But the Rules Handle Roleplay

I was watching some Youtube discussion of OSR games versus more modern story-based games and one topic came up regarding games with "social combat" rules.

In a more modern game, a player would be told to, "roll your diplomacy skill to..." or they may have a "social combat" system.

In an OSR or game without social interaction rules, the player would have to roleplay the interaction with the referee.

The social interactions as skill or ability rolls began I would say back in the days of the Charisma ability score modifier. Why have it unless you were going to roll it? If I were back in the day helping design D&D and could look into the future, I might suggest Charisma does not get an ability score modifier because the Charisma score is only there as a guideline for the player and referee.

Should Charisma never be rolled?

I hear the argument that, "Well a character may have a high STR but the player does not, so having a CHR score protects a player who may be shy or reserved in roleplay situations." Well, however a player roleplays that interaction, the referee needs to take into account that CHR score, regardless of the player's roleplaying ability.

If a shy player with a character with CHR 18 walks into the throne room and says, "Um, hello everyone." The room may erupt in applause. I am not going to force someone out of their comfort zone as a referee, and hopefully the player will ease into the high charisma however they feel it should be done. A player could be like Johnny Depp, be a total oddball, socially awkward, and have a CHR 18 and anything they do is loved regardless.

Referee Bias Possible

Otherwise my bias as a referee comes into play, with CHR 18 do I expect the player to talk like Hamlet with flowery language and thees and thous? Um, no, I can't put my expectation of what a high CHR acts like on the player and use that to judge their roleplaying. I feel Charisma is better as a guideline for both the player and the referee. However the player wants to roleplay is their natural charisma, and their ability score modifies how the interaction is ruled by the referee.

Letting the player be themselves and using the ability score to rule the result - without dice rolls - is honestly how I ran games back in the day. If you need a reaction roll because you have no clue of how the encounter is going to begin, that is a possible use of a CHR modifier, but for roleplay reactions I never rolled it.

Rolling a social interaction forces my hand as a referee. If the roleplay was awkward and the character had a high CHR could produce a different result than flowery roleplay and a high CHR. Same thing for low CHR, but I may rule more favorably if the player sweetened up the deal with extra offers. Middling CHR, middling results. If there is something I am unsure of in the interaction I may throw a die to pick among responses or outcomes, but I would still modify the result.

"But you are forcing people to roleplay!"

Um, yeah. That is the game we are playing here and the appeal of taking on a role. But seriously, if you want to play this as a wargame, go right ahead. I was a fan of the early 4th Edition D&D rules for the battle chess elements, so I get the thrill of tabletop play and love that part of the hobby.

But I am forcing them to roleplay however they are comfortable to. Big difference between that and setting an expectation of how a high CHR should act.

High CHR Failures?

Can a high CHR character ever fail at a social interaction? With rolling for them, yes. With interpreting them without a roll it gets fuzzy. As a referee I would say they can fail, someone is just not going to "make me the king" if I ask them. With a high CHR they may laugh. With a low CHR I may be thrown in the dungeon.

With a high CHR a player will feel a bigger sense of disappointment on failed rolls, where if we don't roll and I rule failure - it is on me the referee - and I now need to make some adjustment to the ruling to take some sting off the failure I ruled. With a dice roll, yes, you can do that, but many times the failed roll stops the roleplay and the characters are looking for the next skill they can roll to get what they want.

"Try subtlety! Try deception! Try administration skill!"

A Trust Thing

I suppose as an experienced referee I don't need to roll and I established that trust with my players. With people you don't know, I can see rolling Charisma because it "protects everybody" and ensures games in official situations - like sanctioned play - are handled by the dice. In solo play too, where the outcome needs to be a little more deterministic, I could see rolling CHR as well.

But a part of me feels an important part of roleplaying involves getting you out of that safe zone and exposing yourself to others, and getting to know other players and referees. Even if I started off rolling CHR, as the group got to know each other I may try to do away with the CHR rolls and roleplay it all. But again, just don't do this all of a sudden - talk to your players and align expectations.

I don't always roll CHR, but I default to letting the roleplay speak for itself, and love it when my players are their own quirky selves. The score will modify my ruling, and if a player feels uncomfortable I will let them roll. I won't punish them if they do. But I like it better when there is that connection, when players are out of their comfort zones, and the playing of roles means role playing.

MMO Games versus Social Games

I tell you, our discussions about game design as super interesting. I ran yesterday's article about "escalating hit points" by DarkgarX the other day, and he predictably had the same reaction, "Escalating hit point systems suck!"

So we talked about it for a while, and we managed to come to an interesting conclusion:

• Some pen-and-paper games are more MMO Roleplaying games
• Some pen-and-paper games are more Social Roleplaying games

Eureka! I thought, and we had this interesting discussion on what makes something more an MMO game than a Social Roleplaying game. I suppose we need some definitions first:

Social RPG: A roleplaying game where social interactions are the primary determining factor in determining success. Combat is a social interaction or the end thereof, and conflict is balanced on one-to-one fights.

MMO RPG (or Party-Based RPG): A roleplaying game where combat is the primary determining factor in determining success. Combat is balanced on many-to-one fights, where a party works together to defeat a foe or group of foes. Combat is a group-based gameplay function and less of a social interaction.

It is an interesting definition, because a lot of things start to make sense. In a game where a PC plays "Dirty Harry", the character's weapon needs to be powerful and a tool of social interaction. Combat needs to be quick and deadly, because how is a single character supposed to make a threat and hold someone off? This is a Social RPG, and weapons and combat in these sorts of games tend to be quick and deadly, and one character can defeat a foe in one blow because that threat needs to exist when violence is used as a tool of interaction between characters and bad guys.

In a MMO RPG, weapons need to be balanced for the party's contributions. Your longsword does 1d8+2, or an average of 7 points of damage. The big boss monster has 60 hit points. Is the boss monster afraid of one sword blow? Probably not. But your 5 person party is doing 7 points each per turn, so that's 35 points of damage potentially in the first volley. That is a threat. The party is the social threat, not one person. Your character is weaker socially with a singular one-on-one threat of violence, but your party is the social group making the interaction with violence here.

In a MMO, that one-on-one social contract many players assume is there with a Dirty Harry "make my day" threat does not exist. That is for the party to say, "make our day." It is a strange way to view things, but it works. Some games cater to the one-on-one interactions, and make violence and combat powerful enough for those one-on-one threats to hold water. These are Social RPGs, where they can be played between two people, a single character feels like they have the power to make threats and changes because a single character matters.

In MMO games, the group matters more than one-on-one interactions. This is why MMOs in general are more popular for groups of people, since it takes a party to get a goal done. You can do one-on-one roleplaying with an MMO RPG, but that social contract of the thief holding a dagger on someone needs to be specially considered with a coup de grace rule because the game is by default setup for a party to be contributing towards a goal, not a single person. One-on-one roleplaying exists in these games, but the social power comes from the "all for one" party and not the individual.

In a MMO RPG, you need escalating hit points. You need to balance things so the party as a contributing whole is the determining factor, instead of the one-on-one fights. The play of a battle matters, and things like boss monsters can exist. Because you don't want every fight at the table to end on turn one, things need to have some play to them and be tough. You can have a 40 hit point giant. You are a part of a team, and that team works together to solve threats and take action.

In a Social RPG, you can get away with using a flat system where weapon damages and hit points do not scale with character power. That 0.38 pistol will always be powerful and a threat. It needs to be because in a more social one-on-one interaction, you need those threats to hold water so you can roleplay them without your mind saying "OMG, that does a d6 damage! He has at least 50 hit points. Not a threat!" You can scale skill and the ability to defend or to-hit, but weapons powers should be high and fights should be deadly because that weapon represents the end-all of a threat made in a social context. That social interaction needs to have weight behind it. Combat needs to be balanced for the one-on-one and deadly.

It is an interesting difference between the style and play of these types of games, and these definitions clean up a lot of how we talk about games. Is this more of a social game? Is this mechanic more party-based and MMO-ish? Is this game's combat system more social-based, or does it assume the party is the driving force?

And a lot of our arguments about which game is better for what have cleared up between us because we can now say "this type of rule is better for social games," or, "this game is better for MMO or party-based play."

Sometimes a disagreement happens is because there is no common definition between the two sides.

Taking a 10 and 20

D&D 4 and D&D 5 mostly did away with the concept of taking a 10 or 20 on a skill roll, yet this still lives on in the Pathfinder game. The concept of the "take a 20" mechanic is this:

If I spend so much time at the task that I iterate through every possible roll, I will at least roll a 20 once in those tries and succeed.

So you trade time for certain success. With taking a 10, you choose to take an average roll. You can check out the rules here on the d20 SRD. We have always had a couple problems with the entire take a ten or twenty mechanic, so here it goes.

Statistics 101

First off, assuming you will get a 20 in this period of time would have driven my statistics professor crazy. He would have come right back at me and said "you could roll 100 times, or even 200 times and you are never guaranteed a 20 in that sequence, the probability goes up, but it is never a certain thing." With taking a 10, there is no such thing as an 'average' roll on a single test. The average on one test is the roll, whatever that may be. Again, my statistics professor would have called BS on both these mechanics.

But Really, in Play...

I don't have the same problem my statistics professor has, because I know these rules are shortcuts to simplify and speed up play. Take a 10 though, yeah, I still have a problem with that since it feels so nonsensical.

First off, taking a 20, the real reason this bugs me is because D&D 3 and all variants accept the fact that you can retry all skills indefinitely. Forever. You can buffalo your way through any skill check by rolling again, and again, and again until the end of time. If you imagine this with a social skill check trying to convince a king to lend you his magic sword, it goes something like this:

"Can I have your magic sword, my king?"
"No."
"I need it to defeat the dragon, may I have it sire?"
"No."
"My chances of rescuing the princess would be greatly increased-"
"No."
"Can I?"
"No."
"Can I have it?"
"No."
"Can I?"
"No."
"Can-"
"No."
"Can I? Can I? Can I? Can I? Can I? Can I?"
"No."
"..."
"No."
"Can I?"
"Okay, take it."

Like any interaction with a three-year old, it assumes the DC you set for any task is merely an annoyance for the players to brute force their way past. We grew up with atomic "pass-fail" skill checks. If your thief blew his lockpicking roll, that was it, that lock could not be picked until the thief raised their lockpicking skill and knew some new tricks to try again. The concept of taking a 10 or a 20 to get automatic success felt alien at the time 3E was released, and truthfully, it still feels strange to us today.

Roleplaying, the Great Second Chance

Yes, there are certain times you should be able to make a second attempt. Let's say you are trying to make a persuasion roll and blow the first one. Normally, that should be it, the person refuses and you need to find another way. However, the player is clever and changes their tack with a second offer, roleplaying out a great 'other reason' why the person should go along with the plan. As a referee, I would allow a second check, but at a penalty since this person is already negatively inclined against this persuasion attempt, and second chances should be rare. But it was a great reason and fit within roleplaying, so it should be allowed for fairness. A third try? At that point you are begging, and I would disallow it, or put such a penalty on the attempt you would have to be a saint with a blessed d20 to succeed.

The king would give you a funny look though. Really?

But yes, great roleplaying should be the basis on which second tries are allowed. There is a limit, of course, but this feels right to me.

Pass-Fail Improv

Pass-fail tests. I love them. If players fail at something, they need to have backup plans or think of another way around, or use another skill. As a good referee, I am not going to tell them to pack up their character sheets, the adventure is over, goodbye and see you next week if the party can't pick a lock. There will be another way in, or the players may be clever enough to figure a way around it. Knock on the door. Climb on the roof. Smoke em out. Something. Just please be more creative than giving up and telling me you take a 20, because I won't let you. that one shot you had was the sole cumulative effort of all you knew, and that was the once shot you had. You rolled a 3 and blew it. Try something else.

As a DM, don't put your adventure in that situation either.

I find players are more creative, start buying backup skills, and become more involved when I use pass-fail tests with them. They understand that moment will not come again, and they make plans in case it fails. They can't sit there and burn time for automatic success, because that's not the way the world works. You can't take a chemistry test until you pass it.

In a movie, when a hero attempts to pick a lock and fails, that is usually never revisited again. The brute in the party kicks it down. The smart kid hacks the computer. Someone tries the window and finds it open. Someone asks, "Is there a back door?" Another character pulls out a welder. Dramatically, it feels right.

Everybody Wins but Nobody Cares

Somewhere, I believe rules like this slipped in because a dungeon master somewhere let his or her players bully them into making successive rolls until they caved in. The player, whoever it was, sat at the table believing that roleplaying was just like a videogame, and you could press that "use skill" button and roll the virtual dice in the CPU again and again until they succeeded.

Player: "What? Come on! I keep trying!"
DM (sighing): "Okay, roll again."

No. Seriously? Life isn't like that. you can't show up at the job interview the next day after they told you to get lost. Your skill roll at this one task was it, and your character gives up trying because it isn't possible. No matter how you feel as a player, you need to figure out another way forward. maybe you shouldn't have skimped on the skill, maybe the task was to tough, or maybe it was just bad luck. Regardless, in that game world, your character failed, and you as the invisible hand of the player must chart a new course and find a new way.

If you roleplay a second chance, I'll give you that. Don't expect it to be easy, and you better have a new angle to come at this problem, but I am fair and love creative play.

Death, the Great Exception

Death is always a great exception to the rule. If your party is fending off a goblin horde, and your thief is trying to pick that lock so everyone can escape, I will let you try again and again until you all fall to goblin blades or get that blasted door open. There may be increasing penalties as each attempt fails. This also feels right. I generally allow in-combat checks as long as there is a chance of grave danger ever present and threatening to strike every turn. In a movie, one character picks the lock while the rest hold off the horde, and everyone is screaming at the thief to get it open.

Out of combat, there is no pressure to succeed, and no life-or-death consequence (yes, even in the grand sense where the princess is behind the door and needs to be set free). With a constant and real threat, yes, I generally allow second chances, and really, this falls under the above "roleplaying" exception for second chances. You are under fire, and need to get the door open. Your character gets second chances because the pressure is on and the adrenaline is pumping. The danger of failure is real. You will succeed. Maybe.

It feels right. It feels dramatically correct and it also reflects real life experiences. Once the threat passes, the pressure is off, and whatever that last check was stands.

Another Exception, Skill-Ups

Let's say your thief fails and comes back to that same lock later with a higher skill level. Yes, I would allow a second check since you learned some new tricks. Or maybe a long amount of time passes, like weeks, then yes, a fresh try could be allowed. This is also being fair, while still staying strong on the pass-fail result of the original check.

This has Always Been How We Played

Really, this has always been how we played roleplaying games. We let the original skill check stand, fail or succeed. We only allowed second chances though creative roleplaying. Players always found another way around, or understood they needed great skills and redundancy of skills and plans to avoid being put in a bad situation by an unlucky skill check.

Taking a 20 felt so lazy to us. It felt like skills checks were inconveniences to play. To us, skill checks were play. Taking a 10 meant nothing, I mean, in what sense could you say "I do an average job" in the chaos of the universe and dungeon crawling where anything could happen?

Even when we play Pathfinder, we disallow taking a 10 or a 20. I would rather just DM fiat "no roll needed" for those simple tasks than to allow a buffalo-through assumption of videogame-inspired try-fail-repeats at my table. If a skill check is that simple, really, why roll? Yes, 3E and Pathfinder say "roll if failure is important and has consequences", but to us, every roll is important and has consequences - because any roll important enough to make at the table should be that important.

Adventurers and Only Adventuers

DarkgarX and I had a discussion and it started like this:

"It is funny how some superhero RPGs assume that the X-Men and the Avengers have the same motivations...."

Now with the old Marvel Superheroes RPG, it had this feeling, at least for us. Now, what is this feeling. I can sum it up by saying that this happens when a roleplaying game automatically puts you into a "default role" based on the fact you are a hero.

You see this with D&D and also Pathfinder, you are some sort of treasure hunter or other "adventurer" class that goes out and loots and kills for experience and profit. In most other games, these people would be called bandits, but I digress, the game has a feeling it puts you into a role just based on the fact you are playing it.

Factions and the world story are secondary, and these games typically don't want to put you in a specific world role because of their generic-fantasy roots, or it is just easier to assume by default those generated in the system belong to this generic adventurer class.

Traveller had the same feeling for us, that the game mustered you out of whatever service the tables put you in, gave you a starship, and said, "Go forth and adventure, space citizen!" And that is typically where our Traveller games ended because space is a huge place. I know it is up to the group to decide what they want the players to do, if they all still work for the scout service or whatever, but the game provides little direction to do so, and we were young, so we wondered what the point all was. Today, yes, we know more and can handle a universe-sized sandbox, but as kids, no, we weren't prepared.

Contrast this with Dragon Age, or even the Pirates of Legend games. In a setting-specific RPG, you have factions ready to join and be a part of, and those factions have missions ready and waiting. I would even put games like Gangbusters (more so) and Star Frontiers (less so) in this category, since those games have built-in worlds and factions a player can jump right into and get going.

Dragon Age is an interesting game, since it pulls so heavily from the lore of this world, and there are many factions to join up with or play against. It is a wonderful world, and very rich in detail and backgrounds, and I will say the world almost feels Star Wars: The Old Republic like in the factions and history. I would have wished Wizards did as good of a job with Faerun, but it often feels Wizards doesn't focus as much on lore and characters as they should. I feel there is always this invisible stalker hovering over Wizards and to some extent Paizo when it comes to lorebooks concerning powerful NPCs, and the tired trope that powerful NPCs make the world unfun. The D&D 4th Edition worldbooks were almost devoid of any personalities or powerful figures, and they felt sterile and useless for our group as a result.

Exactly the opposite feels true for me and my players, powerful NPCs make the world interesting and compelling. Give us a world full of great good guys and bad guys, and we will have adventures in it all day. What is Lord of the Rings without Gandalf?

Dragon Age also has a "goals and ties" system that attempts to give the players a reason to band together, so the default assumption of the adventurer class is still present in the game. They also have a fun-looking "player organizations" system that lets players create factions and run them, so there looks to be thought put into a sandbox-style game and crafting motivations within it beyond the 'kill for loot and XP" motivation of other games.

But back to the original thought. The adventurer class and the default roles of the hero. I find this to be a little less common in generic RPGs (such as GURPS, Legend, and others), since there is literally nothing else to do, so you need to come up with the factions yourself. You need to start by saying "let's spin up a party of ghost hunters" and use the rules to make that happen. With the D&D style games, you can get away with "let's spin up a hero and wait for the DM" sort of generic adventurer role, and things still can work.

I don't think it is a strength, in fact, I think this is one of the things that turns me off to the current incantations of D&D and Pathfinder, the assumed lack of a world and a faction. It isn't the game's fault, of course, because they are toolboxes, but there is something strangely un-generic about these traditional high-fantasy games that feels different than an entirely generic game.

Yes, you can make your own world, and make your own factions, and more power to you if you do. But you can get away without doing it and still have it work. With other generic games, creating a "generic hero" without knowing why is often a recipe for disaster. Fantasy does tend to be simpler in its motivations, so you can get away with designing to fill a role (tank, healer, DPS) and fit right in to any story by "wanting to help out."

It is interesting to compare this to a generic fantasy game such as Legend. With Legend, if you spin up a character, there feels like there is little or nothing to do without a story happening or factions in some sort of game world to motivate players to a call to action. Referee input is needed in order to get going. With the D&D variants, it somehow feels different, like you can start playing without a story and a faction and be fine. You could happily adventure for adventure's sake, and begin leveling up and gathering loot. This admittedly is a strength of the system, since the motivation for leveling is strong and built-in.

It also feels like a weakness of these systems, because by default there is no need for a strong motivation. It is the same "get in and level your guy" sort of motivation MMOs have, where you disconnect yourself from any care about the story or quest text, and play for getting to the next level. I suppose this is a legacy of "XP for monsters" and the hack-and-slash nature of that reward system. It is also interesting to note that if you remove the "XP for monsters" part of D&D and only award story XP for achieving goals, the motivation to level without background decreases a bit. You would still go out to get loot, but killing for XP is now not an option and players are pushed more towards story and not random violence for XP.

Motivations are fascinating things, and the reward systems in games can be setup to reward players who do setting-supporting activities (like Gangbusters). Other games try to walk a middle ground and support generic motivations, like D&D, but this also creates a paradox where you can advance by not supporting a faction or playing through a story. It is an interesting "not choice" for the game, and given a lack of a specific game world with specific story lines and factions, can create a generic adventurer class whose sole motivation is to level.

Simulation at the Level of Detail

There's a section in Frank Chadwick's classic WW2 miniatures game where he recounts using a squad-level WW2 war game to simulate a massive Eastern Front battle. Squad by squad they played out the gigantic battle, and the by the end they realized the outcome did not reflect reality at all. The battle never came out that way, the squad level individual fights played out, and the entire game kind of fell apart under the weight of improbability.

You can imagine a game of this size, a massive amount of gaming tables, maps covering Poland and Russia, and literally thousands of counters or miniatures tracking every vehicle crew, LMG, engineer squad, field car, tank, and supply unit all being moved in hours-long turns in painstaking detail. Every battle for a farmhouse - simulated. Every meeting engagement on a road - simulated. Each battle for a forest or hedgerow - simulated. Every tank battle - simulated down to each shell fired.

Why didn't it come out just like reality? I mean, it should have, since each man-to-man engagement was handled in painstaking detail, and a result like the one that happened in history should have been the outcome, right?

Part of the outcome of this battle led Mr. Chadwick and his designers to simulate these battles in a larger scale, with larger company and corps level units. They realized that simulating large systems down to the smallest detail does not always provide the best reflection of reality. They found if the smallest unit was a tank company or section, they could get a better overall large scale simulation than if they worried about every gun's ammunition, every broken track, and every individual squad. They could write rules that handled larger groups and simulate the historical real-world happenings of these classic WW2 battles, so thus Command Decision was born.

Of course, we do all this by computer nowadays, so why are WW2 miniatures war game rules important? What does this have to do with tabletop roleplaying?

Because today's pen-and-paper designers still make the same mistakes.

Shouldn't a detailed sectional hit points system with hit locations, rules for slicing tendons, and medical trauma charts more realistically simulate medieval combat? Shouldn't an almost slow-motion martial-arts inspired combat system with half-second turns and action points laid out for every move of the arm, swing of a blade, and pull of the bowstring more accurately simulate personal combat?

If we can simulate that level of detail on a man-to-man scale, then we should be able to put twenty people on each side and get a near picture-perfect simulation of medieval combat, right? Especially with miniatures, where we can second-by-second track line-of-sight, force field-like attacks-of-opportunity, and arrow-by-arrow ammo counts. Spells have interlaced count-down casting times. Weapons have speeds and reaches. It should be perfect!

It often isn't, and again, the too micro level of detail breaks down, and you more feel like you are playing a miniatures gaming rules simulator than you anything remotely realistic. The game doesn't know if it wants to be battle chess, a simulation or reality, or a miniatures combat game. Many games try to be everything and fail at everything. Some adopt a "way of thinking" almost like a war-gaming ideology and shoehorn that mantra-like system onto every action, even if it doesn't fit or should be handled by the referee as a one-off without the rules.

You have to be careful with games that dive into too low level of detail, or that try to simulate reality at too granular a level. There will be tons of individual rules simulating how a dagger cuts through leather armor and how that wound affects movement based on hit location and it will look cool and feel great when it happens in game. It is the same thing as the small Russian squad on the Eastern Front holed up in a snow-locked farmhouse holding off an entire onslaught of German attacks, tanks, and aircraft, becoming the heroes of the Eastern Front. Those are cool moments in isolation (and the latter is a great small scale scenario), but in the context of a larger system, they take up too much time and attention from what should be a balanced and even attention of time and focus upon the large system being simulated.

If the game is about a story adventure, yes, a wounded leg may play into that, but are the rules around getting that wounded leg so heavy they take away from the larger story-based experience the designer wanted to focus on for the game? Are all the characters in the story walking around with wounded legs, hands, eyes, clavicles, sprains, pulled muscles, and bandages covering cuts so they won't bleed to death, and the king and queen of Storyville are sitting there wondering why this group isn't in the hospital because they are in no shape to find out who stole the king's crown? If the game is about intrigue, make it about intrigue, and there is a laudable design goal to de-emphasizing things in the rules that may take away from that experience.

You can't put everything in a game and expect it does everything well. Imagine Monopoly with tax forms, IRS requirements, local zoning ordinances specific to each color group, investment income, random events like hotel fires, slumps and building booms, random economic events, a stock market, union protests, a global economy, industrial development charts, WW2 breaking out, populist elections, political wheeling and dealing, and so many layers of detail that yes - this is how a real real estate economy works, and it should all be in there, right?

After all, a game without this level of detail that focused just on buying, selling, building would be seen as too simplistic and not worthy of a true real estate game, right?

No, that stuff doesn't belong, and the job of a good game designer often lies in saying "this is what my game is about" and cutting the cruft and "cool features" that worm their way in during design. "Too many cooks" is a real problem in game design, as is "the cook doesn't know what he wants" or "the cook is trying to copy the best features of several dishes."

It's a taco with Kung Pao chicken, refried beans, pizza sauce, wrapped in a hamburger, and wrapped in a spicy gordita with cheese melted on top.

You get games that are like that, and you get things like that at taco place. It looks great on the menu, but it is typically something you eat only once if you are crazy enough to buy in. Or you're so embarrassed you bought one you start defending it and selling it to your friends.

But seriously, there is such a thing as focus in game design, and games that know what they are trying to do and focusing every rule - from character design, combat, skill use, exploration, and interaction one that one activity and making the parts that matter...matter. They also eliminate the cruft, pointless small simulation, and unneeded detail, and focus on delivering the core experience in the best way possible. If this game is about dungeoning, then let's focus on dungeoning. If this is a storytelling game, let's deliver the best storytelling rules possible and cut out the rest.

Again, we go back to design. This is what makes great products, from cell phones to role playing games.

ArcheAge and Theme Parks

DarkgarX and I have been playing around in the Archage MMO lately and I walked away a little disappointed.

It is a game that promised unlimited freedom trading, building, and PvP - with a huge sandbox world. Our experience has been a typical level-based grind through a series of camp-to-camp quests that seemingly have no end. The PvP is endgame content at 50, and most all of the run up to that feels like a traditional MMO quest-based themepark grind.

It is important to understand the difference between a sandbox and a themepark setup for a game world. Themeparks are tightly controlled settings with clear quest lines, progression, and typically feature strong player protection versus any interference to leveling. The fact that our pair of characters is near level 30 out of 50 and we have not seen or had one PvP battle is depressing.

In old World of Warcraft, the PvP fun started at 20. In the old Warhammer MMO, it started at level 10. Both were a blast to play, and you learned your PvP role quickly. Both of those were still themeparks, but at least they made a conscious effort to start you with PvP early.

In Archage, I feel like PvP is held away, your character is auto-protected, and there is no war of big conflict I have any connection to. The game is beautiful and has wonderful technology with placable houses, farms, mounts, vehicles, ships, and all sorts of other really cool stuff, but I am not feeling the conflict or fight affect my character in much of a way.

Most of the house and farm building is locked up behind quests, and you can live and farm in a protected zone, so there is nothing much at risk for your placable structures.

In a sandbox world, everything is on the table. You can be ganked by level 50's in the starting zone, and even by people supposedly on your same side. There is no sides, it's everyone for themselves. If you want to team up for mutual protection, you are free to do so. If you want to form a guild that protects your new players, go ahead. It's up to the community to create groups and environments based on their desires, play styles, and wants. Yes of course there are problem players, but in these games community and social order usually creates safe havens to get started in.

EVE Online is a great example of minimal protection to start, and then letting people fly free and do whatever they want ion 0.0 space. It has a tiny themepark to get people started, and then cuts you loose in a universe-sized sandbox. It's a great experience.

Sidebar note here, on themeparks in MMOs and roleplaying games. I am becoming tired of them. They feel like engineered experiences that are boring and predictable. They are filled with the by-the-numbers lands and content. I don't need a Disneyland-style  "Egypt Land", "Future World", "Ravenloft Land", or a "Norse Land" in my games, nor does it make sense to me in these worlds. How would you feel if Lord of the Rings had these places added in by Hollywood types?  

For some people, okay, fine; but really, every world I play in doesn't need token tip-of-the-hats to every Earth culture to fill up some development and marketing bucket list. It's just, no, I feel it's just lazy and unimaginative. Plus, everyone's doing it.

If I want an Ancient Egypt fantasy game, I will set it in the original Ancient Egypt and paint D&D rules and monsters all over it. It's fine, you don't need to create a pseudo-Eygpt for me and fit it in some other world somewhere. Maybe now that you don't need to create this place, you can build something original and put it where you were going to put this.

To it's credit, Archage doesn't have these silly places, but it does have the same themepark structure as many other MMOs. The camp-to-camp grind is hard to want to play through, the "chosen one" plot line is the same for thousands of players, and it just feels like it tried to go in a bold new direction, but it fell back on the traditional MMO themepark-isms. We will likely play through our time and see what happens, but I am feeling a little down about the game.

What do I want? I want that free and open game where the actions of the community and players matters. It's tough, you get a lot of hype and pre-release journalism from everywhere, and your expectations are probably way off base than what the game finally ends up being.

Everyone Needs to Play This!

Yeah, that above line. That's what you want to hear. It's like the days when World of Warcraft was hot because that's what everyone at work played, and you had to too so you could be a part of the water-cooler discussions.

Pathfinder? D&D 5?

We're not there yet or the boat never got here.

Pen-and-paper games are terribly niche. It feels easier to sell a boxed board game in Barnes & Noble such as Arkham Horror or Risk than it does to sell a "concept" like "pen and paper roleplaying" to people. This is not for the faithful, this more applies to new players, you know, the next generation of players.

What would it take for fantasy roleplaying to go mainstream again?

You are platform building, like an operating system. Computer companies know how to get market share, and it typically goes like this:

1. Release an OS that is easy to pirate or get for free
2. Support lots of pirated and free software
3. When you control the market, lock things down because the party's over

It's a cynical view, but there's a truth to this. If your game or OS is everywhere, you will control the users, even if you are not making any money doing it. That's more important when you launch, because you can worry about locking in that user base later and monetizing them after they have built up a substantial investment in software or gaming books that it would be too painful to go anywhere else.

It was this way with D&D 3 and the OGL and d20 SRD. Paizo kept supporting those games, and took many of the locked in users with them. If D&D 4 was the "upgraded Windows 7 version" of D&D 3's "Windows XP," things would have been different. But D&D 4 went Windows 8 instead, and you got a split in the market where some people liked the concept, and some long-time users didn't.

So Windows 10 and D&D 5 feel like the "what did we do last night?" hangover games and OS's returning to the familiar way of doing things. They feel like iterative "return to the normal" experiences that you have to use rather than a breakout experience that causes a market hysteria and rush of new users and players. If you want to keep using a PC, yeah, you will probably need to use Windows 10 some day. If you want to be a part of the hobby store crowd, yeah, you will have to pick up D&D 5 and learn how to play. Pathfinder is always there for the D&D 3 crowd as well, existing like a Android or Chrome OS for those fans.

I'm reminded of Apple's new OSX Yosemite upgrade and how nothing really changed much but some backend stuff, the UI, and some icons. It still feels like the same solid design, and they didn't go all iPad on us desktop users and force a new way of doing things on us. There was no major change in the way things were done, there is no "hangover version" of the OS, and things still work the way they did. Apple is conservative, because it know not to mess with the way users know and love how to do things, unless a major-major change is needed and they have no good options (Final Cut, etc).

In a way, roleplaying is already mainstream, it's just online games and communities have taken the torch from pen and paper games and people "roleplay" in a million different ways in a million different programs everyday. D&D has to become relevant to those roleplaying fans again, a platform for people to express themselves in fantasy settings and worlds. They are split off roleplaying in World of Warcraft to Second Life, often roleplaying in games that don't even have basic support for meaningful player interaction or dungeon mastering.

Those are your users.

I feel we are three of four generations of D&D style games away from this point because we just don't have the vision and willpower to make this a reality. D&D does not need a new set of paper rules to get to the mainstream conversation again, it needs a vision of what the product can be.

D&D 5: In Favor of Role Playing Rules

D&D 5 adds mechanical rules for role-playing to the game. Through a system of five defined personality traits that the DM uses to grant a one-use, rechargeable, Inspiration Point, which can be saved and gives the play advantage on a roll (or used for other player's rolls).

I'm not too positive on this system, since I believe it limits the rewards DMs can give to players for good roleplaying, and it is also slightly exploitable. Unless there are other systems in the DMG that are added, I feel a little limited by this system and I find it isn't needed during the sessions we play.

However, let me think of the reasons why you may want to use this system.

Perhaps this is intended for new players and DMs who don't understand the concept of rewarding good roleplaying with in-game bonuses. If you are coming in from another more structured fame environment, how is a new DM supposed to judge and reward play that adheres to a character's personality limitation or belief system? It is an interesting thought, one that makes me think D&D 5 is actually aimed at people outside the hobby.

Think about it, if you never played a pen-and-paper game, and you don't know anyone who does - how are you supposed to know how to reward roleplaying?

This reasoning may also be behind why things are so simplified, like not including map-based combat rules. Nothing intimidates new players more than a map with figures, I have seen people freeze up, not want to touch things, and ask constantly, "Can I do this?" or "Is this okay?" It is part of learning yes, but it can be overwhelming to a new player.

It extends to the Monster Manual as well, with the simplified statistics, lower amounts of special attacks and abilities, and simplified and graphical presentation. Things feel simple because they are intended to be that way for new players.

I see some of that in the Player's Handbook too, there aren't many detailed character build options because those are intimidating, the number range is tighter because it is supposed to work across many levels, and the role of magic items has been reduced to make character builds and gear less important.

It is interesting to think of D&D 5 as a level 1 through 20 version of the Pathfinder Beginner Box, and this may be really what the game is the closest to in spirit.

Another reason why you may want to use the roleplaying rules is in organized play. As a DM, you may want to wash your hands of favoritism accusations from troublesome players or people you don't know, and use the system as a safeguard to make sure everything appears fair. It takes away some of the dynamic and social aspects of the game, but it is sort of a 'protection system' where a DM can coldly award inspiration if action X fulfills motivation Y.

You are never giving advantage to rolls that are fun or entertaining here, but in a public session with people you don't know, you don't want to appear to be playing favorites with certain outgoing players and have some people turned off by that. Removing the DM's role from some of the more interpretative parts of the game has been a theme since D&D 4, and it's possible some people are turned off by a creative and involved DM.

"Well, I can't be that entertaining or creative, and that DM is playing favorites with certain players, so I don't want to play that game."

"I would never play that. I don't even know how to act or what good that does."

You may laugh, but I have seen these feelings out there among people. It's odd, in order for the game to be more socially acceptable, the creative and interpretative parts are being ruled down into strict "yes or no" paths. To us old-schoolers where we want everyone to be involved and we don't think twice about rewarding creative play, it may seem strange to us. But to outsiders in the hobby, having these types of rules is actually "protection" for them and it is seen as something that ensures their contributions to the game will be rewarded.

Part of me feels sad roleplaying has fallen so far out of the mainstream this needs to be taught or enforced with defined rules. I guess it is like remembering the days of computing before antivirus programs were needed for everything, and picking and possibly paying for one was a requirement to get online and doing anything. I suppose I may use those rules with newer players in public settings, but then again, I will abandon them is a group feels like they are limiting their fun and we are all comfortable with my 'reward good play' DM-ing style.

Ultimately, you will play the way you want to play, but I find it very helpful to know why these systems were put in place, and knowing when they can help a group of players.

Where Are Our Immersive Experiences?

George was playing Call of Duty 2 on the big screen TV, and I watched him climb up sheer walls of ice (often falling off), race snowmobiles, hang from cliffs, and do all sorts of other cool stuff that just blew my mind. In reality, a lot of the Battlefield and Call of Duty games go like this, they break up the monotonous shooting levels with in-your-face action, car chases, hang-on-for-your-life moments, and plenty of cinematic spills and chills.

Contrast this with tabletop games such as Descent and roleplaying games like D&D4 and Pathfinder. In tabletop strategy games such as Descent, they place varied sub-goals on the map to break things up, but often the same turn-denial tactics win the day, and you are left with just the math and random chance to provide the excitement. My four figures against your ten, with infinite monster replenishments providing the impetus to end the scenario quickly. You can't run across a flaming log bridge only moments from collapse, dodge falling pillars as the temple crumbles around you, or leap aross an ever widening crevasse to safety. Scenario design could alleviate some of these problems, but too often tabletop games seem mired in the thought of 'math is fun' and expect that combat alone will solve all problems.

Roleplaying games fare a bit better - but you need a spectacular referee and players willing to throw caution to the wind to have a great time. A party that turtles up and avoids running through the collapsing temple, looking for another way around is going to kill your seat-of-your-pants fun; and similarly an unimaginative referee who presents a dull and structurally sound temple full of the same old goblins will get you back to that same old boring experience.

Players could revolt at the entire idea, and shout 'railroading' at the collapsing temple scene and they would be partially right. You need to give and take though, and the cry of railroading can be a method of refusing to participate; you have total freedom in there to escape, and you need to give a little to see how the story comes out. You could call everything in roleplaying games beyond a generic sandbox as railroading, but where is the fun in that? The referee needs the freedom to setup cinematic deathtraps for the players to escape and beat, and these are the challenges in which heroes are made. If I am a player, I accept your railroad, and I shall beat this train in my own way - with style.

So back to the question, where are our cinematic and immersing experiences? The old game Paranoia had it right: if you are boring, you are dead. Take chances, and you shall be rewarded. Your character's survival, however, is not guaranteed. Smart play, daring risks, and decisive action are the path to victory - but even then, a bad dice roll could turn your brave plan into a fool's folly. The only certainty is failure through inaction or cautious play. This is the unwritten contract between players and referees that made that game work so well, and the groups that understood it had a blast. The groups that played the game like some 1984 psychological drama or post-apocalyptic game had less fun.

In itself, math is not fun. A new way of rolling dice does not make a game fun. Having plenty of character design options does not make a game fun. Putting twenty figures on the map for your team of heroes to fight does not make the game any more fun than placing ten. In fact, more figures and more stats means less fun and more work. Combat is dull if it is just a dry calculation of AC versus combat modifiers. We need those moments of excitement. We need for characters to fail and fall. Without failure, there is no risk, and thus, no fun. The definition of a game is an activity in which you can fail.

Where do we go from here? You need to look inside yourself, as a referee, and make that choice to take the game into your own hands - and provide those cinematic experiences to your players despite what the rules say. As a player, you need to rise to the challenge, and accept fate. If the bridge ahead of you is burning and falling to pieces, you should go for it. As a referee, they should have a chance to cross that bridge based on skill, luck, or ingenuity - it is not a 100% certain deathtrap. This is more changing ourselves than the rules or the game, to accept action-oriented cinematic experiences as our personal playstyle - no matter what the game.

Players: Take chances and accept fate. Inaction is failure.

Referees: Present cinematic experiences, and to hell what the rules say.

Design Room: Pathfinder Advanced Race Guide

Hello again! Today we are doing a Design Room breakdown on the Pathfinder Advanced Race Guide. This is not a traditional review, as you can go to the Paizo or Amazon sites and get plenty of those. Instead, we will be breaking this book down from a game design standpoint and discussing related issues with campaign and world design. We will start by covering the basics.

Again, Paizo puts out a beautiful book, a full color 258 page monster of a tome. I will always say, Paizo is the sports team that spends the big bucks, gets the best talent, and they are just a joy to watch deliver. The book is full of new options for existing races, new core races, new alternate races, and a race builder that is the star of the show - more on that later. Art, layout, and content are all playoff quality, as usual.

It is an impressive addition, and very useful in play. I wouldn't say this is an essential book to play with (like the NPC Codex is), as the races in the core rulebook are great and good enough for most every player. If you are a fan of alternate PC races, this book is for you. It really breaks down on you view of fantasy, and how you see the world.

The Creature Cantina

Some people see fantasy as the intersection of the basic D&D races: Humans, Elves, Halflings, and Dwarves. This is your pretty typical Lord of the Rings model for a fantasy world, and it works well no matter what rules system you follow. There could be other races in the world, but there is a distinct deemphasis on their importance in the world. The rule is, if the world can exist without them, they are a minor race.

As an example, compare Dark elves in D&D and Warhammer fantasy. Dark Elves in D&D are a minor race, the world can exist without them. Dark elves in Warhammer are a core part of the world, and they are a major player in everything from battles to Chaos magic. In our D&D world, in most cases, you could do without dark elves a lot easier than you could do without normal elves.

The problem with minor races is that they start to feel like those tack-on latex-mask races that appear weekly in shows like Star Trek, or the mess of races in the Star Wars Creature Cantina. Admittedly, Star Wars is doing a better job nowadays integrating and raising the importance of its core races, with the standardization of the big players in games like the new Star Wars MMO. With a plethora of minor races, they begin to feel like 'guest stars' in the game, and they become a bit more difficult to relate to. It is easy to see the problems a dwarf would have traveling through elven lands, but a kenku or a merman?

The Melting Pot

The Forgotten Realms in D&D3.x was notorious for its subraces, and the Advanced Race Guide gives you subraces in spades. In FR, there were a Baskin Robbins amount of elf flavors, moon elves, star elves, sand elves, sea elves, wood elves, and if I looked hard enough you could probably find stone elves and storm elves. The Advanced Race Guide does not go that far with subtypes, they prefer to differentriate with swappable racial traits, a couple new subtypes, favored class options, and new racial archetypes. It is a good balance of making a race different without creating a new ice cream flavor out of them. Paizo chose to go the 'this is an elf, but with this type of background' style of race design. It is a good choice, and keeps elves as a whole able to relate to each other better.

In a game design sense, you need to be careful of creating too many racial subtypes. You have to balance the fantasy trope of 'oh, there is a cool new race that lives here' with 'oh boy, another derivative flavor of the week race - enough already.' Too many racial subtypes and all of a sudden they are not special, and the original race becomes plain and boring. In the Forgotten Realms, who wanted to play a normal vanilla elf, when there were so many cool subtypes to choose from? Too much of a good thing is a problem.

The Drow in a Human's World

We bring up the specter of Drizzt Do'Urden here, and a PC choosing a race that obviously has problems even walking in the normal LotR style world. Admittedly, D&D4 does a good job with this, with dragonmen, tieflings, and even minotaurs being normal members of society. This is a reason why D&D4 felt so strange to many people, it adopted the Star Wars mixing pot model, and elevated minor races to major players. Nerrath was a fun mixing pot, where a half-giant could be the king, with a tiefling paladin and dragonman court mage working side by side.

With a normal world with the major four races, the drow PC all of a sudden doesn't fit in. This goes the same for aasimars, cat people, goblins, and even half-orcs and the like. I have been in a couple games where choosing a half-orc meant you were ostracized from the group, and you did not get as much play or RP time. It takes a skilled referee to incorporate race choices to a game, or be forward enough to tell players to stick to a subset of races when designing characters. It's okay if you want to do this, and actually helpful - if your vision of the world does not include a player's race choice, you will marginalize that PC subconsciously.

The Far Outs

"But I want to play a gray alien in your 1920's Gangsters game!" Another issue that comes up is the player that wants to play something so far out there it is difficult for them to even relate to the world. Two things can happen: either they become an ignored third wheel in the group, or the entire game centers around them and their wacky misadventures in a world that doesn't accept them. Either way, it's not a good thing. We have had this happen a couple times in our games, and a race guide gives players seeking this sort of attention a lot of ammo to use. I will be frank, I don't like it when race choice becomes a popularity contest. I guess you have to bring it up, since the selection of character race in a carefully crafted world is an important choice, and it can be used to disrupt a game.

There are good sides to 'far out' race selections, otherwise, we wouldn't have the Chewbaccas of the world, and everything would be bog-standard. It depends a lot on the group, theme of the game, and the game world. There is no better answer to talk it out beforehand, before anyone gets set on a particular choice. As a player, you need to feel out what is acceptable, bounce character ideas off the referee, and make sure other players in the group are thinking along the same lines. Selecting a far out choice can work, and not everyone in the group can be one as well.

No LotR Races?

Another fascinating use of the book comes with the Race Builder chapter, and creating campaign worlds. Here is a cool exercise, create a game world using five races. None can be one of the standard four (human, dwarf, elf, or halfling), and one race must play the bad guy. Now try to come up with a story for this world. It is a fun exercise, and it gets you out of Golarion for a while. You could come up with a world full of gnolls, kenku, cat-people, and frog-people - with demonic yeti-men as the enemies. This type of world design forces players out of their comfort zones, and can create a memorable short campaign full of new worlds, savage enemies, and plenty of pulp excitement. It is a favorite game of mine, and a model I used for my interpretation of Golarion's Jade Regent expansion.

My Jade Regent - Races of the Zodiac

To shake up MY Golarion, I reinterpreted the Jade Regent expansion using the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. I used the Advanced Race Guide to design each race, and thrust the players into a savage land where humans are the deposed rulers of the mighty Empire of the Zodiac (the Empress). The land has the following races:

• Ratmen - evil aligned until the tide turned
• Minotaurs (Ox)
• Tigermen - good aligned and used as slaves
• Rabbitkin - neutral
• Dragonmen - initially evil, were turned to good
• Yuan-Ti (snake) - evil
• Horsemen - neutral leaning good
• Goatmen - evil
• Intelligent Monkeys - good, and a fun one to play
• Kenku (rooster) - evil initially
• Wolfmen (dog) - neutral, turned to good
• Pigmen - evil

Granted, that is a lot of races, but not all of them were allied on one side. Some of them were demon-aligned, others persecuted, and others tried to remain neutral. A couple other races made their way in as bad guys, such as demonmen, ravenmen, ghost people (haunts), and a couple other evil-aligned critters. It was a fun game that threw characters out of their element, and forced them to roleplay and think about the nature of the race they dealt with. The goal was to unite the Zodiac's races and put the Empress back on the throne. This game is still going on since it is quite epic and sweeping.

I admit, it also seemed kind of like furry-friendly roleplaying; but hey, it was and still is cool, even if it seems slightly anthropomorphic. This is a great example of using the Advanced Race guide to create a campaign world, or spruce up a part of it you felt was lacking in variety and excitement. I could have done this with less races, but this is the Zodiac, so it was a cool metaphor to use for the conflict.

Overall

The Advanced Race Guide is indispensable for the creative GM world builder. It also allows you to get out of Golarion for a while, and create interesting one-shot worlds with an eclectic mix of races that are out of the ordinary. Sometimes, you need to mix things up and shake up perceptions. For players, this is primarily an options book for character creation, with a big 'check with your group' string attached. Where it shines are in building areas of the world or entirely new ones, and it breaks up the standard collection of fantasy races with a bunch of new kids on the block. Highly recommended for referees, a good buy for players looking for something different.

Referee's Screen: Star Wars Edge of the Empire II, part 4

Part IV: A New Hope

Let's continue our unboxing coverage of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire with some thoughts on campaign creation for the new game. There is a significant amount of game design in campaign creation, and the process can make of break the game. Let's look at some traditional pitfalls of Star Wars campaigns first, continue on to theming, and then layout a framework for building a new campaign.

Where Star Wars Games Go Wrong

I have played in a number of Star Wars games, and I have seen a number of areas where Star Wars as a game can fall apart. Usually these are story and campaign reasons, and a lot of them are common to sci-fi games in general. Let's look at the top three that I have seen and discuss them:

Theme Creep: Readers of SBRPG may recognize this one. A game centered around criminals on the edge of space shifts into a Sith versus Jedi war, alien invasion, son of Darth Vader plot, or some other 'do not want' nonsense. The reason that attracted the players to the game in the first place has been sidelined for the new 'big bad plot' and the players are showing up to just see what happens next to their characters. When the players are not driving the story and the GM is, expect things to break apart in a couple games.

The Great War: I have been in a couple Star Wars games that lost focus, and just turned into a big wargame. The Empire versus Rebellion fight gradually escalated, and the next mission had to become bigger and better than the last - with the stakes even higher. It's only a matter of time before super star destroyers and the latest and greatest superweapon (Sun Crusher, Death Star III.V, Plot Smasher, etc) shows up at this point. Players start racking up TIE fighter kills in the hundreds, the players form STAR Team 6, and the intimate feel of the game is lost.

Supervillain Escalation: This is a common one in Jedi and Sith games, and it happens all the time in superhero RPGs. The big bad is defeated, and the power level goes up for the next battle. Pretty soon, both sides raise their power levels, and the game then becomes about who can throw the biggest attack and most dice around. We saw this in our d6 System superhero game, "Well no, I got 18 dice of attack! The big-bad has 24 dice of defense! Pah-shissshhhh, let the dice tsunami roll!" The game degenerates into a power-versus-power battle, and pretty soon, the big-bad is threatening other planes of existence.

What to Do Padawan?

A good bit of general advice to avoid the above is to keep the game focused on characters, not conflicts. Nobody cares about "The Empire hates the Rebels" in an adventure where the PCs are supposed to be interacting with NPCs face-to-face. The galactic conflict should be in the background, with personal conflicts between characters taking center stage.

Let's look at this closer. If a colony manager is short of water because a local trading cartel is jacking up the price with the help of a local Imperial governor, then things start to become interesting. The 'Rebel vs. Imperial' conflict is still in there, but it is a subtext, and the smaller more personal conflict between characters is driving the plot. It is up to the PCs to interact with those characters, and resolve the situation however they want to.

Never let an ideology be the reason for the adventure! It makes as much sense as M calling James Bond into her office and this exchange taking place:

M: "James, your mission this time is the Cold War. Good luck 007."

James Bond: "WTF? omg lol"

Peeling Back the Onion

Ideologies, conflicts, wars, cartels, trade embargoes, and other large ideas should be backdrops and affect characters in the world - giving them motivation to do specific acts. It is better even yet to have these large ideas being the reason 'something else happened' and a character is involved. The more layers you can write into your adventures the better. Let's layer one out and see if we can craft a beautiful situation:

1. The Empire hates the Rebels, so...
2. The Empire supports a local Hutt boss, who...
3. Runs the local Water Cartel, that is...
4. Run by an Imperial Governor, who is...
5. Raising prices on a colony world, that is...
1. Bonus points for going deeper than this!
6. Causing a shortage of minerals from the asteroid mines, which is...
7. Causing pirates to raid ore ships, which...
8. Caused one ship to disappear, that is...
9. The reason the daughter of the captain contacted the PCs, who wants them to...
10. Find her father.

Wow. The more layers you add, the more fun you can have. Now that we have this, we can fill out each layer with NPCs the players can interact with, factions who have interests going one way or the other, and locations for all of this fun stuff. You should also keep most of the middle layers secret, and let the PCs discover them for themselves! This gives them the satisfaction of unraveling the mystery themselves, and this 'peeling back the onion' is an important part of letting the players have the satisfaction of solving a problem.

Most of the problem will be finding out the who and what, and shadowy forces will be hunting them and trying to stop them at every turn. You typically start out with generic baddies, like Imperials and monsters; and then as the bad guys figure out someone is on to them, the cartel thugs and adventure-specific bad guys start showing up. The opposition that appears is driven by the PCs actions, events in the galaxy, and what happens next.

Remember, the conflicts are driven by the NPCs, the Water Cartel should never order an attack 'because it is'; the NPC leader of the faction should order the attack in response to a specific incident by one of the groups (or PCs). If you played SBRPG and recognize Factions and Faction Reactions at work here, give yourself bonus points. It is the same system, and it works very well in Star Wars: Edge. You can incorporate "ripples" from the events that happen in the galaxy, and have the factions react to them as well, and all of a sudden you have a cool sandbox model for running your game.

In Closing

Keeping your games focused on situations and a layered adventure model keeps your game on track, and keeps you from having to make it up as you go along. You can't sustain winging adventures from week to week, and that typically causes one of the three failure conditions to happen for your campaign. Layer your situations, keep things secret, and have NPCs drive the conflicts between factions. Doing these three things will help you manage a successful game, and keep the players involved in your galaxy.

Referee's Screen: Star Wars Edge of the Empire II, part 3

Part III: Revenge of the d6

Understanding Star Wars: Edge

It is important to get the feel of play right for the game. Star Wars: Edge is different than other RPGs you may be used to, and it threw us when we began playing. In this Referee's Screen, I want to go over some of the issues we saw with macro versus micro play, and how to run Star Wars: Edge at its best given the dicing system and results. Let's dive today into micro versus macro play.

Micro Play

RPGs that play in the 'micro' are almost totally simulation games. Every blow is vectored out with a to-hit, every wound tracked, and every skill roll broken down into subtasks. Some games have marco elements (hit points, AC), but still play with a micro feel, such as D&D3.5. SBRPG had a very micro play style, with the spending of action points towards making attacks and parries, and a detailed blow-by-blow combat system. Car Wars, Aftermath, Champions, GURPS, and many other old-school games played in the micro style.

Macro Play

Remember the old D&D thru D&D2 combat explanation, which went something like this: "An attack roll covers more than just one blow, it is all the activity of the round, including defending, feints, dodging, attacks, and maneuver"? Macro play is like that, a series of actions or activities is aggregated into one roll, such as an attack roll in Arkham Horror. In these games, you are not rolling blow-by-blow to-hits, tracking bullets, and rolling to parry incoming attacks one at a time. You likely are making a 'combat roll' based on 'combat power' for your turn based on your weapons and abilities. The original D&D and its OSR clones are great examples of macro play, along with Star Wars (d6 System).

Star Wars: Macro Dipping Into Micro

Star Wars: Edge is a macro style game that dips into the micro style of play when needed. Combat is a perfect example, especially with minions. When you make an attack roll against a group of minions, you make one attack roll, and you can eliminate multiple minions with that roll. You assume the attack roll is a series of shots, and you are figuring out the result of that sequence of attacks with one roll. This is a great example of macro-style play, and the game encourages skill checks be made in a similar manner.

For example, Chewie would probably make one skill roll to repair the Falcon's broken comm dish. Busting the repair out into a sequence of events into a series of skill checks is discouraged, such as: weld the O-ring, replace the fuses, rewire the main comm line, install the dish, and test the installation. That 5-skill roll repair process would probably make sense in a game such as Space Opera or Traveller, but not here. In Star Wars: Edge, this is one skill roll with a degree of success and failure, along with the positive or negative consequences.

This is not to say Star Wars: Edge is all macro. The game can dip down into the micro when needed, and the dice can simulate what happens when that one photon torpedo shot into the ventilation shaft is needed. The game should play in the macro for the most part, and even things like star travel should utilize the dicing system to determine what happens when you jump into a star system. Life in Star Wars: Edge is controlled by those dice, and the rolls should cover a good amount of action, with those occasional 'one shot' micro rolls.

How This Plays

Now that we understand the macro vs. micro play styles, how does Star Wars play for us? Coming off Arkham Horror with its extremely macro system of task and combat resolution, we get it. The game should play more like a European-style boardgame, with the referee proposing problems to the group of players, and the players working as a team to solve them with their skills and abilities.

The micro-style play that feels like an episode of '24' doesn't really fit here, something that is typical of games like Pathfinder or GURPS, or games where you worry about penalties for switching targets, attacks of opportunity, or other micro-tropes. The game is not a sim, it is more an adventure game where you are solving a series of larger problems. Do not worry about haggling with a shopkeeper over every stim pack (in an hour long RP session); you are solving big problems with a single roll, moving to the next location, and taking on the next challenge.

Here's a good example of how this plays the best, at least in our experience:

GM: You land at the star port of the ice world, ship heavily damaged by that fight with the pirates. You will need a new reactor core, and you also have that encrypted holo-message to deliver to the contact named Jerak, who is supposed to be here, but you don't know how to contact him. All you know is that he is an alien, an asteroid miner, and is wanted by Imperial Intelligence.

Bob: Okay, Sam, you fix the ship, I'll put your pog here on the starport where our ship is. I will take Jane out to the local watering hole and start asking around for asteroid miners, where are the starport bars?

GM: Here, and a really dangerous looking one over here near the salvage yard.

Bob: Okay, let me put our pogs on the dangerous bar at the salvage yard, and we will take Vex-4 along so he can drop by the yard to shop for a new reactor. Does anything happen on the way?

GM: Make a streetwise roll, are you avoiding trouble, or doing something else along the way?

Bob: Avoiding trouble. [makes roll] 2 successes and 1 threat, what happens?

GM: No one beats you up, but it does look like a rough neighborhood. You bump into an Imperial patrol looking for troublemakers, and they take note of you and move on. You arrive at the bar, which looks like a total hole-in-the-starport-wall. Sam, make a roll for your first repairs on the ship....

The game works best with that conversational style, with a higher-level play using a large map. When something happens, either handle it with RP and skill checks, or bust out a quick tactical map for combat. Most checks should be macro, with the advantages or threats from these macro rolls guiding the action.

Use micro play on the zoomed-in combat and tactical maps, such as a roll to pick a lock, repair a distress beacon, or for one-on-one combats. Zoom back out to the macro play style as soon as possible, and don't get bogged down in the details.

Understanding how to zoom in and out like this, and keeping your game focused on macro play will give you greater enjoyment, and also keep that Star Wars feel in your game sessions. Star Wars is about the big picture, and you need to be able to aggregate action into dice rolls, keep players moving, and avoid everyone being bogged down in a dungeon hall.

Games that focus on dungeon halls are rightfully more micro and work better that way, but for dramatic sweeping sci-fi action, you need to play with a larger focus and picture. The Star Wars: Edge dice are designed to help you do this, and you need to understand how they will work for you to get the most out of the game.

-Hak

Referee's Screen: Star Wars Edge of the Empire II, part 2

Part II: The Polyhedral Menace

Meet the Dice

Today, let us meet the symbols on the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game. They are an interesting collection of mahjong-like symbols used in every roll to determine a four-axis result: success vs.failure, good outcome vs. bad outcome. I say mahjong-like and I mean it, the symbols on the dice cancel each other out like in mahjong. It is an interesting Eastern influence on the game, and one that harkens back to Star Wars' "Seven Samurai" inspiration.

We came up with our own fun names for the dice, to help us remember what they are for and what they do, and I will share those below. They are intended to be a fun way to understand how the dice work, and how we use them in the game.

Bang: This symbol is the success symbol, which we call a bang. Bang means explosion, and in Star Wars, the side causing the most explosions is usually the more successful one. Bangs are probably the most important result in the game. Bang is also one syllable, so George will announce, "4 bangs on this roll!"

If you roll positive bangs, the roll is a success. Many bangs indicate greater success, and if you get over four, we houserule you can say something crazy and stupid at the table to celebrate, "Don't get cocky kid!"


Sith: Countering the bang is the Sith, which the game calls a failure result. Siths oppose bangs, and remove them from the roll, one to one. We liken this to Siths being emo, negative, and generally opposed to the action movie trope of 'explosions are good.' Sith usually live on the darker dice, which is typical, and they are a bad result.

If you roll more Siths than bangs, the roll is a failure. Roll enough, and you have really failed big time. It's time to start thinking about career choices when you roll four or more, Leia is wounded, and you have a whole battalion of stormtroopers asking what you are trying to do by getting through that blast door.

Fuzzballs: Before you say this picture is upside down, I will tell you that this looks exactly like Luke's haircut in Star Wars. In fact, it looks like any good hairstyle in the 1970's, and it brings it's good-looking karma with it, what we affectionately call the fuzzball. In the game, this is called an advantage, but we liken fuzzball to that 70's magic of Farah Fawcett, blow dryers, and hairspray. Roll a lot of them, and you can laugh it up, fuzzball.

Each fuzzball increases the magnitude of something good happening because of the roll, independent of the success or failure of the roll. Roll a lot of them, and you are guaranteed something good happening; because in Star Wars, if your hair looks good while doing it, it doesn't matter if you are winning or losing. Just ask Billy Dee Williams or Chewie about Hair Club for Men.

Death Stars: The only thing awesome enough to counter Luke's hair is the Death Star. The game calls these threat, and each one cancels a fuzzball. Advantage and threat work exactly like success and failure, one cancels another on a one-to-one ratio. Rolling lots of them puts you in the cross hairs of fate, or the Death Star, your choice.

If you roll more Death Stars than fuzzballs, you have a roll that produces a negative consequence. If you managed to disarm the starship's engines but accidentally set the self-destruct sequence, you've probably rolled a ton of these small moons, and you are about to have a very bad day. Sometimes, you don't even know how bad it is until later. If you are rolling to find a safe landing spot in an asteroid, and the landing spot that has teeth, you've rolled a bunch of these suckers.

Palm Trees: Play the Star Wars music now, you've just rolled a palm tree. Oh yeah, we are looking at another upside down die, this time, the game's triumph symbol. This is technically treated as a success, but is a very good roll to make. They look like palm trees in Hollywood, complete with a little sun behind them. Getting one of these on the roll guarantees your adventure blockbuster status. This is Hollywood, after all.

One of these could send that photon torpedo down the air shaft. They act like successes, but they are that extra special "play the music and swing across the chasm with the princess" results that make your character oh so cool. Roll two of these, and you are probably eligible for bullet-time and a cool soundtrack to back you up. I hear Mace Windu has gold plated dice that are covered with these symbols, for when he needs to bust out his 'd12 ass kickers.'

Bikini Bottoms: The only symbol fierce enough to counter a palm tree is the dreaded bikini bottom. Ask Leia, if you end up in one of these, you have hit absolute rock bottom. Yes, it's upside down. Yes, it's a silly name, but it has a Star Wars pedigree in the inspiration, and bikini bottoms and palm trees go together like nothing else we know. And yes, we know it's a Sith symbol.

The game calls this the despair symbol, and they cancel triumphs. When you roll one of these, the 'Star Wars despair' music comes on, someone dies, something terrible happens, and the 'bad feeling about this' happens at the worst time. You know you've rolled a bikini bottom when you blow your charm roll at a party, and walk into the next room, where Vader and Boba Fett are just finishing up their appetizers.

May the Dice Roll with You

Well, that does it for our twisted little view on the dice, and hopefully this helps you remember what symbol cancels what, and how they are used in the game. Yes, we do use our crazy names for them around the table, and we have fun with the results. That's what the game is about, fun, and coming up with silly names for the rolls and their results adds to the party atmosphere around the table. They days of laughing at a RPG, quoting your favorite Star Wars character, and having fun are back.

The Seven Deadly Skills

In refining our thoughts on old-school games, George and I talked about activities that should always be handled between the player and referee without the interference from rules, stats, or scores. This is a pretty extreme view of what should be statted and what shouldn't, but this is a good refinement of the old-school idea, and brings some of the charm back to roleplaying. The following represents the 'seven deadly skills' and how they interfere with the interpersonal nature of roleplaying.

Searching
"You see a 15' square room. The floor is covered by a red twill rug, a bed sits in the northwest corner, with a night table and a lit lamp lighting the room. To the east is a desk with drawers, with a book and candle on top. To your immediate right is a shelf covered with books. What do you do?"
 "I make a search skill roll, what do I find?"

The physical act of searching should be an iterative process between the referee and the players. The players should ask for a description of the scene, and figure things out by saying what they search and how they search it. If they are clever enough, they should find the object they need 100% of the time. If they are hasty, ignore descriptions, or don't check the object completely, they should miss the object 100% of the time. Recommendation: eliminate search skills from the game, and make the process completely roleplaying based.

Traps
"After searching the hall, you spot a copper plate embedded into the floor. It looks like some sort of pressure-activated plate, possibly a trap. A small copper panel is on the right wall, at about waist height, with a round hole in the panel. What do you do?"
"I make a Disable Device skill roll, did I defeat the trap?"

Similar to searching, traps should be taken apart with roleplaying descriptions, mixed in with skill and ability rolls. In the above case, we could break the trap down like this:

• Remove the panel with an insulated tool [fail, 3d6 electrical damage, save for half]
• INT check to figure out the three gears and lock [fail and -4 to all further trap disarm rolls]
• Cut the wire between the sphere and coil [fail and panel electrical trap is active]
• DEX check to jam the lever [fail and hall trap goes off, etc...]

Some of these are ability or skill checks, and others are based off the descriptions the referee gives, and the actions the player takes. Everything is intimate and roleplaying based, and the player disarming the trap has to figure things out and pay attention. Recommendation: remove disable device skills from the game, and vector out traps to be interactive puzzles using skills, manipulation, and ability checks. This will enhance the use of ability scores and player logic in their application.

Puzzles
"You see a wood panel with nine shifting squares inlaid into it. One square is missing so the others can slide around. The remaining pieces seem to make a picture (the referee lays out nine paper squares, meant to be slid around and solved). What do you do?"
"I make an INT check, do I figure it out?"

Puzzles are mental exercises meant for the players to figure out - not their dice. In old-school gaming, adventures were full of these challenges, and they were a part of the fun. No matter what the INT of your character, if you could figure out the puzzle, you were given the prize. These sort of things did break the 'fourth wall' of roleplaying, but hey - they were fun, and intended to challenge the players wits, not their characters. Removing puzzles from the game takes all of the 'parlor game' fun out of the shared experience, and lessens the old-school feel. Recommendation: disallow INT or skill checks from solving puzzles, and make all puzzle solving live and roleplayed at the table using the wits of the players.

Lore
"You find an ancient tablet detailing a lost magic empire, destroyed thousands of years ago. On this tablet is a map of the lost mage towers of this civilization, and you see several landmarks on the map as well - some of which seem familiar. You need to find these towers, what do you do?"
"I make a lore skill check, modified by INT. Do I know where the towers are?"

Lore is going to be a controversial addition to the deadly skills list, but this type of 'do I know that?' skill robs some of the magic from the game. If a princess is kidnapped, and the players immediately start making lore checks to figure out where the princess could be, something is wrong here. Based on what their players could know, and the information they have gathered up until this point, the players should figure things out for themselves. In the above example, the referee should provide them with a map with landmarks that sort of line up with what the players already know, and the players should take it from there. If there is a question about 'does my character know that?' use common sense and rule it at the table, a wizard would generally know about spells, the location of magic schools, and other information important to their class. Recommendation: remove lore checks from the game, let players figure things out, and use common sense for everything else.

Intimidate
"The last surviving Orc shaman drops his staff and surrenders, backing into the corner. What do you do?"
"I make an intimidate roll, and get him to tell us where the princess is."

The success or failure of intimidation attempts should be ruled between the effectiveness of the player's roleplaying, and the NPC being intimidated. These sorts of checks always vary wildly with the participants, situation, threat, and information desired - so it should be 100% determined by the referee, with the deciding factor being how the player roleplays the intimidation attempt. Recommendation: eliminate intimidate skill, and make the success or failure dependent on the player's roleplaying and the referee's judgment of the situation.

Charm
"The guard steadfastly refuses to let you into the town, the gates are closed on the god's holiday. What do you do?"
"I make a charm skill roll to get him to let us in."

Charming is another of those situations that should be roleplayed between the referee and the players. If the player doing the charming is charming enough - let the player have it. Bad roleplaying should yield worse results, and there is an argument for the role of charisma here. My ruling would be to let charisma affect the magnitude of the result, but not the chance of success. A high charisma character could be granted a greater result or better outcome, but they should rely on what the player said at the time to determine if the charm attempt succeeds or fails. Do not take away from the roleplaying with the dice or a modifier - let the players play. Recommendation: remove the charm skill from the game, and let the players natural charisma determine the base chance of success.

Trickery
"The guard holds his sword on you, pointing to the stolen purse on the ground. What do you do?"
"I tell him someone else did it, I make a CHR check."

This is another of those purely social activities that should depend on roleplaying alone to determine the success chance. Charisma can affect what happens as a degree of success or failure in the game; but the player needs to think, be crafty, and put on a good show for the group. Why remove some of the most memorable shenanigans of the thief player by letting the dice play the game for them? Recommendation: remove deception and trickery skills from the game, and let the players roleplay the attempt in-character.

Negotiate
"This is my last set of platemail, the shopowner says, the price is 800 gold!"
"I make a barter skill roll to get the price down."

Bartering and negotiation should be done between the player and the referee, with no skills involved. Charisma can affect the final outcome, such as the magnitude of the discount, but it should never replace the one-on-one roleplaying during the negotiating process. The player could try all sorts of thing, like making an offer to sell their salave at that shop alone, for a good deal, trade in a valuable item, or do some other favor to get the price of the platemail down. Recommendation: eliminate all negotiation and barter skills from the game, let player-referee interaction determine success chance, and let the players wheel and deal on their own.


This feels like a pretty comprehensive list of skills negatively impacting roleplaying, and furthers my thoughts on what should be moved to the roleplaying side, and the rest can be played with the normal game rules. This isn't a 'don't do that' type list, but more of an open thought into how we can return the entertaining parts of the game to the table, enhance roleplaying, and let the players play.

Too many modern games put everything on skills, attributes, and success chances - and they leave the game cold with no player input. At that point, you are just rolling dice against a spreadsheet, and the player has minimal involvement with what is happening. Older games never had that luxury, and encouraged players to be wild, make things up, and play creatively. The innocence of the times mandated the players could play, and that creativity affected the outcome of the game. It is important to step back, and look for parts of the game that are 'over ruled.'

The goal is to return roleplaying to its roots, and capture the original feel of the game. I do feel that some rules systems go to far, and simulate everything - to the point of removing the fun from the game. We have to recapture the original feel of our games, let the rules part cover mechanical actions only, and return the spontaneity and player input to the game. Roleplaying is not mathematical simulation, it is a simulation guided by player input - with a strong emphasis on ad-lib and improvisation.

You want people to walk away from the game saying, "That was fun and my input mattered."

You don't want people to walk away from the game saying, "I didn't know the rules, so I didn't do well."