One Thing That Bugs Me

Much as I really like "Star Wars Saga Edition", there's one thing that really bugs me. In fairness to the game, it's something that was ported over directly from the "Revised Core Rulebook" (essentially, the 2nd edition of SW d20), and it's something that just about every game that features the particular element does.

Consider for a moment Red Squadron from Star Wars. We have:

• Red Leader, Garven Dreis, in an X-wing
• Red Two, Wedge Antillies, in an X-wing
• Red Three, Biggs Darklighter, in an X-wing
• Red Five, Luke Skywalker, in an X-wing
• Red Six, Jek Porkins, in an X-wing

and also Reds Four, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, all in X-wings. According to Wookieepedia they all have names, but since they're never named in the film I've not listed them here.

Now, if we consider one of those characters:

Luke Skywalker in an X-wing

Obviously, different games have different requirements, but in the context of a roleplaying game, and assuming Luke is the PC, which is more important: Luke, or the X-wing?

Personally, I'd argue that the answer to that is pretty clear: it's Luke. The X-wing is just a bit of equipment, no more important to the story than Lancelot's sword or Aragorn's belt.

But in Saga Edition, when Luke climbs into the X-wing, what happens is that he uses the fixed set of statistics for the X-wing, slightly modified by Luke's Pilot skill, his Base Attack Bonus, and a couple of other statistics. In the game, it is the X-wing that is by far the dominant element when determining the whole.

Crucially, Luke Skywalker in an X-wing has exactly the same number of hit points as Red Seven in his X-wing. And Red Seven is so low-level he doesn't even have a name! What this means is that the scene shown in the films just doesn't work in the game. In the film, most of the X-wings are horribly fragile - Porkins, Biggs, and all the unnamed Reds are killed with a single hit each, Red Leader and Wedge each survive a single hit (with Red Leader killed by the second), while Luke survives two hits and carries on to the target. (Presumably, Luke would have been killed by a third hit.)

In the game, the X-wings are all equally tough. Meaning that those unnamed Reds are equally likely to survive that first hit as Luke is, and Luke is actually extremely unlikely to survive two hits from the standard TIE fighter.

As far as I can see, a better approach to the problem would be to consider the X-wing to be a simple template that gets applied to a character when he steps inside - it gives a certain amount of damage reduction, a certain shield rating, various weapons, and a movement rate (and maneuverability class). That way, Red Seven, being a 1st level non-heroic character, has about 6 hit points, while Luke Skywalker, level 4 Jedi, has about 50 - it's no wonder he survives rather longer!

Unfortunately, there's rather a lot of work involved in rewriting "Starships of the Galaxy" in light of such a change, so I think I'll pass!

The Occasional Campaign

Several years ago, I ran my first "one-shot showcase" game, which I think was probably the Serenity RPG. The goal at that time was to give a bit of exposure to a game that people might like but that I wasn't sue would garner enough interest for a full campaign.

Over the years since then, I've run quite a few such games in various systems. I've learned quite a lot about the process of putting together a one-shot game, but I've also narrowed my list of potential candidates down quite sharply, with only four games now sitting on my 'one-shot' list.

I've also run each of these four at least once, and have my second run of both "Black Crusade" and "World of Darkness" planned for next year. That being the case, it's not really a "showcase" any more - I know the interest is there, people know at least a bit about the system; it's just a question of whether to proceed to a 'full' campaign or not.

And, actually, the answer to that is mostly "not". Obviously, I'm currently running a "Star Wars" campaign, but both "Serenity" and "Black Crusade" have some significant issues that prevent me taking the plunge, while "World of Darkness" is a much more niche concern, popularity wise (despite being the system used in the single best game I've run in recent years). It's unlikely that any of these will ever be 'promoted' to a full campaign (though it would be nice if the forthcoming "Firefly" RPG changed that).

Having said that, I do have a... notion tickling the back of my mind.

Some time ago, I did a short series of posts detailing the crew of "Betty" for the Serenity RPG. I used that crew for my "Firefly: Furiously Fast" one-shot, and am intending to reuse the same characters for this year's Christmas Game, "Serenity: Bound by Law". And I've also pencilled in next year's Christmas Game, "Firefly: Inglorious", which will use the same characters. In each case, the one-shot background makes some limited reference to the previous adventures, although the games themselves will not assume that prior knowledge.

Likewise, for my "Heresy of Angels" one-shot for "Black Crusade", I put together a set of characters that I intend to reuse for "A Lament for Lustivan" (if it ever happens), and will probably reuse after that. Again, the adventure backgrounds will feature some common elements, but the adventures won't make any assumption of prior knowledge.

And, finally, I think I've hit on a format for my "World of Darkness" one-shots, which will be modelled heavily on the old "Ultraviolet" TV series. Like the "Black Crusade" one-shots, this will use a common set of characters, with missions being assigned by an NPC as required (thus getting the PCs up to speed and involved quickly).

This has the big advantage of cutting down on the amount of unique preparation work I have to do to put together a one-shot game. It also has the advantage of building a scene quickly for returning players - they know what happened last time, and so can slot back into place with a minimum of fuss (albeit with the oddity that they may not have the same character!).

All of which is good so far. But it has another hidden advantage. Both the "Black Crusade" and "World of Darkness" setups are explicitly mission-based, with characters being assigned their tasks by either Lord Maleceros or Michael Colefield. Meanwhile Firefly/Serenity, by its nature, is inherently episodic - and has no great difficulty in simply telling the players where they are at the start of the 'episode'.

What this means is that there's no great need to stick rigidly to the old one-shot formula (with sessions booked months in advance, games being pretty detailed, and everything tightly wrapped up in 5-6 hours of solid play). Instead, if I find myself between campaigns but looking to host a game, I could quickly put something together, put out the call, and run a short mini-series (say 3 sessions across 5 weeks) in one of the games. And, with three different options to choose from, there's no risk of "continuity glitches" if I happen to have a mini-series occurring at the same time as a one-shot.

It at least opens up some interesting possibilities.

Now, I just need to do two things. I need to put together a team of four for the "World of Darkness" series (one cop, one spec-ops/merc, one doctor, and one priest). And I need to build up a bank of easy-to-populate adventure outlines...

Closing the Door

The "Star Wars: Imperial Fist" campaign I started a couple of months ago has had an open spot since it began a couple of months ago. After tonight, the campaign will be going on a brief hiatus over Christmas, and resuming on the 21st of January. Everything going as planned, that session will also mark the start of the second 'adventure' in the campaign, and so represents an ideal jumping-on point for a new player.

I've been giving the matter some thought, and I've decided that that first session in January will be the last opportunity for someone new to join the campaign. After that point, we'll switch to a 'closed' table for the remainder of the campaign. It's just easier for me to plan if I know the group of players (and characters) that I am working with.

On another topic, it looks like the Christmas Game this year may be busy - one player has already signed up, and the further three have expressed a strong interest in the game. Which is all to the good, the ideal would be to have a 'full' crew of 6 players, though that actually can't happen - we don't have enough seats! (Which is itself a nice problem to have.)

Adventure Wherever They Go

One thing I noted when reading through the Conan, Elric, and Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories was that the lead characters would quite often appear to wander quite aimlessly around their world, and wherever they went they would just happen to find adventure. Now, of course, a lot of that's inevitable - nobody wants to read "Fafhrd goes to the marketplace; he buys groceries; nothing much really happens."

But then, in an RPG, one can assume that the players likewise would much rather play "Bazaar of the Bizarre" than "Fafhrd goes shopping"! So, it's not completely irrelevant. And, in terms of campaign design at least, there's a name for that sort of thing: the sandbox. The GM provides a map, populates it will all manner of adventures, and the PCs get to wander around having their adventures.

However, I'm also inclined to think it has some relevance to adventure design as well, especially when dealing with one-shots, an especially with town- or wilderness-based adventures (rather than dungeon crawls). The thing is, it's not really practical for the GM to expect to specify the entirety of a small town for an adventure, or a research installation, or even a WH40k starship - they're just too big, especially for only a few hours of game time.

But what the GM can reasonably do is, when laying out his adventure location, highlight the key locations in a place, and prepare some event related to the adventure that occurs at each one. Other areas should be sketched in in broad terms ("the noble quarter is here, there are warehouses over here..."), with the option of more specific locations being marked when the players realise their significance. This has the advantage of flagging to the players, "you might want to look here", to avoid wasting their time, and it also helps any investigation along because until they've at least checked out all the key locations, they can't really get stuck.

Of course, that all seems a bit fake. And, indeed, it is - it's very much of the "the GM wouldn't mention it unless it was important" school of meta-gaming. But there seems to be a tendency in adventures (as evidenced in that first Numenera one-shot) for towns to be lovingly-detailed with fifty empty locales named - a tavern, a marketplace, several shops... all with "nothing to see here". The players are left to spin their wheels, because they can't see the three relevant trees in the forest. Which is already problematic, but when your entire projected play-time is 5 hours, it's even worse. So, cut it down to the essentials, and make sure that pretty much anything the players do "on-script" has some relevance to the story.

Incidentally, that may seem like a form of that "Chekhov's Gun" behaviour I complained about in my previous post. It's actually the opposite, though: in the CG example, every location that is to be detailed must be required for the plot, where here the locations are only relevant to the plot - they may or may not be encountered.

For example, if three locations are detailed (A, B, and C) and they're all required, then the only decision lies in the order to hit them. There are thus six possible plots: ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, or CBA. However, if the same three locations are detailed and they're all relevant, then there are sixteen possible combinations: A, AB, ABC, AC, ACB, B, BA, BAC, BC, BCA, C, CA, CAB, CB, CBA, or none.

Of course, in the base town for a campaign, you wouldn't want to be so restrictive. If the PCs are going to spend a lot of time in a place, you'll want many more locations, several of which they visit regularly, and many of which will simply be irrelevant to the adventure at hand. So I'm not suggesting some universal truth here!

One more thing: the players should probably take some hand in this as well. Instead of just saying "we go to...", they can really help but saying what they're expecting to do there. Those expectations may or may not be confounded, but they're still useful - "we go to the market to pick up groceries" makes for a very different scene from "we go to the market because I need to contact the thieves' guild". By flagging that to the GM, they allow him to skip over a whole load of irrelevant detail, and lets everyone just get on with things. Or not, if they prefer.

How Did They Get So Bad?

Warning: this one kind of gets away from me somewhere in the middle. In particular, I think the bit about Chekhov's Gun is getting at quite a good point, but doesn't necessarily make it very well. Plus, I think I've said much of this before...

After the game on Sunday, we spent some time discussing the adventure, and the weaknesses that it showed in actual play. Such as the PCs lacking in motivation to actually get involved, the 'blocks' put into the adventure where one bad roll can derail the whole thing, and so forth.

So, the question: how did published adventures get to be so bad? Was it always thus?

Personally, I'm inclined to identify the publication of "Ravenloft" as the key moment. It's not that it's a bad adventure; on the contrary, it is one of the best that has ever been published. However, what Ravenloft marked was a point where adventures shifted from providing locations in which to set adventures to providing stories in which PCs could have their adventures. Now, there's obviously nothing wrong with stories, and there's a fair amount that adventure design can learn from storytelling techniques.

But an RPG adventure is not a novel, and cannot be structured like one. And I think that's a key mistake that too many adventure writers make.

Adventures to be read, not run

I get the distinct impression that a lot of adventures are intended to be read, rather than to be run. Thus, they have a distinct story-like structure, with a clear beginning, middle and end; they support only a small number of PC paths through the story (sometimes as few as one); they presuppose key PC motivations, and sometimes actions; and so on.

Now, in fairness, it's important to note that any adventure's first test will always be in the reading - unless I can wade through the text, I'm never actually going to run it, so if it plays well but reads like a VCR manual, it's useless. And it doesn't really help that many (if not most) reviews are done on the basis of a read-through rather than a play-through - so an adventure that has some fun looking encounters and some good ideas, and has clear text, will score extremely highly even if actual play throws up major issues.

(It also doesn't help that a lot of reviews are also skewed by the names involved - an adventure is likely to review better if it has the name "Monte Cook" on the cover than one without, for example; while the 4e D&D adventures actually review pretty well despite being almost universally awful. But that's another rant.)

But one of the glorious things about RPGs, that sets them apart from reading novels, watching films, or even playing other types of games, is that you can't assume PC actions. Most likely, they'll go off in some direction you didn't expect, or spend a lot of time meandering about. Which plays merry hell with your lovely three-act structure, and can really mess with your pacing. Just as not every novel adapts well to film, so too do many adventures fail to play out the way they're written.

The Logical Leap

Probably the place where the difference between adventure-as-story and adventure-as-game becomes most apparent lies in the use of mysteries. The thing is, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can have Sherlock Holmes solve a complex and convoluted mystery based on the nuance of a half-heard conversation and a bit of fluff, because SACD has full control over making sure his character has access to all those clues, and also has perfect insight into what they mean.

The writer of an adventure module simply cannot assume that. Not only can't he assume that the players will even overhear that conversation at all, but he cannot be sure that the GM will present it exactly as written (so that the nuance is even present). Nor can he be sure that the players will pick up on the meaning of it all - in fact, most likely, they won't.

What this means (as discussed at great length previously, and elsewhere) is that the adventure designer really must insert loads of redundant clues into his mystery. So many, in fact, that on a read-through it will seem like a really lame mystery - if you've got three clues all pointing to "the Baron's a bad guy!" then that's hardly a revelation! And yet, that's pretty much what is required.

(In fact, I'd go further than that. In addition to putting lots of clues in place, the adventure designer should also tag every clue with the mystery to which it is attached, as a reminder to the GM, but also so that they can be sure they can recheck their working later. Which will make it read like an incredibly lame mystery.)

The Red Herring

Don't. Just don't.

Chekhov's Gun

I think this is a big one, and a big mistake for an adventure writer.

Anton Chekhov said, "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

For a script-writer, this makes sense. Cutting superfluous detail just makes for a better story - it's tighter, it is more likely to hold the audience's attention, and it's probably much more effective at making its point.

But for the adventure writer, it is absolutely poisonous, at least if taken literally. See, it gives rise to the temptation to remove everything that doesn't fit your pre-determined narrative - that beginning-middle-end structure you have envisaged. So, you cut the number of clues for your mysteries down to the absolute minimum, because more is just redundant. You cut out all those extraneous encounters that sit on your non-prime paths through the adventure. And, once done you have the 'perfect' adventure... provided your players are four clones of yourself, and provided they follow the exact path from encounter A, through B, C, D, and E, and on to the final confrontation with your BBEG at encounter F. Huzzah!

But then we sit Andrew, Mark, Jill, and me down at the table, fail to equip us with the helm of reading Monte's mind, and expect it all to work out. But of course it doesn't, because after encounter A we wander around for an age, miss the clues in C and D, don't ever get to B... and end up just lost.

And Another Thing...

Protagonists in novels and films are forever getting themselves captured, or infected, or otherwise into scrapes. Naturally, adventure writers want to include much the same in their adventures. That's railroading, of course, but I'm not convinced it's the worst thing in the world. But...

The writer of an adventure needs to be very careful about including such events, for two reasons.

The first of these is that events like captures or infections are very hard to engineer if played 'fairly', and run a very significant risk of alienating players if they are made inescapable. The issue is one of control: the GM has absolute control over every single thing in the game, with only one exception. Conversely, the player has control over only one single thing in the entire game - his character. Enforcing a capture, or infection, or whatever, removes that control, which some players will find utterly and completely unacceptable - possibly to the point of walking out of the game over it.

Now, this is a place where a game like Serenity or Numenera has a distinct advantage - here, the game builds in various storytelling mechanisms, where the GM can basically say, "this is a plot point - just go with it." And, in return for doing so, for accepting the intrusion, the player is rewarded with XP or plot points, or whatever, which they can then trade in later for narrative control of their own. It's not a perfect solution, but it seems to work pretty well.

The second reason it's a problem, though, is that if you have a truly mandatory event in your adventure, whether a capture, infection, or actually anything else, you've created a bottleneck in your design - every path in the adventure must either lead up to that point or must lead away from that point. That's easy said, but not easily done - directing PCs is much like herding cats, and it's really hard to make sure every path leads through your bottleneck without it being obvious what you're doing.

So... How to Fix It?

Unfortunately, I don't think there's an answer for that. Published adventures are both low-margin and, actually, low-use things - even those of us who buy lots of adventures will read many more than we ever play. And there's no magic formula that will make for a good adventure, both to read and to play.

Ultimately, I fear it's going to come down to GMs doing a fairly large amount of leg-work - taking an adventure that may be good to read, and refitting it to be good to run. Which, ironically, begs the question of why you'd want to use a pre-gen adventure in the first place, since they're supposed to be labour-saving tools for the GM...

Oh well.

Numenera: Second Thoughts

We played Numenera for the second time yesterday. We had much the same group as before: Brindy in the chair, and Mark and Jill as fellow players. Jupiter was switched out for Andrew. Likewise, we had some, but not perfect, continuity of characters - Jill was using the same character as before, while I'd switched one "strong-willed Jack who wields two weapons at once" for another. The other two characters were new, and were both Glaives of one variety or another.

To a large extent, my decision to go with the same character again was motivated by a desire to see if the weakness I'd perceived in the previous game (where my schtick proved to make my character suck) was indeed inherent in the game, or if it was just bad luck.

So...

Well, the answer was a positive one: we'd made some key mistakes with our previous game, which had disproportionately hit my "two light weapons" character. And it was also notable that as soon as we met opponents who didn't have heavy armour on, the "two light weapons" approach became at least competitive (if not optimal... which is also a good thing).

One thing that still seemed very odd, though I'm sure it was right enough - the Jack is supposed to be the "skill monkey" type, but it did seem that both Nano and the Glaives had a much longer list of skills on their sheets than I did. Though that may be because a lot of stuff might be skills or might fit elsewhere on the sheet. Plus, of course, that "flex skill" that the Jack has makes a huge difference if the game lasts longer than one day.

And...

The setting is still excellent, with a lot of inventiveness on show. Actually, that may be the highlight of the game, beyond questions over the system - and potentially worth the price of entry in itself. (That said, from a player's perspective, that then serves as a reason not to buy and read the book!)

It was also remarked that a lot of the 'iconic' elements of the adjective/noun/verb descriptors actually become available at tier two. That suggests that, should we play the remaining chapters of the adventure, we should hit that stuff near the end. Which should be good.

All in all, this was a much more satisfactory session than the previous one. I still think some more familiarity with the ruleset would be beneficial... but that's both not really a surprise, and also something that bodes well for the remaining sessions.

But...

Another published adventure, and another... questionable effort. From the player's side, this seemed to be rather better than the previous one, in they we didn't seem to hit any points where we had to succeed on a given roll or go home. However, after the session, Brindy noted that he'd had to change the setup to build in some sort of actual motivation for the PCs to get involved, he'd skipped a big section of pointless and random wandering around, and that he'd cunningly avoided one of those "succeed or go home" challenges. None of which sounds too good.

Parting Thoughts

The second session was vastly more satisfactory than the first, and the lingering problems seemed to be confined to the design of the adventure itself. Given that this is probably the area where it least matters (since the GM can, one presumes, elect not to use prepublished adventures), and given that it seems to be pretty much a feature of published adventures in general, that's not too bad.

All in all, I'm glad we had that second session, am much more happy about playing in a third, and probably misjudged Numenera at least somewhat in my earlier post.

Retraction

In a recent discussion, it was pointed out to me that this post is actually in error. It turns out that the 3.0e PHB does have a table showing the capacities of the various containers (p.110). This table was indeed dropped with 3.5e, and doesn't appear in Pathfinder either (at least, in the Core Rulebook). Plus, rather amusingly, the table in the 3.0e PHB gives only the volume of the various containers, not the weight that they can support - and, of course, absolutely no other item gives its volume! So, it's still quite silly.

Fortunately, for at least one definition of that word, some bright spark took the volumes given, and converted this into a likely weight allowance, as follows:

• Backpack - 60lb. - 1 cubic ft.
• Barrel - 650lb. - 10 cubic ft.
• Basket - 20lb. - 2 cubic ft.
• Bucket - 65lb. - 1 cubic ft.
• Chest - 200lb. - 2 cubic ft.
• Pouch, belt - 10lb. (500 coins) - 1/10 cubic ft.
• Sack - 60lb. - 1 cubic ft.
• Saddlebags - 250lb. - 5 cubic ft.
• Spell Component Pouch - 2 lb. - 1/8 cubic ft.

A couple of thoughts about this:

1. All of the weight allowances are considerably more generous than the 2nd Edition equivalents. Further, I suspect that, in almost all cases, the 2nd Ed version is probably much closer to 'right' - those were likely taken from the 1st Ed values unchanged, and 1st Ed was actually pretty good about researching things like that.
2. The weight allowance of the belt pouch, both then and now, is pretty much insane. The D&D gold piece weighs almost exactly the same as a UK pound coin (I know, I checked!). So, can you imagine walking around with £500 in coins strapped to your leg? I'm inclined to drop that down to 2 pounds (100 coins).
3. The spell component pouch probably shouldn't be on the list - it's not really a container for general equipment as such, rather than a tax on spellcasters.
4. Honestly, I think the only items of any relevance are the backpack, the belt pouch, and the sack (maybe saddlebags as well). How many PCs really wander around carrying their equipment in a basket?

In conclusion... well, nothing really. It's just (slightly) interesting when new information comes to light.