The Alexandrian

You Can’t Do That Here

January 25th, 2010

The Esoterrorists - Robin D. LawsOne of the things I look for in a roleplaying system is the “You Can’t Do That Here” failure point.

Obviously, there are things that a character logically shouldn’t be able to do. (Barring magical or technological aid, for example, a normal human being shouldn’t be able to flap their wings and fly like an eagle.) But that’s not what the You Can’t Do That Here glitch is about. You Can’t Do That Here happens when the structural or statistical quirks of a particular system make it impossible for a likely, probable, or desirable outcome to happen.

Imagine your favorite scene from a movie, book, or television sceries. Could that scene happen in your favorite roleplaying system? If not, why not? And can it be fixed?

These thoughts recently percolated to the surface for me during my read-thru and analysis of The Esoterrorists (which I also discussed here).

Scene 1: The detectives have a hit a dead-end in their investigation. Or perhaps their investigation has raised new questions. In any case, they return to the scene of the crime to look for new clues. Is there anything they might have overlooked? Is there evidence their later investigations suggest should exist that can now be found?

Scene 2: The teenage heroine is spending her summer vacation in the spooky, haunted house owned by her aunt and uncle. After spending seeral weeks in the house (enduring events of escalating strangeness), she passes down the hall and happens to notice for the first time a strange seam in the plaster. Investigating it more closely, she discovers a secret door and a staircase leading down to a hidden basement…

Scenes like these are a dime a dozen. They are also completely impossible if you’re playing The Esoterrorists: The system mandates that any clues which are to be found at a given location will be found by the PCs. That means you will never gain anything new by returning to a crime scene (unless new evidence has been deposited there since the last time you looked for some reason). Nor can you ever notice something that you previously overlooked.

And since this failure point in the system is a direct result of the system’s core design principle, there’s really no easy way to fix it: There’s an entire category of scenario that The Esoterrorists will never allow to be played out.

By contrast, these same scenarios can be absolutely trivial in other RPGs. For example, in the D20 system the former scene is modeled by either returning to the crime scene and Taking 20 for a more exhaustive search; or performing a new search with a circumstance bonus to model the additional insight gleaned from later investigations. And the second scene is nothing more than a series of failed Spot checks followed by a successful Spot check.

 

IN THE LENGTH OF A ROUND

On the other hand, I often see You Can’t Do That Here failure points being misdiagnosed by people who become trapped within the paradigms of the system. Perhaps the most notable example of this is the erroneous believe that, if it can’t be done in the length of a single round, then it can’t be done.

For example, in many discussions surrounding my essay “D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations” people would attempt to demonstrate the “ridiculous” number of feats which real world people require to be modeled “accurately” in the game system. A prime example was the Ride-By Attack feat:

When you are mounted and use the charge action, you may move and attack as if with a standard charge and then move again (continuing the straight line of the charge). Your total movement for the round can’t exceed double your mounted speed. You and your mount do not provoke an attack of opportunity from the opponent that you attack.

People would readily point to the example of any jousting tourney and say, “Anyone who jousts is capable of making an attack and then continuing to ride in a straight line.”

This is true. And, in fact, anyone in D20 can (a) ride up to someone; (b) hit them; and (c) continue riding past them. They just can’t do all of that in a single round.

This is about more than just defending the D20 system from an invalid critique, however. It’s about establishing a mindset in which you maximize the power and flexibility of your system of choice. Because the flip-side of You Can’t Do That Here is You Can Do That here, and that’s a lot more interesting.

Thinking back to the exercise we used to detect You Can’t Do That Here failure points, let’s turn it around now to a more positive use: Imagine your favorite scene from a movie, book, or television series. Can your system do that out of the box? If it can’t, what mechanics do you need to design to make it happen? And how can you design a scenario in which a scene like that becomes possible, plausible, or even probable? Can you generalize the case and figure out how to encourage scenes like that during a gaming session?

For example, imagine a scene where a kung-fu hero throws the bad guy through an aquarium full of piranhas. How can you enable and encourage that kind of scenery-interaction in your fight scenes? What mechanical structure can you use that will be (a) simple enough that the PCs won’t shy away from using it (as opposed to the default 3rd Edition grappling rules, for example); and (b) make the option as attractive (or more attractive) than simply hacking at the guy with their magic sword or throwing a punch at his jaw?

As a real world example, a couple of years ago I designed some simple counter-intelligence guidelines for the Gather Information skill. This took about 5 minutes. But having these guidelines made possible game content that would otherwise never have arisen: Previously “knowing that someone is asking questions about you” was a You Can’t Do That Here problem with the D20 system. Fortunately, it was a trivial one for me to solve — and now my PCs have to be cautious when asking questions about people; and occasionally they’ll be surprised to discover who has been asking questions about them.

2 Responses to “You Can’t Do That Here”

  1. Justin Alexander says:

    ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS

    Justin Alexander
    @miles_underground: It seems a little weird, but the sequential resolution of action in combat is explicitly an abstraction of simultaneous action in the game world. It looks a bit weird and can create some weird corner cases if you’re looking to create weird corner cases, but generally does a serviceable job of it.

    OTOH, I’d agree that specialized rules for jousting are a good idea. I designed some for Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat. Wink
    Friday, January 29, 2010, 1:33:47 AM


    Justin Alexander
    @Craig: That becomes something of an interesting question, because the game can’t quite make up its mind how it’s supposed to work. Either:

    (1) The PCs are supposed to be guaranteed the core clue in the scene, and therefore they don’t actually need to name the investigative ability.

    (2) All they need to do is name the investigative ability to name the clue, which means that every scene sooner or later will resolve itself into a laundry list of “anything with ability X?” — which sounds about as exciting as listening to paint dry.

    (3) Or they actually need to say that they’re using an investigative ability in a way which would actually result in them getting the clue. But if that’s true, then GUMSHOE doesn’t actually do what it’s supposed to be doing (guaranteeing that the PCs get the core clue from the scene).

    The various GUMSHOE rulebooks, adventures, and design blogs can’t quite make up their mind which of these is actually true.

    For a similar dichotomy, you can look at how the various books and blogs approach point buys: Is the GM supposed to tell the players when there’s a point buy available or not? If so, then the game suffers from even more railroading than at first glance (and later publications seem to be strongly encouraging this mode of play). If not, many of the published scenarios probably just don’t work as written.

    @Confanity: We haven’t, actually. I’ll try to remember to put some spit-and-polish on them and get them posted sooner rather than later.
    Friday, January 29, 2010, 1:33:09 AM


    miles_underground
    The weirder part of jousting (in D&D anyway), is that creatures can’t move at the same time.

    This is the same hiccup that gives the slower of two flying creatures an advantage (assuming similar, non-perfect flying categories).
    Wednesday, January 27, 2010, 7:15:51 AM


    Confanity
    Have we seen these counterintelligence guidelines? I trawled through the site a little but couldn’t turn them up. And if they’re not there, will we get to see them? Color me intrigued.
    Wednesday, January 27, 2010, 3:24:43 AM


    Craig Payne
    Doesn’t the GUMSHOE system require the players to SAY that they are going to perform a certain investigation “technique”, the point system just ensures that they get that clue, IF they ask for it? For example, if critical finger prints were on the light bulb, I wouldn’t give the players that information simply for having the finger printing skill, nor even if they said “I finger print the room” (taking normal procedure to be checking on handles and obviously handled objects). If the player’s DID ask to finger print the light bulb, then they’d get the clue, but the idea would be that a later scene would give that idea when the players find out the culprit needed a certain variation of light filter for whatever occurred in the room.

    Honestly though, I only have Mutant City Blues, and don’t have those rules to hand in order to check if that’s how the rules suggest they should work. If not, that’s certainly the first house rule I shall be implementing if I run a game.
    Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 2:48:09 PM

  2. Josh says:

    I’m rather partial to the ruling that anyone can move-attack-move in 3.5, and in the same round, they just take AOs from their target and anyone else along their path.

    I also agree that the movement rules in D20 leave something to be desired; the only solution that springs immediately to mind is a slightly complex series of turn phases where 1) initial movement is declared, 2) movement is fully declared, and then 3) everyone gets to attack anyone whose paths they crossed.

    Jousting can be very simple though: both targets move the full charge speed past each other, both targets make a single attack against the other according to their initiative (so that one’s successful hit could disrupt the other’s chance to) with an appropriate +2 – +8 bonus, and they resolve the bull rush normally, with success unseating their opponent. You could opt to add a bull rush for free so that a jouster can do damage & unseat if you like.

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