Category Archives: Experimental Mechanics

I was reading something I wrote a few years back and pulled a thought out. I’ve been thinking about reducing the kinds of actions a player character starts out with to make games less complicated for beginning players. That turns out to be a complicated thing to accomplish. I realized while reading, that maybe it’s not the specific actions that need to be narrowed down, maybe it’s the goals.

My thought is that a character in this hypothetical game would have to go through a right of passage that is their first goal. Once the character has accomplished this goal, they are more free to move in a direction they make up for themselves.

In simple terms, lets imagine that this right of passage is hunting your first bull elk. Imagine a society that requires you to take down the elk to make their weapons from, to pay back their family in food and hide. Now the child is no longer bound to their parents and can go out on their own.

I don’t have much interest in making that game, but it serves as an example of what the first goal could look like.

Why do I feel this is important? I am frequently asked “How do you win?” A question I usually make up some long and complicated answer to. If the answer was the first right of passage of a society, then the game becomes more concrete.

Now imagine a string of societal goals that a character can go after, each which give a character specific rights in the society. The goals of the players are defined and the reasons they go after them have to be clear too.

I have heard of a game that does this explicitly. The players have to first gain a title that allows them to move up in society. I don’t think it helped in the game’s adoption, but that may just be an anomaly. Maybe it means that the thought is garbage.

It could be said that in a lot of games, the first goal is to amass wealth to become a formidable opponent. The point where the PC has reached this point is fuzzy though and makes it hard for an early player to know when they’ve arrived at their goal.

I really like tech challenges. I’ve had a lot of interesting things happen in games because of them. That’s mainly because I read the “tech” not as “technology”, but as “technical.” The difference is significant.

That’s the first change, they should be Technical Challenges, so their use is better understood. What does this do? For example, I’ve used Technical Challenges when a character was picking a lock. A player decided to try and help by using their vehicle’s enhanced sensor system to scan the lock and understand how it worked. The result was an interesting story, that the players still tell. I’ve also used Technical Challenges in a diplomatic negotiation, where the characters needed to use cultural information to decipher a person’s responses.

The official process in the book is too complicated though and the “transforms” (hereafter called consequences) don’t feel right. The rules call for new skills that players want to use, be tested via a three step process. It’s too cumbersome, but it does allow for novel solutions that the GM might not have otherwise allowed.

I see rules as an arbiter between the players and the GM, something like laws that apply to police. The rules give the players power to do things they may not have felt like they were allowed to do. The problem with this strategy is if the player never digs deep into the rules, they don’t know they have this structure available. They want to get to the point and start knocking down the problem. That makes the whole structure pointless, the GM can try to enforce it but at that point the rules are just in the way.

One solution would be for the GM to pick a set of skills that could be used to attack a technical challenge and to be open to reasonable suggestions by players, especially if they have a way the skill could apply to the challenge. I do want some mechanism for players to challenge a GM veto, because I feel that there are often unusual solutions to problems that people feel could never work, just because they’ve never seen it.

Usually at the table the situation goes like this. I’ll state a suggested skill that will be effective in taking down the challenge. One of the players will look at their sheet and not have that skill. They may allow the characters with the skill to start rolling, but either if the others are failing rolls or if they just feel bored, they’ll ask if they can use one of their skills to help. In most cases, the angle they’re trying to use the skill in is unusual but often interesting.

Let’s split the difference. Since these unusual skill applications shouldn’t solve the problem all by themselves, for example, using sensors to pick a lock, the characters can use an unusual skill only after one of the primary skills has been successful. Each time an unusual skill is used, another successful primary skill roll is needed before they can try again. Primary skills can be used repeatedly. If the GM feels the skill is unsuitable, they should allow the roll, but the consequences should be greater (possibly double or more) than a primary skill roll. This deincentivizes the use of random skills, but wouldn’t leave the characters in the lurch if for some reason no one was able to use the primary skills.

On to the issue of Consequences. Technical Challenges are set up so that the challenge responds to the character’s efforts to solve the problem. If every combat was solved by “I hit it with my sword” then combat would be quite boring. Consequences are there to keep the problem changing and keep it interesting. The problem is, I don’t think that many changes are needed. In play, I rarely impose as many consequences as are called for mainly because they slow down play. Even with failures, I don’t always use a consequence, because it doesn’t always make sense to.

Consequences are important though, because the challenge is the opposition. If it just sits there and doesn’t change, it’s boring. So let’s make this simple. The main consequence of a failed roll is that the character takes a stress point. But each turn, the GM can roll for or impose a consequence that makes sense. Here, the challenge is behaving more like a monster does, that it gets a way to fight back but on it’s own turn so to speak. This way the players can all work on the problem quickly and then the GM can apply the consequence.

I think those changes would streamline the system significantly.

I would have to figure out how to work the technical challenges in the Players Handbook for crafting equipment though. In each of those cases, the rolls are much more concrete because the consequences are very specific to the tasks. The new way of running the challenge would make designing equipment far easier in a group. That makes sense, but a large group would be overly effective. I’d have to restructure the number of challenge points. It would  remove the need for two consequence tables, making the results more standard. It would be difficult to model a whole nation (like the Scimrahn) designing a vehicle. In short, I can’t recommend using this simplified system for that yet.

Last post I wrote about trying to simplify the Survival Challenge system for groups. To expand on that thought, I feel like the system works just fine for one character and conceptually it works for a group, but tracking challenge points individually for each character is a pain. The other issue I have with the system is, while there is a way for characters to help each other, it’s not simple.

The easiest way to simplify the process is to handle the challenge points as a group. The problem is, to a simulationist (me) that doesn’t make sense. It could make some sense, since lowering the challenge as a group could signify the characters helping each other through the difficulty. The problem is, that in some situations like surviving a dessert trek, more people make the challenge harder.

The solution could lie in scaling certain challenges, like climbing a cliff, according to how many characters are going to take on the challenge. Even that solution is messy however. For one, the group could decide that only the good climbers in the group are going to attempt the climb and the rest will stay behind.

There is one other issue with the system. That is, tracking when certain events happen in the challenge

Now, midstream, the GM has to change the number of challenge points to match. That’s just annoying. The other problem is that the character’s strategy may be to have one character run through the challenge quickly while the others work through the challenge more slowly. Then the one pool system really doesn’t work.

The solution could lie in flipping the math. It’s mentally easier and possibly more enjoyable to have the players build up to the total number of challenge points. The players track their own progress, and because it’s a build up, the process is more interesting. It would also make sharing progress easier. If each player has a number of points built up, it’s easier to redistribute points among the player characters.

It would also make sense to track this kind of progress with a spin down d20, or in this case, a spin up d20. This would make the progress evident for each character. The players can distribute their points among themselves as they see fit.

The other advantage to this is, it’s easier to know when each character gets to each stage of a challenge. The GM can mark down at what stage each stage occurs.

One more thing

It came to my attention that at each stage of a challenge, the player should get a choice of two different “attacks” the environment can make. I think that would introduce more player agency and introduce choice.

Survival challenges are reasonably concrete in how they work. The part that is a little fuzzy is tracking the challenge with multiple players. It just feels like the group should all fight the challenge together instead of individually. It would make Challenge Point tracking simpler but would loose a bit of it’s realism. For instance, if I’m a really good climber and cut through the challenge points easily, another character who’s physically incapable of climbing also overcomes the challenge. That is, unless I can come up with justifying everyone decreasing the same pool of points. I think that’s the big change I’d like to figure out.

Tech Challenges are a different story. They’re completely not concrete and that makes them difficult to handle. A GM has to go through multiple steps just to have the player’s roll once. There’s  a whole series of steps that determine if a skill can be used.

I’ve come to use the tech challenges in a bit more cut and dry way. I set a number of points and judge if a skill is usable, usually if a plausible explanation is given for how it’s used. I don’t use a lot of transforms either but that’s kind of guts the system’s consequences.

I think a simpler system needs to be in place. The GM should pick from a small set (2-3) of skills that are approved to overcome the challenge and select a few transforms (transforms are the consequences of the character’s rolls) from a list. They can either roll or choose the transforms.

Come to think of it, transforms should just be called “Consequences” to make the process more concrete.

I’m not sure how the consequences should happen though, at the moment, they are a reaction to the roll the player makes. That doesn’t seem organic to play though. It should be that the GM gets to make an “attack” that alters the challenge. The problem with that is, the attacks are going to feel directed by the GM instead of a natural process of the character learning about a problem.

I think the key there is to structure the consequence as character learning instead of a series of random events determined by dice. I’ll try and write that up later.

From the very start, I wanted sensors to play a big role in vehicle combat on The Artifact. For the most part, that hasn’t worked out. With the third edition I tried to introduce “sensor locks” into the game. This required sensor rolls in order to start using vehicle based weapons. This is plainly the wrong approach.

I was juggling a lot of elements when putting out the third edition, but this plainly breaks many game design criteria that I set for other systems in the game. Primarily that any additional rolls should reward a player when they succeed, not penalize them when they fail. If a character can’t start firing until they pass a sensor roll, that’s plainly penalizing them.

Try Different

The sensor systems of a vehicle should make them more capable than a person handling a weapon manually, not be an impediment. My thought is, how does a “sensor lock” work in movies? It means that the sensors make for an automatic hit unless a heroic effort is made to evade.

That means that getting a sensor lock guarantees a basic hit. That’s simple for the Fraction Column system, a sensor lock gives a single success each turn the lock stays in place. This means the vehicle will at least hit it’s target as long as the target doesn’t dodge, or use their ECMs to break the sensor lock.

A pilot can still roll to hit with their Artillery Operation skill and improve the number of successes the attack has. This means that doing things like avoiding shields or armor is easier. Burst weapons are more effective and having multiple weapons firing all at once suddenly is very very effective. Rall 4s weapon lay out becomes staggeringly effective.

There is one little peculiarity to this concept though. What if the character rolls under their 8th for their sensor roll? Do they get 4 fractional successes to hit? My instinct is no. That would be far too effective and probably break the game. So what does rolling well under sensors do for you?

The main advantage of a good sensor roll would be that the lock is harder to break. The defender has to make an ECM roll that matches or exceeds the roll for the sensor lock. That makes a good lock roll a devastating development to a pilot.

I think that should do it, it makes sense and it follows the basic concept that people would expect. It rewards the player for using an action, so that’s better too.

Any objections to this system?

I’ve casually kicked around the idea of a fourth edition for The Artifact. My first instinct is to convert the whole game over to my Energy System (ES) that’s been getting more and more capable of handling the game world. I’m currently veering away from that though, not because I wouldn’t like the result, but more because of the history the game has. Converting to ES  would massively streamline the rules since it does all the things that the current Fraction Column system does, but with fewer moving parts. The downside is that it would make all the system knowledge that players have built up over decades invalid.

So if I’m not looking at moving to ES, what would a fourth edition do that would make it worth the effort? Let’s look at the things I would like in a new edition.

I would like to clarify and possibly simplify the tech  and survival challenge system.

I’d like to make the infantry system more organic to the system. It’s functional but still requires the player to absorb a very different mindset to employ.

I want to change the role of sensors in vehicle combat. Currently NPCs have a really hard time properly locking on targets and using ECMs. They can take stress to make sure they get the sensor lock but that severely limits them later. We’ve hammered out something of what the new sensor rules should look like and I’ll do a post later on what they’d look like in case anyone wants to use them. As it is, the role of sensors is a little murky in the current rules.

A big maybe

There are a huge number of moving parts in the current game. I know some players really like that, but no one uses everything that’s built into the game. That means there’s a lot that can be trimmed. I’m thinking that some of the in play complications could be helped by reducing the number of attributes, something along the lines of the Physical, Functional, Mental categories becoming the actual attributes. That would be sacrilege to many players though. Maybe characters could specialize in one of those categories and they’d get the attributes in that category broken out for them? That would require a lot of other moving parts to implement, but in play it might make things more streamlined, or it could just swap one level of complexity with another.

Is that enough?

Looking at the list, I’d say no, the third edition is standing up pretty well. That’s never stopped me before though. I think I should approach this the same way I’ve always handled things. I’ll post ideas here on what might work and when I feel like I’ve built up enough changes, I’ll want to rebuild the whole thing into a fourth edition.

I recently picked up the book Universal Principles of Design. It’s a book I wish I had a long time ago but didn’t know existed. I used to think of design as one of those murky subjects that no one really knew what was going on in because I would see designers that churn out wacky or useless items. Maybe I was just seeing the fringe actors that were more interested in grabbing people’s attention. The book, first published in 2003 is research based and although it still leaves a lot of wiggle room up to the designer, it illuminates the ideas that lead to good design.

One of those principles is control. The concept is very simple, there should be a way to use a design for beginners that is simple and consistent and an expert way to use a design that opens up options and adds flexibility. I’ve stumbled on the idea of making simpler RPGs to help beginning players a while ago but the simple treatment of the subject made me take another look at the subject.

The principal of Control is laid out to include the concept of two levels of interaction with a design. This is nothing new to RPGs, in fact it’s very old. You have your Basic book and your Advanced book. I think the thing that turned me off of this concept early on, was that often the rules for the basic book were inherently different than those in the advanced book. This meant that a character made with the basic rules wouldn’t translate to the advanced rules. At least, that’s my recollection. I think the Marvel Superheroes game by TSR had a clean translation from beginner book to advanced.

I tried to give lip service to this concept when I was working on the 3rd edition for The Artifact. In the beginning of the rules, I point to the rules that are vitally important and the ones that are there for added functionality. I don’t think that goes far enough. For one, it doesn’t simplify things in the eyes of the reader. They still feel compelled to read through all the added functions. But even if the idea did work, I’m only making things easier on the GM. I haven’t helped out the players yet.

I have a partial concept of simplifying the character sheet by emphasizing the main useful strategies that an occupation could use. I’m not sure about how to do it yet though.

This is one of my perennial topics. I harp on it because if you were able to remove the entry barriers to an RPG, you might see a lot of people take up playing. There have been a lot of attempts to remove barriers, but they seem to have missed the real thing that keeps people away.

Let’s do a quick list of the things people most often try to fix when it comes to RPGs.

• Too much reading
• Too complicated (too many rules)
• People want story not more game

But there have been games that address these problems. For example Risus has a shorter list of rules than most board games. There isn’t too much reading and it’s not too complex. There are a large number of story games that remove mechanical barriers and allow story freedom. I agree that these things are potential barriers to people picking up a game but they haven’t suddenly produced a huge number of players. This tells me that while these things are nice, they aren’t the main blockade to RPGs being accepted.

What games are the most successful of all the RPGs? D&D, Pathfinder and the Star Wars franchise. Each one of these games has a large buy in to our cultural consciousness. People just know what D&D is, it’s been around long enough to have embedded what it is into people’s consciousness. Pathfinder is a straight out extension of that. A majority of people start playing RPGs in these two games because to many, these titles are synonymous with RPG. In essence, someone says “I’d like to try this RPG thing” and they pick up one of these big titles.

What about Star Wars? This may be the one example of an RPG that draws in a lot of new players that may not have looked for an RPG in the first place. I see a good number of players that talk about starting their RPG careers in a Star Wars franchise. Many of these new players started in the D20 system. This is not a simple system. It requires a lot of reading. It’s very mechanical, often artificially so. It bucks the trend that RPG designers are trying to work toward and bring down the barriers to entry.

What does this tell us then? It’s possible that Star Wars is doing something that people aren’t working toward?

In general, franchises of popular media entities get faster adoption than generic games or new stories. Why? It seems that the barrier isn’t the reading or the rules. It’s trying to fit a new world in your head. If that world is already there, the barriers are far less.

Is that the end of the matter then? No, I don’t think so. I think there should be a way of shortcutting this barrier without having to adopt a big media franchise as your world. As an example, think of video games. There are entrenched media worlds like Super Mario Brothers, but there are also new titles that get picked up, like Portal which is now an established name of it’s own but that started off as a throw away concept game.

In each case of a new world being introduced in books, movies or video games, the world has to start in just the right way.

• It has to have limited options at first. Think of the first Super Mario Brothers, jump run, left, right and a few others. Think D&D, left, right, straight, fight, detect trap (in a  dungeon anyway).
• It has to be vibrant. Questions about what this world is and what happens in it have to be answerable intuitively.
• It helps a lot if the answers to questions are amusing or unexpected. Think about Portal, the unusual uses of the gun that are explored. Super Mario, piranha plants come out of sewer pipes. Star Wars juxtaposes high tech with a priestly order and a cowboy smuggler.
• There has to be obvious first order strategies that will get you through. A focus on brute strength, or raw speed for example.
• Familiarity with the real world helps as an anchor. The world is ours, except for X. Although this takes away from the vibrancy and simplicity of the world because people know the world is complicated and often boring.

These are just some common things that hook people into a new world. These things are inherently limiting, but that’s the point. Potential players are often overwhelmed at the start of trying to pick up an RPG. Making the story options limited by only giving the players a few starting activities that they’ll take part in limits the scope of things they have to absorb. Designing a world that explains itself means less reading and the players will get a better concept of how to move the game forward.

The problem is less with the complexity of an RPG’s text, and more with the complexity of it’s play. Story games have missed the point and often increase the complexity of play by opening up more possibilities to a player that would have a hard time with a dungeon crawl.

Can an RPG be taken down to the complexity of a board game or a video game and still remain an RPG? I think it can. Think of Dungeon World* and how it basically gives the player five or so “buttons” to push as actions. It’s far easier for players to know what to try next when the options are narrowed down for them.

I don’t think RPGs should be limited to this kind of design development, but it would be good to have a race to the bottom in terms of story complexity among a group of writers. It would give a list of easy answers when someone says that they’d like to try an RPG but want to start easy. We need a class of RPGs that really push the boundary between playing like Monopoly and keeping the theater of the mind that an RPG has.

*I feel Apocalypse World limited itself by having an adult theme so is less a contender in helping RPG adoption.