Firefly: Shooting Fish

The third "Lost Episode" of Firefly took place last night. Due to a last-minute calloff, we were reduced to four players plus myself, which had two effects: it meant that the seating arrangements were a little more relaxed than last time, but it also meant I'm still waiting for that elusive first gender-balanced group. (Not that I care all that much - it would just be noteworthy for being the first.)

This game had the distinct advantage that it actually finished on time - a first for the "Lost Episodes". Part of this was that I'd deliberately chosen to remove some elements from the game, and part of it was simply slightly better pacing. So I was happy there.

What I was less happy about was that this adventure was probably the weakest of the episodes so far: we had yet another evil mayor to contend with, and another mission of mercy with no obvious payoff, but perhaps more importantly the adventure seemed awfully concerned with the "how" of resolving the steps required - a boat rebuild and then a race - and rather less with telling an engaging story: there seemed to be a lot of shopping at one stage! That's unfortunate, and it didn't really work for me: I think the A-team style "locked in a garage" montage doesn't really work unless the players have some wild and wacky ideas prepared for what they want to build.

Still, all being told it was entertaining enough. I won't be doing another "evil mayor" episode for a while, though!

The next episode is "Friends in Low Places", in which the Crew's old friend Monty needs help: his new wife has been abducted! After that, I'm going to go "off book" with the next one, as I've had a rather neat adventure idea, and it will allow me to resolve one of the dangling plot threads from a few months ago...

Scene Framing: Arrive Late and Leave Early

Apparently, one of the great lessons of script-writing is as stated above: whenever you're writing a scene, you should 'arrive' later than you think and 'leave' earlier than you intended - that is, you should get stuck straight into the action, deal with the action, and then move on as soon as practically possible.

As a GM, I find that's very much against my instincts: I want to lay out the scene in a "ground state" and then let the PCs start to change things with their actions. And, at the tail end, I don't really feel right about moving on; that's largely something for the players to decide once they've done everything they want in the scene.

And yet, it's right enough - it's very easy to let things drag out in an RPG if the players don't know quite how to get started, or if the GM isn't willing to just push things when the players haven't themselves called a halt. And it is definitely the case in films that a scene generally works best if there's no extraneous filler that just bloats up the running time.

Building a Scene

When constructing a scene, therefore, I think there are two aspects to consider:

1. What are the "moving parts"?
2. What needs to be resolved in the scene?

The "moving parts" are anything that can move the scene forward. The biggest of these are, of course, the PCs, but as these aren't under GM control they usually don't count. Other elements can include the NPCs, a ticking clock, or really anything else.

The question of what needs to be resolved should be fairly obvious, as it's the whole point of having the scene. There may be one such thing, or many. One important thing to bear in mind, though: these are questions to be answered; they should not pre-suppose any particular answers - it's just as valid for the PCs to be captured and thrown in prison as it is for them to escape!

Framing the Scene

When setting out the scene, the GM should quickly lay out the location, but should be particularly sure to call out each of the moving parts of the scene - where are the PCs, where are the key NPCs, and so forth. If there's a ticking clock, this should be mentioned!

As the moving parts are called out, they should also be put into motion. This should probably include the PCs - perhaps they walk into the bar, perhaps they respond to the threat represented by the ticking clock, or something. But they should probably start doing something!

That's the key to "arriving late" - the scene starts with things in motion. It's not the PCs job to push things into motion from the steady state, especially since the players may well not know what they're trying to do, and they may not actually know what moving parts they can push!

Playing Out the Scene

The scene should largely play out as normal. However, the GM should be mindful both of the moving parts and also the issues to be resolved.

Each moving part should generally stay in motion. Depending on interactions with the PCs and with other moving parts they may change direction, but they generally shouldn't come to rest. Or, rather, if they do then they should drop out of the scene (and be seen to drop out of the scene).

For example, in the "Speeder Bike chase" scene in Return of the Jedi, as soon as Luke and Leia race off on their bike, Han ceases to be in motion - he can no longer affect the scene. As such, he drops out and we don't see him again. The action doesn't keep cutting back to Han and Chewie standing around doing nothing!

Likewise, as the various issues are resolved, they should likewise be highlighted as such.

It's worth noting that, of course, the players might well introduce new moving parts or new questions to be resolved into the scene. That's absolutely fine - the players are, after all, co-writers in the game so they can and should help drive the story. In which case, add those elements to the board and carry on - again, these new moving parts should stay in motion or drop out of the scene, and the issues should be resolved as the scene progresses.

Ending a Scene

The scene should end as soon as either of two things occur:

• There are no more moving parts still in motion.
• All the questions have been resolved.

Strictly speaking, the first of these should be unlikely, as the PCs will mostly remain active and in motion. However, the GM should keep watch on player involvement in the scene - as soon as the players start to lose interest, or as soon as they start to go in circles or to seem lost, it's time to move on.

But the second point is usually the more likely end point for the scene. And here, again, it should be a question of calling it as soon as all the big questions have been meaningfully resolved, without necessarily dealing with every micro detail. For example, again from Return of the Jedi, the battle on Endor ends as soon as Chewie reveals himself as driving the AT-ST - there's no need to chase down and eliminate every single enemy Stormtrooper.

As soon as either of these conditions is fulfilled, the GM should move on from this scene to the next one. If there are any loose ends to tie up (such as those last few Stormtroopers), either just ignore them or narrate the results - there's no need for those last few rounds of combat to be run through. Beyond that, unless a player brings up something pressing, move on and start the next scene.

Holding Things Back

One other thing that can be considered is the option of holding back some elements from a scene until such time as new life is needed. This is particularly useful if the players start to get lost but there's no clear way to resolve one or more of the questions. In which case, perhaps a friendly NPC suddenly drops some new advice or information into the pot. Or perhaps some bad guys kick down the door, giving the players a 'kick' to get them out of their cycle.

This is probably best done sparingly, as often a scene is complex enough as it is. However, it can be useful in the situation as described, and especially for the likes of planning scenes where the players may cycle between several perfectly good plans without settling on any single one.

The Scene Management Board

Having put all this together, there's probably something that can be useful for the GM to help with this, that being a scene management board. As the name implies, this should be a board (or notepad, or whatever) on which the GM tracks the elements of the scene. It should have five sections:

1. Scene Framing: The first column on the board will be about the scene location - terrain and location features, appropriate adjectives, and so on. Specifically, this will exclude things like traps, as these are generally moving parts, but should include general terrain features such as lava flows.
2. Moving Parts, active: As the name implies, the second section gives the moving parts in the scene - the names of the relevant PCs and NPCs, the ticking clock, traps, and the like. These are those moving parts that are currently active in the scene; when a new moving part is introduced it should be added to the board; when one ceases to move it should be removed from the board.
3. Moving Parts, reserve: A second, smaller part of this column may be added to give some moving parts that the GM has held in reserve. This is an optional section that may not exist in all scenes. Note that this section should not include parts that were once moving but have now stopped - these should be removed from the board entirely.
4. Questions, active: Simply put, these are the questions that the scene is hoping to answer. As each question is answered, it should be moved to:
5. Questions, answered: As each question is answered, it should be moved to this section, with the answer noted. As far as is possible, the GM should resist moving a question back to the 'active' section - it's seldom interesting to answer the same thing twice.

Of course, the board may or may not be helpful. Also, it may or may not be appropriate to let the players see the board - on the one hand it makes things nice and obvious (here's the scene, here are the moving parts, here are the questions); on the other hand it's a pretty artificial framework, and just as the power cards in 4e tended to have a chilling effect on player spontenaity, so too is showing the board likely to limit the players' ability to cause chaos in a scene.

On balance, I think I'm leaning towards not showing the board.

House Rule: Multiclassing (3e)

To be honest, I doubt I'll ever run 3e again. However, if I do I intend to adopt the following house rules:

1. Any PC may have up to 3 classes.
2. A character can have either 1 or 2 base classes, and 0 or 1 Prestige classes.
3. If a character has two base classes, one of these must be his race's Favoured Class. (Humans and half-elves have a Favoured Class of "any", and so may adopt any two base classes of their choice.)
4. Because of this rule change, the XP penalty associated with unbalanced levels does not apply.
5. The Monk and Paladin multiclass restrictions do not apply.

The purpose of this change is two-fold: firstly, it places a hard limit on multiclassing without removing it entirely, and secondly it reinforces the flavour of the races in a way that tends to be left behind in the game.

That said... I'm unlikely ever to run 3e again.

Firefly: What's Yours is Mine

Another month, another game session, and more fun had. This time we had a full complement of five players, plus myself, and it turns out that even with the revised seating arrangements that's the maximum that can comfortably be handled - indeed, even that number is perhaps a little tight.

The game itself went quite well, except that once again there was a pacing issue that led to the finale being very rushed and also heavily compressing Act Three (and omitting Act Four entirely!). Still, everyone seemed to have fun, so that was good.

For the next session, "Shooting Fish", I'm going to spend a bit more time in preparation and see what I can edit out of the session. It does look like the adventures as-written are slightly too long to fit comfortably in three hours, so some adaptation is probably in order. Which is no bad thing, just something to keep in mind.

I'm also starting to consider going "off book" with these "Lost Episodes". There's absolutely nothing wrong with the pre-gen adventures, and indeed it's quite nice to actually be using some of the many adventures I've acquired, rather than having them just taking up space, but I do wonder if it might be better to start writing my own custom episodes, and thus building them to fit in the three-hour slot I have available?

Anyway, something to think about, for now. The next session is scheduled for four weeks from now, and is the next adventure from "Thrillin' Heroics" - "Shooting Fish".

Another Hack at Encumbrance Rules

The best version of encumbrance rules that I've yet seen come from the "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" retroclone. They're pretty damn simple, but they also provide the difficult choices I'm looking for. They're also reasonably adaptable to other systems.

They're also a variant of my "minor, major, conditional" split for items that I've mentioned before... or rather, my version is a variant of those rules.

Firstly, count up the number of encumbrance points your character is carrying, as follows:

• If your character is wearing Medium armour: +1
• If your character is wearing Heavy armour: +2
• For every 'oversized' item your character is carrying: +1
• For every 5 other different things your character is carrying (round down): +1

An 'oversized' item is any two-handed or great weapon, anything that requires two hands to carry, or anything taller in height than your character. A sack full of loot counts as an oversized item in addition to the weight of the treasure itself.

As noted above, several small, similar items count as a single 'thing' - that is, a pouch of iron spikes, several torches or flasks of oil, several potions, several scrolls. A pouch of up to 100 coins counts as a 'thing'. Any single weapon counts as a 'thing'. Four bunches of ammunition (arrows, bolts, sling stones, throwing knives, plus the appropriate quiver or other holder) counts as a 'thing'. Food and water for three days counts as a 'thing'.

Worn items, excluding armour, do not count. Likewise, assorted treasure items carried in a sack don't count, as these are part of the sack's value. A backpack, when worn, does not count towards encumbrance. If a backpack is being lifted but not worn, perhaps by a strap, it is considered an oversized item.

A character is considered unencumbered if he is carrying a number of encumbrance points less than 3 + Str Mod (minimum 2). A character is considered encumbered if he is carrying more than that and less than 5 + Str Mod (minimum 3). And a character is considered heavily encumbered if he is carrying more than that less than 7 + Str Mod (minimum 4) encumbrance points. A character carrying 7 + Str Mod or more encumbrance points cannot move and falls prone in his space.

In addition to those items a character can reasonably wear, each character has 6 arbitrary "quick access" spaces about his person, each of which can contain a weapon or a single small item (a pouch of coin or gems, a single potion or scroll, concealed thieves' tools, or whatever). Any of these items can be accessed using a swift/minor/bonus action.

The remainder of the character's adventuring gear must be stored in a backpack, haversack, or similar container. Items stored in a pack of this sort can be accessed only with a full minute spent readying them. (Effectively, this means they cannot be accessed while in combat - so pick your 6 quick accesses carefully!) A normal backpack can carry 10 'things', a small backpack can carry 6, and a masterwork backpack can carry 15 (10 for a masterwork small backpack!).

Treasure items must be carried in a sack or similar container. Items stored in a sack can be accessed only with a full minute spent readying the item. A normal sack can carry 10 'things', a small sack can carry 6, and a masterwork sack 15.

A sack can be dropped as a swift/minor/bonus item, and picked up in the same way. A worn pack can likewise be dropped as a swift/minor/bonus item, and can be donned as a standard action. Furthermore, a character can only drop/don a backpack if his hands are empty. (A backpack that is merely held in-hand is equivalent to a sack.)

And that's about it. The rules are, hopefully, simple enough to allow for quick recalculations where needed (though that shouldn't be too often anyway), while the "difficult choice" aspect lies in choosing which items need to go in those 6 quick access slots and which for the backpack, and also in whether to drop the pack at start of combat (and have to therefore spend time readying weapons) or to fight on while encumbered.

Value Add

Something I was musing on last night:

Any rule in a game, but most especially peripheral rules such as encumbrance, alignment, or spell components, will necessarily add a certain amount of Hassle to the running of the game - if only by virtue of you needing to remember that rule. I'm going to label that H.

Any rule is also going to add a certain amount of Value to the game, by improving immersion, by adding fun, or whatever. I'm going to label that V. (It's worth noting that V could in fact be negative - a really bad rule could actually make the game worse - see the "Free Parking" house rule in Monopoly.)

And, of course, different people will see H and V differently. That's life.

Ideally, when designing rules you should aim to maximise V and minimise H. That way, you get the best bang for your buck - rules that add a great deal to the game with a minimum of fuss. But more often it's a trade-off, where you can choose between simpler rules that add less or more complex rules that add more.

For encumbrance, for example, some people might regard that the tracking of equipment just isn't fun, no matter what. So H >> V for pretty much any set of encumbrance rules, and so they should simply drop the rules entirely and have done. There's just no value-add.

Other people might take the view that encumbrance rules are absolutely necessary - that without them the imagined space loses all integrity and the whole thing becomes a joke. As such, they'll find that virtually any encumbrance rules are worth the effort of applying, because V >> H. (But, of course, they may well still be better trying to find a better set of rules, because while bad rules may be better than no rules, good rules would be better still.)

And then there's the third group, which in the case of encumbrance actually includes me: for the right type of game, I'm in favour of the use of encumbrance rules in principle, but I find that virtually every RPG ever manages to strike almost exactly the wrong balance - the rules generally expect you to micro-manage a set of lovingly detailed weights and then compare them against limits that are far too generous, and potentially apply some penalties that are too damn fiddly to bother with anyway.

So the concept works for me, but the ratio of H to V doesn't.

Consider another example: spell components.

In theory, these are quite cool: some spells require verbal components, some actions, some special materials. This gives a nice bit of flavour to the game.

Only it doesn't, because keeping track of those material components is just a pain, so the Wizard has a "spell component pouch" on his character sheet and thereafter gives it not a moment's thought. Well, until he finds himself without that pouch, of course, when he's completely screwed. (Not to mention that it makes the silence spell vastly overpowered - what should have been a minor stealth spell becomes an anti-spellcaster bomb. Not good.)

So, with the rule as originally formulated, H was very high and V was moderate - too much hassle to be worth. In attempting a fix, by adding the spell component pouch, H was reduced... and V reduced to effectively nothing.

And yet the concept remains somewhat interesting. So, is there a better way?

Well, I'm going to suggest something. The baseline here will be the 3e rules, as those are the ones I'm most familiar with.

1) Ignore the Spell Components listed for the spells. Instead, every spell requires a Verbal and Somatic component, and every spellcaster requires a Focus component for all his spells. (A wand or crystal for Wizards, a holy symbol for Clerics, or similar.) Any spells that require a 'costly' material component or an XP cost should be increased in level by 1, with [i]wish[/i] therefore being bumped to 10th level and being out of reach of mortal spellcasters. (This would need a further fix, except I never expect to play at that level again.)

2) If a spellcaster ever needs to cast a spell while missing one of the required components (Verbal, Mental, Focus), he must make a Spellcraft check (DC 10 + spell level + 5 per 'missing' component). And the casting time increases by one step - Swift -> Standard -> Full-round -> 1 round -> 1 minute -> 10 minutes -> 1 hour -> 1 day -> 1 more day.

3) The Still Spell metamagic feat allows the caster to simply remove the Somatic component from his spells (no change in casting time, and no Spellcraft check). The Silent Spell metamagic feat does the same, removing the Verbal component. The Eschew Materials feat is renamed Unfocussed Spell, and removes the Focus component.

So far, so good. Now...

4) When casting a spell, the player can optionally add a description of a material component. This must be thematically-appropriate to the spell in question. If the player does so, he gains a +1 bonus to caster level for this spell (including all repeat castings until he takes a short rest - otherwise, it's going to get really tedious!)

5) In addition, the game can then introduce a number of special components (unicorn horn, dragon scales, demon's blood...) which are both rare and powerful - important enough to bother tracking on the character sheet. If the player chooses to use one of these components in a thematically-appropriate way, he gets a +2 bonus to caster level for this spell (again, including repeat castings). However, doing so exhausts his entire stock of the special component - such things are good for one shot only.

As far as I can see, this has several advantages:

• It actually requires less book-keeping than the existing mechanism, because all spells require the same components. (H is reduced)
• It applies a much-needed reduction to the power of silence - it's still a worthwhile spell, but not the magekiller it is as written. (V is increased)
• It likewise prevents the Wizard from being crippled by a few easy steps - losing his spell component pouch, gagging him, or tying him up doesn't automatically eliminate 90% of his effectiveness. (Of course, 3e Wizards are vastly over-powered, but that's another issue.) (V is increased)
• It injects the desired flavour into material components, but without any need to micro-manage what the Wizard is carrying. In particular, because the player has to declare which component he is using when he casts, this ensures that these get mentioned. (V is increased)
• It allows the further enhancement of the special components. Of course, these can (and in some games do) coexist with the existing material component rules, but by having them used in the same way as 'regular' components they should see more use. (V is increased)

So, as far as I can see, we've reduced H while increasing V quite a bit. Which shifts the ratio quite a bit and should hopefully make for a better game.

And, of course, anyone who isn't interested can easily enough just ignore such rules entirely.

Some Random Stuff About Campaign Design

I've found that a 3-4 hour game session makes for a good equivalent of a single episode of a TV series - something in the region of 40-45 minutes. This gives a good amount of time for a beginning, middle, and end. However, this definitely works better in a reasonably rules-lite game; something like D&D tends to quickly bog down in combat in a manner that inhibits storytelling.

Most TV series have a season of about 20-26 episodes, with 22 still being the most common. I've found that this also gives a pretty good format, allowing a fairly well-developed story to be told over the course of a year, without squeezing it unduly or stretching it beyond interest.

Conveniently, a bi-weekly schedule should allow 26 game sessions in the year. Even if you drop several sessions due to Christmas and other breaks, there's still plenty of room for 20 sessions in year.

But: When watching "The Clone Wars", and also when running SWSE, I found that something that also works well is if a few episodes are chained together into a mini-arc. (I found 3 sessions to be ideal here, with the added bonus that in SWSE and/or D&D it made sense to have the PCs level up after each 3-session arc. Though in 5e I would be inclined to have a single-session intro, have the PCs level from 1st to 2nd at the end of that, and then kick off the first 'real' arc.)

When it comes to Adventure Path products then, what I probably don't want are six largeish adventures that the PCs will get through at whatever speed they get through, nor do I really want 17 'episodes' that don't actually have any concept of how they tie into individual sessions. What would be better would actually be a presentation of about 6 mini-arcs each split into three 'chunks', with each chunk designed to fit into a single session, plus a 2-part finale for the game. (In 5e, add a single-episode introduction.)

Furthermore, it would be beneficial if each session were then written in such a way that there's a stripped down version that contains only the minimal set of events required to progress the plot (ideally playable in 2 hours), followed by a number of additional elements (further encounters, or side-quests, or similar) to allow the session to be expanded out to 3-, 4-, or more hours of play. That would be exceptionally useful, as it would allow me to pick up the campaign and just use it as-is, without concern that the whole of one session would be blown on a hugely-wasteful throwaway encounter ("Tomb of Horrors" 4e, I'm looking at you!).

But then, that would involve much more scripting than even an Adventure Path really benefits from. Though perhaps if the campaign were then presented in some sort of matrix format, so that elements could be encountered in different orders, or not at all...