… So, yeah. I was wrong. That ending really was just as bad as everyone was saying.

At this point, the failed ending of Mass Effect 3 is a well warmed chestnut. Because of that, in my discussion here, I’m going to try to avoid dwelling too much on specifics. But I do want to spend a little time discussing the structural flaws of the ending and what can be learned from those.

(Although I won’t be delving deeply into specifics, there are still MASSIVE SPOILERS ahead.)

NEGATING CHOICE

Most of Mass Effect 3 is an amazing conclusion to a series in which tough choices had real consequences. As Mass Effect 3 develops, those choices begin to reshape the galaxy itself. It’s incredibly powerful watching this saga draw itself towards a conclusion: Old favors are called in. Old debts are paid. Old vendettas are fulfilled. Entire races are set in motion or destroyed based on the actions you’ve taken.

Wow.

Regardless of which path you take, however, there is a pervasive theme of “bringing the galaxy together”. It is a massive, seemingly impossible task. But slowly and inexorably you manage to pull it off. (And, unlike a lot of RPGs, it never feels like a dues ex machine or shortcut or a cheat. You have to work at it and it’s believable when the pieces start coming together.)

Unfortunately, the three endings presented to you at the end of the trilogy render most (or all) of your choices irrelevant.

Most pervasively, of course, the destruction of the mass relays renders the entire theme of “bringing the galaxy together” irrelevant. But the problems pervade at every level of the game.

Did you cure the genophage or leave the krogan sterile? Doesn’t matter. Either their entire genetic code has been rewritten or they’ve been isolated on a world that the writers went out of their way to tell you can’t support them.

Did you kill the quarians? Kill the geth? Unite them in peace? Doesn’t matter. Either you killed all the geth or rewrote both species into cyborgs.

And so forth.

I talked just a couple days ago about the series’ penchant for negating tough choices, but negating these choices on this scale is practically criminal. This alone would have guaranteed fan outrage: You can’t invest players fully in making meaningful choices and then take it all away from them in the last two minutes.

THEMATIC INCOHERENCE

For most players, the ending of Mass Effect 3 negates important themes and accomplishments that were seen as integral to the story of the series.

For example, in my play-thru – between curing the genophage and forging a lasting peace between the quarians and geths – I had emphasized (a) that wiping out an entire species was wrong; (b) free will was incredibly important; and (c) organics and synthetics could work together.

Then, at the end of the game, I was given a choice between (a) wiping out the species I had just saved; (b) taking away free will from the Reapers; or (c) forcing everyone in the galaxy into becoming something they aren’t without their permission or consent. And I’m not even allowed to use my experience with the quarians and geth to argue with the smarmy, mass-murdering AI boy that there’s a non-genocidal solution to the “created vs. creator” problem.

The synthetic destruction ending just rubs your nose in it when you realize that Joker is desperately trying to save the love of his life by outrunning the energy wave… and then he fails and we watch him walk out of her corpse while the soundtrack shifts into an uplifting tune (pun intended). Holy shit, Bioware.

This failure can be a little bit harder to pin down because these thematic elements can vary radically over the course of the three games depending on the choices you made. I think there actually is a narrow range of play-thrus in which you exterminate the geth and treat EDI like a slave in which the “destroy the Reapers” ending is thematically consistent.

But most players experienced this thematic incoherence, and it severely disrupted their connection to the game.

(For a deep exploration of this thematic incoherence, check out the excellent original post in this thread.)

Worse yet, this particular thematic incoherence was achieved by forcing the players to make a choice which would be fundamentally out of character for most of them. This is a mistake a lot of games make, but it was particularly devastating in a game like Mass Effect which had spent 90+ hours avoiding the exact mistake.

(A related problem in many games is that “cut-scene boss fight” where you’re suddenly forced to lose. This was something else that the Mass Effect series had avoided until Mass Effect 3 introduced Kai Leng. As with forcing an out of character choice, this abrupt deprotagonization alienates the player from their character.)

CONTINUITY ERRORS

The ending further complicates those two major problems by including an incredibly large number of gaping plot holes.

I don’t agree with those that claim that the destruction of the mass relays must inevitably signal a mass extinction event: The release of the energy in most endings is clearly shown to be non-destructive (either transforming everything or destroying only Reapers) and is quite clearly different from the uncontrolled explosion you get from plowing a meteor into a mass relay.

But, for example, how did everyone get back onto the Normandy?

The so-called “perfect ending” only makes things worse. In this ending you select to destroy the Reapers, Shepard is shown exiting the crashed Normandy… and then Shepard is shown taking a gasping breath while buried under rubble.

That suggests that the entire Normandy crash-landing is, in fact, a dream or hallucination. But, if so, how much of the ending should actually be considered a hallucination? Does it actually go all the way back to the reaper laser?

Either it’s sloppy writing or it’s a poorly conceived conundrum. It’s probably both.

Which brings us to the final structural flaw: You can get away with enigmatic endings to a 2-hour sci-fi art film, but people are going to have a lot less patience for that after 90 hours of investment. Particularly if the primary experience of the game is explicitly seeing the consequences of your actions.

BLATANT LYING TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

The designers of the game promised that the ending would definitely not be “choose A, B, or C”.

The actual ending, of course, is literally someone telling you to choose A, B, or C.

Don’t lie to your customers. That never ends well.

FINAL THOUGHTS

There are a lot of ways in which the ending of Mass Effect 3 could be “fixed”. Most of them have already been bandied about.

From a structural standpoint, however, it’s interesting to note that the game would have been more successful just having a single ending with no choice at all: Shepard reaches the Citadel, activates the Crucible, and wipes out the Reapers (while either living or dying in the process).

This ending would have worked because it would have actually provided a functional tabula rasa at that point: The entirety of the game had reshaped the galaxy (in many different ways) towards the singular goal of wiping out the Reapers. Achieving that goal would provide clear satisfaction regardless of the path that had been previously charted, and the player would have been free to read the future fate of the galaxy based on their experiences up to that point.

Effectively, this lack of choice in the final two minutes of the game would actually turn the entirety of Mass Effect 3 into the ending of the game.

(If you wanted to further improve this ending, you could simply add explicit detail about the future fate of characters and civilizations based on the play-thru. If you wanted to be really awesome about it, more of your choices would have also been reflected in the final battle for Earth. But these wouldn’t be strictly necessary to improve upon the fundamentally unsound ending provided in the game as it was published.)

Of course, there are also a number of other “three choice endings” that could have been applied without implementing something structurally unsound. Maybe you force a choice between different ways of destroying the Reapers with different consequences for each (destroy all synthetic life; destroy the mass relays; destroy Earth). Maybe you give the same three basic choices (control, destroy, synthesize) but in a way which is thematically consistent with the rest of the game and built on the choices you made instead of negating them. Each of these would be a tough choice with meaningful consequences, but they would not have negated your previous choices or been thematically incoherent.

So, yeah. Lots of ways it could be fixed. But the same could be said of the Star Wars prequels.

Screw it. My game ended with a beautiful sequence in which Shepard destroys the Reapers while in no way murdering EDI and mass-murdering a race that I had just spent the last 20 hours trying to save while reconciling them with their creators.

Also, there was no Highlander 2.

As the image suggests, Walking Shadow Theatre’s production of Compleat Female Stage Beauty by Jeffrey Hatcher opens on May 18th and runs thru June 2nd. (Generally Thursdays thru Saturdays, but click thru for the full schedule.)

The production is lavish: Beautiful set, beautiful costumes, beautiful performances. I’m also appearing as Prime Minster Hyde.

If you’re local, come check it out!

Rani Sharim has been translating articles from the Alexandrian into Hebrew.

Check ‘em out: Three Clue Rule and Don’t Prep Plots.

(Or you can read the English originals at Three Clue Rule and Don’t Prep Plots.)

It is not, however, without flaw and today I want to talk about one of them: The negation of tough choices.

To do this, obviously, I’m going to need to discuss some spoilers. First, I’m going to do a pass on some MINOR SPOILERS for two of the loyalty quests in Mass Effect 2. Then, I’m going to talk through some MAJOR SPOILERS for the end of the game. Control your reading accordingly.

MAKING TOUGH CHOICES

Creating tough choices in a video game is hard work. First, you need to sufficiently immerse the player into the game world that they care about the outcome of the choice. Second, the choice needs to have real consequences.

The bad news is that the former is fleetingly rare and the latter is seen as exponentially increasing development costs. (This is based on a fundamentally limited understanding of how to implement choice consequences in video games, but that’s a topic for another time.)

The good news is that these two factors easily end up feeding into each other: Making a tough choice will immerse the player into the experience, which will make them care more about the outcome of future choices, which will make those choices tougher, which will further immerse the player into the experience… and so forth.

One common mistake among game designers is to mistake calculations for choices. I’ve talked about this previously and you should also check out this episode of Extra Credits. The short version is that game players are often presented with what looks like a huge number of choices, but because those “choices” all boil down to different ways of accomplishing the same thing, the “choice” is really just a calculation of which method is the best for accomplishing a given goal.

Meaningful choices, on the other hand, often involve elements of sacrifice: You have to give up one thing you want in order to gain another.

Most games featuring “moral choices” fall into this trap: Yahtzee at Zero Punctuation has frequently made the case that many of these games only offer simplistic – and oftentimes simple-minded – choices (“go out of you way to get food for these hungry orphans or burn their orphanage down”). But the more systemic problem is that these games don’t actually offer any choice at all.

See, in most of these games there is the “good track” and there is the “bad track”. If you follow one track you get the “good guy content”; if you follow the other track you get the “bad guy content”. At best, this means that there is only one choice: Which set of content do you want to see first?

Once you’ve made that choice, every other choice in the game is reduced to mere calculation: Which choice will accumulate the most points for the track I’ve chosen?

MINOR SPOILERS

The Mass Effect games feature a similar “moral track” in the form of their Paragon vs. Renegade scale. And although there are elements of calculation still present in the system, Bioware manages to frequently sidestep the problem in three ways.

First, there are plenty of points to go around and a little dabbling on the Renegade track won’t screw up your Paragon play-thru. This means that you’re free to make a more complex pattern of choices.

Second, the definitions of Paragon and Renegade are a bit more complex than just “goody two-shoes” vs. “purest evil”. (“Paragon” means that you’ll generally be helpful, sympathetic, and play by the rulebook. “Renegade” means that you’ll generally do what you want, take shortcuts, and expect people to take care of themselves.) This means that Bioware’s writers can, for example, offer several different “flavors” of Paragon choices in response to a given situation.

Third, Bioware presents you with choices which impact more than just your moral meter.

And this last is the real key. It’s what allows Bioware to give you legitimately tough choices.

For example, during the loyalty mission for the mercenary Zaeed in Mass Effect 2 you’re confronted with a choice: You can either help Zaeed pursue his twenty-year vendetta or you can turn aside to help save a group of civilians.

It sounds really simple, but the effect in the game was positively electric: I’d been playing a character who was primarily a Paragon, so saving the civilians should’ve been a no-brainer. But loyalty in Mass Effect 2 is really important: First, you won’t have full access to the abilities of your NPC allies unless they’re loyal. Second, the game had made it really clear that you needed the loyalty of your crew if you wanted to survive the suicide mission at the end of the game. (The game had even suggested pretty heavily that there was a no-win scenario in which you might win Mass Effect 2, but end up dead and unable to import your character into Mass Effect 3. I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but the game certainly made me believe it while I was playing it.)

In short, the game suddenly presented me with a choice which had a huge impact both mechanically on me as a player and narratively on the game world. As a result, it was a truly tough choice: Do I stick to my morals and do the right thing? Or do I let those civilians die and do what has to be done in order to ensure that my team is ready for the final mission?

I eventually chose to save the civilians. And that choice was immensely satisfying on multiple levels.

Imagine my disappointment, therefore, when Bioware negated that choice five minutes later.

See, when I got to the end of the loyalty mission, I was given a paragon conversation option that sweet-talked Zaeed into being loyal despite the fact that I had just screwed him over. In other words, I made a Paragon-aligned decision that carried with it significant consequences; but because I had made so many Paragon-aligned decisions, I was given the option to negate those consequences.

MORE MINOR SPOILERS

This problem actually crops up frequently during Mass Effect 2: You make a tough choice, but making the tough choice rewards you in a way which directly allows you to negate the consequences of the tough choice.

Another notable example of this can be seen in Tali’s loyalty mission. At the end of that mission, you’ve gained possession of evidence that’s needed to exonerate Tali. But, for various reasons, Tali doesn’t want you to use it. So you’re faced with a tough choice: Do you honor your friend’s request to suppress the evidence and watch her get emotionally devastated when she’s exiled from her home? Or do you betray your friend in order to protect her?

That is an inherently fascinating choice. (Particularly because, at this point, I’ve spent about 70 hours in Tali’s virtual company and I really, genuinely care about her as a character.) I eventually chose to honor Tali’s request and suppress the evidence.

But, yet again, I found the consequences of this choice negated: Using a paragon-conversation option, I was able to still talk the judges into finding Tali not guilty despite the lack of exonerating evidence.

What’s interesting about this example, however, is that there’s another level on which this was still a tough choice: See, the nature of the evidence would also potentially have a profound effect on the politics of Tali’s people. If they have the evidence, they’ll likely go one way. If they don’t have the evidence, things will probably go the other. And there is no right answer: It’s a question of your values, your opinions, and your hopes.

If we can ignore for a moment the fact that half of the tough choice ended up being negated, we can take a moment to appreciate how beautiful this choice really is: Either choice would be an interesting one. But by adding a second, independent layer of consequences, the writers of the game exponentially complicated the choice and made it virtually impossible for anyone to divine a truly “right” answer to the conundrum.

MAJOR SPOILERS

My intention here should not be misinterpreted: I critique the points where Mass Effect 2 comes up short only because it so often gets it right, and in the process provides a structural road map for how other games can do better.

And the pay-off for a game that is filled with meaningful choices – which convinces you through sheer weight of evidence that your choices do matter and that they will have an effect – can be truly immense.

By the end of Mass Effect 2, the games had taught me three things:

1. The decisions I make can result in the death of major characters.
2. That wrong decisions could create a no-win scenario in which the game could not be completed.
3. The fate of the galaxy was on the line. (And that really did matter.)

So when I got to a point during the final mission where I was forced to make a personnel decision about which of my teammates was going to have to go on a solo operation, I was absolutely convinced that I was being asked to choose which of my teammates was going to die. But I was also absolutely convinced that if I didn’t pick the best person for the job, then the entire mission might fail.

And the game didn’t pull any punches. It said, “Choose anybody you want.” And it would have been easy to pick one of the characters I hadn’t formed a strong, emotional bond with to play the martyr. But I knew who was most qualified: It was Tali. Tali who had gone on virtually every mission with me in the first game. Tali who had been a shining beacon of joy when she finally joined the crew. Tali who had helped to alleviate the immense sense of alienation and loss that I’d been experiencing for most of the game.

I couldn’t kill Tali. I moved the cursor off her name. Went scrolling for somebody I could bear to lose. But… I couldn’t afford not to send Tali. I needed the people with the best skills in the right place at the right time. So the cursor worked its way back up to Tali.

That’s when I realized there were literally tears streaming down the sides of my face.

…

So. Yeah. The Mass Effect trilogy. You should play it.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The most impressive thing about that specific moment, in retrospect, is that I really don’t expect most players of the game to experience it: It depended heavily on my personal experience with Mass Effect (in which my favorite moments were “adventuring with Liara and Tali”), compounded with a reaction to the narrative of Mass Effect 2 which may be largely idiosyncratic, and then culminating in a decision that seemed to target Tali specifically (although that may not actually bet true).

By contrast, the death of Aerith in Final Fantasy VII – another powerful, emotional moment for me as a gamer – is a moment that’s literally shared by every single person who ever played Final Fantasy VII.

But I do think that specifically because of the rich panoply of tough choices in the Mass Effect games, most people playing the games will have a comparable moment of emotional resonance. And the relative uniqueness of those moments will only serve to enhance them.

Go to Part 1

These tools are designed to be of use when prepping or improvising with the tactical hacking system.

GENERIC TERMINAL STAT BLOCKS

These generic terminals can be quickly plugged in while quick-stocking or improvising a location. Alternatively, they can serve as tweakable building blocks. (For example, you could snag the stats for a security hub and then crank up its access cap to reflect the fact that it gives access to the video archives for the building’s security cameras.) In any case, they should give you some sense (however vague) of what the system is capable of.

Employee Terminal (access cap 10, intel value 1, security modifier +0): These are the types of generic units you can find strewn around any typical office complex.

High-End Terminal (access cap 20, intel value 1, security modifier +0): Either specialized machines that are more likely to be used on sensitive projects or computers belonging to corporate managers, gang lords, or other key personnel.

Secured Terminal (access cap 30, intel value 3, security modifier -2): This is a system with highly sensitive information and the user knows it. Tough to crack, but worth it.

Hacker’s Dream (access cap 30, intel value 2, security modifier +2): Operated by a user with access to sensitive information, but no sense of security. (The kind of guy who leaves his workstation logged in overnight or who uses “123456” as his password.)

Personal Assistant (access cap 25, intel value 2, security modifier +0): A smartphone, datalink, cyberhub, or similar portable device. People will run their entire lives through these thin wafers of silicon… but often not give a lot of thought to properly securing them. They can be harder to get physical access to, but are often easily cracked.

Corporate Server (access cap 40, intel value 5, security modifier -5): Either a repository of the organization’s sensitive data or allowing access to a broad array of systems. Corporate servers are like treasure chests for the tactical hacker.

Security Hub (access cap 15, intel value 1, security modifier -4): Security hubs usually aren’t repositories of sensitive data, but they often provide access to valuable functionality (in the form of special features).

RANDOM TABLE OF SPECIAL FEATURES

This table of terminal special features is far from exhaustive, but can hopefully serve as a source of inspiration. They’re presented as a random table to facilitate their use during stocking or improvisation. (Assume 1 terminal in 6 has a special feature if stocking randomly.)

I have to admit that I sickened of the collectible trading card market before getting beyond my first addictive encounter with Magic the Gathering. After spending $70 to get a complete set of one of the early supplement sets I realized I had spent $70 to get a bunch of cards which, if WotC wasn’t actively attempting to rip off its consumers, should have only cost $15 to get and wouldn’t have created a detritus of cardboard. I also thought about how much potential enjoyment I was going to get out of that $70 investment and realized the money could be better spent just about anywhere else I cared to think about spending it. As a result of these bad experiences I ignored the card section of the roleplaying store entirely.

Ironically, however, it was Wizards of the Coast which brought me back over there once more with their highly addictive game Twitch. I am very glad they did this because in addition to the other three games in the WotC’s line of “family card games” this was also where my store was keeping the excellent line of Atlas card games (Once Upon a Time, Lunch Money, Spammers, etc.), but also all of the Cheapass Games. So, although I have not since returned to CCGs (and never will, although I am occasionally tempted to just pick up the starter decks – which would render them into normal card games for all intents and purposes) I have discovered one positive spin-off from them: They’ve gotten people experimenting with alternate types of games and they’ve also (re)introduced a number of mechanics which have been adapted into many interesting uses (notably the concept of having cards with unique instructions guide gameplay).

So when I picked up a copy of Guillotine I was looking forward to getting a chance to play it. I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s the basic mechanics:

Each player represents an executioner during the French Revolution. Your goal is to be the guy with the best bragging rights when you go back to the locker room at the end of things – so you want to be responsible for bagging the biggest heads around. The game is made of up three days. On each day twelve nobles are lined up for execution (twelve noble cards are laid down sequentially from left to right). Play goes around the table and consists of each player playing a single action card (if they so desire) and then taking the noble card which is first in line, so to speak. When all the nobles have been executed the day comes to an end. Each noble card has a point value and the action cards modify gameplay in various ways (changing the order in which the nobles are executed, effecting point totals of nobles, etc.). The goal, therefore, is to play your action cards in such a way that by the end of the three days you have the highest point total.

The game, it must be admitted right from the start, will never be addictive enough in the way that RoboRally or Twitch are in order to get a strong following of support. The concept is original and intriguing, but the mechanics (while being very good and providing strong gameplay) simply don’t grab you strongly enough.

The place where this product really shines, though, are the card designs. Illustrated by Quinton Hoover and Mike Raabe under the direction of Christopher Rush the cards are cartoony in style, original, creative, and (most importantly) funny. The action cards are more than amusing, but the caricatures of the noble cards are drop-dead hilarious, if you’ll pardon the pun. The Piss Boy card, in particular, became the favorite of the group I played with.

Overall I can say that I strongly recommend this game. Although it can’t be counted among the “best of the best”, it definitely deserves recognition.

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Writers: Paul Peterson
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Price: n/a
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: 1-57530-534-8

Originally Posted: 1999/04/13

Unlike Before I Kill You, Mister Bond…, which I reviewed around this same time, Guillotine still sees occasional play at my house. Of the other games I mentioned in this review, Twitch, RoboRally, and Lunch Money still get played a lot. Looking at my reviews for these games with the benefit of a decade’s hindsight, I’m actually quite pleased that I was generally fairly accurate in picking out the long-term winners from the short-term losers.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

One of the really great features in both titles is your ability to hack dozens or hundreds of computer terminals throughout the game, revealing data – from the variety of electronic communications you eavesdrop upon – that can provide you with valuable operational intel, deeper insight into the conspiracy, and access to unique resources.

This kind of “information in depth” works wonders in terms of immersing you into the game world; it’s also a lot of fun. But replicating this kind of experience in a tabletop RPG is really difficult: Even if you don’t go so far as to prep individual handouts for every e-mail and chat log the PCs uncover, it would still require an almost insane amount of prep work in order to customize the contents of the dozens of computer terminals in a typical complex.

To solve this problem, I’ve thrown together a simple-to-prep game structure for tactical hacking. This system assumes a couple of things are generally true: First, the hacker is opportunistically targeting systems to compromise. Second, the primary goal of the hacker is to accrue information. (The structure includes some minimal support for other hacking strategies, but they’re not the primary focus of the structure.)

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to assume a D20-style system with a single Hacking skill. But it should be fairly easy to modify these guidelines for any RPG with discrete action checks.

NETWORKS

Each network is defined by a Network Intel Table (NIT). Each entry on the NIT is a discrete piece of information with an associated difficulty class. (In practice, it looks very similar to a Gather Information table.)

Note that the term “network” is not necessarily being used in a literal sense, but rather as a convenient way of referring to multiple systems or accounts that are somehow meaningfully related to each other. (For example, the home computer of Sansasoft’s district manager may not be directly wired into the corporate infranet, but the e-mails on her computer could easily contain compromising information, so for the purposes of this system it would be considered part of the “Sansasoft Network”.)

TERMINALS

Terminals refer to any computer, cellphone, access point, or user account that the PCs can attempt to hack. Each terminal is rated with an access cap, an intel value, and a security modifier. Some terminals may also have special features.

Access Cap: The maximum DC that can be achieved on a Hacking check using that terminal. If a higher result is rolled, the excess is ignored. (For example, a hacker named Panda is using a terminal with an access cap of 15. Rolling her Hacking skill, she gets a result of 22. Despite that, the result of her check is treated as a 15.)

Intel Value: The intel value of the terminal determines the maximum number of entries that can be gleaned from the Network Intel Table.  (For example, Panda’s DC 15 result on her Hacking check is high enough to theoretically access the first six pieces of information on the Network Intel Table. But if the system she’s using only has an intel value of 2, she’ll be limited to two pieces of information.)

Security Modifier: Modifies the skill check made to hack the system. For example, a cellphone with a -4 security modifier applies a -4 penalty to a hacker’s skill check.

TERMINAL SPECIAL FEATURES

These special features (and any others you can imagine) can be added to any terminal. In fact, a single terminal might have several special features.

Communications Control: The terminal allows monitoring and/or control of local communication channels.

Data Tunnel: A data tunnel connects one terminal to another terminal. Each data tunnel is rated with a DC. With a successful Hacking check, a hacker can use the data tunnel to access the remote terminal. Some data tunnels might also grant bonuses when attempting to hack the remote terminal they link to.

High-Value Content: A high-value system grants a bonus to the hacker’s highest result on the Network Intel Table to date. (The more valuable the system, the higher the bonus.)

Specific Content: Although the point of this tactical hacking system is generally to avoid coding specific information to specific systems, in some circumstances it may still be valuable to do so. Specific content could also refer to security maps, data network maps, or other mission-valuable intel.

Systems Control: The terminal can be used to control surveillance cameras, robots, gun turrets, environmental controls, navigation systems, or any number of other “real world” systems.

PREP LIST

For the purposes of tactical hacking, think of each “network” as a body of related information. Each terminal on the network is a system or account which either houses part of that body of information or has access to it. It is assumed that there are a multitude of ways to discover each piece of information in the network. (For example, a hacker could discover Sansasoft’s illegal digital smuggling by reading compromising e-mails; performing forensic examinations on black book budgets; decrypting incriminating communication intercepts; discovering off-book shipping manifests; or any number of other possibilities.) If a piece of information can really only be discovered in a specific way, then that’s specific content that should be keyed as a special feature to a particular terminal.

When prepping a network for tactical hacking, you first need to prep the Network Intel Table. Here’s a sample:

(I’ve included a potential explanation for how the hacker could access each piece of information. You could expand on that by creating full handouts for each piece of information; or you could skip that and just improvise the details during play.)

Second, you need to prep a list of the terminals on the network. (Such a list could also easily be integrated into a location key or other reference as appropriate.) For example, you might stat up the customer service terminals at Sansasoft like this:

CS Terminals (access cap 15, intel value 1, security modifier +0): There is a 1 in 10 chance that any given customer service terminal will instead have no access cap (due to an unusually compromising internal e-mail). Otherwise, hackers can gain no more than 3 pieces of intel in total from all customer service terminals.

RUNNING THE SYSTEM

When a PC wants to hack a terminal, follow these steps:

(1)   The character makes a Hacking check.

(2)   Modify the check by the terminal’s security modifier.

(3)   Check to see if the terminal’s access cap applies and reduce the effective check result if necessary.

(4)   Use the character’s effective check result to determine the number of previously unrevealed pieces of information they can discover. If this number is larger than the terminal’s intel value, randomly determine which pieces of intel they receive.

Alternatively, you could randomly determine between all possible pieces of intel (which could result in them learning nothing new due to duplication from previous efforts).

Go to Part 2: Tools for Tactical Hacking

On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of drenching this sort of thing in mystique. Plus, even untrained high school students can climb up on stage and perform. Just because you can’t consistently produce material like Matt Damon does in Saving Private Ryan (the entire story of his brothers was improvised) doesn’t mean you should just throw in the towel.

With that being said, I usually don’t worry too much about this on Day One with new players: If they want to play an avatar of themselves, no problem. If they want more than that, then a properly constructed set of rules, the example of other players, and their own creativity will lead them into it.

But when you come to second day of roleplaying, you might want to reach for something a little more daring. And that’s when you might discover that capturing the totality of a personality which isn’t yours can be a daunting task. It may seem too immense or you may not know where to begin. Even if you do manage to get a grip on the character, it can be easy for it to slip away once you actually start playing the game (and that can be really frustrating).

When that happens, this is my advice: Instead of jumping into the deep end and getting overwhelmed, start with a small, concrete checklist of “touchstones” that you can use to connect with your character.

Pick three touchstones. Focus on those.

For example:

1. Pick a single personality trait. (Think of it in concise terms, but you may benefit from not making it completely generic. For example, instead of just saying “greedy”, you might say “greedy, but will always give a coin to a child in need”. Focus on finding opportunities when you can make active choices based on that personality trait. Also focus on never acting contrary to that personality trait.)
2. Pick a physical mannerism. (This shouldn’t be flamboyant and it doesn’t have to be particularly fancy or complicated. In fact, the simpler the better. Something like “he drums his fingers” or “he scowls when he has to think hard about something” or “he likes to wink while giving a thumb’s up”.)
3. Create a catch-phrase. (It doesn’t necessarily have to be a specific phrase (which could easily get worn out and boring), but perhaps make it some core concept. For example, Conan often swears to Crom. He doesn’t do it all the time and it often takes different forms, but it’s a persistent element of his character. As a bard, you could pick some famous songwriter or storyteller who inspires you.)

While keeping those touchstones in mind, just keep doing what you’re doing now. But whenever it’s appropriate, hit one of those touchstones: Drum your fingers on the table. Or demand the choicest share of treasure. Or mention that “a beast like this was described in the song s of the legendary bard Moranth”.

Of course, don’t feel as if your character has to be limited to those things. But these are your touchstones: Focus on achieving them and let the rest take care of itself for awhile.

It won’t be long before you start to feel the character “settle in” around those touchstones. Over time, the character will become deeper and richer. But whenever you feel the character “slipping away” again, simply reach for one of your touchstones to find your way back.

As a final rumination on the subject of game structures, I want to discuss player-known and player-unknown game structures and the differences between the two in actual play.

Let me demonstrate what I’m talking about by way of example.

THE UNKNOWN HEX

In the earliest hexcrawling structures, the players were supposed to be aware of the hexes. Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures for OD&D, for example, reads, “When players venture into this area they should have a blank hexagon map, and as they move over each hex the referee will inform them as to what kind of terrain is in that hex.”

In designing the structure I use for hexcrawling, on the other hand, I specifically eschewed this approach: Although I found the abstraction of the hex map useful in many ways, I didn’t want the players to directly interface with that abstraction. Instead, I wanted them to interact with the game world.

So while I used the abstraction of the hex map for its convenience in mapping and keying, my players had to figure out how to navigate the world purely from the view point of their characters.

The original version of hexcrawling is a player-known game structure: They can see, understand, and even manipulate the game structure that you’re using to represent the game world. Most combat systems are another excellent example of player-known game structures.

My version of hexcrawling is a player-unknown game structure: They perceive only the game world and don’t know exactly what structures you’re using to prep and run that world. Another common example of a player-unknown game structure are random encounters: Did they run into goblins in that hallway because the encounter was keyed there or because the GM rolled a random encounter?

USING PLAYER-UNKNOWN STRUCTURES

My decision to obfuscate my hexcrawling procedures is not unusual for me. As a GM, I’m generally trying to find simple methods of organizing my prep work so that it can be easily and efficiently referenced and used during play. But I don’t necessarily want my players to see the structure that I use: I want them to see the messy, chaotic world that

The method I refer to a “The Second Track” in Advanced Node-Based Design is an example of this: I organize two distinct and easy-to-manage groups of nodes, but then I mix them together in play to create a more complex reality.

I discussed another example as “Minor Elevation Shifts” as part of the Jaquays Techniques: “When the PCs come to a staircase they may naturally assume that they are going up or down to a new level of the dungeon. But by including minor elevation shifts within the topography of a single dungeon level you can confound their expectations … These techniques aren’t just a matter of confusing the players’ mapping. You are disrupting their ability to intuit the organization of your maps by analyzing the reality of the game world. While maintaining clean and simple maps for your own use and reference, you are creating a world that not only seems more dynamic and complex, but actually is more dynamic and complex.”

More generally, if the players don’t know the structure you’re using then they can’t engage the structure: Instead, they have to propose actions in-character.

See if you can imagine for a moment what combat would be like if the players had no idea what the underlying structure of the game was. I don’t just mean a scenario in which the GM is keeping their hit point totals secret from them: I mean that the players don’t know what rounds are; they don’t know what attack rolls are; they don’t know what hit points are. What effect would that have on how combat is experienced at the game table?

On a similar note, running a new game structure in a player-unknown configuration can be a great method for diagnosing inadequacies, shortcomings, and dissociations in the structure. If you come to your players and say, “Here’s a system for Gee-Whizzing and it has rules for A, B, and C.” Then your players may focus exclusively on the options that have been presented to them.

But if you just come to your players and say, “Let’s do some Gee-Whizzing.” Then your players will be free to propose any action that occurs to them: If they stick to A, B, and C then you’ve done your job well. If they’re proposing D, E, F, and G then you’ve got some holes to fill.

Similarly, if you find that your structure keeps expecting the players to make decisions that they aren’t making (or that they can’t make without being aware of the structure), then that’s a huge tip-off that your structure is dissociated.

USING PLAYER-KNOWN STRUCTURES

This is not to say, however, that player-unknown structures are the be-all and end-all of gaming. On the other end of the spectrum, player-known structures are specifically useful because they allow players to make decisions informed by the game structures in play.

In my hexcrawling structure, for example, players must select their mode of travel: Normal, Hustling, Cautious, or Exploring.

(Normal movement has no modifiers. Hustling increases navigation DCs. Cautious movement is made at ¾ normal speed, navigation DCs are decreased, and the chance for non-exploratory encounters is halved. Finally, while exploring, characters move at ½ normal speed and the chance for encounters is doubled.)

For roughly a dozen sessions or so, I kept this structure hidden from the players: Instead, I applied the appropriate mode of travel based on the actions they proposed. (For example, if they said that they were going to start moving carefully through the woods in order to avoid encountering any of the orc warbands they knew were looking for them, then I would slot them into the “cautious” mode of travel.)

Eventually, however, I concluded that it made more sense to make this a player-known structure: First, because the players were assuming – in the absence of additional information – that these types of decisions were irrelevant in the game structure I was using. (And because of this false intuition of the game structure, they stopped feeding me the cues I was using to assign modes of travel.) Second, because choosing a mode of travel had a significant impact on the efficacy of navigation in the system. (Hiding this structure from them actually made them less competent than their characters.)

You can see a similar principle in the familiar debate of whether or not GMs should tell their players the target number for an action check.  (My opinion is that you should only obfuscate the target number if that obfuscation mirrors a lack of information on the part of the character. Otherwise, providing the DC is the quickest way to overcome the vast difference in bandwidth between the character’s perception of the world around them and the player’s perception of that world. For example, a character standing in front of a chasm can actually see the chasm. The player, on the other hand, is completely dependent on a very narrow band of audio communication from the GM.)

But I digress.

As a final point of consideration in player-known structures, consider the Point of First Contact in that structure. As described in an essay at D-Constructions:

For better or for worse, most RPGs have freeform moments and structured moments, and it’s a really good idea to think about how the latter start. […]

The first die does get a lot of focus in play because it’s the break moment. It’s the moment you start concentrating and reach for your first contact with the rules. So it pops up in your mind and yells “THIS IS IMPORTANT”. To an extent, therefore, it doesn’t matter what your CORE mechanic is because your first gets more attention. […]

It’s worthwhile, therefore, to make sure your first contact IS important to the kind of game you want to run. In Smallville your first die is your value – what you believe in, why you care about this struggle at all. In Marvel it’s what kind of team you’re in – are you the kind of person who performs better in a team, with a buddy, or solo. Right way we have something central to Marvel’s enduring dynamic.

What’s your first point of contact? In every sense?

IN CONCLUSION

This has been a very long series of essays. It’s touched on a lot of different subjects (which is perhaps unsurprising, given that the topic is one that lies at the heart of virtually every moment at your gaming table). But if you gain absolutely nothing else from it, I hope you can take away two important points:

First, I think a lot of the linear, railroaded scenarios that we see in roleplaying games are the result of GMs who have a limited (or nonexistent) toolset. Often I think GMs don’t even realize that these types of tools exist. But they do exist and there’s nothing complex or mysterious about them. Once you know they exist, they’re not even particularly difficult to master.

Second, if you’re a GM, I think you’ll benefit greatly from consciously thinking about the game structures you’re using: Innovate. Experiment. Create. Share. Playtest.

One of the most exciting thing about the Old School Renaissance for me has been its role in rediscovering highly effective game structures that had largely been forgotten by the mainstream gaming community. Over the past few years, we’ve seen how much fresh creativity and original gameplay can be generated out of tapping a robust game structure like hexcrawling that has lain dormant for years.

But I think that’s barely scratching the surface. If we can get stuff like Carcosa and Points of Light and Kingmaker out of hexcrawling, what else have we been missing out on?

Game structures are merely ornately-wrought keys. The really interesting stuff is what lies beyond the doors those keys will unlock.

The first RPGs had unique game structures for just about everything. In the original edition of D&D, for example, evading monsters in the dungeon had one mechanical structure and the process for evading monsters in the wilderness had a completely different structure. The earliest designers, when confronted with the need to resolve the outcome of a new situation, would simply create entirely new mechanics and new paradigms to handle it.

This didn’t last long: Systems that had worked well in the past got repurposed. Similar systems had their redundancies conflated away. Even more importantly, GMs looking to adjudicate unanticipated actions were quick to develop consistent methodologies. (“When you wanted to do X, we did Y. Now you want to do something that’s kind of like X, so we’ll use Y again.”) And this very rapidly evolved into the first universal, generic mechanic: Rolling either 3d6 or 1d20 and comparing it to the character’s ability score.

Shortly thereafter, the idea of modifying these rolls using character skills appeared. These modifications mutated rapidly and then generally settled into the system of “ability score + skill modifier” that has basically dominated RPG mechanics for the past three decades.

The advantage of having a generic, universal mechanic is that it provides the GM with a robust tool for making rulings at the table. With a properly comprehensive skill list, for example, making a ruling for the resolution of any discrete action is simply a matter of selecting the appropriate skill.

(By contrast, the process of making a ruling in many early RPGs often involved first inventing the tools. It wasn’t unusual to literally invent entire dice mechanics from scratch. It’s unsurprising that GMs in these systems almost reflexively create universal mechanics as quickly as possible.)

This is obviously good for the GM (for the same reason that carpenters like to have a toolbox instead of needing to reinvent the hammer for every new project), but it’s also good for the players: It creates a flexible environment in which any discrete action can be attempted within the structure of the game mechanics. This means that any action can be proposed without bogging the session down; it also means that there is no structural bias for or against any type of action. (There may still be a mechanical bias, of course, if certain actions are easier than alternatives, but that’s a separate issue.)

(When I say “structural bias” I’m referring to the fact that gameplay generally gravitates towards existing game structures. I’ve talked about this a couple times previously: If there’s a system for prospecting gems, for example, players are more likely to go prospecting. If a game includes a robust system for resolving riddle contests but has no mechanics for resolving combat, it’s likely that the game will see a lot more riddling with words than it will riddling with bullets.)

GENERIC SCENARIO STRUCTURES

If a generic, universal action resolution mechanic is useful, it’s not hard to see how much more useful a generic, universal scenario structure would be. With a tool like that, GMs could seamlessly transition their campaigns to be virtually anything and it would all be as robust, entertaining, and rewarding as a dungeoncrawl or a combat encounter.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the history of the industry is studded with efforts to expand the generic, universal mechanic to include larger structures at both micro- and macro-levels. Many of these efforts have historically been little more than crude guidelines, often fumbling in the dark towards an objective that has been poorly understood. Others, however, have attempted to create more comprehensive and defined structures.

In recent years, the best-known example of this sort of thing has almost certainly been D&D 4^th Edition’s skill challenges.

And, unfortunately, skill challenges show all the characteristic failures typical of these systems: Dissociated mechanics (including emergent dissociated properties). A systemic blandness that often results in fundamental gameplay which is “not fun”. A prevention of meaningful choices by the players (or an outright forbiddance of such choices). And so forth.

In Part 11 I listed six properties of effective game structures:

1. They should be flexible (allowing players to make decisions not constrained by the structure).
2. They should have a capacity for meaningful decisions.
3. They should allow players to make decisions which are associated and in-character.
4. The default actions of the structure should be tied to the reward structures of the game.
5. They should be fun.
6. They should be easy to prep.

And while skill challenges satisfy some of these criteria (more or less depending on exactly which version of the skill challenge rules you’re actually using), they obviously fail to fulfill most of them (and arguably the most important ones).

Most of these problems seem to crop up due to the lack of specificity inherent in a generic structure. For example, while it’s possible to break almost any activity down into an abstract “action” which can be resolved with a generic skill check, the procedural and structural differences between, for example, negotiating a peace treaty, safely traversing a haunted forest, or prospecting for gems seem to defy a generic approach. And when such a generic approach is attempted, the result usually dissociates itself as the mechanical decisions divorce themselves from the decisions being made by the characters in those unique situations.

On the other hand, while Eurogames prove that abstract mechanical representations can still provide fundamentally fun gameplay, efforts to solve the dissociative problems with generic scenario structures tend to emphasize flat, bland mechanics that strive to be as “vanilla” as possible. And that results in gameplay which is mechanically boring.

Historically, this appears to be an insoluble balancing act: The more “interest” you add to the mechanics, the more specific they become and the stronger they dissociate from the game world. The more generic you make the mechanics, the blander and more boring they become. (Nor does there seem much success in solving fully for one or the other: Making the mechanics less specific seems to solve some problems of dissociation, but simultaneously introduces others.)

THE HOLY GRAIL

This would be an appropriate time for me to announce a dramatic cutting of this Gordian knot, unveiling an incredible generic scenario structure that would revolutionize your gaming table.

Sadly, however, this is not to be.

A truly successful, fun, and effective generic scenario structure would be the holy grail of roleplaying games. But, much like the holy grail, it may also be an unattainable prize.

On the other hand, at this time last year, I would have said that even generic structures at a level of complexity comparable to combat (i.e., generic structures for resolving conflicts in multiple steps) had largely failed. But as I recently discussed, Technoir has achieved a remarkable success in accomplishing exactly that (albeut in a form which I haven’t figured out how to reverse engineer successfully into other RPGs yet).

So there may be some breakthroughs lurking out there; just waiting for the right time and the right circumstances to emerge. Unfortunately, I won’t be the one to bring them into the limelight. (At least not today.)

I suspect that at least part of the problem with achieving these breakthroughs, however, is that our current range of robust, fully-developed scenario structures is so dreadfully limited in its scope and variety: If all you’ve seen is an apple and a couple of pears, it would be difficult to reverse engineer what the generic definition of “fruit” should be.

Personally, I think it would be great if we started seeing more unique, fully-developed scenario structures in the hobby and industry. It’s something that’s been consuming more and more of my own time (as this series of essays might suggest), and I think that broad experimentation in this area will begin to open up possibilities for dynamic gameplay that we can’t even really begin to imagine today. (Particularly as these robust scenario structures are mastered and recombined.)

Go to Part 16: Player-Known and Unknown Scenario Structures