State of the Inkwell: Project Update

I'm working on another post, just my general thoughts on an issue I've come across while doing game prep. I started writing a short description of the progress I've made on my pet projects, but as I wrote more and more about my projects, I decided it would be better off as its own small post.

Project AK

I've decided to stop holding it back, as soon as I update the rules with the results of my playtest, I'll be doing a release post.

Eclipse Phase Adventures

I'm writing a collection of Eclipse Phase scenarios I will be running as a campaign eventually. They were initially just a set of scenarios I was writing but I've recently decided to combine them into a short campaign set up as a series of unconnected vignettes. If my players are reading, and you know who you are, don't read them. You'll only be spoiling it for yourself.

Steel Titans

This is the working title for a game in the mecha genre. It's definitely not rules heavy or rules light, it's really more of a rules moderate game, if that makes sense. There are two main concepts that I'm trying to get across with the rules.

The first is customization, I could put together a massive list of mecha and allow a player to choose the one they like best, but I don't think that's very fun or authentic to the genre. Look at Pacific Rim or the Gundam series, in these examples each of the protagonists mechas have a specific design reflecting the personality and combat niche of its pilot(s). The Jaeger Cherno Alpha is a heavy brawler focused on head to head combat whereas Crimson Typhoon focuses on acrobatic combat and its unique three pilot system. So allowing the player to design their mecha allows them to fit them to a niche.

I think I've mentioned wanted to do a game where combat is treated like social skills are in D&D and other games of its ilk. That's my second point, combat with pilots is just another way of solving an argument. Not to focus too much on Pacific Rim but there is a fist fight between pilots. It doesn't endanger any lives, nothing is at stake except the argument between the characters. Also, I didn't want to limit myself to a system that could capture the feel of mecha combat and a fist fight between pilots with equal accuracy (Something I think would detract from the authenticity of both). Also, if the game is about giant walking tanks fighting, that's the focus of the game. A fight between pilots is to the genre as doing research in a library is to a dungeon crawl, it might reveal interesting things, sometimes things that are vital to the plot, but the action itself isn't important.

-Ink

Design: Rewarding Randomness and Card Conflicts

One of the fundamental ideas of the roleplaying hobby is the idea of using dice as an objective means of determining success or failure. There are exceptions, such as LARPS and certain narrative focused games, but they have made a conscious decision to not use dice due to logistical or design choices. I'm focusing on the, at lack of a better term, traditional RPGs. Like I proposed in the Fluxborn first impression, I'm asking why we, as gamers and as designers, reward and punish based on arbitrary results.

The classic examples are the critical hit and the fumble. These are events with a small, but not insignificant chance of occurring, and they either greatly reward or greatly punish players. Even the idea of success and failure relying on the roll of a die is rewarding and punishing arbitrarily. If I try to remove myself from any knowledge of tabletop games, I would wonder why a die is involved at all. It doesn't reflect the skill of the character, or the player at all. It can level the playing field, but it can also skew things one way or another.

We need an objective arbitrator of results in a structured RPG. That is the way RPGs distinguish themselves from, say, an improv game. Because even game master, the referee analogue, is one of the players, it can't be a judgement call. This is especially true since every player may have internalized a different take on a given scene. If the referee makes a call that doesn't mesh with someone's idea of the situation, there can be conflict. So we naturally fall back on the randomization of dice as our arbitrator. This is the whole reason for mechanics, it is something to fall back on when two players disagree. This may have something to do with the hobby's connection to war games, which traditionally used conventional six sided dice, but in early examples the dice were only used for factors outside the influence of tactics.

Most games, especially those with a more traditional structure incorporate things like attributes and skills to show where a character's strengths and weaknesses lie. Even with this notation imbedded in the game's structure, we, as gamers, still rely on dice as an arbitrator. In RPGs with a level based component, some things are impossible to a lower levelled PC, so it doesn't seem to be about allowing agency on the part of players. Honestly, the only explanation I can see for why RPGs use dice at all is tradition.

I wrote about games that don't use dice in their design earlier. These games, usually newer and in the broad category of “narrative” or “story” games eschew the use of random arbitration in favour of narrative guidance. Even then, this doesn't so much reflect the skill and nature of the characters as it does the most interesting narrative path. I don't see anything wrong with either path, it just struck me as odd that things like critical hits are considered an inherent part of the game and those that drop things like the use of dice are deliberately breaking away from the usual form a game takes.

To switch gears completely, I've seen games use playing cards as the randomization factor instead of dice. It makes sense, if you take out face cards, you have 10 cards in each suit. If you shuffle after each draw, it's the same as rolling a d10. Most card games don't have you draw one card at a time. You usually have a hand of cards. A core mechanic using a hand of cards puts more emphasis on strategy and less on purely random factors. I came up with a outline of a card based resolution mechanic while musing on the subject of randomization.

There are three major things that your standard playing cards have that dice don't. First, we have set colours, black and red. Second, we have suits. Four identical sets with only a symbol to distinguish them. Lastly, we have the face cards: Jacks, Queens and Kings. I'll admit, the face cards don't fit into the dice analogue that the rest of the cards give us, but if we link them thematically to the concept of the game, we can do some interesting stuff. The jokers are interesting for similar reasons but don't have the same fourfold symmetry that the suits give us.

The standard playing cards aren't the only kind of cards readily available to a gaming group though. The tarot deck has four different suits, ones with a less abstract form. We have the swords, a basic symbol of offence with masculine ties (phallic metaphor and all). So the reverse would be the cup suit with ties to femininity (I'm just working off what I remember about the metaphor of these kind of things, I don't have any attachment to these ideas, but they work for our purposes). What is the reverse of offence? Obviously defence. We also have the pentacles, or the version I'm choosing to use, coins. At first, I had trouble thinking of what sort of connection the coins could have to game concepts. Then I looked at the obvious counterpart for coins (and the only suit of the minor arcana remaining), the staves. What was the big realization? Well, another name for that suit is wands. Wands are associated in pop culture with wizards and witches making it a symbol of the occult (or, arcane, if you will). Wands then seem to be in direct conflict with the worldly connotations of the coin suit.

The French suits of the tarot minor arcana correspond to the suits of a typically deck of playing cards. Wands and clubs are paired, as are diamonds and coins, hearts and cups, and spades with swords. Wands and swords would then be black suits, with coins and cups as red suits.

You might ask “what does this have to do with a conflict resolution mechanic”? It's the very basis of it. In my original conception of this system, I had two (at times, conflicting) ideas of things I wanted in the system. Firstly, I liked the idea of a character having an overarching theme of high or low and red or black (some other distinguishing mark perhaps, if using the tarot deck). Secondly, the idea of each skill being tied to a particular suit and either high or low. We can use the metaphorical descriptions of the tarot suits for a guideline on what kind of skill to link to what suit. The high and low is difficult to thematically tie into the mechanics. Either way, I suppose that the skills would be divided into ranks and playing a card that is closer to high or low (for high or low skills respectively) would be the intended goal. Playing a card that meets or exceeds the rank, after any modifiers, would equal a success. In this example, if you have a low skill of 4, you would need to play a card that is a four or lower in the relevant suit to get a success. Whereas, if you had a high skill of four, any card that is four or higher is a success. Playing cards that don't match the suit, or even the colour would be possible, but with penalties. On the subject of modifiers, I think I would apply them to the skill ranks, rather than the card played, just for simplicity's sake.

On the subject of hands, (the grouping of cards, not the limb, or hands in general) the player characters would have five or six cards while the GM would have a larger hand (possibly 10-12 cards) for all the NPCs. That said, if there were particularly large groups, they would either have to be grouped together, or the GM's hand size would increase. An alternative way of handling the GM's hand is to give them the face cards. This removes a potentially interesting tactical element from gameplay, but something about the GM working in more metaphorical terms interests me. This mode prefers the tarot deck, as there are four face cards per suit as well as the major arcana which could serve a similar purpose.

While I enjoy working on mechanics for mechanics sake but before I can go any further in designing this system, I need to decide what kind of game it is for. The basic mechanics (ignoring the tarot based suit metaphors for now) are card based, and could be modified to be fairly neutral. My first association is with the western, shortly followed by mafia stories as they both have a thematic link to cards and gambling. The mafia in particular is a good fit for this system since North American pop culture usually uses Italian crime families as their inspiration. The common tarot deck is based off of the Italian style, so you can see the connections build up. Those choices are based entirely on the method of arbitration, not the concepts of the system itself. I like the idea of the GM using the face card and major arcana, so I'll assume that the system uses the tarot deck. We have swords, the occult (or knowledge), and wealth. What this suggests to me is a fantasy game with a wider scope (especially given the medieval nature of the face cards). To me, this system seems like it suggests a group of allied baronies, marches, or small kingdoms struggling against outside influences. Unlike the typical adventuring party, the communication would all be correspondences, they would rarely be in the same room, much less crawling into a dusty old crypt together, and combat would be done with armies, not weapons. A departure from the typical fantasy game to be sure, but it could be interesting. In fact, I think I'll start writing something of a setting for it. We'll have to see how it works out.

Design: Factions Actions

In the most recent session of my Wild Talents game, some of the players got to plan the defence of a superhuman enclave. Also, an ongoing actual play stream of Stars Without Number had something called a “GM turn” recently. These two events got me thinking about factions in games and how they can form the undercurrent of a sandbox game.

Initially, I ran sandbox games by giving my players a spray of plot hooks and letting them choose which ones to take. When I started writing my Wild Talents game, I started building factions and teams with certain motives and/or goals. With player intervention and the personalities and methodologies of the factions, plot hooks emerge organically. The interactions between groups are either (as I've done it) up to the GM's judgement or played out in full. Given the number of potential factions and conflicts between them, playing them out in full is not really feasible. So, given my nigh fetish for rules design, I started planning a reputation system that would affect how behind the scenes action happened. This post is not a description of that sub-system, just my thoughts on what goes into designing these systems and potential components.

One, I guess I'd call it bias, I see in games (both on the side of the developer and the player) is the preoccupation with symmetrical design. I'm talking about the idea of one solid set of rules that the GM and the players use. The GM might get a few extra tools, but everything works on the same underlying basics. I suppose this makes balance easy, but I don't think it works in all cases. With the notable exception of GM-less games, the medium is fundamentally asymmetrical. The Game master already has a different role than the other players so to me it seems insisting on symmetry as a design philosophy seems dishonest. I'm not saying symmetrical design is inherently bad, just like asymmetrical design is not inherently good. I bring this up because the entire idea of faction mechanics hinges on the idea of the GM having mechanics exclusive to their role.

What are faction mechanics? First of all, it is large scale mechanics depicting struggles between two or more groups of NPCs. Secondly, these struggles take place over larger spans of time than typical PC actions. Third, these interactions would be time consuming to calculate using the interpersonal mechanics.

Before settling on conflict resolution mechanics, we need to decide how factions exist mechanically. I like the idea of breaking them down into assets that contribute to different rolls. For instance, if a criminal faction has a gun running operation, that would give them access to a steady supply of weapons and money from selling them. This would increase their buying power and their military power. Each asset would have resilience based on morale, strength of arms, and strength of numbers. So a small group that is well armed and extremely loyal is roughly equivalent to a large group of poorly armed fanatics, or a large group of well armed cowards.

When it comes to the titular faction actions, there should be a cost involved. In the example of the gun runners, I would say they can either earn money, bring in weapons, or act as personnel for something the faction attempts. If they earn money, that could go towards purchasing a new asset for the factions or supporting an action. No matter what the endeavour is, it will cost some money. Even purely money making actions take some capital to start up. That said, I would simplify matters by removing any sort of cost for using capital producing groups to add to the faction wealth. If they brought in weapons, they wouldn't make any money from selling them, and would likely need to spend money bribing border officials and the like but the rest of the faction would have the weapons available to them, adding to the overall capacity for physical force. Lastly, if they are used as personnel, they aren't doing their usual jobs and are acting as foot soldiers, recruiters, spies, or anything else the faction might need from them. There should also be some mechanical facet that marks the gun runners as criminals.

A logical assumption to make is that factions don't operate on the same wealth scale as player characters. The gun runners touched on this a bit. The question is whether wealth should be treated like a stat, or as a game economy. We aren't counting out every gold piece, credit, or dollar, but we could create an arbitrarily large sum of money that factions deal in. That said, it need not represent liquid capital, it might be production capabilities or sufficient barter goods. What a wealth score represents depends on the setting and could even vary from faction to faction within a setting. If we treat wealth as a game economy, spending and gaining points over time, what else can we treat as a game economy?

Reputation, or at least the goodwill of a group of people is difficult to represent as a game economy. After all, what matters to the population of one island/planet/city/whatever the territorial separation du jour in your setting is, may not matter to the population of another. A rebel group may be isolated to a single region, or it might be a populist movement across the whole country. I would say that the previously mentioned marks may be a way around this. If a movement is limited to a specific area, it should be easier for them to cash in on their reputation there, but more difficult elsewhere. Why a game economy for reputation? What benefits does it grant the system? I think it makes sense that, like wealth, a faction cashing in on its reputation (either the fear, or goodwill of the populace) will run out eventually. For example, the gang of gun runners and a populist uprising are both strapped for cash and need a place to hide out. They intimidate or accept the hospitality of the common people, respectively. Eventually, the people are going to strike back against the intimidation, or get sick of the rebel fighters and kick them out. In either case, unless the faction does something to inspire fear or hope in the people, the reputation that allowed for the action in the first place is going to expend itself.

Not everything should take the form of an economy. The use of force is an example of a resource that can't really be spent in the same fashion as wealth or reputation. Factions don't accomplish everything through force though. Each faction is made up of many, many characters and if each character has the capacity to do certain things, then it stands to reason that a faction should be able to do the same, but in a coordinated manner. The use of force is one such thing, but it certainly isn't everything. Just as we consolidate all aggressive capabilities, be they gunslinging or spellslinging, we should also consolidate other character options that use the same general methodology. Stealth and deception should be one part of a faction's repertoire.

Knowledge, sadly, is a difficult thing to work with on a mass scale. First we need to look at the function of knowledge in a character scale. I'll separate this into two categories, world knowledge and skill knowledge. World knowledge is the kind of thing that players develop from exploring the setting and getting relevant contextual information from the game master. Simply put, these are facts about the setting and its inhabitants. Skill knowledge is general knowledge about academic subjects, or the knowledge needed for trained skills. This is things like knowledge of heraldry, or occult secrets, or how to fix a starship. Even these categories break down further and there is some overlap between them. If knowledge of the Black Knight’s heraldry, or the Ritual of Unseen Dangers is relevant to the plot, then it might cross over from skill knowledge to world knowledge. What would a faction use the knowledge of how to fix starships for? Well, you can fix starships which either gives you a starship, or someone pays you for fixing their starship. Either way, this falls under the category of wealth. When is knowing occult secrets or heraldry important? When it gives you an advantage in winning over a potential ally, thwarting an enemy, or other things that I haven't thought of. With that in mind, can we separate knowledge into its own category? I have to say no, when knowledge is relevant, it is enhancing some other aspect of the faction.

These are just some initial thoughts. I may revisit the subject with some more concrete ideas. I may also touch on potential uses for a faction scale system in the hands of the players. We'll have to see what we end up with, won't we?