If you're a fan of the first edition of Gamma World (or, for that matter, Expedition to the Barriers Peaks), you'll immediately recognize the flowchart above. It's used to simulate a character's attempts to discern the use and operation of a technological artifact. The way it works is relatively straightforward. A token is placed on the square marked "S." Every hour of game time, a player rolls 1d10 up to five times to represent his character's efforts to puzzle out the workings of a piece of high-tech device. The roll is modified by his character's Intelligence score (and the presence of others helping him), The goal is to advance through the flowchart to reach the square marked "F," which indicates success in figuring out how the artifact works. Along the way, there's even the potential that these attempts might result in damage to the character and/or his companions, represented by the skull and crossbones symbols.
I've used this chart or ones like it many times in the past, since figuring out how to operate the tools of the Ancients is an important part of the fun of Gamma World. However, what I noticed is that the fun very quickly dissipates. After a half-dozen or so uses of the chart, the whole process ceases to be enjoyable and simply becomes tedious. I suspect I'm not the only one who felt this way, because the second edition of Gamma World, published in 1983, abandoned the use of these flowcharts entirely, opting for a different system that still involves a lengthy series of die rolls. Having made use of it as well, I can only say that I didn't find it any more consistently fun to use than the flowcharts.
I bring this up not to knock either system. Both are, in my opinion, valiant attempts to present a relatively simple method of simulating something that should be an important part of any post-apocalyptic RPG setting. Unfortunately, they fail – or, at least, they fail to do so in a way that holds up after more than a few uses. This, to mean, is an example of something that most roleplaying games struggle with in one place or another, namely the limits of simulation.
I've been thinking about this over the last week or so, after re-reading the last two issues of White Dwarf, which include details of a system for crafting magic items. I think most people would agree that the making of a magic item, especially something as impressive as a magic sword or a staff, should be an involved and difficult process, one that requires time, effort, and significant resources. Ideally, it should also be the foundation of many sessions of engaging activity by the player characters. In practice, though, I've generally found the opposite. Rather than being engaging, they've been enervating, often to the point where a player eventually decides that it's simply not worth all the effort.
That's a real shame. On the other hand, it's not an uncommon problem in many (probably most) RPGs of my acquaintance. There are many activities that, from a "dramatic" point of view, which is to say, from the perspective of a character living within a given imaginary setting, ought to be both significant and compelling. Yet, these are quite hard to simulate within a roleplaying game without bogging gameplay down in tedious detail. Research, whether of forgotten lore or the mysteries of spellcraft, is another example of the kind of thing of which I'm thinking. Poring over a blasphemous tome to unlock its secrets is a momentous endeavor for a character, but how best to handle it via game rules?
I suspect there is no single answer to that or any other question. Naturally, each player has varying degrees of interest and indeed tolerance for devoting precious game time to the simulation of certain activities. What seems tedious to one might well represent the epitome of pleasure for another. We see this all the time in debates over, for instance, how complex and detailed combat ought to be. For some, D&D's very abstract combat is more than sufficient, while, for others, nothing short of Rolemaster will do the trick. If that sounds like I'm waffling on the matter, I suppose I am, but that doesn't make it any less true.
We "simulate" combat via rules, charts, and tables - to varying tastes - because actual fighting would end our fun; we have no choice. On the other hand, just about everything else can be played out in its true form. If PCs have to research a tome, then why not hand them a real book along with a question that compels them to flip though it to find the answer? How many villages in the Septimontium? I just found the answer in A History of the Romans! Put a slick cover on that book, call it a tome, and give the players a question to answer to generate some research. Something similar applies for "magic" ingredients. In our microwave dinner world, we often forget that spices actually have distinct odors. Put, rosemary and thyme in a mortar and pestle and ask players to identify them by scent to create a facsimile of "magic" research. You can buy some bad ass bottles colored for a few bucks at Pier One Imports to create some awesome "potion" flasks. More doing, less dice.
ReplyDeleteFor reading tomes, I've often considered some form of mental combat,kind of like how a shaman defeats a spirit in RuneQuest. The reader generates "Mind Points" like they would hit points, but inverted (wizard d10 per level, fighter d4 per level, modified as per Con but by Int). The info is treated as per a monster of appropriate type and abilities. The reader then "fights" the monster in combat.
ReplyDeleteIf they win, the get the information. If they lose, they fail, though there is no real damage dealt, merely mental fatigue. They can always try again later.
Oh, and each "round" of combat depends on the depth and complexity of the work. Some might be measured in rounds, minutes, turns, hours, or even days...
Great idea. Reminds me of Daredevils from FGU. One rolled dice against a skill to accrue Task Points in order to accomplish a non-combat task.
DeleteOoh! This is a very interesting idea. Definitely worth developing further.
DeleteI agree with James that what starts off as exciting becomes tedious. You could always add in effects related to magical artifacts (eg: room starts to vibrate, plague of frogs rains from the sky and so on).
M-Space (Mythras-based sci-fi) has a whole chapter on Extended Conflicts, which is basically this, but for any sort of endavour.
DeletePart of the problem with these charts is there is no meaningful decision making during the process. That can happen with RPG combat systems, but is less likely, especially if tokens or miniatures are used with a battle map of some sort and the game system provides at least some rules that make positioning important.
ReplyDeleteI was going to say something similar. There is not much interesting about spamming rolls with no decision points to engage the player.
DeleteIf you can't figure out a way to insert real choices, then since each endpoint has a calculable chance of occurring, you would be better off to roll only twice. Once to determine the outcome, and a second time to determine how long it takes to get there.
agree with you 100%! I suspect that a reasonable angle here could be in giving players a limited number of "fudge points" to modify their rolls over the course of a long-term research project. This raises the question-- should I save my fudge points for later to avoid potential absolute catastrophe or should I spend them now to try to stay more on track and avoid getting looped back to and earlier point in the flowchart? and of course additional fudge points could be granted through diegetic rewards-- either consulting outside sources or something or just guzzling a Potion Of Insight or whatever. at this point it becomes not just a tedious chance-based minigame but a minigame with meaningful choices and strategy and robust connection to the rest of the campaign.
DeleteYour point is well taken, but I do have fond memories of these charts from the Gamma World games of my youth, when they were often the source of memorable tension, as a character struggled to figure out what they hoped was a cool new weapon without "shooting their eye out". Most memorable was the pencil sharpener that the characters were sure was a machine gun of some kind.
ReplyDeleteBut to get back to the original point, I find that a key element of making procedures of this sort engaging at the table is remembering to stop after doing a mechanical step and ask "what did that look like?" in the fiction. Often the answer to that can be arrived at by the player and GMs together. E.g. if a roll has just been made where there was a chance of the character being seriously hurt, but it didn't happen, describing a little vignette of the character peering down the barrel of the laser rifle while they fiddle with the trigger guard, and then being distracted as their companion walks up just before they did something irrevocable does a lot to convert dry mechanics into color and flavor for the fictional experience.
Yes! The excitement and memories come from the jeopardy and the description of the consequences or near-misses. There needs to be a pay-off in excitement or engagement level.
DeleteFirst edition Stormbringer had extensive rules for summoning and binding demons into objects to make magic items. I remember once it took an entire session and involved life and death decisions. It was great, tense fun!
ReplyDeleteStormbringer's rules for making magic items was pretty spectacular.
DeleteI managed to kill so many of my own PC by making a mess of these rolls.
Delete: )
DeleteMy sole GW campaign was with 2E, so I never used these flowcharts in the game...however, I *did* use the similar ones in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure they served some sort of purpose for the designer, but they do seem both overly complicated and tedious, simply in order to 'draw out' the discovery process. Not sure why this was considered valuable (even if "time" were a desired factor, this could be calculated with a second random roll...over even a roll based on the result of the initial discovery roll). Far easier to simply have a different random table for each type of artifact with distinct chances of success, failure, break, injury, etc. modified by character species and IQ.
Yeah...just rolling to roll isn't a mini-game I find particularly satisfying...and certainly didn't even back in my youth running S3!
The problem I see with that flowchart is that, for all its complexity, it's nothing more than a long series of rolls with no decisions in between; all the input it requires from the player is tedious, uninteresting, and repetitive. This makes it functionally just a single random outcome generator. Either collapse it to a single roll on a table, or insert meaningful player interaction somewhere.
ReplyDeleteOne way could be framing it as a challenge which requires a certain number of successes, with every roll risking some resource (mental health, magical ingredients, maybe reputation from the local community?); just like combat, if you think about it. This injects decisions from the player: "you're pretty mentally exhausted after your effort, do you want to push your luck and try to unlock the spell tonight, or will you seek assistance from the mage guild, at a price?".
Blades in the Dark does something similar with downtime projects (iirc). There are no failed rolls, just different degrees of success, i.e. number of progresses, but the number of rolls is limited and tied to a resource economy, so a player must make a decision about what to spend their downtime for (with other activities being useful stuff like healing, training, etc).
I have no idea what's the point in a "decipher artifact" flowchart like the one above without any player involvement - I guess you can restart or abort the process, but that's about it. The thing is about as exciting as pushing a single button on a slot machine. I can't recall how it looked in the 1991 GW edition exactly but there were decision points, minor and major functions, false functions to discover and so on, in this form it even may make some sense.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a job for a Hex Flower ...
ReplyDelete:O)