I’ve been playing through the Mass Effect trilogy over the past two weeks. It is, hands down, one of the greatest video game experiences I’ve ever had. It is also, through the virtue of its immersion, one of the most intense narrative experiences I’ve ever had.

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 be 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.)

Tagline: Who can resist a card game where you’re competing to see who can decapitate and execute the most people?

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.

I’ve recently been playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’ve been enjoying it so much that I’m virtually certain that there’ll be a replay of the original Deus Ex in my near future.

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

True roleplaying — in which you pervasively portray and deeply immerse yourself into a character who is not yourself — is a difficult art. There are people who literally spend years studying and mastering improvisational acting. And quite a few of those people would look at the challenge of performing at a dining room table while simultaneously rolling dice to be a very high hurdle to clear.

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.