Go to Part 1

IN MEDIAS RES

Framing a scene in medias res is to start things in the middle of the action. It’s an effective technique because it jump-starts the scene at its most exciting or interesting part. In other mediums it also intrigues the audience by creating a mini-mystery: How did the characters find themselves in this precarious situation?

This element of mystery in the in medias res becomes problematic in an RPG, however: While it’s all right for an audience to remain ignorant of how the characters found themselves in their current circumstances, that can create significant issues when the players are supposed to be the characters and need to know what they know so that they can make coherent decisions.

Let’s lay the mini-mystery aside for a moment, therefore, and focus on a more basic form of in medias res that I highly recommend regardless of your predilections: Framing past the entrance.

GMs tend to frame to the arrival: If the PCs are heading to a warehouse, the GM will cut to their car pulling up outside the warehouse. If they’re going to question a suspect, the GM will cut to them knocking on the suspect’s door. It’s a safe choice, but it’s frequently unnecessary. For example, if you know that the PCs are going to Boss Man’s office to search for clues, you don’t have to go through the laborious process of having them enter the office building, pick the lock on his door, and so forth. Instead, you can cut straight to them rifling through his filing cabinets and pulling out the incriminating documents.

This works because the assumptions you’re making in framing the scene are obvious: You’re assuming that the PCs are, in fact, going to do what they said they were going to do. And you’re assuming that they will be successful in doing it. (If the latter is in doubt, of course, you’d call for an action check and then frame accordingly. For example, if the PCs fail an infiltration check then you might frame to the moment where the flashlight of a security guard flashes across them.)

ADVANCED IN MEDIAS RES

More dramatic examples of in medias res are common in other mediums, but relatively difficult to pull off in an RPG without railroading. But it can be very rewarding if you can make it work.

In my experience, that requires a high degree of trust and understanding between the GM and the players: The GM needs to know his players and their characters well enough that he can accurately predict their reactions. And then the players need to have enough trust in the GM to believe that he has made an accurate prediction.

However, there are also ways that the GM can “cheat” in order to achieve satisfactory in medias res scene openings. A basic method is, “Why are you here?” The GM opens the scene by saying something like, “You’re in a dark tunnel underneath the Parker Corporation’s headquarters. Why are you here?”

This technique basically says, “Yup, we’re railroading to this point. But I’m going to mitigate it by giving you some influence over exactly what model the locomotive is going to be.” Obviously that’s a lot heavier handed than a lot of people are going to be comfortable with. (It’s way out of my personal comfort zone.) But if it works for you and yours, the pay-off is that you can get away with much harder frames and much tighter pacing.

Another “cheat” is to use the in medias res in combination with a flashback: You show the PCs mired in a situation and then use a flashback to establish how they got there. The “future” knowledge of where they end up obviously constrains choice, but once again you’re mitigating the heavy hand you’re applying by allowing the players to influence (or even define) the path that leads to the events they’ve seen. (And there can be a fine art in portraying something compelling in your flashforward which is not particularly binding in its content.)

EPILOGUE SCENE

An epilogue scene is a specific type of color scene which immediately follows a major conflict or bang. During the epilogue scene, the characters are able to reflect and react to the things that just happened to them.

The purpose of the epilogue is both aesthetic and practical. (And it’s practical in both the game world and the metagame.) Aesthetically it provides a natural formula for effectively varying the pacing of your game: Moments of high tension and exciting action are contrasted against the relative calm of the epilogue which puts those moments into a larger context of progress or setback or revelation.

In the context of the metagame, an epilogue scene is practical because it often comes at a moment when the players and/or GM need to take stock: Damage needs to be healed. Resources need to be tallied. Notes need to be consulted. If your group can develop the ability to roleplay effectively through these moments of mechanical bookkeeping it can greatly enhance your game sessions. (Note that the roleplaying does not necessarily need to be about the mechanical bookkeeping that’s happening: It’s possible to say “we heal everybody up” and then handle the mechanics of that while actually roleplaying a later scene in which the PCs are discussing their options for raiding the palace.)

Meanwhile, in the context of the game world, it’s perfectly natural for people to kick back, relax, and take a moment to recover from a stressful situation. Or to sit down and try to talk their way through earth-shaking revelations. (“Dude, you’ve gotta bring me some beer. Betty just broke up with me. Also, I think she’s been possessed by a demon.”)

In practice, these scenes will often happen quite naturally if you give the PCs a bit of rope. If you’re using harder scene framing, however, you really shouldn’t neglect them.

An effective technique for this sort of thing is to establish common “set pieces” for epilogue scenes. For example, in my Ptolus campaign these scenes often happen in their rooms at the Ghostly Minstrel, during a carriage ride across the city, or while they’re looting the bodies of the dead and tending their wounded. We’ve established these as common themes in the campaign and when they show up the group has naturally developed a habit of falling into an epilogue scene.

DISRUPTIVE PACING

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, epilogue scenes often happened at the school library or (in later seasons) at the Magic Box. But Buffy is also a great example of how you can use a set piece for epilogue scenes and then shift it by occasionally dropping a conflict into the location. This is a basic example of disruptive pacing.

The pacing of a book or movie often falls into a repetitive pattern. The same is true of an RPG. This regular rhythm can be very satisfying in its familiarity (particularly when it feels like the whole group is suddenly on the same page and participating in the ineffable synergy of an instinctive collaboration), but it can also easily become stupefying or stale in its predictability. To avoid that, you need to occasionally disrupt the familiar pacing by throwing in something unexpected: A scene that should be color suddenly erupts into conflict. A sequence that feels as if it’s winding down is abruptly escalated with a fresh bang.

What’s interesting about disruptive pacing is that it can easily degrade back into the expected. For example, the first time a supposedly dead monster suddenly reappeared during what was supposed to be the epilogue of the film it was wildly successful disruptive pacing. Now, however, it’s become part of the expected pacing for a horror film: You’re more shocked when the slasher villain stays dead than you are when he suddenly pops back to his feet.

CONCLUSION

I really can’t emphasize enough the degree to which we’ve barely even begun to scratch the surface of RPG pacing in this essay.

On the other hand, that may be for the best: While film, for example, has certainly benefited from a richer understanding of how pacing can be used in the filmmaker’s toolkit, the process of effectively pacing a film is still very much an art rather than a science. Similarly, it can be a little too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of one-true-wayism if one tries to develop trite maxims.

Instead, I hope that I’ve managed to convey a handful of useful conceptual tools that you can use in a myriad number of ways to better understand and control the pacing of your own campaigns. How you choose to use those tools is up to you: Experiment with them. Play with them. See what you can discover and what you can improve.

SUPPLEMENTAL READING – THE ART OF PACING
Film Banging: The Avengers
Film Banging: Alien
Film Banging: The Matrix
The Art of Pacing: Prepping Bangs
The Art of Pacing: Running Awesome Scenes
The Art of Pacing: How NOT to Frame a Scene

FURTHER READING
The Art of Rulings
The Art of the Key
Gamemastery 101

Go to Part 1

Now that we’ve established the basic tools for pacing in roleplaying games, let’s briefly visit some advanced techniques. This will be by no means an encyclopedic treatment of the subject. In fact, we’ll barely even scratch the surface. But hopefully even a quick exploration of the topic will point us in some interesting directions.

SPLITTING THE PARTY

Let’s start with simultaneous scenes: Half the party leaves to explore the abandoned water tower while the other half of the party goes to question Jim Baxter, the farmer with an inexplicable supply of Nazi gold.

On two entirely separate occasions I’ve had a group I’ve been GMing for spontaneously announce that they weren’t going to split up because they didn’t want to make things tough for me. In both cases, I rapidly dissuaded them from their “good intentions”: The truth is, I love it when the PCs split up.

While it does take a little extra juggling to handle multiple sets of continuity, that slight cost is more than worth the fact that a split party gives you so many more options for effective pacing: The trick is that you no longer have to wait for the end of a scene. Instead, you can cut back and forth between the simultaneous scenes.

• Cut on an escalating bang. (The bang becomes a cliffhanger: “The door is suddenly blown open with plastic explosives! Colonel Kurtz steps through the mangled wreckage… Meanwhile, on the other side of town—“)
• Cut on the choice. (Remember that everything in a roleplaying game is a conversation of meaningful choices. When a doozy of a choice comes along, cut to the other group.)
• Cut on the roll of dice. (Leaving the outcome in suspense. But the other thing you’re eliminating is the mechanical pause in which the dice are rolled and modifiers are added. All of that is happening while something exciting is happening to the other groups. And when they get to an action check—BAM! You cut back to the first group, collect the result, and move the action forward.)
• Or, from a purely practical standpoint, cut at any point where a player needs to look up a rule or perform a complex calculation or read through a handout. There may not have been a cliffhanger or a moment of suspense to emphasize, but you’re still eliminating dead air at the gaming table.

The end result is that effective cuts between simultaneous scenes allow you to easily tighten your pacing, heighten moments of suspense, and emphasize key choices.

CROSSOVER

Once you’ve mastered the basic juggling act of simultaneous scenes, you can enrich the experience by tying those scenes together through crossovers.

The simplest type of crossover is a direct crossover. This is where an element or outcome from one scene appears immediately in a different scene. For example, if one group blows up the arms depot then the other group might hear the explosion from across town. Or Colonel Kurtz flees from one group of PCs and ends up running back to his office… which the other PCs are currently searching.

Indirect crossovers are both subtler and more varied. These are common or related elements in each scene which are not identical. For example, you might have Franklin discover a cult manual bearing the sign of a white cobra while, simultaneously, John sees a white cobra painted on the face of his murdered wife.

An indirect crossover might not have any specific connection in the game world whatsoever: For example, Suzy might ask Rick out for a date at the Italian Stallion on Friday night. Simultaneously, in a different scene, Bobby gets ordered by his police lieutenant to arrange surveillance for a mob boss meeting at the same restaurant at the same time. Suzy and Rick have no connection to the mob or the police, but that’s still a crossover.

This also demonstrates how crossovers can be used to weave disconnected narratives together: Suzy, Rick, and Bobby are all going to end up at that restaurant at the same time. Franklin and John are both going to be launching separate investigations into the white cobra. It’s still not clear exactly how their paths are going to cross, but they’ve definitely been set on a collision course.

This technique can be particularly effective at the beginning of a scenario or campaign: Instead of having the PCs all meet in a bar, you can instead launch them all into separate scenes and then seed crossovers into those scenes to slowly and organically draw them all together.

Another way of using these techniques is to strengthen the role of player-as-audience-member. You know that moment in a horror movie where the audience doesn’t want a character to open a door because they know something the character doesn’t? Hard to do in an RPG… unless the table knows it (because it was established in a different scene), but the PC doesn’t. (This assumes, of course, that your players are mature enough to handle a separation of PC and player knowledge.)

NON-SEQUENTIAL SCENES

It should be noted that techniques similar to crossovers can obviously be used in sequential, non-simultaneous scenes, too. (John sees a white cobra painted on his dead wife’s face and then, later, the PCs discover the white cobra cult manual.) But the specific idea of the crossover is that you’re specifically juxtaposing the two elements both for immediate effect and to tie the simultaneous action together.

For some people, this can easily feel artificial. What are the odds, really, that both the dinner date and the surveillance order are both being made at the same time? One way to work around this is through the use of non-sequential scenes: The scene in which the dinner date is made might take place on Tuesday and the police lieutenant might order Bobby to set up the surveillance on Thursday. But that doesn’t mean we can’t run those two scenes simultaneously at the gaming table.

This non-sequential handling of time is also a good way of avoiding another common speed bump GMs often encounter when splitting the party. It starts when a PC says something like this: “Okay, you guys head across town to search the warehouse! We’ll stay here until David can finish cracking the encryption on this database.”

And then the GM thinks: “Well, it’ll take at least 15 minutes for them to get to the warehouse. So I’ll have to play through at least 15 minutes of activity here at the server farm before I can pick up the action over at the warehouse.” But that’s not necessarily true. There’s no reason you can’t run the warehouse search and the server farm stuff simultaneously.

I refer to these as time-shifted scenes. For me, personally, the time dilation on these scenes usually isn’t significant in and of itself. The point is merely to take advantage of more effective pacing techniques. A common example is when everyone splits up to take care of personal errands: We know everything is happening at some point on Wednesday afternoon, but I’m not particularly interested in strictly figuring out what happens at 2pm as opposed to 2:15pm. Instead I’m going to cut on the bangs, cut away from the dice rolls, and do all that other nifty stuff.

FLASHBACKS

Flashbacks are another common form of non-sequential scene. Or rather, they’re very common in other forms of media. In my experience, they’re exceptionally rare in roleplaying games.

Unlike a scene that’s been slightly time-shifted, the nonlinearity of the flashback is often a significant feature of its presentation: What it depicts from the past is meant to be either thematically relevant or expositionally revelatory to the current events of the narrative. (Some non-RPG examples would include Godfather II, which is an extensive but relatively straightforward handling of the technique; Memento, which is an almost absurdly complex use of the technique; and Iain M. Banks’ Use of Weapons in which both sets of scenes originate at the same point in time, with one set of scenes moving backwards through time and the other moving forwards through time.)

Flashbacks and non-sequential scenes in general do require a careful handling of continuity. This is usually a mixture of setting things up to avoid continuity errors ahead of time and also a willingness by everyone at the table not to deliberately violate known continuity. (“I call him on my cellphone!” “Okay, but we already know he went to the warehouse regardless of what you said on the phone call. So play it accordingly.”) The occasional retcon may be called for if things fall seriously out of joint, but that’s obviously not a desirable outcome.

The advantage of a flashback is that it allows you a lot more flexibility in how you explore both character and situation. In addition to, for example, playing out scenes that took place before play begins, flashbacks can also be used to mitigate or enhance hard scene framing: If you end up skipping over something that turns out to be important, you can simply flash back to it.

Go to Part 6: More Advanced Techniques

I have previously read (and reviewed) two other products from Guardians of Order: Big Eyes, Small Mouth (the first generic anime RPG) and Big Robots, Cool Starships (a vehicle construction system for BESM). I approached each of these books with a certain degree of doubt: Anime is capable of anything, so isn’t a generic anime game just another anime game? A simple vehicle construction system? Isn’t that an oxymoron? In each case, not only did the doubts vanish, but the books proved themselves worthy of lavish praise.

The Sailor Moon Role-Playing Game and Resource Book (henceforth the Sailor Moon RPG) was no exception when it came to doubts. I had no worries about the game itself (which uses a specially modified version of the TriStat engine used in Big Eyes, Small Mouth), but with the source material: Even if I was impressed with how well Guardians of Order had translated the Sailor Moon television series into game terms (and that was no sure thing, licensed products are devilishly hard to do properly), quite frankly, I didn’t really think the material itself was going to do anything for me. I’m not a rabid Sailor Moon hater – quite the opposite, I mildly enjoyed the handful of syndicated episodes I saw (although, per usual, I have issues with the American translation, dubbing, and censorship), but it simply didn’t seem the type of thing which was going to send me dancing through the streets singing its praise.

Well, I’m not dancing, but I’ll tell you right up front that Guardians of Order has successfully pulled the rug out from under my expectations once again.

THE RULES

The Sailor Moon RPG uses a customized version of the TriStat System, Guardians of Order’s house system originally used in its generic form in Big Eyes, Small Mouth. In my review of BESM (found elsewhere on RPGNet), I have given a comprehensive overview of the basic TriStat mechanics. Therefore, for the Sailor Moon RPG I am just going to briefly go over how those rules have been customized. Anyone curious in any specifics which I don’t mention here can, of course, take a look at my review of BESM.

Starting at the top of character creation: One of my minor problems (and they were all minor) with BESM was that stat generation defaulted to a random state (2d6+10 points which are distributed among the three stats), with the non-random options isolated at the back of the book. The Sailor Moon RPG not only corrects this problem, but goes one step better. Two methods are presented by which the GM can determine stat points: In Method A the GM gives everyone the exact same number of stat points. In Method B every character is given a static number of stat points, which is then modified by a random roll.

What seems to be missing are the options for unbalanced character creation – so that some characters will have more stat points than others. This option is given for the generation of attributes, so its oversight in stat assignation is odd. On the other hand, since there are attributes which modify the basic stats, you can get the same result through indirect means.

The character attribute system itself is a proto sub-attribute system. I describe it that way, because by the time I read the Sailor Moon RPG I had already read Big Robots, Cool Starships which develops and refines the mechanic in order to create a phenomenal vehicle construction system (reviewed elsewhere on RPGNet).

In the Sailor Moon RPG the sub-attribute system is used to specifically model the special powers of the Sailor Scouts (known as Sailor “Senshi” or “Knights” in the original Japanese) as well as the special powers of their Negaverse (or “Dark”) foes. Specifically you spend some of your Character Points to purchase either the Senshi/Knight Powers attribute or the Negaverse/Dark Powers attribute. For each level of these attributes you purchase, you get 10 Power Points in order to buy the sub-attributes which you are given access to (such as “Item of Power” or “Mind Control”).

And that about does it as far as customization goes.

This customization process works quite well with the TriStat system – which, due to its simplicity, take no more than half a dozen pages or so to explain (plus the particular attributes, many of which are specialized to the Sailor Moon universe). As a result you end up with a complete, stand-alone game which is also 100% compatible with other TriStat products. If you bought the Sailor Moon RPG first, for example, you could go out and buy Big Eyes, Small Mouth and use the attributes there to expand the scope and depth of your game. When GOF releases their licensed Dominion Tank Police game, you’ll be able to do crossovers easily. And so on. Nothing extra is required to play, but everything becomes an addition to your game.

THE RESOURCE BOOK

The other interesting thing about this book is that it is presented as the Sailor Moon Role-Playing Game and Resource Book. What’s this “Resource Book” stuff?

Well, this is not just a game – a large portion of the book is dedicated to being a general resource guide for fans of the Sailor Moon television show. So you get some general background on Japan (including the particulars of how their school system functions); a guide to the places seen in the Sailor Moon TV show; a Sailor Moon timeline; a “travel guide” to the Negaverse, the Moon Kingdom, the Planet of Makaiju, Crystal Tokyo, and Nemesis the Dark Moon; a character guide to all the major and minor characters; an overview to the mythological references made in the series; an episode guide complete with summaries; a bibliography of Sailor Moon’s creator (Naoko Takeuchi); a guide to Japanese pronunciation (and a minor glossary of some major terms relating to Sailor Moon); a guide to the meaning of the character’s names; a reference to the Sailor Senshi attacks (and translations of them); a yoma/cardian/droid list; a guide to on-line Sailor Moon resources; translations of the opening songs; and a credit list for the creative personalities behind the show.

As you’ve probably already noticed, a large amount of that stuff is fairly typical of what you’d see in any RPG – setting information. So why call it a “Resource Book”? Because by calling it a resource book, Mark MacKinnon is able to get the book into places where an RPG could never go. People who would never see (and would never consider buying) such a roleplaying game, will see (and perhaps even buy) this book. Recent reports seem to be bearing the theory out.

And that’s great. The young females who are the primary (but not only) audience for Sailor Moon are precisely the demographic to which RPG’s have never appealed. Indeed, I can’t think of any better property which could be developed than Sailor Moon which would both appeal to these new fans, and also have some potential of attracting established roleplayers. Nor is there any system better built than the TriStat System to function as an introduction to roleplaying. Anyone with young daughters or nieces who they would like to get interested in roleplaying could probably do no wrong in giving them a copy of this book as a birthday or Christmas present.

THE SETTING

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably been reading this review with a bit of a jaundiced eye. Sure, the system is nice. Sure, the presentation is superb. Sure, the game functions great as an introduction for new players. But play a bunch of pubescent girls who run around in skimpy outfits?

A digression is called for.

One of my favorite RPGs is Amber, a game based on the series of popular fantasy novels by Roger Zelazny. Although I find its system to be tremendously innovative, what draws me back to the game time and time again is the setting. For whatever reason the basic Amber canon, as described by Zelazny, functions only as a starting point for a host of variation. I, for example, have played in a variation where Amber was completely destroyed, and another where the entire Court was replaced with alternates (King Oberon became Queen Titania, Dworkin the ancient man became Rozel the young female, the players assumed the roles of a brand new set of children, and so on). Some have theorized that this was brought about because of the unreliability of the narrator in the original Amber books (was he really telling the truth? or was his version merely a plot to accomplish something else?); others point to the basic necessity of any licensed property to modify the canon in order to leave a place for the PCs to participate; and some have pointed to Wujcik’s decision to model multiple interpretations of the major characters in the main rulebook. In my opinion all of that had something to do with it, but when you boil it all away, Zelazny based his world on strong mythological archetypes. Those archetypes are extremely resiliant to massive amounts of change, and indeed, have been subject to thousands of alterations over the course of human history. It is little surprise, therefore, that Amber not only stands up under such change, but thrives under it.

In any case, the world of Amber has been twisted and distorted in any number of interesting and original ways. It’s fan community is a vibrant thing in which ideas are swapped and every conceivable alteration and possibility is considered, adapted, and used in various combinations.

I bring all of this up because I see the same potential in the Sailor Moon RPG, with the same type of groundwork being laid (almost certainly unintentionally) by Mark MacKinnon as was laid by Eric Wujcik. The basic mythological themes of Naoko Takeuchi’s characters and plots, combined with the need to modify the canon for a roleplaying game, leads inexorably to the great potential found in variating the Sailor Moon Universe. I have already considered several interesting possibilities (including one in which the Sailor Moon manga and anime series are a set of propaganda films distributed by the evil Sailor Senshi, while the truth is that the Negaverse is fighting to protect our world from their machinations and eventual domination).

As for “playing young girls in skimpy outfits” being a problem for you, the method of your salvation is built right into the game. Rules for creating Knight characters (such as the Tuxedo Mask from the series) are built right into the system. I immediately began pondering the possibility of a campaign where all the PCs are Knights, while the Sailor Senshi were relegated to fulfilling roles similar to that of Tuxedo Mask.

A COUPLE OF BAD THINGS

I came across two things in the Sailor Moon RPG which are regrettable:

First, many of the attributes discuss and use Energy Points to one degree or another. The only problem here is that you don’t find out what “Energy Points” are until Step Six of Character Creation (because its a Derived Stat), while the Attributes are discussed in Step Four of Character Creation.

Second, the Sailor Moon RPG suffers from what I’ve begun to call the “Guardians of Order Index Problem” – in which every entry in the index has exactly one reference. For example, according to the index, Sailor Moon is only mentioned once in the entire book (the reference is to her character sheet write-up). There is actually one exception to this: Each episode of the Sailor Moon TV show ends with a segment called “Sailor Moon Says” in which a little moral is provided for the day’s story. MacKinnnon used these to great effect throughout the book as boxed text, often finding very appropriate ones which complemented what the main text was discussing. In the index all four of these are mentioned.

CONCLUSION

I highly recommend the Sailor Moon RPG for five reasons:

First, the “Resource Book” portion of the title should be considered anything but tacked on. It is the first such resource book published for Sailor Moon in the States, and it is a wonderful resource. Any fan of the Sailor Moon TV show would definitely enjoy the book just for its reference purposes.

Second, it acts as a wonderful (if previously unmentioned) showcase for Sailor Moon art. The text is liberally sprinkled with highly appropriate selections from the manga and anime, including a full color section of pin-ups.

Third, the Sailor Moon RPG acts as a showcase for the enduring strength of the TriStat system. It’s sub-attribute system, as well as the host of new attributes introduced for the Scouts and Negaverse powers, would be useful in quite a few BESM games.

Fourth, I think that the Sailor Moon universe has tremendous flexibility and potential. The Japanese have far more respect for their children’s media tastes than American cartoon makers typically do, and as a result Sailor Moon benefits greatly from an unexpected depth of character and unique mythology. As a result, campaigns set both within and without the “canon” the series have a surprisingly huge amount of rich source material to draw from.

Fifth, and finally, the Sailor Moon RPG acts as an excellent introductory volume for roleplaying – particularly for young girls and fans of the Sailor Moon anime and manga. I have a cousin who, when she gets a couple of years older, will probably be getting a set of Sailor Moon tapes, some Sailor Moon manga, and a copy of this book. I’ll corrupt her yet.

For some this book will just be silly; but for many it will hit the nail right on the head. In short, I can’t say “every roleplayer will enjoy this book”. However, I think every roleplayer who has a broad palate should at least give the book a try… particularly if anything in this review has caught your interest.

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Author: Mark C. MacKinnon
Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order
Cost: $25.00
Page Count: 209
ISBN: 0-9682431-1-8

Originally Posted: 1999/08/16

This really was a groundbreaking RPG and the “Resource Book” approach was, according to all reports and evidence, highly effective at reaching out to new players. It was one of the few instances where I feel a small RPG company was actually really, really successful at reaching outside of the existing hobby.

Unfortunately, within a few short years the internet had grown to a point where “Resource Books” were irrelevant: Online resources and wikis wholly replaced them. It’s probably not wholly coincidental that Guardians of Order didn’t last very long after that. As I said in my review for BESM, I miss ’em. They came close to nailing something really special, but in the end they missed it.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Based on this poll I’m currently working on my first professional design work featuring the Pathfinder system. (The 3-to-1 advantage over 3.5 was impossible to ignore. Hopefully the other people, like me, using 3.5 in their home games will be OK with the minimal on-the-fly conversion work necessary to make a Pathfinder module work in 3.5.)

I’ve run into a conceptual difficulty, however, surrounding the conflation of Listen, Spot, and Search into a single Perception skill. It’s a fairly minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but I wanted to get some outside opinions on it.

LOCATION KEYS

The way I structure location keys is fairly straight-forward:

• There’s boxed text which conveys the common information that anyone walking into the room would immediately perceive. (“You see a box in the corner with a weird symbol painted on it.”)
• After the boxed text, I immediately list any reactive skill checks which should be immediately made by anyone entering the room. These are typically perception-type checks, but they might also be knowledge-checks. (For example, make a See Hidden check to notice that there are small spiders crawling all over the box. Or a History check to recognize the symbol as the royal seal of Emperor Norton.)
• Then each significant element in the room is independently described with additional details that will become important if characters investigate or interact with it. (“Inside the chest is ruby which has been cracked in half. You can see that the inside of the ruby is filled with empty spider’s eggs.”)

The significant elements often include specifically delineated skill checks that become relevant during the investigation/interaction. In my work with 3.5,  this delineated skill check was usually a Search check and, as a result, the format was self-evident in its utility: A Spot check for the room was almost always at the top of the key entry; specific Search checks for various elements within the room were located with those elements.

What’s happening in Pathfinder, however, is that I’ve just got Perception checks scattered throughout the room description. My concern is that it’s not necessarily self-evident which Perception checks are passive versus which Perception checks require active searching, which could lead to the key being more confusing to use at the table.

EXAMPLES

Here’s a really simple example of what a room element looked like in a 3.5 module:

Iron Door (Area 11): This locked door has been severely dented and scarred.
—Search (DC 12): It looks like the door was battered upon using handheld siege weaponry.

Here’s what a straight conversion to Pathfinder looks like:

Iron Door (Area 11): This locked door has been severely dented and scarred.
—Perception (DC 12): It looks like the door was battered upon using handheld siege weaponry.

In isolation, that doesn’t look particularly problematic. But if you’re a Pathfinder player, what I’m specifically interested in is what you think about this:

Iron Door (Area 11): This locked door has been severely dented and scarred.
—Perception (Active – DC 12): It looks like the door was battered upon using handheld siege weaponry.

Is it clear what I mean? Is there a better solution for what I’m trying to distinguish here?

Reactive Perception checks are part of Pathfinder, but the term “active Perception check” isn’t actually part of the core rules. It does seem to be fairly widespread among fans, either as a natural evolution of the “reactive” terminology or because it migrated over from 4E (where “active Perception check” is a term of art).

Thoughts?

(click for PDF)

UPDATE: These cheat sheets have been revised and improved. I recommend checking out Version 2.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I frequently prep system cheat sheets for the RPGs I run. These summarize all the rules for the game — from basic action resolution to advanced combat options. It’s a great way to get a grip on a new system and, of course, it also provides a valuable resource at the game table for both the GM and the players. (For more information on the methods I use for prepping these sheets, click here.)

This particular set of cheat sheets was designed for Eclipse Phase. It should be noted that these cheat sheets aren’t designed to serve as a quick start packet: They’re designed to be a comprehensive reference for someone who has read the rulebook and will almost certainly prove wholly insufficient for teaching you the game. (Although they do serve as a valuable adjunct reference if you’re teaching someone the game.)

WHAT’S NOT INCLUDED

The most notable absence from these cheat sheets are what I refer to as “character option chunks” (for reasons discussed here). So you won’t find psi sleights or the effects of specific nanodrugs listed here.

HOW I USE THEM

I keep a copy of these cheat sheets behind my GM screen for quick reference and also place a half dozen copies in the center of the table for the players to grab as needed. The information included is meant to be as comprehensive as possible; although rulebooks are also available, my goal is to minimize the amount of time people spend referencing the rulebook: Finding something in the 14 pages of the cheat sheet is a much faster process than paging through a 400 page rulebook. And, once you’ve found it, processing the streamlined information on the cheat sheet will (hopefully) also be quicker.

The organization of information onto each page of the cheat sheet should, hopefully, be fairly intuitive. The actual sequencing of pages (combat before hacking, hacking before psi) is mostly arbitrary. The sheets as they currently exist have been tweaked several times based on actual play experience.

Page 1: Basic mechanics. The stuff on this page should become irrelevant fairly quickly because players are going to rapidly memorize it through play. The information in “Your Muse and You” is more verbose and advisory than the sort of material I would normally include in a system cheat sheet, but after a few sessions I found that new players were routinely under-utilizing their muses. Adding this chunk of material significantly improved this and the inclusion of the stat block for a standard muse was significantly useful.

Pages 2-4: The combat reference. If you’re looking for a more simplistic system introduction for new players, temporarily remove pages 3 and 4. The Eclipse Phase combat system really comes alive when both the GM and the players are actively trying to create situations that will create positive modifiers on their combat tests, so I recommend continually refocusing attention on the combat modifiers table through both word and deed.

Page 5: In a future version of the cheat sheets, I might try to find some way to incorporate more info on medichines, nano-bandages, and repair spray. (They’re fairly ubiquitous and commonly used.) But letting health and healing spill onto multiple pages made things significantly less useful and most of the key information is summarized on the Healing table in any case. So, for now, I’m merely including the page references.

Page 6: The streamlined rules for jamming shells and vehicles is one of the major improvements Eclipse Phase makes on the Shadowrun rules. I just recently added the default stat block for a bot/vehicle AI to this page. Including the muse AI on page 1 was so useful I decided I should try to include a few more of these stat blocks. I’ve never done this with a cheat sheet before, but these AIs are so ubiquitous in the Eclipse Phase setting that I think this will prove very valuable.

Page 7-10: The methodology here is a page of general information on the mesh and then two pages of material on hacking… and then another half page on hacking because I couldn’t figure out a way to squeeze it all onto two pages. Fortunately, the key information is all on the two main pages (although this took a few playtesting tweaks to really figure out what was essential and what wasn’t in typical play).

Page 11: Reputation. This page is oft-referenced by new players trying to figure out how the new economies of Eclipse Phase work.

Page 12: I initially didn’t include resleeving rules in the cheat sheets. Big mistake. First, there are many scenarios in which the PCs are going to seek frequent resleevings in the middle of the action. Second, for new players this sheet helps to acclimate them to some of the unusual features of the setting.

Page 13: This is a recent addition to the cheat sheet because I specifically avoided including psi in the first half dozen sessions of Eclipse Phase that I ran. That’ s not because I don’t like the psi system (or its inclusion in the setting). Rather, I decided there was already so much stuff to grapple with in the setting that simply avoiding psi would be a convenient way to simplify things.

Page 14: And, finally, a page of miscellanea. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Some people might consider leaving this sort out of stuff off the cheat sheet entirely, but over the years I’ve found that this is actually the stuff you’ll find most useful in the long-term. As the other core mechanics slowly ingrain themselves into your memory, it’s going to be the random miscellanea that you’ll need to keep referencing every time it comes up.

A SIMPLER SET

If you’re looking for a quick introduction to the system for new players, here’s what I recommend:

• Page 1: Basic Mechanics (tell them to report test results to as “# out of #”, for example “I rolled 32 out of 65”)
• Page 2: Basic Combat (emphasize how valuable combat modifiers are)
• Page 5: Health and Healing (make sure they understand wound/trauma thresholds; you can’t trust players with their own bookkeeping until they do)
• Page 7: Basic Mesh Use (emphasize how valuable Research tests are)
• Page 11: Reputation / Social Networks

For this approach to work, you’ll want to avoid PCs that are focused on jamming, hacking, or psi. That’ll be very limiting in a long-term campaign, unfortunately, so you might want to start with a couple of one-shots to build up system familiarity. Or, alternatively, set aside time with the specific players interested in those areas to review those rules.

There is also, of course, setting information that you’ll want to pass on. I recommend 10 Things You Should Know About Eclipse Phase as a good way for accomplishing that.

The Eclipse Phase: System Cheat Sheet is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.