I’m there now.

Anybody else hanging out in Indianapolis? Running a game I should attend? Seen an awesome game I should check out?

My big disappointment so far was missing out on Android: Netrunner, which I was hoping to play some pick-up games with. Had a fairly slow Thursday otherwise: Super RoboRally (played with giant-sized, fully-operational lego robots) is cute. Mechnoir, the mecha expansion to Technoir, has been released, and Ken Hite makes for an awesome panel.

Also, check out the Indie Games on Demand room. It’s pretty awesome up there.  I may end up running a game there if I get the chance. I’ll try to post an update here if that happens.

As I’ve discussed previously, Technoir features a conflict-resolution system in which players push adjectives onto other characters. For example, instead of making an attack roll with your machine gun to inflict hit point damage, you instead use your Shoot verb to apply the adjective of riddled to the target.

In the rules as written, positive and negative adjectives “can be applied to a character directly – representing her physical or psychological state – or to an object belonging to a character – representing its physical condition or the states of its electronics and software”. When applying the latter, you’re supposed to draw a line from the adjective to the piece of equipment being affected. Some of the former might only apply to a particular part of the body; if so, that should be indicated in parentheses next to the adjective. (For example, broken (arm).)

RELATIONSHIP ADJECTIVES

There is also one other type of adjective in the game: The permanent, locked relationship adjectives which describes how a PC feels about their connections. (These adjectives act “as positive adjectives when the protagonist is helping or defending that character, they act as negative adjectives if she acts against that character”.)

What I would like to propose is a slight conceptual and mechanical shift in how relationship adjectives are handled throughout Technoir.

1. A relationship adjective specifically refers to any adjective which describes the connection between two characters.

2. When you apply a relationship adjective to a character, you specify which character they have that relationship with. The adjective describes the target character’s relationship with that character; it does not necessarily describe the character’s relationship with them.

(You can already apply an adjective like trusting. What I’m saying is that you should specify who, exactly, the character trusts. For example, trusting (Paul) or affectionate (Cyndi). This would mean that they’re trusting of Paul or affectionate of Cyndi; it wouldn’t necessarily means that Paul trusts them or Cyndi likes them.)

3. If you want a relationship adjective to describe their relationship with multiple people – for example, if you want them to be trusting of both you and your friends – then you need to use the rules for multiple targets: You need to have an adjective or tag that justify the application and you need to discharge a Push die (that is not rolled as part of the dice pool) to pay for the attempt.

Pushing relationship tags that describe relationships with multiple people onto multiple targets costs two Push die (one for multiple relationships; one for multiple targets).

(For example, if you want to make an entire Cyn Set gang loyal to Saito International, you’d need to spend one Push die to affect all the members in the gang and a second Push die because Saito International represents a large group of people. However, if you just want the leader of the gang to feel loyal to the corporation, that would only cost one Push die. Similarly, if you want the whole gang to feel loyal to a particular representative of the Saito International, that would also only cost you one Push die.)

4. Relationship adjectives generally act as negative adjectives when you act against the character you have a relationship with and positive adjectives when you’re helping or defending that character. Some exceptions may exist.

5. In general, relationship adjectives work just like any other adjective. If someone is fleetingly trusting of a character, they’ve been momentarily persuaded to believe their story. If that same adjective is made sticky, on the other hand, then they’ll keep swallowing the character’s bullshit for a long time.

If a relationship adjective is locked onto a protagonist, however, the character it describes automatically becomes a connection. (Somebody is saying “this guy is of major importance to this protagonist” and that needs to be respected.) This means they can be hit up like any other connection, added to the plot map, and so forth. (The GM can prep customized connection tables for the new connection; use them to replace a connection who has been killed or otherwise removed from play; or even make them the seed for a new or overlapping transmission. Alternatively, the GM can just use the master table for the connection whenever the nouveau connection is hit up.)

6. Of course, as with any other adjective, you still need to establish the proper vector for applying the adjective.

Had an interesting experience with a plot map in Technoir last night and wanted to share it: I generated a mission seed, figured out what was going on, and then hooked the PCs.

But during the actual session, the PCs never got anywhere near the core of the plot map (the heart of the conspiracy defined by the original mission seed). Instead, they became completely wrapped up in a complex periphery of events that were being influenced or instigated by the conspiracy without actually being a part of it.

I’m now referring to this as the “untouched core”. Let me give a hypothetical example of what I’m talking about:

I generate a conspiracy focusing around a complex alliance of interests working to rig the presidential election in Ohio. The first impulse is that the PCs will work their contacts, shake a few trees, and eventually find a way to unmask (or at least de-fang) the conspiracy (presumably preventing the election from being rigged). But when the campaign takes the form of the “untouched core”, that’s not what happens: Instead, the PCs get tangled up in the street warfare of a small gang that murdered a campaign worker. Or end up investigating the illegal medical testing of one of the companies involved in the election rigging. Or wrangle a contract to protect one of the down-ticket candidates.

The point is that you end up with his sort of “cloud of activity” surrounding the conspiracy at the center of your plot map, and it’s fully possible for the PCs to get completely (and compellingly) tangled up in this cloud without ever worming their way into the heart of the matter.

This isn’t necessarily something that I could force to happen. (And I wouldn’t want to.) But it’s something I’m going to make a point of leaving myself open to and being all right with if it happens in the future.

By contrast, I think I inadvertently mucked up the first Technoir adventure I ran by pushing too hard for the revelation of the central conspiracy. I think I would have been better off simply letting the PCs resolve the local squabble they were tangled up in and letting the deeper conspiracy either pass them by or come back for a second pass in a different form further down the road.

A missing aspect from Technoir’s scenario structure is the scenario hook: The plot map will tell you what’s happening, but it won’t tell you how to get the PCs involved in it.

(To be clear: I’m not holding this against Technoir. The game actually provides quite a bit of guidance on how to motivate noir characters and includes a nascent structure by which the players will actually prompt you to give them the scenario hook. This is more than most RPGs do.)

But as you stare at your mission seed – madly brainstorming possible hooks – here’s my playtest tip: Set the PCs into immediate opposition with each other.

Here are some genericized examples of how I’ve done that:

• One PC has been framed for murder. Another PC has an appointment to show up at the murder scene. A third PC has received an anonymous tip that they should show up at the murder scene about 5 minutes after the second PC.
• Two members of the group are hired to deliver a package. Two members of the group are hired to prevent the delivery of the package. (Leaving me madly curious to see which half of the group is the first to call the fifth PC for help.)
• A PC has been deliberately framed for a crime. The other PCs are sent to track her down and find out what she knows.

As the PCs start fighting with each other, they’ll start generating strongly-motivated drama without you ever needing to lift a finger. Simultaneously, they’ll start spending push dice on each other, allowing you to build up a stockpile to hurt them with when the bad guys make their move.

A couple of things to watch out for with this technique:

First, the push dice economy of the game requires that the GM spend his push dice to get them back into the hands of the players. If the PCs are just fighting each other, this can be difficult to accomplish and the game will flounder as the push dice all become concentrated in the GM’s hands. You have to look for your opportunities (the bar patron who gets angry that his drink was spilled; the cops who don’t like having their time wasted; etc.) and try to find the moment when you can get them turned back to the main plot and introduce some threats to antagonize them.

Second, when the PCs go to their contacts asking for leads on each other, it can be tempting to think of this as being a “special case” that somehow doesn’t apply to your plot map. Don’t do that. Stick with the rules for generating your plot map: A lead can point them in the direction of the PC and be connected to the conspiracy.

The flip-side of that is that the PCs — occupied with each other — may not hit up their contacts for leads or information. If that happens your plot map can stagnate. In this scenario, a friend of mine with experience GMing Technoir recommends randomly generating a threat, figuring out what their agenda is, and then essentially running them in the background as an independent PC: This allows you to develop your plot map and figure out what’s going on. Once you’ve got enough pieces in play, you should be able to start using those to hook the PCs back into the conspiracy. (I’ll be giving this a try in the near future.)

Go to Part 1

Looking at the two versions of Madame Ling from yesterday, it’s notable that both contain the same amount of detail. Does this mean we can’t (or shouldn’t) add any prep to Madame Ling?

Not necessarily. But we need to look for where we can execute value-added prep that isn’t wastefully redundant or needlessly limiting within the scenario structure of Technoir. Specifically, we want to avoid pre-linking any of the nodes together: The plot map mechanics will do that for us during play.

But beyond that, there are a lots of way in which we could theoretically enhance Technoir transmissions.

For example, consider Club Neo. Off the top of my head, we could potentially prep:

• A detailed floorplan of the club.
• Throw together a couple paragraphs describing the “overlapping reality” club scene, in which people deliberately share a common physical space with contrasting audio- and visual-inputs pumped through their AR rigs.
• Detail the “seven layers of reality” on Club Neo’s experiential menu.
• Provide a stat block for the club’s bouncer.
• Prep a drink menu for the club that could be given to the players as a handout.
• Set up a random table of ten colorful NPCs who could be used to provide the club with some instant flavor as needed.

How much of that should you actually prep? I dunno. How much of it actually looks useful to you? How much of it do you think would enhance the game for you and your players? How much time are you willing to spend in prep?

For myself, I’ve so far confined my Technoir runs to the minimalist approach of the default transmissions, with one exception: For each city that I’ve run, I’ve googled up a neighborhood map of the city as it currently exists and printed it off. Although the cities have changed dramatically in Technoir’s dark future, these maps have given me just enough of the local geography for a firm foundation.

SOME FINAL QUALIFIERS

In closing, I want to just clear up a couple minor semantic points which are likely to throw some people off the scent if they get too hung up on them.

To be perfectly clear: Every bit of detail you prep is, in some sense, going to lock down options. That’s why I made it a point to specifically identify the principles of smart prep as guidelines. If you try to pursue them as hard rules you’re going to be disappointed.

For example, what if I decide to prep Club Neo in more detail and, as part of that, say that it’s owned and operated by former twee-disco star Big Purple? I have now effectively locked out the option of making Madame Ling the owner of Club Neo. How is that any different than locking Madame Ling into actually being the owner of Club Neo? Haven’t I still restricted her relationship with the club?

Well, it’s largely a matter of degree. By making someone else the owner of Club Neo, I have locked out one option for Madame Ling among a nearly infinite multitude. But if I make Madame Ling the owner of the club, I have locked out a multitude of options in favor of a single choice.

Then am I saying that you should never make an NPC the owner of a restaurant? Well, as Big Purple demonstrates, obviously not. This is something particular to the fact that Madame Ling and Club Neo are both nodes in Technoir’s scenario structure: There’s nothing particularly heinous about making Madame Ling the owner of a sex salon or giving Club Neo a particular owner; it is rather the particular act of pre-linking two nodes which is substantially problematic within this specific scenario structure.

The point is that you want to maximize the utility and flexibility of your prep while avoiding prep which serves little or no function except to limit the flexibility of your material. Pre-linking nodes in Technoir is a particularly clear-cut example of how you can limit your flexibility without adding utility; prepping plots instead of situations is a slightly more complicated one.

But there are plenty of other examples (both large and small). For example, you might write, “The giants are automatically hostile and will not listen to negotiations of any kind.” It’s just one sentence, but unless I’ve got a really good reason for introducing that type of limitation, I’m not going to do it. I’m certainly not going to elaborate upon it. What’s the point of wasting time on something which provides a strictly negative value at the actual game table?

Smart prep. It’s what all the cool kids are doing.