An idea that I’ve toyed around with for years is creating a hex map for the Underdark. I still haven’t done it. But recently I’ve been running a huge technological complex for Numenera with a hex map that shares a lot of similarities with the Underdark. If the idea of running a hexcrawl through the Underdark is something you’d like to try,  I think there are a few key points to consider:

(1) What makes a hex map work is that it abstracts the actual terrain of the game world. If you’re doing a wilderness hexcrawl, you shouldn’t try to map every tree… or even every single country lane. If you do that, you’re defeating the entire point of the hex map. Similarly, if you’re designing your Underdark with a hex map you should not try to map every individual tunnel. (You might map major thoroughfares, the same way that major highways or rivers would be indicated on your wilderness hex map.)

(2) One key distinction between a wilderness hex map and an Underdark hex map is that, generally speaking, travel is always assumed to be possible through the side of a wilderness hex. This is not necessarily the case in the Underdark and one thing you’ll want to develop is a key indicating a minimum of three states for each side of the hex:

• Open (there are lots of tunnels leading from this hex to that hex)
• Closed (there are no tunnels leading from this hex to that hex)
• Chokepoint (you can get from this hex to that hex, but only by passing through a specific keyed location)

Note that the existence of a given chokepoint could also be a secret that needs to be discovered (by either obtaining the information elsewhere or perhaps by performing a detailed survey of the area).

(3) The RPG industry has developed a fairly standard “vocabulary” of wilderness terrain types. (These actually predate D&D and were inherited from Avalon Hill’s Outdoor Survival when Arneson used it as a template.) These terrain types also have the benefit of being familiar to us in our every day lives: We know what forests are. We know what mountains are. And so forth. IMO, you’re going to want to develop a similarly interesting vocabulary of at least 4-5 different Underdark terrain types. And you’re going to have to figure out how to clearly communicate those differences to a group that probably doesn’t contain spelunkers (and certainly no fantasy spelunkers). The point of this, obviously, is to make the map more interesting: This both rewards exploration (a key component of any hexcrawl), but also to make the actual description of the PCs’ journey more engaging.

(4) The Underdark is fundamentally three dimensional in a way that the surface of the world is not. Keep that in mind, but don’t worry about it too much: The surface of our planet varies from 1,400 feet below sea level to 29,000 feet above sea level but we still successfully visualize it as a flat plane. Consider the minor elevation shifts I discussed in Xandering the Dungeon and apply the same logic at a macro-scale here: You can probably make your Underdark more interesting by saying “you have to go down and then over and then up to get to there”, but vast slopes and slants and descents and climbs can be abstracted onto a two-dimensional map. So go back to Point #1 above and remember to embrace the abstraction of the hex!

A quick review for those unfamiliar with the Eclipse Phase system: It’s a percentile system where you need to roll equal to or under your skill level in order to succeed. If you roll a success, your margin of success is equal to the number you rolled on the dice. If you roll a failure, your margin of failure is equal to the number you rolled minus your skill level.

(So if your Fray skill is 45 and you roll 27, your margin of success is 27. If you roll 89, your margin of failure is 89 – 45 = 44.)

Playing Eclipse Phase at Gencon this year, I noticed once again the difficulty some people have grokking this method of “calculating” margin of success. Part of the problem is that it’s discordant with how venerable percentile systems like Call of Cthulhu calculate margin of success (by subtracting the number you rolled from your skill rating). And part of the problem is that Eclipse Phase actually swapped methods between subtracting numbers and reading the die roll between printings. (The post-Catalyst Labs versions of the game should really have been clearly labeled a Revised Edition, frankly.)

But laying all of that aside, the huge advantage of the “read the die” method of calculating margin of success is that it completely eliminates calculation at the table when calculating margin of success: All you have to do is look at the dice. When you can get everyone to grok that (and to report their rolls as “XX out of YY” instead of just “succcess”) it makes the game run with incredible smoothness. (Margins of failure still require calculation, but the system doesn’t use them nearly as often.)

Having concluded that there’s a huge upside to calculating margin of success like this, without further ado I present several different conceptual frameworks that can help you (or someone else) grok the concept:

• Success starts at 00 and grows from there, so the higher you roll the better your success (assuming that you succeed).
• It’s like blackjack: You want to get as close to your target number as possible without going over.
• It’s like The Price is Right: The dice are naming a price and you want that price to be as close to the actual price (i.e., your skill rating) as possible.
  
• Your skill rating is like a gravity well: Successes start far away at 00, but the closer they get to your gravity well the faster they go and the bigger the explosion when you punch that guy in the face.

(For some reason face punching always features heavily whenever I’m teaching a new system to people.)

UNTESTED: MARGIN OF FAILURE

Okay, now that you’ve grokked how Eclipse Phase does margins of succcess, let me strain your credibility by proposing a similar method for handling margin of failure in the system. (This is really just a random thought that occurred to me as I was writing out the above.)

The key point here is that the system (a) rarely cares about margin of failure and (b) when it does, it only cares if you missed by either 30 points or 60 points. (The former are referred to as “severe failures” and in my system cheat sheet I refer to the latter as “horrific failures”, although I don’t believe the rulebook ever gives a formal term for them.)

So the method here is really simple:

• A roll of 70 or less is a severe failure
• A roll of 40 or less is a horrific failure.

The system also has a handful of effects which are determined “per 10 margin of failure”. (For example, shock damage can knock you unconscious for 1 round per 10 MoF.) To calculate that, simply subtract the tens digit of your result from 9. (So if you roll 77, you would be shocked for 9 – 7 = 2 rounds.)

If you’re looking for a conceptual framework, think of failure as emanating from 99 and growing in magnitude. Note, too, that higher is always better with this system: A higher success is a better success; a higher failure is a better failure. What my mind initially tries to interpret as a discontinuity actually makes sense if you just imagine success and failure emanating from opposite ends of the spectrum while the outcome is a linear comparison to your skill rating.

UPDATE: Many moons ago I wrote a lengthy post discussing the 5E Consultant Witch Hunt, using it to discuss wider issues of outrage culture and the witch hunts it engenders.

At the time I described the accusations as being without evidence. That was true… at that time.

Subsequently, however, a great deal of evidence has emerged that the two people at the center of this controversy — RPGPundit and Zak Smith — are, in fact, giant scumbags. The former has repeatedly associated himself with white supremacists and advocated genocide. The latter has accumulated a lengthy track record of gaslighting, impersonating others, and truly horrific abusive behavior both online and offline.

This evidence also now includes a great deal which directly substantiates what was being said in 2014.

I don’t necessarily regret giving them the benefit of the doubt in 2014 when this evidence was not yet available, but, ultimately, mea culpa.

Many of the things I wrote in that original post remain true. But too many of the specifics have aged incredibly poorly. Thus, I’m pulling that post down.

When discussing roleplaying games I’ve tried to eliminate the term “immersion” from my vocabulary: It’s terminology with a horribly fractured etymology and never fails to create confusion whenever it’s used.

The problem has its primary roots in the ’90s: In the tabletop community, the Usenet groups picked the term “immersion” to refer to people deeply immersing themselves in the playing of their character. “Deep immersion” became the state in which roleplaying flowed naturally and you were able to make decisions as your character and portray your character without having to engage in logical analysis.

Almost simultaneously, however, the video game community created the concept of “immersion vs. interactivity”. In this construct, loosely speaking, interactivity refers to the player making decisions and immersion refers to the player becoming drawn into or convinced by the faux reality of the game world. (You’ll notice that, in this construction, the concept of “immersion” is effectively set up as being in a state of antithesis with the tabletop community’s use of the word “immersion”.) This video game concept of “immersion” then “jumped the pond” and got picked up by various tabletop communities.

Then you can take all of that confusion and stir in a healthy dose of people using the word according to its general dictionary definition: “Deep mental involvement.” That meant any time somebody said “no, immersion is about deep mental involvement in X” (whether X was “playing your character” or “the presentation of the game world”), somebody else could respond by saying “no, I experience immersion by having a deep mental involvement with Y”.

My personal use of the term was shaped in those old Usenet discussions. So if you ever do see me using the word “immersion” in the context of tabletop roleplaying, it’s a virtual certainty that I’m talking about immersion in the process of roleplaying a character; the sort of one-to-one flow of thought to action and the empathetic flow of thought that often characterizes our conception of the very best Method actors. But I’ve generally found that when I need to discuss that sort of thing it’s almost always more rewarding to find a way of talking about it which doesn’t use the word “immersion”.

Whatever your personal conception of the word “immersion” is, I recommend you do the same.

Should the Bluff skill be usable on PCs?

Hypothetical situation proposed on another forum: Billy doesn’t trust Sue. Billy’s player argues that, even if Sue succeeded on her Bluff check, Billy still wouldn’t believe her. It doesn’t matter how good a lie is if the person being lied to inherently doesn’t trust the speaker. Counterargument? If you inherently distrust someone, that’s what roll modifiers are for.

This is a common discussion. I had a couple of immediate reactions to this particular scenario that I thought might be of general interest.

Note that there are, in fact, two different issues here.

First: Whether or not social skills should compel PC behavior.

One group will argue that playing an RPG is fundamentally about making choices as if you were your character. Therefore, a mechanic which effectively “plays the game for you” is really problematic, particularly if it fundamentally disrupts a player’s conception of the character they’re playing. (The GM gets to create and control the entire universe; it might be best if the player gets to at least have undisputed control over his one character.)

The flip-side of this argument is that being forced to believe a lie against your will is not fundamentally different than being stabbed through your kidney with three feet of steel against your will. Both remove character agency and there’s really no reason to distinguish between the two.

What decides the issue for me, personally, is that I’ve never encountered a player in the latter group who has their enjoyment of the game negatively affected if compulsory social mechanics aren’t used: They’re OK with them, but they don’t need them. On the other hand, I’ve met lots of players in the first group who have their playing experience totally ruined by the presence of compulsory social mechanics.

So, for me, this is kind of a no-brainer: I’ve got an option that will make a lot of people happier and which will have no negative impact on anyone else. That’s the option I should go with.

Second: How the specific mechanic is being applied.

Is the mechanic sufficiently taking into account the level of distrust that Billy has for Sue? It looks like there are roll modifiers, but are those modifiers large enough to truly represent the amount of distrust he has?

Also, should the outcome of a successful Bluff check be “you believe the lie and you have to act as if you are completely gulled and have no doubts whatsoever” or should the outcome of a successful Bluff check be “she looks like she’s telling the truth / you don’t see anyone reason not to believe what she’s saying”?

This ties back into the question of whether or not the social mechanics should be compulsory or not.

To put this in perspective, imagine that this was a Poker game: Someone makes a Bluff check and succeeds against your Sense Motive check. Should the mechanics force the PC to call his bet (or go all in) without having any choice in the matter? Or should the mechanics simply report back “you think he’s got the better hand” and then let the player make the decision?

In general, I prefer social mechanics to either (a) provide information or (b) have a mechanical impact without compelling action.

If you make a Spot check to see someone hiding in a room, a successful check doesn’t compel you to attack them: The Spot check provides you with information (“there’s a dude hiding in there” or “the room appears to be empty”) and then you make a decision about what to do with that information. Similarly, a Sense Motive check should provide you with information (“you think he’s in love with Sarah” or “you don’t think she’s lying”) and it’s still up to you to make a decision about what to do with that information.

Similarly, a successful Intimidate check might apply a morale penalty to your action, but the ultimate decision of whether you drop your sword and run away screaming is up to you.

What about NPCs?

I’m perfectly OK with social mechanics being compulsory for NPCs. In fact, as a GM, I generally prefer it. The difference is that I don’t think of them as “compulsory” — instead those mechanics are the oracle that I consult to tell me what’s happening in the game world. (It’s very similar to a random encounter check: I don’t know what’s going to happen. Let’s consult the mechanics and find out.)

For similar reasons, I find it perhaps unsurprising that people have a lot less problem with compulsory social mechanics in STGs: They are playing a game of narrative control and the relationship they have to their character is very different than the relationship a player has to their character in an RPG. An oracular consultation of the mechanics to determine what their character is doing is more likely to fit into their mental landscape; it also just becomes one more mechanic for determining narrative control among a plethora of such mechanics.