Smoky torches? Check. Worn stairs? Check. Black-mawed doors? Check. Inexplicable carvings? Check. Vapors of a worrisome nature? Check and check.
Nothing more exciting than a good dungeoncrawl.
Note, too, how the central figures are dwarfed by the enigma of the locale. They could be anybody. They could be you.
Which way will you turn?
Had an interesting experience with a plot map in Technoir last night and wanted to share it: I generated a mission seed, figured out what was going on, and then hooked the PCs.
But during the actual session, the PCs never got anywhere near the core of the plot map (the heart of the conspiracy defined by the original mission seed). Instead, they became completely wrapped up in a complex periphery of events that were being influenced or instigated by the conspiracy without actually being a part of it.
I’m now referring to this as the “untouched core”. Let me give a hypothetical example of what I’m talking about:
I generate a conspiracy focusing around a complex alliance of interests working to rig the presidential election in Ohio. The first impulse is that the PCs will work their contacts, shake a few trees, and eventually find a way to unmask (or at least de-fang) the conspiracy (presumably preventing the election from being rigged). But when the campaign takes the form of the “untouched core”, that’s not what happens: Instead, the PCs get tangled up in the street warfare of a small gang that murdered a campaign worker. Or end up investigating the illegal medical testing of one of the companies involved in the election rigging. Or wrangle a contract to protect one of the down-ticket candidates.
The point is that you end up with his sort of “cloud of activity” surrounding the conspiracy at the center of your plot map, and it’s fully possible for the PCs to get completely (and compellingly) tangled up in this cloud without ever worming their way into the heart of the matter.
This isn’t necessarily something that I could force to happen. (And I wouldn’t want to.) But it’s something I’m going to make a point of leaving myself open to and being all right with if it happens in the future.
By contrast, I think I inadvertently mucked up the first Technoir adventure I ran by pushing too hard for the revelation of the central conspiracy. I think I would have been better off simply letting the PCs resolve the local squabble they were tangled up in and letting the deeper conspiracy either pass them by or come back for a second pass in a different form further down the road.
A quick walk through the history of the saving throw mechanic:
(1) OD&D offered an incomplete, source/type-based array of saving throws. This created a couple of problems, one of which was that many effects would actually fall into multiple categories. Did the DM simply make a ruling for which applied? Did a character always use the best-applicable saving throw? Or should they always use the worst-applicable saving throw?
(2) AD&D eliminated that problem by establishing a fairly clear hierarchy of which saving throw category should be applied first. But it didn’t fix the other problem, which is that many effects which required saving throws didn’t conveniently fall into any particular category. There were two possible solutions: Create a new category every time you needed one or simply arbitrarily assign one of the existing saving throw categories. In general, designers and DMs did the latter. This assignation was often based on a rough approximation of “method of avoidance” (you avoid dragon breath by ducking out of the the way, this effect could be avoided by ducking out of the way, so let’s make it a save vs. dragon breath) or “similarity of effect” (dragon breath is a big blast of fire, this trap is creating a big blast of fire, so let’s make it a save vs. dragon breath). (These methods often overlapped.)
(3) D&D3 eliminated that problem by swapping to a universal system based on method-of-avoidance. In some corner-case situations, this system actually reintroduces the lack-of-hierarchy problems from OD&D (“do I duck out of the way or do I tough it out?”), but most of the time there is a clear and obvious saving throw for any given effect.
(4) 4E, of course, took the term “saving throw” and applied it to a completely different mechanic. But if you look at the mechanic which actually derives from pre-2008’s saving throws, 4E did two things with it: First, it inverted the facing of the mechanic. Instead of the defender making the saving throw roll, it’s the attacker rolling against the save.
This is an interesting choice. And to understand why, let’s consider the fact that they could have done the exact opposite with AC: Instead of the attacker rolling vs. AC, they could have swapped AC so that it works like old school saving throws (with the defender rolling against the attacker’s static score).
It’s important to understand that, in terms of mathematics and game balance, this change is completely irrelevant. It has no effect whatsoever.
In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, however, the psychological effect of this mechanic is to make the person initiating the action feel passive: They announce the action their character is taking in the game world, but they take no “action” in the real world. Instead, the target takes the real world action.
Or, to put it another way: If you roll for an attack, the emphasis of the game becomes trying to hit people with your sword. If you roll for defense, the emphasis of the game becomes trying to dodge or deflect the blows of others. (If you roll for both, no such emphasis occurs. But this becomes too swingy with D&D’s d20-based mechanics.)
As a result, in 4E, you are always active on your turn and always passive on every other character’s turn. In 3E, on the other hand, the differentiation between the facing of attack rolls and the facing of saving throws mixes the experience up: Spellcasters generally feel more “passive” than fighters on their turn. Meanwhile, players frequently become “active” on other characters’ turns because saving throws will be called for.
Here, as with many of its design choices, 4E is flattening the game experience into something more “consistent”, but also blander and less varied. No player will ever feel as if they “didn’t do anything” on their turn, but the trade-off is that they literally do nothing while everyone else is taking their turn. (Theoretically this is then balanced out with the plethora of immediate actions that 4E adds. BID.)
The second major change 4E implemented, however, was to basically eradicate any clear connection between the action in the game world and the save/defense being used. (For example, a cleric can use his weapon vs. AC, vs. Fort, and vs. Will. Why? Because the mechanics say so.) They embrace this dissociation of the mechanics because it allows them to give every character class the ability to target different defenses without having them actually take different types of actions.
Laying aside the general effects of dissociated mechanics for the moment, this second change has the practical effect of watering down the actual meaning of the various defense scores. When Radiant Brilliance lets you charge your weapon with divine energy and trigger an explosion by hitting your target with a vs. Reflex attack and Holy Spark lets you do basically the same thing with a vs. Will attack… what’s the difference between Reflex and Will defenses? Absolutely nothing, of course. They’re just arbitrary categories that we drop various powers into for an “interesting” mechanical mix.
Dove City – Alex Drummond
So far we’ve been featuring fantasy heroes in this series, but of equal important, in my opinion, are the startling vistas of fantasy.
Alex Drummond‘s conception of a place called Dove City draws my eye into the misty depths of forgotten antiquity. I yearn to cross those bridges of stone and explore the byzantine chambers which lie behind those intricate walls of bas relief.
What do you think lies within?
A missing aspect from Technoir’s scenario structure is the scenario hook: The plot map will tell you what’s happening, but it won’t tell you how to get the PCs involved in it.
(To be clear: I’m not holding this against Technoir. The game actually provides quite a bit of guidance on how to motivate noir characters and includes a nascent structure by which the players will actually prompt you to give them the scenario hook. This is more than most RPGs do.)
But as you stare at your mission seed – madly brainstorming possible hooks – here’s my playtest tip: Set the PCs into immediate opposition with each other.
Here are some genericized examples of how I’ve done that:
As the PCs start fighting with each other, they’ll start generating strongly-motivated drama without you ever needing to lift a finger. Simultaneously, they’ll start spending push dice on each other, allowing you to build up a stockpile to hurt them with when the bad guys make their move.
A couple of things to watch out for with this technique:
First, the push dice economy of the game requires that the GM spend his push dice to get them back into the hands of the players. If the PCs are just fighting each other, this can be difficult to accomplish and the game will flounder as the push dice all become concentrated in the GM’s hands. You have to look for your opportunities (the bar patron who gets angry that his drink was spilled; the cops who don’t like having their time wasted; etc.) and try to find the moment when you can get them turned back to the main plot and introduce some threats to antagonize them.
Second, when the PCs go to their contacts asking for leads on each other, it can be tempting to think of this as being a “special case” that somehow doesn’t apply to your plot map. Don’t do that. Stick with the rules for generating your plot map: A lead can point them in the direction of the PC and be connected to the conspiracy.
The flip-side of that is that the PCs — occupied with each other — may not hit up their contacts for leads or information. If that happens your plot map can stagnate. In this scenario, a friend of mine with experience GMing Technoir recommends randomly generating a threat, figuring out what their agenda is, and then essentially running them in the background as an independent PC: This allows you to develop your plot map and figure out what’s going on. Once you’ve got enough pieces in play, you should be able to start using those to hook the PCs back into the conspiracy. (I’ll be giving this a try in the near future.)
