople, now you have a great motivator. Slowly something is moving in on the town. It’s not the townspeople’s fault, it’s just something that’s happening in the area. Now the players identify the town as their town and nobody better mess with it.

People are one of those motivators that never get old if managed properly. If someone is more trouble than they’re worth, players may move on so it still shouldn’t be abused. The point is to motivate the players with something other than mechanical money rewards. To keep the players from getting frustrated with a villages inability to protect itself, the villagers should be trying to defend themselves periodically with varying degrees of success especially if the players weren’t around.

Thinking Bigger

Another motivator is for the players to think beyond new toys to play with in game. Things like building their own home base, maybe a fortified bunker or even their own fortress. Let them enjoy building it, when you sense that they’re done with their building process, make it the scene of several games where the action takes place within it. Then set a threat to it that would have come anyway so the players can be glad they built up their base.

In some cases I’ve had the players find an abandoned fortress that they adopted as their own. It allowed for interesting games as the players tried to remake the base more to their needs. The more eccentric the original builder the better because this leaves for plenty of exploration.

Mine

When a player lays claim to a certain part of the game world, they become more invested in it. They set it as their goal to keep that part of the game world. There is a balancing act between making their claimed territory enjoyable and making it challenging. A GM should be cautious to allow the players to enjoy their claimed territory more often than it causes them trouble, otherwise they may abandon it and the goal of keeping it. Let the players build something. It could be a physical structure or social ties, it only matters what it is as long as the players are interested in it. You may need to try a few different things and maybe only part of the party will be interested in any one thing so try a variety and let each player pick what interests them.

Not every set of characters has to go down these paths but every player should. My feeling is that the sooner they do, the sooner they’ll learn to set their own goals. Do you agree? Have you used these situations in your games? Did your players grow from the experience?

In the ongoing theme that RPGs are complicated and new players need time to ease into them, I wanted to talk about goals that the players set for their characters. I was again putting the cart before the horse. Setting goals seems like a simple enough concept but it’s not. That idea is premised on the player understanding (at least subconsciously) that their character is a pet. A player character may be the first virtual pet (and then came Tamagotchis).

I don’t know if that makes immediate sense even to a seasoned role player so I’ll explain the concept a bit. When a player first is introduced to role playing, they make a character. To them this character is comparable to a piece on a chess board. They are moved around as the rules say they should be and little else. Unlike a board game piece, the player finds that their character doesn’t always do what they expect it to do. It sometimes does what they want and they are disappointed. Then it does well in a situation and the player is proud of their character. It is at this point that the player begins to think of the character as a pet. Not overtly, but they start to do all the things they would do for a pet. They start to think of it’s needs. They feed it, (if only with gold coins) and they may even put it to bed when it’s tired. Now they start to protect it and wonder if their character has desires. What does my character want?

It is only at this point that a player starts to think in terms of goals for their character. Before this, the game is simply an question of mastering the events that the GM presents. After a player starts to treat their character like a pet, they now can imagine virtual needs and wants beyond what is presented strictly in the rules.

This is not an automatic process. Long time players imagine that it is because it happens under our radar. We are not conscious of it happening and up until recently I wasn’t either.

Not convinced? Have you ever talked with someone that was really into their dog. The ones that make cloths for it and cook it’s food? You know what those conversations are like. Now replace ‘dog’ with ‘character’. Did you start to see it?

Imagine that someone’s cat dies, would you tell them “Hey it’s okay, just get another one”? Tell me if this statement is any different to a role player when their character dies “Hey it’s okay, just roll up another one.”

The important point is, that because it’s not a real living thing, a new player takes time to make the connection to their character. A furry dog or cat is easier because it’s soft and warm. Having a virtual pet is more like having a spider or a snake as a pet, not everyone accepts it as a “good” (or enjoyable) pet. I don’t know if telling them that it’s a virtual pet will speed their progression or turn them off before they intuitively make the connection. I’m hoping that identifying these stages helps a GM to understand what will make a game enjoyable to each player.

Footnote: The Utility of Understanding Characters Are Virtual Pets

I think this is a useful tool for discussing why RPGs are fun. Traditionally when non-players see the devotion that role players attach to their characters it seems strange to them. They don’t ‘get it’. The language isn’t fully there but explaining that a character is like having a pet and there are varying degrees of devotion that pets engender can help explain the situation. Just like a dog or a cat, we interact with this virtual pet and build up a history with it. Some people have lots of pets and they give some attention to each. Others have only one that they cherish for a long time.

What do you think?

One of the things that RPGs do not often do is to identify effective strategies for the players. This may be because different GMs can have differing styles requiring strategies to change. Without clear strategies, the players are left to try and divine what their best course of action is and this is yet another mental load on the player that can dissuade them from playing.

Identifying an effective strategy to the players makes things simpler. They don’t have to worry about being ineffective because they went about things the wrong way. This allows event the casual player to come in sit down, do something cool and go home happy.

There are plenty of players that love to explore strategies, for them having several unstated effective strategies in a game is really going to enhance their enjoyment of the game. For this article though I’m focusing on trying to ease in players that don’t immediately find discovering them enjoyable or may never find them enjoyable.

Simple Strategies For Your Game

So here are some easily understood strategies for players that you might consider having in your games.

Brawn

This is the classic big tough guy. It’s the most easily understood strategy and one of the first ones that beginning players reach for. The question is, is it effective in your game? Should it be? In a game world with medieval knights powered by muscles it should have a large effect. In Sci-Fi settings that’s not the case but a big tough guy might be able to carry more equipment and soak more damage.

Is there an advantage built into your game that takes this into account? In The Artifact, this advantage is there but I have to admit it’s pretty weak. Although that’s not out of place in the setting. Because of that, the fact that brawn is not the most effective strategy needs to be clearly identified.

Speed

Does the ability to move quickly give the character an advantage? Can they avoid danger with speed? This may mean running speed or the reaction time of the character. In higher tech settings, maybe vehicles play a big part in getting characters though dangers.

Is there some built in advantage for speed in the game? This is probably the first effective strategy most players discover when playing The Artifact. Reflex is an important attribute and a fast vehicle comes in very handy in our games. In some situations the players vehicles have been so fast, they were nearly immune to attack. Again, how this works for the player needs to be clearly identified.

Reach

The ability to strike before anyone else can be a large advantage. Is there a built in advantage for this? Can a character build a strategy around being the first to act in most situations? Can they strike while out of reach of danger?

This is one of the core effective strategies for The Artifact. I need to state it more clearly. Every piece of equipment is geared for range vs effectiveness.

Others

There are other strategies that could be made obvious to players. For example, being highly perceptive may allow characters to avoid danger rather than stumble into it. Stealth is another common strategy.

Where are the mechanical advantages when playing the game? Identify them to your players, especially new players so that they don’t have to master the rules to be effective.

Thoughts or suggestions? Comment and let us know.

Expanding on the last two posts, I’ve written about how the limitless choices of an RPG may be too much for most people and as it’s overwhelming to them they never become players.

I have to admit, this is where throwing your players in a labyrinth filled with monsters starts to make a lot of sense from the perspective of the players. There is little choice, right, left or straight. Fight or run. That’s about all the choices and it settles the players into the mechanics of the game. The players get to say ‘Hey my pet character did cool stuff’ and they begin to identify with them. At some point they realize that there might be a more interesting world outside of the labyrinth. It starts off on the trip to buy a nice new sword. They actually start to play out the interaction of buying the sword, then they say ‘Where do we sleep at night? I want to reward my pet character with a nice warm bed to sleep on instead of a blanket on a stone floor.’ They began to realize their character would logically have needs and wants.

That only happens after they’ve run them around like board game pieces for months or years. Long time players assume the thought is natural. If I just tell a new player that their character is like a real person, they’ll understand. Sometimes they do and a new player is born. Most of the time they don’t, it really is too much for the person to grasp. They haven’t formed an emotional connection to a character (most times they haven’t even made a character yet) before they’re told they need to treat them like a real human (or real whatever creature they are).

Now this is a different argument than what I started with the last few days. I have talked about choices and limiting how many choices the players have to make. The thing that allows the players to make choices is having goals. If the goal is a better cleaving tool, then they need money. If they need money, they need to make or find that money somehow. We start throwing players into a much richer world than that and it’s very hard to imagine why the choices in this virtual world matter. We want to speed them along the path that we took but it doesn’t work that way. We’re skipping a thousand steps that we took, probably in our teen years that we forgot about.

So the question is, if they really don’t get the desire to make their own goals just by explaining them, how can they be helped? The answer, for the most part is to learn the way most role players probably learned. Slowly.

Learning slowly, growing slowly

In order to not overwhelm a new player, they need to be eased into making choices. They need to start out with things as simple as left, right, straight, run or fight. You could substitute a direction (up, down or right) or an action (talk or run away) but adding to the choices will quickly overwhelm the new player. In addition to this, the new player must be told what their options are to make it clear there is a limited set.

So how do you know when the new player is ready to take on more? They’ll tell you. When one says “There must be another way of dealing with this guard, I want to try talking to him.” you know they’re ready for more. Not a lot more, but they’re growing.

If one says “I’m going to try using the rope I have to cross this gorge.” they’re growing. Let them introduce the possibilities. Be ready with a way of going around the gorge and give them opportunities to see new possibilities for handling things.

The point is, give them a limited set of choices, make the choices obvious but don’t limit the players to the choices you present. Thus the title of this post limit your player’s (presented) options but not your players (actual options). When they want to expand, when they’re ready to expand, help them do so. In essence there are rails that the players can run on but when they see something they want that’s not on those rails, let them jump off and go get it.

The Apple Strategy

Apple Computer has an interesting strategy with their products. They know that customers think they like choice but in truth they want to know they’re getting a good choice. The best way to make sure of this is to give them only a few choices. Each one is almost the same as the last but cost more and more as you go up the chain. Each step offers a little more functionality and the highest step has a prestige bonus (the white one) so everyone knows you picked the highest step.

This is an excellent model for beginning players. Give them a few options, clearly delineates them as to cost and give the most costly one a prestige bonus (something shiny that proves they did it the hard way). Two options may be a little restrictive but three is usually a good number. Any more than that and the choices start to overwhelm the players. A GM has an advantage that Apple doesn’t. Once a player starts asking for a different choice, he can usually make it available in short order.

The Problem of Mixing

One problem that is perplexing is how to handle a new player who can only handle limited options who is playing with advanced players who are already making goals for themselves. This is a hidden danger because this is exactly the situation where I have seen new players bow out. They don’t understand the complex thinking of the advanced players and feel they never will. The experienced player can actually poison the new player’s desire to play.

More and More

Each time I sit down to write about this, I keep coming up with more that needs to be explained or discussed. I’ll have to let this topic spill into next week.

Anything click with this idea? Anything not work in your experience? let me know in the comments.

RPGs are all about making choices. Players love being given agency and autonomy. This is the core draw of a table top RPG.

It may also be the reason very few people play them.

Continuing the thought from yesterday, letting your players have control of what they will do is the holy grail of good GMing. Give them what they want, let them be awesome, never say no.

This philosophy is poisoning RPGs. How can I say this? You probably have used these mantras and had your games become more enjoyable. They became more enjoyable for you, but what about that guy that tried out sitting in on the game to see if he’d like it and then didn’t come back? He’s the majority. He didn’t enjoy it and we assume he didn’t “get it.” You probably asked him why he didn’t like playing and he probably shrugged, not knowing what to say.

A lot of people see us sitting around the table and think “That’s really nerdy.” Take the same group of people and have them play a board game and people don’t think “nerdy” they think “They’re having fun.” Why?

Let’s decode this language. “Nerdy” means that the people involved are putting in more mental effort into a task than most people would. That means people are looking at people playing RPGs and saying “That’s really hard.” They don’t always want to admit that to you or themselves so they disparage it with “Nerdy”.

So why are RPGs hard? We have one page RPGs, on the level of game complexity and reading they’re simpler than most board games. If keeping track of a fantasy world is too much mental effort, there are plenty of one shot adventures, no memorization required. In all the games, no matter how simple or complex rule wise one thing that makes all of them mentally challenging.

Choice

Choice is great when you know what you want. It lets you get what you’re after. We assume that given choice people will decide on what they want. It would seem the reasonable thing wouldn’t it?

The problem is that people don’t often know what they want to do. In the context of a game, we imagine that throwing out infinite possibilities makes the game more enjoyable, and it does, for a select group of people who know what they want. For the rest of the people in the world, they sit down to a game and want to be entertained. They don’t particularly care how but having to work hard at making choices is not entertainment and they see RPGs as having to work hard.

I now recognize that this is where I’m going wrong with some of my players. I have some that know what they want out of the game. Others, just want to have fun, they’re not personally after a goal. They’ll go after a goal if you set it in front of them and it looks like it’ll be fun getting there. They wouldn’t have picked it for themselves out of the air though.

This isn’t just RPGs, it’s everything. I think this is one place that Apple Computer has really gotten things right. You offer one or two options, if you have an option that costs more (the white one) then people feel really good about themselves for choosing it.

Barry Schwartz wrote a book the Paradox of Choice. Heres a video of him talking about it.

If you don’t want the lead up skip to about 8 min to get to the core ideas.

This is also the biggest difficulty in this. Some players will enjoy the choice, others do not. Choice has to be offered to the players that do want it and the players that want to be guided need to have fewer choices. It’s not a one size fits all proposition and that makes GMing much harder. Tomorrow I’m going to try and come up with some ideas for how to handle players that want choice and players that don’t.

I’ve been mulling over how to get more people interested in RPGs. This isn’t anything new for this blog but I haven’t talked about it in a little bit. So lets get back into it.

Things Like RPGs

Video Game RPGs are common enough and most video gamers wouldn’t hesitate to play one if you plopped one down in front of them. Board games in some ways are like RPGs and are commonly accepted as a family fun kind of game. I was thinking about these two categories of games and mentally comparing them to RPGs.

One of my first theories was that a boardgame is more acceptable to the average person because it is less complex. That sounds pretty compelling when comparing a 200 page book to a board and a three page pamphlet. You might think “Aha! RPGs need to be less complicated and then they will be acceptable.” That however has already been done. There are plenty of one page RPGs out there. If the solution was lowered complexity, we’d be there already.

Then I thought about video game RPGs. Even though they’re called RPGs, they’re usually more “Adventure Game With Some Choice” (AGWSC?) and I think that’s the difference. When you play an video game RPG, some really have very little choice if you want to progress through the game. You have to do what the king or old man wants you to do or you won’t progress. Even MMOs are a series of hand holding steps. They tell the player exactly what their next step is. The player’s enjoyment comes from having the skill to perform those actions using the game controls. In some situations the player is challenged by the strategy or having the dexterity to accomplish the task.

Conclusion?

What if all our fears about giving the players the maximum amount of choice is wrong? What if compelling stories are with the players at the helm are the problem? What if, (and i’ve broached this subject before) if done in the right way Railroading is exactly what new players need to get comfortable. When I think about it, most of my new players, for the first few games are asking “What do I do now?” They’re not used to deciding for themselves. I think about my first games, when I was introduced to RPGs. There was very little choice. I was lead along, guided. Only later did I discover the value of choice.

What do you think? Is this train of thought madness? How were your first games?