The Barbarian Must Write A Poem: #RPGaDAY2020 5 - Tribute

Today's #RPGaDAY2020 prompt is

Tribute

It's always interesting for a character to have to give something up in order to continue on their path.

Now that could be something physical that they're carrying--for example to make room for treasure because otherwise they'll suffer encumbrance--but what about other things they could give up?

Say they are travelling through land controlled by an entity that demands tribute. And this faction has resources enough to be nonplussed by bags full of gold.

Perhaps the despotic ruler demands that the PCs swear fealty to his rival kingdom. Or wants them to proclaim something publicly that the PCs might not agree with. Maybe they're a religious leader and want the PCs to worship a specific deity.

Physical offerings can also be made more interesting and serve as adventure hooks. What if the tribute must be a fruit from a specific tree in the twisted woods to the south? Or a carved image of a false idol, made by a local craftswoman?

What resources do the PCs have other than their stuff? If it's a domain management game, maybe they need to give a share of their crops to the king, or a portion of their population to join the army. Or they have to round up some monsters for the parliamentary zoo.

Hell maybe they are actually called to pay tribute at a special event to soothe the ego of the egotistical queen so she doesn't pull out of a peace treaty. The bard has to write an ode to her; the barbarian must fight in the ceremonial gladiatorial tournament. Or the other way round!

Make your PCs pay tribute in a way that can't be solved with a bag of gold. It'll make for a better story.

Laservision and Squeeze Focus: #RPGaDAY2020 4 - Vision

Today's #RPGaDAY2020 prompt is

Vision

I hate vision mechanics.

What's the difference between infravision and darkvision? Or low-light vision? How does dim light affect combat? What about fog, or magical darkness? What if my character is blinded? How far does my torch cast light? Is there an aura of dim light around that? What if I move during an enemies turn and change the lighting condition they're in? How far can I actually see? Which creatures have which kind of vision?

Et cetera, et fucking cetera...

There are -too many interactions- for there to be rules for these things. This is the clearest case I can think of where "rulings over rules" makes literally everything easier for both the GM and the players. Nobody wants to look this stuff up in play and nobody is going to remember all the different multi-dimensional Venn diagrams of overlap and superceding rules.

If it's dark, you can't see unless you have a light source or your species can see without light. Everything else is subject to ruling by the GM. DONE. (If you want infravision because it works in a weird way and exlains why old monsters have red eyes GO NUTS you don't need rules for that)

OH and like, the party where everyone's a dwarf or elf and can see in the dark but there's -one- human so they all have to use a torch? It means that in 90% of circumstances the see-in-the-dark ability just doesn't matter and the other 10% of the time it's just sending someone ahead to scout outside of the torchlight. It's a pet peeve and annoying (just like the party where everyone can move 30ft but the halfling only moves 25ft so -everyone- has to slow down, and this especially fucks the player who took an option that doubles their move speed), but I guess it can lead to some interesting inter-party conflict or tactical decisions. However I think it would be better to find differentiation between species like Arnold K suggests for the GLOG, with active abilities rather than passive ones. Or giving them an interesting trade-off.

Like:

Laservision: You can cause your eyeballs to shoot lasers that bounce off things and return to you carrying distance and temperature information, functioning over the length of a huge underground cavern. However, this causes your eyes to glow red, which can be noticed from a good distance away, and also there is a 1-in-8 chance your eyes overheat, causing you to go blind for 1d8 hours.

or

Squeeze Focus: By working your orbital muscles you can shift the liquid in your eyeballs to give you the ability to see miles further than usual, with perfect acuity. However, this gives you incredibly blurred vision for anything near you. This effect lasts for 2d4 rounds.

I think these would be immensely more fun to play with than just plain "60 foot darkvision".

Mechanics Should Get Out of the Way: #RPGaDAY2020 2 - Change

Today's #RPGaDAY2020 prompt is

Change

A lot of my interests and involvement in the hobby have changed over the years. Or have they?

When I first started playing regularly, it was D&D 3.0. The longest campaigns I played in were 3.5, and I ran my urban fantasy homebrew The City for years in d20 modern. The sheer amount of options for characters were staggering. Skills, feats, prestige classes, a truly mindboggling amount of OGL sourcebooks--it was corpulent. Oh my god, that one Mutants and Masterminds game I ran... I assumed this was just how it worked. I -hated- prepping for the d20 modern campaign. Making balanced encounters around CR calculations, trying to create encounters specifically to challenge each PC ability, creating set-pieces and plots; when all I realy wanted to do (and kind of ended up doing anyway at the table) was just have an idea of how things might go and make up most of it as I needed it.

I played other games now and then, but it wasn't until I stumbled onto Spirit of the Century that I realized games didn't necessarily need to be so fiddly. Reading up on Fate really created a shift in perspective--not so much the shared narrative control, but that instead of making a shit-ton of hyperspecific classes and skill lists and character options, you could just... be the thing you wanted to be. The mechanics were there to -support- your idea, rather than having to implement some shadow of your idea through the mechanics.

Now of course this didn't always work in practice, and Fate still suffered some skill bloat (ever tried navigating the list from Diaspora?), but the absolute delight of Fate Accelerated Edition pretty much solved those issues and I wish I could play it more.

When I was living in England, the long-term campaign was just not an option. But there I found a community of designers who were always playtesting and trying out weird small indie games, and it was like I had walked through the doors of perception. Exposure to completely off-the-wall mechanics, one-page RPGs that didn't take themselves seriously, rules-light things that provided scaffolding for specific genres, games that generated histories and maps, the concept of ludonarrative dissonance, the crazy worlds of nordic larp, immersive theatre, and real-world games...

It was in this space, somewhere, that I also stumbled into OSR games. I knew nothing of the scene or people involved in it and mostly thought it was retroclones rather than a style of design and play. But some of the ideas I found, those that melded with other things I was learning from indie games, of stripping out and simplifying mechanics so that they get out of the way and just _letting players be who they want to be: oh that locked a change into the way I wanted to run games. I think it might have specifically been crystalized in an idea I saw in Kevin Crawford's Scarlet Heroes: characters get a background, and up to 3 points in it. They get to add those points as a bonus to any check they make that could reasonably be related to that background. It's so simple and transparent and doesn't involve like 12 different subsystems and I was like "why can't the whole thing be like this".

I've tended to like classless, rules-lite play ever since, with favoured systems being FAE, Maze Rats, and Knave. Ooo, I think running something in Risus would be good fun precisely for these reasons.

It's been interesting to see how the changes have been in knowledge and exposure rather than taste and attitudes. I kind of always knew what I wanted in rpgs, even if I couldn't express it, and managed to discover games that did those things. I'm kind of wondering now if I can codify some of those tastes in design decisions for Crook, or if they can just be things that hang out in my mind and I can keep finding ways of interacting with them via different games and systems.

What about you? How have your tastes and experiences in rpgs changed?

Crook: Fleshing Out Clients and Jobs

In Crook, the start of any story is our protagonist looking at their list of job offers and choosing one to pursue.

I have been thinking of this like a more focused version of the rumours a party of adventurers might hear while playing in a sandbox game. These are the hooks that lead them to interesting, potentially pre-prepared places (stocked dungeons, bounded explorable locations like forests or swamps, small towns with secret cults, etc). In Crook, because we're narrowing our focus to jobs that -patrons- offer, a way to still capture a similar sense of freedom, exploration and discovery like in a "true" sandbox game is to make a -really engaging- job board.

So what details make a job listing interesting?

The generator I detailed in a previous post provides details that allow the player to make some risk/reward decisions--the outcome literally tells you how risky the job is and what the reward will be--but aside from a very brief description of the type of patron and the kind of job, there are no evocative details to actually act as hooks.

I think the details that do the most work in this regard would include:

    -the patron: their profession/occupation, and their relationship to the crook and any factions (and potentially their personality quirks).

    -the job: the key people or objects involved, an interesting location, the obstacles, and a theme.

My instinct as always is to turn to random generators to create some inspiration for each of these factors that the GM can flesh out into details. However, that's not strictly necessary. In the same way that you can stock the rumour tables in your sandbox game with hooks leading to prepared dungeon crawls and encounters and other already-existing stuff, the crook's job board can have listings that would lead the crook to prepared adventures. Pretty much any "find this item" or "interact with this person" job can easily be fitted onto any existing adventure module.

BUUUUT it's pretty fun to create a whole adventure from just a few random prompts that then interact both the GM's setting knowledge and with the decisions of our motivated crook.

The structure I used as a starting point to make jobs for Penny was:

    patron-type occupation; descriptor descriptor place; job-type; risk; opposition; distance; reward

A lot of this is provided by the job generator: ie patron-type is criminal/noble/merchant/etc and job-type is theft/smuggle/escort/etc--risk, distance, and reward are settled too.

Sometimes I would use the "Sample Crimes", "Location" and "Potential Foes" tables at the back of Scarlet Heroes to generate some of these details, but those crimes are more for the PC to -investigate- rather than commit (the list includes crimes like "forced marriage", "treason", "dark worship", and "rape"--I'm not going to include those as jobs for the PC to do in my games and I recommend you don't either).

But mostly I'd generate the details from scratch using several different tables:

The patron's occupation came from a list of "101 fantasy jobs and professions" made by Ennead Games (now no longer available individually, though it -is- part of a $500+ bundle)--which I liked not only for the huge list of occupations but also because each one included a short hook this kind of NPC could offer (ie a gravedigger mentions that bodies are being dug up, a blacksmith needs a rare alloy for a special weapon, a teacher asks for help locating a missing child...).  This would combine with the patron-type from the job generator, ie "criminal lore master", "noble/merchant musician", and "military blacksmith". This provided a really good jumping-off point--you can already imagine the kind of work each of these combos might offer. The rest of the patron's details would come from numerous other generators that would provide personality quirks, names, ancestry/culture, etc.

The details of the job beyond just whether it's theft/smuggling/etc is a pair of descriptors, a place, and the opposition. Most of the time I would generate these using my favourite GM tool ever, Instant Game (another product that was -almost- not available anymore, as its creators and their publishing imprint Animalball Partners have vanished from the internet--but a copy of the original freely-available PDF is on RPGGeek). It had d100 tables for all the relevant categories and would result in evocative prompts like "gloomy ritual correctional system, opposition mythical legend", "steady tough government office, opposition mindless horde", and "awesome secret armoury, opposition invaders/outsiders".

These prompts about the job, in combination with the details of the patron, are enough to create a really evocative hook for our crook, and gets you about 80% of the way to what you need to run the session.

I would refine the results into a more specific job offer, using details of the world that were established through play in previous sessions.  For example "awesome secret armoury" was part of a job offer that turned into:

    "Maganak Five Names, elven diplomat, wants a wand delivered to a secret city defense armoury. but city is overrun by oozes. reward: some coin, and whatever you steal."

The city overrun by oozes was just an offhand comment in an earlier session of the game that I jotted down to keep for later.  Meanwhile "gloomy ritual correctional system" combined with other prompts to become:

    "Cotme Ower, halfling ferryman. smuggles contraband and people to/from island prison of Glama-worshipping cult of liars. wants help to con prison guards of a particular shipment. reward: standard fee and one set of enchanted armour"

Don't those sound like fun jobs to get involved in? Not only that but they give pretty clear direction for what the GM could prepare for the session if the crook chooses to do that job.

Now the question is, as I develop Crook into a Thing: should it have its own tables, or can I just recommend the use of these kinds of tables? I don't think I could do a unique job of filling a d100 table better than the tables I use, but also -none- of the tables that form the core of the job generator are widely available anymore. Should Crook include its own generators to provide prompts, or just include guidance on what makes a good job hook?

I haven't decided yet, and out of cowardice will put the question aside and work on something else entirely for the next several posts!

Guiding Principles for Crooks

It occurs to me that as I go forward trying to make the systems I've created to run a thief job duet game for my partner into something other people can use, it would be wise to come up with some guiding principles. Or at least, make concrete the ones I've been implicitly using.

***

Crook

A game where a lone scoundrel does unusual jobs for unusual people.

1. Player-focused preparation. There is only one player; the GM should focus on things -that specific- player is likely to be interested in.

2. Alternative challenges. There is only one player; it is not possible to solve every problem by hitting it.

3. Alternative consequences. There is only one player; removing them from play should be avoided, but bad things can and will happen to them.

4. Rulings over rules. In the OSR/DIY sense: don't use a rule where you can make it work well on the fly.

5. Be permissive. Yes, and/but. No locked doors without stakes.

***

Thoughts on what these mean for making decisions when designing Crook:

1: What sorts of things is our crook going to be interested in?  The people who offer them jobs, and the nature of those jobs (I've been working on a job generator for this). The people and things that can help them accomplish those jobs. Something that they can do or work towards with the rewards from those jobs (are they paying off a debt? are they atoning for their past? do they want to prove themselves to a specific person? this likely should be a key trait established in when the player makes their crook). Organizations they can be part of, influence or be influenced by that will affect the other things they're interested in (thieves guilds, town guard, noble families, merchants, gangs, etc).

It's also important to tailor to the specific tastes of the player in your duet. Do they like dungeoncrawling more than courtly intrigue? Do they run off their mouth and start fights? Have they trained for years to become the perfect silent assassin? The jobs they're offered and the challenges they face should reflect the tastes of the player-as-a-person.

2: Combat shouldn't always be avoided, but there should be a focus on solving problems in a way that doesn't get the crook killed or incarcerated. This is important in all kinds of roleplaying adventure games, but I feel it's especially important in a duet. Ingenuity, insight, and non-linear thinking can be encouraged by giving the crook non-combat tools: immovable rods, vials of grease, and 1/day misty step as opposed to flasks of alchemists fire, acid arrows, and enchanted daggers (though if such standard combat items are given sparingly, that will encourage their use in creative ways).

This also can be reflected in environment design. Firey laterns swinging on long chains; precarious boulders above the narrow pass; loose bricks around the other side of the house. Traps that can be reset or redirected. Multiple paths in and out, and ways to manipulate the environment totally--what if there's a button on a pedestal that turns all the liquid in a 20 ft radius into blood? What if the inscription on the ceiling, when translated, teaches a chant that blocks out the sun for 2 minutes and then you forget the chant forever?

3: Preventing your one player from doing what they want to do by killing them or otherwise taking them out of play only serves to stop the game. Instead, have things break, or lost, or be stolen. Have important other people die. If a brutal combat does occur, have the crook be scarred or lose a limb or an eye. Or perhaps the baddies choose not to kill: it's always fun to have our protagonist hogtied and left to die in the desert--or perhaps thrown into a barrel, which is then chucked into a river heading toward a waterfall.

4: This is as much a reminder to myself to pare down rules wherever I can as it is guidance for running the game. That said, while making systems for Crook, I can and probably will go overboard, with full knowledge that I'll have to cut away all the cruft later. A rule of thumb I like for this is from Goblin Punch: "only write a rule when it is better than what you could come up with on the fly". And "better" can be defined in a number of ways as detailed in that post.

5: Others have been far more sophisticated than I with this, but nothing annoys me more than a locked door that is hard to open and if you fail there's no consequence other than not getting through the door. At least put some time pressure on: is the guardian automaton searching for the crook? Is a boulder rolling down the hallway towards us? Or give consequences for failure: the lock breaks and now you've made a wall. Or picking it sloppily triggers a visible blowdart aimed at the lock, or releases acid into the font of healing mineral water you're trying to get to. NO LOCKED DOORS WITHOUT STAKES.

If they want to do something and there's no consequence for failure, they do it! If you really want it to hurt for your Crook to try doing something mundane you can roll to see how many tries it takes and make them lose some spare change down a chasm each time they stumble (and I hope it's clear that that kind of pettiness is precisely what should be avoided). This goes for -abstract- doors especially. If our crook has a hunch about what kind of liquor the gang leader likes to drink as a digestif, they either can find out by asking the GM if they know or can do something interesting to find out (like sneaking into the leader's office and reading their diary, or bribing the manager of the member's-only bar, or beating it out of a lackey)--it should -not- be locked behind a knowledge roll that can be failed.

I think that'll do for now.

OH WAIT one thing I like about the name Crook is that it reminds me of "by hook or by crook" which is exactly the way in which our protagonist should try to accomplish things.

Story-Flavoured Powdered Beverage

It's the final day of BrigadeCon's daily RPG prompts! Check out their site to see the full list, sign up for the online convention, and donate to Child's Play. I only started doing the prompts on day 10, so I will continue to do them into September (though I might do more than one a day on occasion).

Today's #RPGaDay2016 prompt is: best advice you were ever given for your game of choice. Strap in: this is a big and rambling one.

There are two concepts that changed the way I think about running games, and both of them come from D +Vincent Baker .

The first, from Dogs in the Vineyard, has spread widely: "say yes or roll the dice". Loads of intelligent people have written on this, and players with different philosophies have debated its merits and re- or mis-interpreted it. My own take on it is informed, I think, by trying to use the bloated skill systems of the 3rd ed d20 games.

I hope I'm not being hyperbolic when I say d20 had too many and too hyperspecific skills. It wasn't just stuff like Use Rope and Decipher Script, there were also skills with fill-in-the-blanks like Knowledge (_____) or Perform (_____) which effectively made the list simultaneously too specific -and- infinite. And the existence of these skills encourages their use, so even with advice like "use the Knowledge skills to drive the plot and give the players crucial information", you're basically telling players "roll to see if you get this information I want to give you". It's worse with the practical skills, because either they never come into play, or you're constantly rolling them (like perception or search checks in every. single. room.) so you're guaranteed to get a failure eventually; which again, ends up being "roll to see if you get this thing I want to give you".

Playing only within that paradigm, it took a hell of a mind twist to realize that I can just give the players things I want to give them. Whichever PC knows about the history of this region--they know the bit of trivia about this old ruin which could help them avoid a trap. They don't have to roll. The old sailor PC who would have 10 ranks in Use Rope? Why would they need to roll to see if they can moor a boat? PCs that are good at stuff should get to just do that stuff. This is just the "say yes" part of the advice!  It was probably the most revelatory for me, as it blurred away this assumption that skills must always be rolled.

The "or roll the dice" part took much longer to grasp, and I'm still figuring it out. This post on the old forge forums goes a little way towards explaining why--I think this way of playing doesn't work in every situation. I argue the key factor is that the system, players, and setting must support characters attempting to do things that they have a chance of failing -and- allowing interesting consequences for failing. In other words, the attempt should have a chance of getting the PC into trouble. The advice becomes something like "say yes, or throw rocks". This is different from asking for rolls when you want to drive the story forward--it's the reverse: drive the story forward whenever the PCs try something worth rolling for. And it's only worth rolling for when it would be interesting to fail. The classic example is to avoid rolling to pick a lock when there's no time pressure and no trap set. Rolling the dice should significantly affect the game.

The other concept comes from Apocalypse World: "play to find out what happens". This one's a little looser and there's lots of ways to use it. It reminds me of +Justin Alexander 's classic post, Don't Prep Plots. By creating situations, tricky or complex or dangerous ones, and then throwing the PCs into them, not only do we avoid all the problems of trying to railroad players through a specific sequence of events, we let the players -and- the GM discover a story. The value of surprise seems pretty obvious for players--the GM springing plot twists and sudden monsters on unsuspecting PCs is a pretty classic way to play--but what about for GMs?  Maybe random generators are fun partially because it means the GM doesn't know everything that will happen. Why not extend that further? Create a compelling situation, get the PCs in there, and play to find out what happens.

At this point, it's patently obvious that I have drunk, deeply, of the story games kool-aid. However, I think that these two bits of advice are applicable to any game and have the potential to improve the experience at your gaming table for everyone. Avoid making players do stuff that has no point and let them get on with what they're interested in rather than using them as pieces in "your story". This works in classic D&D just as well as the most pretentious Nordic LARP you can imagine, and games that bake it into the system (like Fate and Dungeon World) hit a real sweet spot of player- and character-driven gaming.