In New Angeles the players each take on the role of a hypercorp in a cyberpunk megalopolis that’s fraying at the edges due to the social and economic crises created by the introduction of android labor. You play cooperatively to face the emerging crises of the city, trying to prevent the city from descending into enough chaos that the federal government moves in and shuts down the party. On the other hand, each player also has a secret rival and you need to ruthlessly exploit the city in order to earn more capital than your corporate rival.

Hypothetically, this tension between collective good and personal need will create dynamic, high-stakes gameplay.

Spoilers: It doesn’t.

CHOICE vs. CALCULATION

New Angeles should be exactly the type of game I love. The basic dynamic (collectively dealing with crises while seeking personal advantage for the victory condition) is shared with Republic of Rome, for example, which is one of my personal favorites.

The fundamental problem which cripples the game is that the crises faced all boil down to simplistic calculations instead of meaningful choices. At any given time, there are two problems faced by the hypercorps:

• A demand which must be met by producing X amount of five different resources. If the demand isn’t met, threat is generated.
• An upcoming event which will generate threat unless a specific type of problem is dealt with (Orgcrime, Human First activists, outages, unrest, illness).

Ideally there would be a meaningful choice between these two problems. This would create a space for legitimate negotiation (by arguing that Problem A is more important than Problem B, and therefore your action to deal with Problem A should be supported instead of the other guy’s proposal to deal with Problem B). Except this doesn’t happen, because the threat gained from failing to meet demand is virtually always higher than the potential threat gained from the upcoming event: Thus, rather than a choice, you have a calculation. If the group is forced to choose between meeting demand or dealing with the problem highlighted by the upcoming event, the calculation is always to meet demand.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if you still had legitimate choices to make in how you meet the demand. The combination of board state, the limited number of actions you can take, and the specific combination of resources you need to generate in order to meet the current demand means that nine times out of ten there is one clear path to meeting the demand.

What you’re left with is a game that basically plays itself: There is always a clear set of specific actions that need to be taken, with little or no spare room for doing anything other than those actions.

Although the game features a complex cluster of scoring mechanics, the fact that the game plays itself boils the result down to random number generators: You’re hoping that you randomly draw the scoring abilities that match the randomly generated demand and board state.

The game could be potentially bailed out here if you had the ability to meaningfully cut deals based on personal greed: “Screw the city, let’s get together and make some profit!” But two things conspire to limit this dynamic. First, in any given interaction the scoring is uni-dimensional; you generally aren’t presented with and can’t create situations where you’ve got a pool of points and can divvy them out. Second, the overwhelming randomness of the game prevents meaningful long-term deal-swapping. (You can’t say, “I do X now and then you do Y later.” because there’s generally no specific “later” that will reliably create a desirable outcome.)

The other thing that could potentially save the game would be some degree of uncertainty about what the city actually needs, allowing for legitimate arguments that X would be a better preparatory action than Y. But each time you resolve the current demand, all of your resources are reset to a clean slate before dealing with the next demand, so preparatory action is largely impossible.

RUNAWAY LEADER

The other thing which cripples New Angeles is the runaway leaders.

The designers clearly think they’ve eliminated the runaway leader problem because there can be no leader! Each individual player has a rival, and you only care what your specific rival’s score is!

… except they’ve deceived themselves. What often holds a runaway leader in check in games like this is that everyone gangs up on them and pulls them back to the pack. That doesn’t happen in New Angeles specifically because only one person cares about the runaway leader: If your rival pulls out a big lead on you, you’re basically screwed and nobody else cares.

A related problem revolves around the Deal. The Deal is the central gameplay mechanic of the game: The current player offers an action card and then, through a bidding process, one other player has the option of offering a different action card. The other players (those who aren’t offering one of the two action cards), then bid to determine which action card will be resolved (which will also give the winner a bonus in the form of an asset which offers some special ability).

On the surface, the Deal seems very clever and immersive, supposedly creating high-stakes negotiations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work. In addition to the fact that the game plays itself (largely defanging the Deal in 90% of the turns you’ll take), even when you do have a turn with a meaningful Deal you’re faced with a more fundamental problem: The entire action economy runs through the Deal. If you can’t take actions, you can’t gain tradable resources. If you can’t gain resources, you have nothing to trade to convince other people to let you take actions.

AND ALSO A KINGMAKER PROBLEM

Lots of games featuring a point track suffer from a kingmaker problem late in the game (where someone who knows they’re losing is confronted with choices which basically determine which of the other players will win the game). New Angeles raises this to a whole new level because players are allowed to directly trade their personal points to another player at any time.

At the end of this 3-5 hour long game, people will have generally scored somewhere between 30 and 50 points. The margins of victory, however, will usually be in the single digits.

If you play rationally, therefore, everything you’ve done up to this point is rendered almost entirely meaningless in a final furious round of horse-trading to determine the actual winners.

It’s also equally likely that a runaway leader will have enough spare points to arbitrarily choose winners and losers. Or, conversely, a player who knows they can’t possibly win will have a pool of, say, 30 points that they can now arbitrarily dole out to all of the other players.

THINGS THAT MIGHT HAVE HELPED

In order for meaningful choice to exist, you need to have two (or more) objectives that are put into conflict with each other.

New Angeles lacks that conflict. It therefore lacks true choices. And it therefore lacks the ability to negotiate and debate between those choices. Even if the mechanical structures it provides for competitive negotiation were flawless (and they aren’t), they would be rendered meaningless because, by and large, there’s nothing to negotiate.

It may be easiest to understand this by looking at some ways in which New Angeles could have avoided this problem.

Persistent/Escalating Demand. As described above, the fundamental component of gameplay is generating X resources to meet Y demand. You’ll do this three times over the course of the game, wiping out all of the resources you’ve generated each time.

If you didn’t wipe out all the resources you generated, however, you could meaningfully argue for long-term gains (“we can produce an excess now, so that we’ve got a more comfortable buffer for next time”) against solutions to your immediate problems. This would also inherently create an incomplete information problem (whereby calculations are turned into choices because you have to make the decision before having enough information to make a reliable calculation) because of the uncertainty surrounding future demand.

The game could have done this in two different ways: First, allowing you to keep your surplus after meeting demand. Second, using a set of escalating demand cards (so that you’d keep all your resources, but Stage II demand cards would demand even more production from you).

More Secondary Production. You generally generate resources by exploiting different districts of the city. Although some of these districts generate a primary and secondary resources, most only generate a single resource type. If there was more secondary production, there could be legitimate debate not about the primary production, but about which non-essential secondary production would be chosen.

This would work even better if you had secondary production that generated something other than resources.

Multiple Paths to Victory. Victory in New Angeles boils down to a single metric: Having more points. This makes it incredibly difficult for the game to escape the crippling flaw of boiling down to calculation instead of choice, because ultimately all actions are only meaningful insofar as they either directly or indirectly generate points.

By contrast, consider the aforementioned Republic of Rome (which features a very similar gameplay dynamic to New Angeles): In Republic of Rome you win by becoming Consul for Life. But you can do so through money, influence, military revolt, and/or manipulating other players’ vote totals using a variety of mechanics (including assassinations, concessions, and military assignments). Each of those is a different resource, which creates the incomparable comparisons that result in meaningful negotiation and deal-making.

Varied Costs for Actions. Most of the action cards in the game do X while having a cost Y. (You have to destroy a beneficial Prisec unit in order to remove two enemy units. Or you break up a strike, but at the cost of provoking Human First protests.) The game would benefit enormously from having the same outcome X available with a significant variety of costs, which would allow two players to offer the same necessary action while arguing for different costs. (“I think we should violently break up this strike at the cost of dealing with Human First protests tomorrow.” vs. “I think we should break up the strike by sacrificing a Prisec unit.” vs. “I think we should just move the strike to a different location.” vs. “I think we should use my Orgcrime contacts to roust the strikers.” vs. “I think we could patiently negotiate with the strikers and resolve their problems, at the cost of 2 production credits or a group sacrifice of 10 personal capital.” and so forth.) Unfortunately, the game generally doesn’t offer these options (more generally favoring a “this card lets you get rid of a little bit of problem X with a no/minimal cost and this other card lets you get rid of a lot of it at a higher cost”). If it did, you would again have the opportunity to debate legitimate incomparables: We all know that we need to get rid of the Strike token in this district, but what price are we willing to pay to do it?

CONCLUSION

Unfortunately, none of the things which would improve New Angeles are quick or easy fixes. It thus comes tantalizingly close to being a really compelling and interesting game, but is instead limited to mediocrity. A mediocrity which is compounded by its rather long playing time (3-5 hours in actual practice).

It probably plays better if your group is really bad at co-op games and incapable of performing the calculations. So it’s got that going for it, I guess.

But for me and mine, this game has been dumped onto eBay and won’t be returning to our table again.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 10D: Clan of the Torn Ear

I suspect that there will be a number of posts in this series that end up being basically variations on, “Look how cool prepping situations instead of plots is!”

But that’s because it’s really frickin’ cool.

Let’s talk a little about how this scenario came into existence, because it’s a confluence of several different factors that went into building the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign.

First, of course, was a desire to run a campaign in Ptolus, which I’ve discussed before. Among the raw material Monte Cook designed for Ptolus were a half dozen scenarios in the Ptolus supplement designed to kick-off a Ptolus campaign.

One of these was “The Trouble With Goblins”, which you can more or less see play out in Session 5 of the campaign: Goblins emerge from the catacombs beneath the city and take up residence in an abandoned house in the Rivergate District. In the scenario as written, the players can trace the goblins back to Ghul’s Labyrinth, but there’s nothing to find down there: “The passages literally go as far as you want them to – and as far as the adventurers are willing to take them. They wind through ancient chambers empty except for more and more zombie encounters. There is no treasure to find.” The intention is that the zombies will eventually drive the PCs back to the surface (through boredom if nothing else).

I’ve never been comfortable with “there’s an endless array of empty corridors down there, so eventually you turn back” set-ups because, basically, I’ve never figured out how to run them successfully (by which I mean, in a way which is satisfying for both me and the players). So I decided to take a different approach: The goblins came from somewhere, and they could be tracked back there.

I decided that the “somewhere” in this case would be an impassable bluesteel door. (This would allow me to introduce one of the major features of Ghul’s Labyrinth.) Rather than just placing a bluesteel door, though, I created the mini-scenario The Complex of Zombies: The idea was that the PCs would be “rewarded” for tracking the goblins with a little horror scenario, find the bluesteel door, and be able to satisfactorily conclude this line of investigation.

As previously discussed, however, things didn’t quite work out like that: The PCs managed to do something incredibly clever and get the bluesteel door open.

Although I ended up adding a whole new scenario on the opposite side of the bluesteel door, I now had a situation where the PCs would logically be able to track the goblins back to their “home”… wherever and whatever that was.

The goblin shook his head. “He was not of our clan. He was traitor. Come. Look.” Holding the runty goblin’s corpse by the head like a rag doll, he bent it forward to present the neck.

Puzzled, Tee came closer. On the back of the goblin’s neck she saw four small tendrils of greenish ooze – they were still wriggling and writhing.

The other major factor was that, before the campaign began, I had done a survey of about 40-50 issues of Dungeon Magazine looking for interesting scenarios that would be appropriate for Ptolus. One of the scenarios I had really liked but ultimately ended up not finding a place for was “Caverns of the Ooze Lord” by Campbell Pentney in Dungeon #132. Now I pulled it back out.

The original module features a small village that’s been infested by mind-controlling ooze parasites, and the PCs are able to track the problem back to a local cave complex. I said to myself: What if the infested “village” is actually a clan of goblins? And the goblins had come to Greyson House because they were fleeing the ooze?

THE SITUATION

So I basically ripped out the entire front half of Pentney’s module, heavily modified the caverns in the back half to fit the new back story, and inserted a freshly designed set of goblin caverns. I summarized the situation and background like this:

• 40 years ago an earthquake struck this area. It opened the fissure leading to the Laboratory of the Beast (Adventure 003B); collapsed the tunnels which once led in that direction; and also opened the fissure leading to the Temple of Juiblex.
  • Juiblex the Shapeless is one of the Galchutt.
• The connection to the Temple of Juiblex contaminated the caverns and disrupted the local balance, leading to the emergence of sickstone. The goblins were eventually forced to abandon the sickstone caverns.
• An expedition was mounted to the Laboratory of the Beast, but it ran into the adamantium guulvorg skeleton, suffered heavy casualties, and retreated. The complex, along with the legendary “surface world”, was forbidden to the tribe by their leaders.
• 2 years ago the warcaster Morbion journeyed into the sickstone caverns. He found the Temple of Juiblex and was corrupted.
• 3 months ago, the goblins became aware that something was wrong: Goblins were disappearing. Eventually they figured out the “oozed ones” were controlling some of them and kidnapping or killing others. Their efforts to combat this threat have failed.
• 2 months ago, a small group of goblins fled through the Laboratory of the Beast and reached Greyson House.
• Currently Ursaal and the duskblades, along with 8 of the lesser warriors and one of the greater warriors, have been corrupted by Morbion.

(Tangentially, I knew that the Galchutt referenced here would play a major role in Act II of the campaign. I find that when designing unanticipated interstitial material in a campaign it’s useful – and also logical! – to find opportunity to reincorporate and foreshadow other elements from the campaign. You can see a similar methodology in the Obelisk of Axum and Severn Valley scenarios that I added to the Eternal Lies campaign as a result of actual play.)

EMERGENT EVENTS

In designing this scenario, my assumption was that the PCs would actually fight their way through the goblins – slowly gathering environmental clues about the presence of the “oozed ones” – and then fight their way through the ooze caverns. Kind of a standard “kill all the goblins” dungeoncrawl that would slowly morph into a horror scenario.

But as you can see in this week’s journal entry, that’s not what happened: The PCs ended up negotiating with the goblins and the entire scenario literally turned on a dime and became something completely different. And that’s what makes prepping situations so cool: Not only do you have the joy of being constantly surprised by what happens at the gaming table, but something like two hundred words of situational prep can suddenly blossom into entire sessions of compelling play.

The character of Itarek is one example of this: Found nowhere in my prep notes, he emerged logically out of the adversary roster I had created for the scenario, and (as you’ll see) quickly became one of the most unforgettable supporting cast members in the campaign.

“I will take you to our Queen. She will decide.”

Tee laughed. “You expect us to just walk into the middle of your caves?”

“You were going there anyway. And I give oath of safety.”

The “oath of safety” is a key emergent moment: If Tee hadn’t laughed off Itarek’s initial offer to take them to the queen, he never would have given them an oath of safety (and the subsequent scene would have played out completely differently).

Note, too, the roleplaying with Tor that emerges out of this completely unanticipated sequence of events. In the Shadow of the Spire benefits tremendously from players who are willing to make bold, strong choices.

I’ve said in the past that I think a lot of games suffer because of two unexamined paradigms or meta-rules:

1. The PCs are not allowed to fight each other.
2. PCs are not allowed to split up or leave the group.

The belief is that this prevents friction and disruptive play, but in my experience it actually creates those things. The moments between Tee and Tor that emerged during this session are an example of what can happen when you remove these artificial limitations: Tor being willing to leave the party because of his principles forced the group to resolve the situation in a way which created an even greater bond going forward.

And I firmly believe that interaction was only possible because it was, in fact, a real possibility that Tor would leave forever. (At which point we would have figured out a new character for Tor’s player.)

In much the same way that the enduring relationship between the party and Crashekka and Itarek only exists because it was equally possible that the party could have just stabbed them without ever learning their names.

Prepping situations is so frickin’ cool.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 10D: CLAN OF THE TORN EAR

November 3rd, 2007
The 30th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

THE GOBLIN CAVERNS

Looking down into the fissure, Tee saw that it opened out into a natural – and very narrow – chain of caves. But there was definitely room enough for all of them to pass through and see where those caves might lead.

Tor volunteered to stay behind and stand guard in the chamber with the blood-stained pit. The rest of the group agreed to explore the caves for about ten minutes – if they didn’t find anything interesting, they’d turn back.

After climbing twenty feet down the steeply angled fissure, the caves beyond it proved remarkably easy to navigate. Although they were narrow enough that Agnarr’s shoulders occasionally scraped the walls, the floor was almost entirely free of obstruction. They made good time, and after five minutes they had already covered several hundred feet at a brisk walking pace. The cave floor had begun to descend at a shallow, but noticeable, angle.

About seven minutes after they had left Tor, the rest of the group came to an area where the narrow cave tunnel suddenly opened out onto a large side-cavern choked full of stalagtites and stalagmites.

Tee was in the lead, and as she emerged into this side-cavern a deep, guttural voice spoke loudly in Goblin: “Come no farther!” A large, broad-shouldered goblin stood up from behind some of the stalagmites. “These are the caverns of my people. What is your purpose here?”

Tee was surprised to discover that she understood what he was saying… the words just seemed to fall into place in her mind. But she had never spoken the Goblin tongue before.

The others couldn’t understand a word as Tee said, “We’re explorers.”

“Wanderers? From the surface world?”

“Yes.”

The goblin shook his head. “Go back. We do not want you here.”

Tee quickly translated the situation back to her compansion.

“There are more of you here?” the goblin demanded.

Tee confirmed it.

“Go now!” Tee wasn’t sure if the goblin was angry or if it was just the guttural tones of the language.

“All right,” Tee said. “We’ll go.”

But as she turned, another goblin – this one shorter and runtier – suddenly jumped up from behind another patch of stalagmites and fired a crude arrow at her. It went wide, but Tee’s reaction was immediate: She drew her dragon pistol and fired. Read more »

Called shots are a mechanic which seem to cause problems in a lot of game systems. They tend to combine poorly with abstract hit mechanics — like those found in D&D and most RPGs — since they frequently beg the question of why you wouldn’t aim for the bad guy’s head / other vital organs every single time. (The abstract hit mechanics, of course, are based on the idea that you are doing that, but that doesn’t always mean that you can or that you can succeed.) Even systems that ditch the abstract system and bake specific hit locations into their core combat mechanic will still frequently struggle with how to balance people’s desire to always aim for the most mechanically advantageous location (see choice vs. calculation).

In any case, there are a number of ways systems have found to try to deal with this issue. Here’s one that came to me in the shower that I don’t think I’ve seen before: When you declare your desire to make a called shot, there’s a percentage chance that you won’t be able to make an attack this round. Why? Because the shot you want isn’t available at the moment and you need to wait for it to line up. Think of all those movies where the sniper says, “I don’t have a shot!” Same thing applies in melee combat; if you’re specifically aiming to hit one specific location, then your focus on that will result in you missing or passing up on other opportunities to strike your foe.

You’d need to play with the exact probabilities involved depending on your system and the varied mechanical impact of the called shot. But I thought this was an interesting mechanical paradigm that a system designer or house ruler might play with.

This article was originally written in 2000-01. It has never been published. It is a companion piece to Monstrous Tactics: Ethereal Marauders.

The fearsome marauders possess every advantage of a natural predator, including a maw of unearthly, trilateral fangs. But to their fierce physical prowess, the marauders also adds the uncannily dangerous ability to shift at will between the material and ethereal planes – striking out at their prey from a universal hiding place of which few are aware, and fewer still can hope to detect. Their dangerous, ephemeral attacks can prove the bane of any who are not prepared for their assault.

HELPFUL TIPS

• Use see invisibility or invisibility purge to strip a marauder of its ability to surprise
• Use hold monster or dimensional anchor to trap the marauder on your own turf
• Stay together – don’t split your forces between the material and ethereal plains
• Pay attention to the marauder’s keening wail

PREPARATION

SKILLS AND FEATS: The ethereal marauder’s primary advantage is their ability to emerge spontaneously from the ethereal plane onto the material plane at will. As a result, you’re going to want to be prepared to detect and respond to the marauder as quickly as possible. The Spot skill (along with the bonuses conferred by the Alertness feat) will help you detect the marauder as he shifts into your area (preventing your from being surprised). Once the marauder has appeared, you’re going to want to be able to strike before he disappears again – so consider Improved Initiative to give you an advantage on that all-important second round. If your Dexterity score is high enough to make it worth your while, you may also want to consider Combat Reflexes.

SIGHT SPELLS: Prepare spells which will allow you to see onto the ethereal plane, stripping the marauder completely of its ability to surprise you. See invisibility, true seeing, and invisibility purge are your best options here (particularly the last, as it will grant everyone in your party the ability to see the marauder if it draws near the spellcaster).

ATTACK & DEFENSE SPELLS: Its important to remember that force effects, gaze effects, and the entire abjuration school of magic extends onto the Ethereal Plane – and can affect a marauder there. Spells like magic missile have an obvious usefulness, therefore – as does wall of force. It can be easy to overlook the usefulness of dimensional anchor (trapping the marauder either on the ethereal plane — where he can’t harm you — or the material plane – where you can kill him), so don’t.

ETHEREAL MOVEMENT: It should go without saying that spells like ethereal jaunt and etherealness may be useful. Similarly, magic items which allow travel between planes (or simply the assumption of an ethereal form) should be invaluable to the party when confronting or hunting a marauder.

TACTICS

SEE YOUR ENEMY: As long as the marauder can see you – and you can’t see it – it’s going to have the advantage. So, once you become aware of the marauder’s presence (and presumable interest in making you a quick snack), the first thing you’re going to want to do is have your spellcaster bring out his anti-invisibility spells. Even if its only the spellcaster who can see the marauder, that can still be useful – he should be able to communicate enough information to the rest of the party so that the marauder’s sudden appearances are no longer taking you by surprise.

AFFECT YOUR ENEMY: Next, you’re going to want to find ways to hurt the marauder. This is where your spellcaster’s force effects are going to come in handy – since it can take the attack to the marauder no matter where it’s lurking. On the other hand, you don’t want to neglect the ability for the other members of the party to take their shots when the marauder visits the material plane.

If you spread out, the marauder is going to able to pick you off one at a time. The best formation, therefore, is a tight circle – probably with your spellcaster at the center. When the marauder appears to make his attack, he should be within reach of at least two or three attackers: A few solid blows and your troubles will be over before they began.

TRAP YOUR ENEMY: If you can use force effects or dimensional anchor to trap the marauder (either where you can hurt it, or where it can’t hurt you) you will have essentially stripped the marauder of its primary advantage – making things far easier for you. At that point, you will either have completely eliminated the threat (by trapping it where it can’t hurt you) or reduced it to little more than a common wolf.

PURSUE YOUR ENEMY: If the marauder escapes death, he may come back later to trouble you again. Pursuing a marauder onto the ethereal plane may be the only way to finally rid yourself of its threat. However, an important cautionary note should be made here: It can be very tempting for someone who can move in the ethereal plane to do so the minute the marauder shows up. In doing so, however, you need to be aware that you are – in fact – dividing your forces. If you’re a spellcaster, in particular, isolating yourself on the ethereal plane may not accomplish anything more than making yourself the marauder’s next meal.

PAY ATTENTION TO THE WHINE: Ethereal marauders have an unearthly, high-pitched wail or whine which they emit almost constantly. Its quality and pitch varies depending on its physical health – so keep at least one ear trained on it.