IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 4B: RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENTS

April 7th, 2007
The 18th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

TEE AT THE COCK PIT

Instead of retiring, however, Tee took advantage of the evening hours in order to track down the Cock Pit. She was successful, discovering that the Cock Pit was, in fact, an illegal gambling house run by someone named Naosh (presumably the same Naosh that Toridan Cran had made the 100 gp payment to). It also turned out that, while Naosh ran the Cock Pit, the place was actually controlled by someone named Aggah-Shan.

Tee decided to try going to the Cock Pit by herself (suspecting, perhaps, that the less than subtle methods of some of her compatriots might be less than effective in an underground gambling den). She easily found the place she’d been told to go – a nondescript and unmarked warehouse – and knocked on the door. After a cursory inspection by three guards (“Whaddya want?” “I’m here to gamble.” “Go right in.”) Tee entered a surprisingly lavish gambling hall. Guards were posted conspicuously at several locations, including the main hallway that led out of the area.

Tee asked some questions, tried to flirt unsuccessfully with one of the guards (“Elves not your thing, huh? Your loss.”) in order to see what was further down the hall, and then cashed in 20 gold pieces to play the copper ante tables. Over the next hour she gambled with a fair amount of success (ending up on the night) and continued asking questions, trying to find out whatever she could about Naosh and Aggah-Shan.

She wasn’t very successful. In fact, her questioning brought unwanted attention: A guard dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder and said, “Naosh wants to see you. Now.” (more…)

Go to Part 1

We’ve reached the end of the road: The dice have been rolled. The mechanics have determined success or failure.

Now the GM needs to describe that outcome. (They need to complete the fiction-mechanics cycle by bringing the result back into the fiction.)

If the result is a success, this usually means answering two key questions:

• How does the intention succeed?
• Are there any complications (i.e., unintended side effects)?

If the result is a failure, the questions are:

• How does the action fail?
• What are the consequences of failure?

The process we talked about in Fictional Cleromancy sort of naturally elides into this: As you’re thinking about graduated results, you’re thinking about what the potential outcomes of the action can be. You can usually just carry these thoughts forward through the mechanical resolution.

The actual narration of what’s happening in the game world is, of course, more art than science. But when it comes to describing outcome, there are a few general principles that you can keep in mind.

INTERNAL vs. EXTERNAL FACTORS

First, consider the question of why the outcome happened. What were the determining factors?

Bear in mind that both internal and external factors can influence the outcome of a skill check. (The distinction here is between failing to crack the safe because you’re simply not skilled enough and failing to crack the safe because your lockpick was defective and snapped off.) A lot of GMs default exclusively to the former (the character made a skill check; the check was a failure; therefore it was the character’s fault), but it’s arguably more effective to remember that the randomness of the dice models the entire situation, not just variance in the character’s ability: Sometimes you fail a Steath check because a guard comes around the corner at exactly the wrong time. You fail a Jump check because the ground is unexpectedly slippery. And so forth.

Another way of thinking about this is that, in any given skill check, there are myriad factors that determine its ultimate success and failure. Some of these factors – generally the ones we care about the most – are known. (For example, in D&D we’re always interested in whether a character’s armor will protect them from an attack, so their AC is always factored into the attack roll.) A lot of factors, however, aren’t important enough or consistent enough for us to want to specifically track them, so we use a random number generator to account for all the different factors that could impact the success or failure of any given action (and then trust to the GM to adjudicate the result accordingly).

For example, let’s say that the PC goes to a library and makes a Research test in order to find a particular piece of information. The test fails. The GM decides that it’s because the library doesn’t own a copy of the book that would contain the information.

Some people struggle with this because, if the book wasn’t present in the library, then the PC shouldn’t have had any chance at success on their Research test. This is a fundamental misunderstanding, however: Nobody at the table knows that the book isn’t there until the fictional cleromancy of the random number generator (combined with the GM’s ruling of what that outcome means) gives them that information. The library’s ownership of the necessary book is just one of a multitude of different external factors that could result in failure. (Other external factors might include whether the book has been checked out; if the book has been shelved incorrectly; has the book been damaged; does the book exist at all; and so forth.) The point is that we don’t care about any of these external factors enough to track it or model it mechanically, and so they all get abstractly bundled into the random number generator.

And, because all of these factors are bundled into the random number generator, it’s the GM’s responsibility to creatively unbundle them as they describe the outcomes of action resolution.

But what if we DO care about whether or not the specific book we want is available in this specific library? Well, in that case the GM would specifically determine that – through a listing of all the books in the library; or a list of all the places where that book exists; or maybe through a random percentile check – and then, like the armor bonus to AC, directly factor it into the success or failure of the Research test. (For example, if the GM knows that only one copy of the book survives anywhere in the world and they know that copy isn’t in this library, the Research test would automatically fail.) But when you make an external factor like this explicit, it’s no longer part of the abstract factors being modeled by the random die roll.

(It should be fairly obvious, of course, that no matter how many factors you make explicit there will always be factors you haven’t accounted for when you’re making a skill check. If there weren’t, in fact, you wouldn’t be making the skill check: You’d simply be defaulting to yes or saying no. Saying that the outcome of the action is random is inherently saying that there are factors that may or may not affect the outcome.)

FACTORS INFLUENCING OUTCOME

The ways in which characters can succeed or fail are as varied and limitless as the panoply of actions they can attempt in the first place. With that being said, there are some general principles you can keep in mind when describing outcomes.

SKILL: The most obvious of potential factors. Sometimes you have the best game of your life and sometimes you screw up and fall on your face. A lot of things can impact success or failure, but sometimes you succeed because you’re just that good (or fail because you’re just not good enough).

KNOWLEDGE: Is the character familiar with this particular model of safe? Do they recognize the patterns in a game of chess? Sometimes having just the right piece of information makes the difference between success and failure.

POWER: Sometimes people succeed because they just put more power into the attempt, or fail because they didn’t. A guard raises his sword to parry the barbarian’s blow, but her mighty thews sweep it aside and crush the guard’s skull.

FINESSE: And sometimes actions succeed because of the precision with which they are performed.

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS: Slippery floors. Frigid weather. Jammed locks. Floors that buckle under foot. Piles of fetid garbage that get in the way of your swinging sword.

TIME REQUIRED: How much time does it take to complete the action? High margins of success might indicate that the action took less time for the character to perform. A failure might result from something taking too long.

LUCK: Sometimes the biggest reason a character succeeds is because they’ve gotten lucky. The giant’s sword was going to take their head off, but it deflected off a falling piece of rubble. They were about to slide off a cliff to certain doom, but they grabbed a piece of scrub brush and miraculously its roots held.

THE TARGET: Whether the target is an object or a person actively opposing the character, they can obviously have an impact on the success or failure of an action. These are the locks that are devilishly difficult or the gullible guard who easily falls for your lie.

BYSTANDERS: In addition to the character directly targeted by an action, it’s possible for other characters to either interfere or assist in the attempt (whether wittingly or unwittingly).

TOOLS: You’re only as good as your tools. Lockpicks break, elven blades slide through seams in armor, inferior IC makes a system vulnerable, and luck charms crafted by your beloved can give the edge in a mystic duel.

These obviously don’t represent the totality of factors that can affect outcome, but hopefully they’ll provide a little inspiration.

(Way back in 1999 I wrote Dice of Destiny for Pyramid Magazine which mechanized this process by assigning qualities similar to these factors to individual dice in a dice pool system. If you find yourself struggling to diversify your outcome descriptions, you might want to check it out.)

MAKING FAILURE INTERESTING

Something else to remember is that the gatekeeper of mechanical resolution is that failure should be interesting, meaningful, or both. In other words, it should have consequences.

This can be one advantage of using external factors in explaining failure: If the character’s research at the library reveals that the book they need only exists in one place, for example, their next action will be to figure out how to get access to it.

What this means, in practice, is that failure generally should NOT cause a return to the status quo. This doesn’t necessarily mean failing forward, but it’s usually best if the outcome of an action – regardless of success or failure – should in some way change the situation. FATE refers to this as “blaming the circumstances”, and the advantage is that the new situation creates new options (which prevent the situation from stagnating or becoming a dead end).

(All of this also applies to success, but as I’ve mentioned previously this generally takes care of itself: Success implies that the character is one step closer to achieving their goals.  A stated intention can almost always be summarized as “I want to change the current situation” and, therefore, the success of that intention automatically carries with it a change in the current situation.)

KEEP IT PITHY

Vivid descriptions are great, but try to get the ball back to your players ASAP.

A necessary corollary of making the outcome of an action interesting by giving it consequences is that you will have created a situation which (ideally) demands a fresh response from the PCs. Once you’ve established that new context, give the players the opportunity to make that response.

PLAYER DESCRIPTION

Instead of narrating the outcome themselves, a GM can instead prompt a player to provide the description. (Often this is the player attempting the action, although it can also be outsourced to other players at the table.)

For example, the GM might say, “You’re spotted as you try to sneak onto the mansion’s grounds. Who spots you?” Or, “You make a loud noise as you climb in through the roof. What’s the noise and how are you responsible?”

(Providing specific improvisation prompts like this – instead of simply asking a generic, “How do you fail?” – is generally more effective because it focuses the player’s response. You’re less likely to get a blank look if you ask a player to finish painting a picture instead of just handing them an empty canvass.)

Using the technique in this form grants the player a limited degree of narrative control. As such, it tends to work great in storytelling games (where it becomes part of a wider tapestry of methods for sharing narrative control). When used in a roleplaying game, on the other hand, I’ve generally found it problematic: It doesn’t really give the players any narrative autonomy (since they can only take narrative control when the GM gives it to them), but periodically forces them into a potentially disruptive and undesired authorial stance.

(In other words, if you want players to have that kind of narrative control, you’re probably better off playing a game that’s designed to do that.)

But that’s not the be-all or end-all of the technique. Instead of having the player get into an authorial stance and describe how the external world affects their character’s intention, you can instead have the mechanical result serve as an improv seed that informs how they play out the scene.

This can be particularly useful for social scenes: Instead of playing out an entire seduction attempt and then rolling to see if it succeeds, for example, you can make a Seduction attempt and then roleplay the scene based on the mechanical result.

This, however, begins to transition us into a discussion of fortune positioning, which is what we’ll covering in the next installment of the Art of Rulings.

Go to Part 10

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 4A: Riot in Oldtown

In which a cry for freedom takes an unexpectedly sinister turn, the scope of events becomes larger than can immediately be managed, and Master Ranthir performs astonishing deeds of derring-do…

As with the rules for handling house fires that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, I created a custom structure for handling the riot in this week’s installment of the campaign journal. And I similarly posted them here on the Alexandrian back in 2007. They’ve actually got much wider applications than just riots, and you can find them here: Crowd Rules.

BUILDING A RIOT

Although the group’s decision of what to do next is presented at the beginning of this entry in the campaign journal, I had actually asked them that question at the end of the previous session. (As a I talk about in the Railroading Manifesto, one of the most potent tools in the GM’s arsenal is simply asking, “What are you planning to do next session?”) So I knew that the PCs would be present for the riot, which by its very nature was going to be a big set piece.

Successfully pulling off big set pieces at the table can be tricky. By definition, they involve a lot of moving parts and managing all of those parts can be a bit of a juggling act. The secret, in my experience, is clearly organizing all of those parts into distinct tools which you can then easily pick up and use on-the-fly. For this particular scene, I prepped several tools.

First, a general timeline of events as they would play out if the PCs didn’t interfere with Helmut’s plans. (See “Goal-Oriented Opponents” in Don’t Prep Plots, and also the detailed example of doing this sort of thing at a larger scale.)

Second, the relevant stat blocks for the Riot Mobs (the large crowd was broken into 8 mobs) and the City Watch.

Third, Helmut’s speech. Using big speeches like this at the gaming table can be tricky. Being able to deliver them effectively and dramatically helps, of course (I’ve literally trained professionally for this, so I have an advantage). But the real trick is making sure that they don’t deprotagonize the PCs.

You know those video game cut scenes where all you want to do as a player is pull the trigger and shoot the idiot who’s yammering on? Right. That’s exactly what you want to avoid here. At the gaming table you’ve got the advantage that your players actually can interrupt what you’re saying and declare that they’re taking an action. But it can also be useful to take a more proactive approach as a GM, which is what I did here: The timeline of events was specifically designed to overlap the speech and, as you can see represented in the journal entry, the speech was broken down into chunks between which actions could be taken. (So, for example, Helmut would speak for a bit and then I’d call for Spot checks to let people notice the guards moving towards the stage.)

THE FEAR OF RAILROADS

Something that isn’t represented in the campaign journal is the point where one of the players declared that everything happening had been foreordained and there was nothing they could do about it — i.e., that they were being railroaded.

Which was a weird moment. First, it had been their choice to attend the riot in the first place. Second, as we’ve seen, the whole encounter had been structured to insure that the PCs could take action and influence the outcome of the event. Third, the PCs had been taking actions in an effort to affect the mob… they were just failing. The specific moment which triggered the comment was, oddly, when Dominic tried to calm the crowd down… and rolled a 2 on his Diplomacy check. His failure could not more clearly have been the result of pure mechanical resolution.

And yet the conclusion was reached that they were stuck in a railroad.

This was one in sequence of events which led me inexorably to an unfortunate truth: Railroading is a form of abuse.

I recognize the hyperbolic nature of the claim. And I’m not saying that people who are railroaded actually suffer emotional damage. But within the specific context of the game table, the behavior modification is remarkably similar: Railroaded players become hyper-aware of the GM’s behavior, constantly looking for the cues that indicate the railroad is coming. Their response will be to take actions to minimize the damage of the railroad — either acceding to it so that they don’t have to be manhandled into it; or becoming disruptive in an effort to resist it.

And this is where the analogy becomes useful, because this behavior modification persists even after the player is no longer threatened by the railroad: They continue looking for the subtle cues that warn them the railroad is coming. But when those cues occur in the absence of railroading, their behavior becomes seemingly erratic and irrational. (Why are they randomly shooting people in the head? Why are they just blindly doing whatever an NPC asks them to do, even when it’s clearly not in their best interest and they’re endlessly complaining about it?) This can be baffling and confusing for the GM who doesn’t understand what’s happening. (And it can be even more difficult for a GM who is trying to improve themselves and stop their previous railroading tendencies.)

Having identified the problem, what’s the solution? Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s an easy one to be had. A frank conversation in the metagame where you make it clear that the outcomes in your game aren’t predetermined and that the players are in control of their own destinies can be useful. Beyond that, the best you can do is to keep running your game: When they see that their actions have a meaningful impact — when they realize that the entire course of a campaign can be radically diverted by the simplest of moments and the smallest of choices — they’ll figure it out.

And although that will take time, it will be worth it in the end.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 4A: RIOT IN OLDTOWN

April 7th, 2007
The 18th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The party decided that Ranthir should continue his research at the Delver’s Guild Library. The rest of them would head to the Republican rally scheduled to start in just a couple of hours.

On the way back up to Oldtown they finished selling the rest of the gear (with Elestra heading into the Bull and Bear Armory to avoid any further repercussions from Tee’s bad run-in with Iltumar the day before).

After dropping Ranthir off at the Delver’s Guild Library, the party continued down Dalenguard Road, discovering that the Administration Building (where the rally was being held) was only a few blocks away. A large platform had been erected in front of the pool in the center of the courtyard before the building. Only a few people milled about – the group was about an hour early for the rally itself.

The group split up: Agnarr headed up to a position parallel from the platform, planning to keep an eye on the crowd. Dominic and Elestra headed to the opposite side, standing near the edge of Dalenguard Road. Tee kept a look-out for Phon, suspecting that she might attend the rally.

Tee was right. About twenty minutes before the rally was scheduled to start – after a relatively large crowd of a couple hundred people had gathered – Tee saw Phon coming up Dalenguard Road from the east. Tee went over to her and waved, receiving a friendly smile and wave in response. After chatting amicably for awhile, Tee said that she’d like to keep an eye on Phon during the rally, just to make sure she was safe. Phon was glad to hear it, but suggested that – since the rally was about to begin – they should get a place near the front.

Just then, a shorter man – barrel-chested and with thinning hair, wearing fancy robes of black and silver – emerged from the Administration Building. Accompanied by two other men, with whom he chatted and laughed, he strode up to the platform, raised his hands, and cried out: “Friends! This is a momentous day! This is the day that you hear the truth of brotherhood and freedom!” The crowd settled down. (more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 3B: Questioning Cran

In which answers are demanded, justice is served, and a young boy is unexpectedly disappointed by lost memories…

Decipher Script is possibly my favorite skill.

Tussling meaning out of antediluvian texts and puzzling out the secrets of strange runes is awesome. On the one hand, there’s that Indiana Jones thrill of plucking lost truths from ancient texts (towards which end I commonly stock my fantasy setting with hidden epochs and unknown historical ages which are clearly defined but not commonly known, presenting a meta-mystery which the PCs can slowly unravel — although that’s a topic for another time). On the other hand, encrypting a text is also a great way of signaling that there’s something of particular importance to be found (much like locking or trapping a chest). And on the gripping hand, when only partial successes are achieved (or the text is fragmentary to begin with) the cryptic passages immediately create an air of enigma.

With that being said, Decipher Script is also one of the most problematic skills because:

(a) A lot of GMs don’t want to risk their previous railroads being derailed when someone fails to decrypt a text or cypher, so they don’t include opportunities for using Decipher Script.

(b) The default use of the skill is rendered completely obsolete by a 1st level spell (comprehend languages).

You solve the first problem, obviously, by realizing that failing to decipher the counter-ritual that would thwart the cultists is exciting because it forces the PCs to find a different solution to their dilemma. (And then following up by liberally strewing your campaign world with enigmatic texts because… well, why wouldn’t you?)

The second is a bit trickier to deal with. You could resolve it with a house rule by turning comprehend languages into a spell that grants a hefty bonus to your Decipher Script check instead of simply rendering it irrelevant; or by modifying secret page so that it can thwart comprehend languages but not mundane deciphering attempts. But over the years I’ve opted to implement a variety of other methods instead.

LAYERED CIPHER

One technique can be found in this week’s campaign journal: When Ranthir casts comprehend languages on the encoded journal, it doesn’t work. This is because the journal has been encoded with a Decipher Script check used in conjunction with a comprehend languages spell. (The idea being that you lay the memetic weave of the spell over the page and then inscribe the encoded text onto the page through the weave. When the weave is withdrawn, the text becomes even further “scrambled” and restoring the memetic weave — with a fresh casting of comprehend languages — only gets you back to the encoded text.)

ENCODING A LAYERED CIPHER: This requires a conjoined Spellcraft check (DC 20) and a Decipher Script check (DC 20). If both checks are successful, the text is successfully encoded with the layered cypher. If the Spellcraft check fails, you end up with a text of irrecoverable gibberish. If the Decipher Script check fails, a comprehend languages spell will reveal the text normally.

DECODING A LAYERED CIPHER: A layered cypher can still be decoded with a simple Decipher Script check, but the DC for doing so is at +20. Alternatively, if you cast a comprehend languages spell first, you can use a Decipher Script against the normal DC of the cypher.

IDENTIFYING A LAYERED CIPHER: A successful Decipher Script or Spellcraft check (DC 25, or DC 10 if currently using a comprehend languages spell) can identify the layered cypher for what it is.

LONG TEXTS

Another way of rewarding the Decipher Script skill over the comprehend languages spell is through the simple expedient of using longer texts: The comprehend languages spell only lasts 10 minutes per level. That’s plenty of time to read a couple of pages, but if you’re looking at an archaic tome containing several hundred pages it will take you hours to read through it. You can either cast the spell multiple times, or just make a single Decipher Script check.

Alternatively, for long texts which are heavily encoded or badly damaged complex skill checks (X successes before Y failures) are a great mechanic, allowing the character to suss out additional details for every hour of study with a successful check.

OTHER USES OF DECIPHER SCRIPT

CREATE CIPHER: You can create a cipher to encode written messages. The DC for deciphering the cipher after its creation is equal to 10 + your total skill modifier at the time of the cipher’s creation. Creating a cipher takes 1 day of uninterrupted work.

Quick Ciphers: You can put together a quick cipher in 1 hour, but the DC for breaking the cipher suffers a -5 penalty. A cipher can be created in 1 minute, but the DC for breaking the cipher suffers a -20 penalty.

DECIPHER SPOKEN LANGUAGE: You can make a Decipher Script check at a -10 penalty to decipher a spoken language and communicate in a pidgin fashion. You must make a check for each idea or concept you attempt to communicate or decipher. (You can try this check again if the creature you’re trying to understand repeats themselves or if you try to make yourself understood again.)

(I also allow people to invest ranks into their Language skills, and then use this same mechanic to communicate with people in related languages. This, of course, requires the extra prep of designing actual language trees for the languages of your world. The invested Language skill can also be used like Craft or Profession in order to create written material for sale.)

INTERCEPT SIGNALS: While observing enemies, you can catch a view of any visual signals they are using to coordinate their actions. You can attempt to puzzle out the meaning of the signals and determine the enemy’s short-term plans. Such signal systems tend to use many false signals, leaving a chance that you will pick up on a fake set of signals or misinterpret a signal (if you fail your check by 5 or more). Once a character has cracked a signal set, it becomes much easier to subsequently decode it: The character gains a +5 competence bonus to decode subsequent uses of that signal set.