Gen Con

I've just submitted four Fate Core games for Gen Con:

City of Shadows is a Quirky, dark urban fantasy. The characters range from an animated stuffed teddy bear with pistols and a bad attitude, to a student of drunken sorcery. More information can be found here.

Rescuing Dr. Dinosaur is an Atomic Robo game. Behold the power of crystals! Your pathetic mammalian brains cannot possibly understand the inner workings of Dr. Dinosaur's "Time Vortex." But, when something goes wrong, you may be his (and the worlds) last chance.

A Quiet Extraction is a Mindjammer game. You must infiltrate a paranoid, computer-aged world and extract a mass murderer hiding there, while avoiding attention of both the xenophobic government and the Venu agents operating there.

The Tome of Tjar Viscal is a D&Dish high fantasy adventure for Fate Core. You have been hired by a scribe to enter the ruins of a once great city and find the last known copy of a famous book. I'm tentatively planning on letting players create custom characters by selecting index cards: A race card, an occupation card, and one or more Stunt cards.

I'll post more when/if they get approved.

Neuroshima Hex Review (iPhone Version)

Neuroshima Hex is a great little board game. It's easy to learn. Quick to setup, quick to play. With my group of friends, we could often get 3 to 5 games in a single setting.

Needless to say, as a big iOS geek, I was excited to see Neuroshima Hex come to the iPhone--especially since I haven't had a chance to play the actual board game in over two months.

Overall, it's an excellent game. If you like the board game, you'll like this. And even though there's only an iPhone version, it plays well on the iPad in x2 mode (maybe better than on the iPhone itself). But it's not perfect. I find rotating the pieces is a little too difficult. There's no "undo move" if you make a mistake (though you can exit back to the main menu and then resume the game, and if you haven't completed your turn, it will start your turn over).

My biggest complaint, however, is the AI. Don't get me wrong. I've had a blast playing against it. But I haven't lost a single game yet--even when I play the 4-player mode with all the AIs cranked all the way up. There have been a couple of close battles, but there have also been a lot of blow-away games where I just crush everyone.

Like many iOS versions of board games, this makes an excellent travel edition. It's cheaper than the real-world version, if you just want to give Neuroshima Hex a try. I just hope they bump up the AI in the next release (PS: NS Guys, call me if you want some help with that. I've got some ideas.).

-Rich-

Gaming in Houston

Hey all.

As you may or may not know, I have just moved to Houston, and I am itching to start gaming again. I've checked out some of the local gaming/comic stores (Nan's Games and Comics Too gets high marks for their collection of board and role-playing game. They even had Burning Wheel and Fate books on hand!). And I hope to check out the Rice gaming club, FASTWARP.

However, if anyone knows of any other good resources, please let me know. I haven't had a chance to do much gaming since Kai was born, and he just turned 3. That's something I need to fix.

-Rich-

New Fate 3.0 Games

This has been a very good week for fans of Fate 3.0 RPGs. And I'm a huge Fate fan.

Evil Hat Productions released the PDF versions of the Dresden Files RPG. For those who don't know, this game is based on Jim Butcher's best selling series. If you're at all interested in urban fantasy, you must read these books. Then buy the game.

The RPG comes in two volumes: Your Story and Our World. I've just started reading Volume 1, but I've already run into a reference to a caffeinomancer. Seriously, buy this game.

Next, Cubicle 7 Entertainment has released Legends of Anglerre. This basically brings the Starblazers treatment to fantasy. I haven't picked this one up yet (I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of Dresden to read first), but I definitely plan to.

It's interesting, one of my only complaints about the Fate system was the lack of any magic systems, and now we have two entries with strong magical components.

Life is good.

-Rich-

Location:Waialae Ave,Honolulu,United States

New Discoveries

OK, I'm a little bit late to the game here. All of these systems have been around for several years now, but I recently picked up Spirit of the Century, Reign and FantasyCraft, and I must say, I'm now a big fan of the Fate 3.0, the One Roll system and the MasterCraft system. I've since picked up the Wild Talents Essential Edition, Starblazers, Diaspora and all the character class pdfs from Crafty Games. All excellent products. There are a few one-roll PDFs on my to-buy list (as soon as I finish Starblazers, it's a big book). And I cannot wait for Dresden Files to come out this summer.

It seems a bit odd to me that two of these game systems (One Roll and MasterCraft) are fairly crunchy systems, given my general preference for story-focused games. But they both have an elegant, streamlined mechanic that I appreciate, and the flexibility to make (and to model with in-game rules) a mind-boggling variety of characters. There's a sweet-spot for me where the rules still provide structure to support my character ideas, but also provide enough flexibility to let me make almost anything I want. All three of these games hit that sweet spot exactly.

And I love the toolkit feel of both Wild Talents and FantasyCraft. I am always more interested in tools that help me make the game my own.

And Fate 3.0 (in all its variations) is almost a perfect game in my mind. I was thinking of developing a game that had many of the same beats, and I've largely lost my motivation. Fate 3.0 handles almost everything I wanted, and often handles it in a more-elegant way than I would have.

Anyway, if you haven't checked out these games, please do. They are well worth your time.

-Rich-

D&D 4E Mini Review

I had high hopes about this. I have a lot of nostalgic memories about playing AD&D late into the night (or early into the morning). Some of those stories still stand out, even after all these years. We knew the game so well, it just sort of got out of our way, and let us tell the stories we wanted to tell.

I'd heard some grumblings that made me believe the refresh might be more story-friendly than past editions. So, as soon as it came out, I ran out and bought a set of the core books. I'd hoped to actually play a bit before writing this review, but that's not going to happen any time soon. So, without further delay, here we go.

Starting with the Player's Handbook, I appreciate the way it tries to give every class a unique way to shine. However, I felt most of the actual abilities were quite disappointing, especially for the martial classes. Often, they were only minor variations on a theme. Usually they did some damage, with what appeared to me to be a minor side effect.

The classes themselves are described with an overwhelming bias towards tactical situations, and this is painfully clear in the class abilities. Instead of making broad abilities that could be applied in a wide range of situations, these were narrowly focused, and only really useable in combat.

Want to use a confusion spell to temporarily distract the castle guards? No such luck. The confusion spell doesn't actually confuse someone. It causes damage (making it unusable in non-combat situations), and gives you some control over how the person moves. I guess that sort of models confusion from a highly abstracted perspective, but it really felt flat to me.

That brings up my second major complaint. Maybe it's just me, but I often had trouble figuring out what the ability was supposed to be modeling. Often we are only given a name and the tactical effects with very little description or explanation. It all left me wondering why ability X had effect Y. What was the narrative description of the action? How did it look or feel from the characters perspective? In many cases, I honestly have no idea.

Surprisingly utility abilities are also often only useable in a fight. Sure, they might not do direct damage, but they often had little or no non-combat uses. Some of the movement abilities maybe useable, but that's about it.

Skills are a little better, but they're still overwhelmingly described from a tactical standpoint. Ritual magic stood out as the only real breath of fresh air--but not all characters have access to ritual magic. More importantly, at this point we have very few ritual spells to choose from.

Ok, on to the Dungeon Master's Guide.

I found it somewhat ironic that the DMG started with a discussion of different play styles. They correctly identified that there are many players (like myself) who are more interested in the story and character development than tactical play.

Unfortunately, they gave no useful advice on adapting the game to other play styles. No matter how much lip service it may play to other gaming styles, at the end of the day, it's a heavily tactical game.

For example, D&D 4E has rather formulaic methods for building encounters. They go to great lengths to describe what sort of characters the players should have in their party, what sort of opponents they should be facing, and how to modify the encounter if either of these assumptions are not true. They have rather strict math for determining the strength of an encounter, and for determining the rewards received.

All this is designed to produce interesting, exciting, balanced encounters--and particularly to produce interesting, exciting and balanced combat encounters. That's fine if you're playing a war game or a board game, but for an RPG it feels stifling to me.

In particular, it feels like it would limit my ability to improvise.

I strongly feel that the ability to improvise, and having empowered players are the two pillars for building quality story-focused games. And, it feels like D&D 4E makes both of these hard. GMs are limited by the encounter construction guidelines. Players are limited by restrictively-defined abilities.

Oddly enough, Paul Tevis from "Have Games, Will Travel" said that he felt the D&D 4E skill system would actually encourage improvisation. Normally I highly respect Paul's opinions, and he's played the game while I haven't. So, I'll bow to his experience here. But, I'm sure having trouble seeing it work for me.

And speaking of Mr. Tevis, he had quite a bit more to say about D&D 4E recently, specifically comparing it to Story or Narrativist games. Check out his podcast at Have Games, Will Travel.

I'll give you the cliff notes here. D&D 4E is a great tactical game, but it's not a good tool for building communal stories.

And that's a damned shame.

-Rich-

Combat Stories.

A couple of things have me thinking about combat lately. I've been reading a lot of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. I really admire the way he handles the fight scenes. They're more than just the hacking of limbs and gouts of blood. The battles grow naturally from the plot and support the theme and atmosphere of the story.

Meanwhile, I went ahead and purchased the new 4ed D&D books. I know, I know. I'll write more about them once I make my way through the books, but let me say this up front. They are incredibly tactically focused--more so than 3.0/3.5, if you can believe that's possible. I'm not sure I could run a story-focused game given these rules. It would be incredibly hard to run combat without maps and miniatures on the table.

OK, one more comment. It's interesting how many of the ideas from the indie/story games worlds have made their way into the 4ed books, but they have been badly warped towards this purely tactical paradigm.

Anyway, between these two, I've been thinking a lot about the cross section of combat and stories.

Combat has long been the default source of conflict in role playing games. In part, combat is just too easy. You don't need to spend a lot of time plotting out motivations. You don't need to lay the proper groundwork with clues and foreshadowing. One side simply pulls out knives, and then tries to cut pieces out of the other. Voila, instant conflict.

Combat also emphasizes the tactical/gameist side of role playing games. Building tactically interesting combat encounters is often quite easy, and tactical play can be quite enjoyable.

But, building good story content into a combat scene is incredibly difficult.

I've addressed the basic rules before. Each scene should do at least two things. Don't just have combat for combat's sake. The fight should reveal vital information about the character's opposition. Or it should fulfill a promise made earlier in the game.

Also, players should be less concerned with winning the combat, and focus more on the result of the combat. How will the scene effect the story? What does losing really mean for the characters? What does winning mean?

For example, in "The Scarlet Tower", Conan's army is smashed through betrayal and trickery. He finds himself on foot and injured, his back to a mound of dead horses and men, as his enemies circle around him. He has lost the combat--but that's just the beginning of the story.

Indeed, the tactical difficulty of a fight is often unrelated to the fight's story content. The characters may win or lose easily. But the fight itself doesn't matter, it's the emotional after-effects that drive the story forward.

However, tactically challenging scenes can also build the story.

I think this is an area that is too-often ignored by many story-focused gamers. At least, I'm guilty of this.

A lot of stories rely on action to drive the story forward. Oh, they aren't exclusively about action--but the raw challenge of hero vs. villain definitely shapes the plot.

The rules I listed above still apply. The scene should be about more than just a simple fight. But, few things get my blood pumping more than honest fear for my character's survival. Threats to life and limb have a way of grabbing a player's attention, forcing them to engage with the story.

Indeed, the best combats have the same features of other scenes. The characters must be forced to make hard decisions. Do I press my luck and try to take out the ogre? or do I retreat and drink a healing potion? The wrong choice might doom my friends or myself. They're no less important to the story, just because they're tactical decisions.

It seems to me, there is a place where the tactical elements and the story elements meet. A place where having a good tactical challenge can produce good stories.

This does present problems, however. In general, I want my players to de-emphasize the immediate result of combat, and focus on the combat's effect on the story itself. If they are defeated, they will be knocked unconscious or taken prisoner or saved by the cops or something. Players often know that they will live to fight another day. So, how do I project that, in this particular fight, the immediate results really do matter?

One option is to set the expectations explicitly. A lot of games build this into the mechanics themselves, where players explicitly set the stakes at the beginning of each combat. However, I'm not a big fan of this approach. I feel it somewhat neuters the conflict, by setting limits at the beginning. I prefer systems that allow you to increasingly up the ante as the conflict evolves.

You can sometimes imply the stakes by having the bad guys kill off an important NPC. Or have one of them bad guys pull back to strike a PC who has surrendered or who is incapacitated, and then let the others have a chance to react and interrupt the action. But, it's not always possible to weave these clues into the story in a way that is both obvious to the players without being too heavy handed.

Also, what do you do if a character dies? The story might be able to move forward, with the memory of the fallen friend driving the other characters onwards. However, what do you do if the character is vital to the main plot? Or if a large portion of the party dies?

For action scenes to work, the players must believe the threat is real. Of course, loss does not necessarily mean a loss of life.

If a thug leaves you bleeding in an alleyway, you won't make it home in time to prevent Jimmy-One-Hand from throwing your sister from your third-story window. Here, the emotional result of combat largely mirrors the tactical result. If you can make the players feel real pain in their defeat, both the players and the characters will remain fully engaged in any combat scenes. Seems to me, that's the best of both worlds.

-Rich-

Missing the Clue

I've recently picked up Robin D. Laws's The Esoterrorists. I'll write a complete review after I finish reading the entire game, but I did want to discuss part if it right now.

The Esoterrorists's mechanics are largely based around a single idea--it's hard to run mystery plots in typical RPG games. Typically, the characters must make rolls to discover clues. If they fail their rolls, then they don't uncover the clue, and the plot grinds to a halt.

The Esoterrorists (and other games using the Gumshoe system) solve this problem by guaranteeing that characters can find important clues. Your investigative skills give you a pool of points. You can spend these points to automatically discover clues (and sometimes additional details). This guarantees that the plot will continue to move forward.

Now, that's not a bad mechanic, as far as things go. It looks like a great way to run mystery games. But, I'm not sure I agree with Robin's analysis of mystery games.

True, mystery games are often incredibly frustrating. But, I don't think the dice are to blame.

Sure, it sucks when characters miss an important clue. And maybe it matters, if you're running a simple whodunnit. If the bad guy has already killed all the people he intends to kill, then one missed clue and he might get away. However, that's not the type of mystery I want to run. I prefer mysteries where the characters are peeling away layers of a larger conspiracy. Sure, they may not be able to solve a single murder--but, just wait. There will be more.

If the characters botch a single roll, don't sweat it. Just quickly move time forward to the next incident.

The bigger problem is pacing. The GM is the only one who knows the full story. Ideally, he should dribble out clues at just the right rate. They should come fast enough to keep the player's engaged in the story, without giving away the ending too early. This is incredibly hard to do. And I'm not sure The Esoterrorist's mechanics can really help here.

Here are some suggestions:

1) Give the characters clues that are hard to understand, but that open up possibilities for further research. The classic example would be some sort of occult mark on one of the victims (or bad guys). The characters have no idea what the mark means, no matter how good they roll (at best, it seems somehow familiar, but they can't put their finger on it). The clue remains unsolved, but opens up opportunities for future research or investigation.

The main goal here is to have the players proactively direct the investigation. This helps with pacing, since the players will pursue those things that most interest them. Proactive players help define how quickly the story unfolds. And, once players start acting proactively, they will usually find ways to ferret out all the clues they need.

So give them clues they can follow: A phone number ripped from a phone book, The picture of a famous celebrity, taken from a cell phone camera, An informant turning up dead. The opportunities are endless.

2) Reward the players for being proactive by providing them with additional clues. Always remember, ever scene should move the story forward. In the case of a mystery, each scene should provide one (or preferably more than one) paths that the characters can pursue further.

Also, you don't have to force the characters to roll for every clue. You can reveal clues as part of the description (or clues to clues). Let's say there's a few bloody fingerprints smeared on the window. You could mention that there is blood on the window when you describe the room. Or just mention the "dim light filtering through the smeared window", and wait for the characters to ask about it.

When someone actively investigates the window, you may or may not require a roll to identify the smears as blood (or to notice the fingerprints). Obviously (at least obviously to me) if someone asks, "are there fingerprints on the window?", just say "Yes" and move on.

Don't let yourself get bogged down by the rolls.

3) Be stingy with the clues. RPG players are typically very smart. Don't make it too easy on them. It's better to be too stingy than too generous, especially since you can always spice things up (see hint 4).

4) Don't let the plot slow down. If things start to drag, have something exciting happen. Maybe the conspiracy thinks the players are getting too close, and tries to off them. Maybe they take the next major step in their evil plan. It doesn't matter. Pick something that gets the blood pumping again and keep things moving.

-Rich-

Predestined Consistency

It's often said, if you mention a gun in scene one, someone has to shoot it in scene three. We expect this sort of consistency from most forms of fiction. A good story fulfills the promises made at the beginning.

However, this is often hard to pull this off in RPGs. In old-school games you could sometimes fake it by railroading the characters, but this was rarely satisfactory. In a narrative-heavy game, the GM has even less control over the story, and that can make fulfilling these promises even harder.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Consistency is hard. And, as gamers, we don't have the freedom to go back and edit things. We've got to get them right the first time.

So, instead of just hoping that everything will work out, let's create a framework to set and resolve these expectations.

Let's start with Rich's first law of gaming, every conflict should move the story forward. Generally speaking, the winner of a conflict gains some narrative control over the scene. They could use this to gain some clue, earn an ally, or otherwise throw a wrench into the opposition's plans. If they fail, things generally take a turn for the worst. But, most of the time, these are immediate effects.

But, do they need to be immediate effects? What happens if we let the winner establish an expectation related to the conflict. We record this expectation, perhaps on the character sheet or in the GM's notes, with the explicit promise that it will come to pass sometime in the future.

For example, our hero decides to seduce an opposing femme fatal NPC. If he succeeds, he sets the expectation that she will switch sides at some undeclared point in the future. We don't know when this will occur, but the expectation becomes part of the story. The GM may change her behavior to foreshadow this event. Then, at a dramatically appropriate moment, she betrays the other bad guys. Of course, she may just stab our hero in the back five minutes later, but at least we've fulfilled our initial expectation.

Of course, player's shouldn't get all the fun. For example, the same hero loses a dual against a minor opponent. The gm could set the expectation that one of the characters will kill the other, turning a throw-away villain into a major nemesis.

Or, lets turn this all on its head. I always like the idea of letting losers define the cost of their failure. Maybe the player decides he must kill or be killed by his opponent. Or the femme fatal decides that she's fated to change sides. Having the players self-select these expectation will help them buy into the story.

Long time readers might notice how well this fits into my Evolve or Resolve mechanic.

Remember, these are player expectations, not character expectations. The character may not know anything about them. He may believe the exact opposite, and may struggle against the expected fate. Rather, these are tools for the players. They are the load-carrying beams that connect past and future. They help give the story structure, while also giving the players more control over its shape.

I haven't thought this out completely. And it could probably use some play testing to flush out the details. What sort of expectation can we set? What are the limits? Which are better, specific expectations, or open-ended expectations? Can other players trigger an expectation's fulfillment? Should players be rewarded for playing into these expectations? Under what circumstances can we break these expectations?

I'd be interested in your thoughts here.

-Rich-

Gaming and Children

Since the boy's arrival 6 months ago, I really haven't had much time for gaming with other adults. Instead, I've been trying to corrupt Haruko, my 7-year-old daughter. She loves Flux, and I've recently introduced both her and my wife to Faery's Tale.

If you haven't seen it yet, Faery's Tale was written by Patrick Sweeney, Sandy Antunes, Christina Stiles, and Robin D. Laws. It is specifically designed for children ages 6 or older. You take on the role of a pixie, sprite, brownie or pooka, and head off for adventures in the Brightwood.

My wife is also a newbie gamer, and I thought the comparison between their reactions was interesting.

Both floundered about in the beginning, not really knowing what to do. I call this the "what can I do?" phase, where players are really too timid and afraid of doing something wrong.

My wife soon got into the swing of things, however.

Not surprisingly, Haruko had more trouble. She loved the game, but she was really most comfortable when she could follow her own little script. Every scene was the same. First she'd look for someone to talk to. Then she'd search for clues. It reminded me of the good old days...

GM: You come to a door.
Me: I check for traps...Wait, I listen at the door...OK, I try to pick the lock...

Ah, I can smell the cold pizza and flat soda, as if it where yesterday.

I suspect the open nature of the game is somewhat hard for Haruko. She'd probably love it if the game consisted of nothing but "choose your own adventure" style decisions, combined with a heavy helping of railroading to keep the plot moving. Which was hard for me, I'm all about character empowerment.

Still, I'm glad she had a good time. I'll try to make the next adventure a little more structured, and we'll see how that goes.

Has anyone else tried gaming with small children? I'd love to hear about your experiences.

-Rich-

A Matter of Trust

All RPGs have one thing in common. To succeed, the players must trust the game master, the other players and the game system itself.

Trust is a complex, multi-faceted issue, but there are a few aspects that seem easy to identify. We expect the system will be well defined, commonly understood and fair. We expect the GM will take us somewhere interesting. And we expect the other players will positively contribute to the story.

The interesting thing is, in some ways, one type of trust can replace the others.

Players who don't trust the other participants will often want a system they can depend on. In many ways, explicit social contracts are just a method for building trusted systems.

Alternatively, if you just mistrust the GM, you may try to distribute much of his power to the other player, or eliminate the GM entirely. If you mistrust the other players, you may want a strong GM to keep them in line. Finally, if you don't trust the system, you may de-emphasize it, relying on the GM and other players to just "wing it."

Note: none of these compensations are inherently bad. But, they all have a degenerate form.

Trusting the system may lead to rules lawyering as each participant tries to use the system to defend their concept of their character, their story and even the flow of the game itself.

Social contracts, by definition, limit the type of stories that you can tell. If you sufficiently trust the other participants, they may be able to escort you outside your comfort zone. This can lead you to more powerful, more interesting stories than your explicit social contract would allow.

GM-less games tend to emphasize emergent stories. Unfortunately, it can be hard to maintain the story's structure or any real consistency. There's no guarantee that the gun I placed on the mantle piece in act 1 will actually be shot in act 3. Most likely, it will be forgotten, leading to an inconsistent and somewhat scattered story.

On the other hand, relying on a strong GM forces the GM into a dictatorial role. By definition, this limits the type of choices and the amount of influence you have as a player.

Finally, "winging it" makes it more likely that the participants will have inconsistent or incompatible views of the system. Even with a single, well-defined, hard-and-fast set of rules, each player will have his or her own interpretations. Add another layer of fuzziness, and the players' mental concepts begin to drift.

Clearly, this is not a clean or concise science. And, to make things worse, every gamer has a unique set of trust issues, with varying levels of tolerance.

By default, most players seem to trust the system over the other participants. In many ways, this is the most pragmatic choice. You can alway buy a good system--finding good players can be much harder task. By emphasizing the system over the other participants, you can play with the widest range of other gamers. Unfortunately, your games will become severely limited to those things that the system handles well. Typically, this means tactically heavy combat.

For myself, I want to play with a GM that I can trust. I need a GM to manage the structure and consistency, and to make me feel like the story is going somewhere interesting. This represents my own mistrust in emergent stories.

Not surprisingly, I have a lower bar for the other players, but I still demand a high level of trust there. The system is the least important to me. I want it to be fast and transparent--but I don't really need to trust it. Not if I trust the other participants.

Obviously, many sets of trust issues are incompatible. I should not play games with people who mistrust their fellow gamers. That's just going to end badly.

Additionally, I think we can get a feel for a game designer's personal trust issues by examining the type of games they build. A lot of indie game designs are reactionary, at least in part. This is particularly true for designers who grew up on mainstream games. We all carry the scars of bad experiences, and we design our games around them.

Personally, I want games that heavily focus on story. This means the rules I design tend to be a bit fuzzy--They need to be fast and they need to be flexible. I trust the GM and Players to keep things fair and consistent. I always want a role for the GM, but will strongly empower the players. I feel the best stories can be found in the chaotic borderland between purely emergent stories and heavily plotted ones. The GM still monitors and maintains the structure, but the players make real decisions that have real consequences. The story's not allowed to drift randomly, nor is it railroaded to a particular destination. The player's trust that it is going somewhere, but they also help define the final destination.

Now, not everything in that statement can be boiled down to an issue of trust--but I'm sure some of my own, personal trust issues definitely shine through.

-Rich-

My Dirty Little Secret

I hate to admit it, but I have become somewhat obsessed with with the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition.

This strikes me as odd, since my tastes have continually moved towards story focused, independent games.

One obvious explanation has been my inability to find (or convert) other players. If I break out a copy of Sorcerer, everyone stares at me as if I'd sprouted a third arm. However, I can always find players for D&D (or anything by White Wolf, for that matter).

And, from the murmurs I've been hearing, DnD4E includes a number of narrative/indie-ish ideas. Oh, it will undoubtedly be more tactical than I really care for. But, we both talk about creating specific roles for all the characters in the game. Of course, I'm talking about narrative roles, and I suspect they're talking about tactical roles. But, if you are playing stories with a significant action/adventure flavor, then these two ideas become intertwined.

DnD4E promises to be faster--which is a good thing.

DnD4E claims to require less GM prep work. I wrote an entire essay on the evil of prep work. This must also be a good thing.

DnD4E supposedly focuses on opportunities rather than restrictions, that is a very good thing.

DnD4E says it is focused on fun. Fun's good. I like fun.

Mostly, though, it turns out that one of my long lost friends is one of the DnD4E developers. I spotted him while obsessively watching YouTube videos from the Dungeons & Dragon's Experience. I probably haven't talked with him in 5 years, but the video prompted me to drop him a line. So, even if DnD4E completely disappoints me in every other possible way, at least it has done some good in my life.

I really want DnD4E to be a good platform for compromise games. They might not be exactly what I want, but maybe they'll be good enough. And maybe, just maybe I can corrupt a few more players over to the dark side.

But, I'm worried that I will be disappointed, and I think the tension between hope and fear is just feeding my rapidly growing obsession.

-Rich-

My Take on Tactics

While discussing tactics, thanuir mentioned Wushu. I have since taken a look at the free version of the rules. I then purchased the Pulp-Fu rules, and I'll probably pick up the rest of the PDFs soon.

The game has an interesting take on conflict. I wholeheartedly support the way it encourages players to participate in the narration. I also love the way better narration and more-dramatic actions generate bigger bonuses. However, I was a little concerned with the way the game decouples descriptions from results.

Basically, when you describe your character's actions, you're not announcing what you would like to happen--you are actually narrating the story at that point. The die rolls then determine how influential the action is on the eventual resolution.

For example, I could narrate that I draw my revolver and plants three bullets into the big bad's chest. However, if I roll crappy, the oozing chest wounds still exist, but they don't slow him down.

Yes, this example is a little contrived. The GM (or any of the players) could, and probably would, veto my description unless there was a good chance that the fight was about to end. Still, the same problem occurs on a smaller scale.

However, after sleeping on the rules (No, not literally. That would be uncomfortable.), I don't think this is a major problem. The Veto rule should prevent the worst problems. More importantly, fiction pulls this stunt all the time. Our protagonist gets kicked bloody. His arm's broken, ribs are cracked, and there's a jagged piece of metal jutting from his leg. But, he still manages to claw his way back to his feet, raise a shaking pistol and plant the fight-ending bullet in the bad guy's forehead.

The only catch is, the players (and the GM) must play off of each others descriptions. If you do that, I think everything will work out fine.

Anyway, while researching Wushu, I found several references to it as a tactic-less game system.

That just doesn't sound right to me. Yes, it lacks many of the trappings of tactics. Resource management is minimal. You don't need to master a number of arcane rules. You don't need to worry about picking just the right skills and abilities when building your character (OK, that's more strategic, but it's related). But, from my perspective, it's still tactical.

When playing, you are still concerned with winning each and every conflict. There is an unwritten assumption that the players will win the majority of the conflicts, and the story is driven forward by their successes.

See, my idea of tactic-less play includes de-emphasizing the tactical trappings, but it also includes a mental shift. Ultimately, the players should not worry about whether they win or lose a conflict--either result should move the story forward. Indeed, loosing a conflict may move the story better than winning.

Of course, we always want our characters to win, but the success or failure of the story should not depend on victory. This obsession with victory is, for me, the key characteristic of tactical play. I could be playing with miniatures, rulers and six-page character sheets, but as long as I can lose the fight and still move the story forward, it's not tactical play.

The story is driven forward, not by characters successes moving them closer towards their goal, but by the decisions they make during times of trouble. Conflicts build and evolve over time, and the story ends when they find a resolution to a major external or internal conflict.

Of course, this brings up a paradox. For the story to succeed, we need the players to become engaged in the story. Tactic-less play runs the risk that the players won't care about the actions, since (to some degree) the results don't matter.

Of course, there's more than one way to engage someone. The characters could become engaged by the competitive win-or-die nature of most tactical play. Or they could become engaged with the characters, or with the plot. Personally, I'd prefer the latter options.

Let's look at a concrete example. I was playing an slender, acrobatic character in a high fantasy game. We were attacked by a group of ogres. After repelling the raid, one of the ogres was escaping back into the woods. I decided to jump on his back from behind, in the hopes of stopping him.

In my mind, I knew the action was tactically bad--the ogre would swat me like a fly--but it fit my character. I was young and inexperience. I had an idealistic view of heroics and a gross overestimation of my own abilities. As a player, I also hoped the action would open up possibilities for the GM. The Ogre would probably injure me or embarrass me. It might leave me with a scar as a reminder. The experience might dull my heroic dreams. It might make me question my own abilities. Alternatively, if we ran into the Ogre again, I would have a more personal stake in the next conflict.

Unfortunately, the GM only saw the action as a tactical mistake, and could only see one resolution for the conflict--my character's death. We stood on two very different sides of the tactical divide.

Anyway, I hope that makes my thoughts clearer. As always, I'd love to hear what you have to say. Please leave a comment or two.

-Rich-

Update on my life

Sorry to disappear for so long. I've been busily working on another magazine article. The good news is, the editor really liked it. The bad news (at least as far as this blog is concerned) is that I will be working on two more articles for him. So, don't expect many posts over the next few months.

In other news, I recently submitted a short story to the Writers Of The Future contest. I just learned that my story recoeved an honorable mention. As I understand it, that puts me in the top 5-10%. So, It's been a good week on the writing front.

As far as this blog is concerned, I have been thinking about a new post on tactical play. Based on some of the comments from last time, I think I have a different definition of tactical play than some of you. But, I'll save that for next tim

-Rich-

Defending Gamist and Simulationist play.

Ok, you should all know by now that I strongly favor story-heavy games.

Quite often the narrativist/story focused front of the RPG Theory movement takes a somewhat negative view of Gamist and Simulationist play (please excuse me if I use GNS terminology for just a moment here). Oh, sure. We give lip service to equality. "There's nothing wrong with...deep, rich hobby...different styles for different tastes...blah, blah, blah." But let's face facts. We despise anything other than our precious story.

Some of the new breed of indie games have gone to great lengths to strip their games down to their narrative core. They've strived to get rid of nearly all traces of tactical play or what is typically called "realism" in the rules.

But are Gamist and Simulationist play really that bad? Yes, we want our game designs to be consistent. Yes, we want our games to focus on our desired creative agenda. But I think that some degree of tactical play and some nod towards realism (or at least perceived realism) is important. When handled correctly, they can actually improve the story content of a game.

Let's look at tactical play first. It is an unfortunate fact about (most) games, we have multiple players but play largely progresses serially. Each person takes a turn adding something to the story. That means, for a large portion of the game, I'm stuck waiting for my turn. That's a lot of downtime.

Sure, I can listen to the story being created by my fellow players. But, let's face it. I'm far to narcissistic for that. If I'm not in the spotlight, I'm either bored or I'm rapidly becoming bored.

During a tactical game, players have more things to do during the downtime. They can analyze the situation, plan out their next move, look up rules, worry about their rapidly falling hit points. Whatever. Tactical play has the ability to engage the players. It tricks the players into investing in the story. And a story cannot succeed unless the players are both engaged and invested in it's outcome.

Problems (as I define them) only arise when tactical play begins to dominate the game. Unfortunately, each of us probably have a different threshold level for tactical domination. That's one of the things that makes RPGs so difficult.

Ok now onto simulation. Let me step back a second here. Stories require the willing suspension of disbelief. We know the story's not real, but we're willing to accept it as temporarily real. Again, this lets us become emotionally involved with the story.

Unfortunately, if something destroys our ability to suspend disbelief, we often fall out of the story.

Take the movie 300. They went to great lengths to point out how the Spartans fought in Phalanxes. How their real strength came from their ability to fight as a unit. But, as soon as the fight scenes began, they all broke ranks and began Jet Leeishly jumping and swooping about. Visually stunning, yes. but it dropped me right out of the story, and I had real trouble enjoying the rest of the movie. If they had just removed that one bit of dialog, my entire reaction to the movie would have changed.

Of course, realism in games is a tricky subject. Common wisdom often conflates realism with complex rules. However, it can be argued that these complex rules don't do any better at modeling the real world. Indeed, they may be much worse.

In the end, it doesn't really matter whether the game accurately models the real world. What matters is that the game feel real to the players. That means the world and the cultures displayed, the NPCs and PCs all feel like real people and real places. This also means that the game's physics (largely defined by the game mechanics) feel real to the players.

Again, you can take this too far. The realism should serve and support the story. It's too easy to get wrapped up in recreating life during the Roman Republic, that we lose all sight of the story. Or at least, it starts to suffer under the burden of realism.

That's it. As always, please leave a comment or two. I would love to see your ideas on the subject.

-Rich-

Well, That's One Theory...

Theory is a somewhat overloaded word. Different people have very different ideas on what "theory" means.

For myself, I have a strong scientific and engineering background. I tend to take the scientists view of the word. The following, from Wikipedia sums it up nicely:


"In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations, and is predictive, logical, and testable. As such, scientific theories are essentially the equivalent of what everyday speech refers to as facts."


When most people use the word, it has a much weaker connotation. Again from Wikipedia:


"In common usage, the word theory is often used to signify a conjecture, an opinion, or a speculation. In this usage, a theory is not necessarily based on facts; in other words, it is not required to be consistent with true descriptions of reality. This usage of theory leads to the common incorrect statement "It's not a fact, it's only a theory.""


Most RPG theories seem to be a mutated offshoot of literary theory. Now, I don't have a literary background, so I'm not really sure what people mean when they use the word "theory" in that context, but I'm willing to bet hard money that it has more in common with conjecture, opinion and speculation than with prediction or testability.

When we speculate about RPG theory, we're not developing testable hypothesis. And we're certainly not running experiments to validate these hypothesis. Instead, we resemble the ancient natural philosophers. We sit around and think really hard about our topic. We analyze it. We form analogies. We create an explanation, then try to argue for our explanations using logic and persuasion alone.

There's no sign of the scientific method--no effort to rigorously test these ideas. Nor should there be. None of us have the funding to even start down that road.

But we need to be cautious about how we treat RPG theories. Arguing based on logic alone has a very bad track record. Logic and analogy tend to lead you astray. Just look at psychology. Early attempts at explaining the mind relied heavily on self-analysis and logical extrapolation. Unfortunately, rigorous modern testing has shown that most of our assumptions about our minds are just plain wrong.

When we observe our own thoughts, we think our brain works one way. However, experiments have shown that the truth is very different.

When it comes to our gaming, what actually occurs at the table may be very different from what we think we observe. Indeed, different payers may have very different observations.

I don't mean to discount all of RPG theory. But, I do think our theories need to be taken with a rather large grain of salt. For example, many theories feel like they are reactions to bad experiences. It's almost like each different theory is simply an attack on a different pet peeve. Ok, that exaggerates somewhat, but I'm a bit concerned that RPG Theories are a bit too negative and reactionary, rather than being constructive and supportive.

Besides, based on the past record of similar "theoretical" thought, we can safely assume all our hypothesis are wrong. Or at least badly flawed.

But, does that mean they are worthless? No! Not if you take the pragmatic approach.

Instead of worrying about the absolute accuracy of a theory, we should focus on the theory's utility. If a theory improves your game, then it is useful and it is worth exploring. However, if the utility you gain from the theory is less than the effort you put into it--then it's a bad deal. Just walk away.

A theory's utility does not come from it's ability to explain gaming dynamics. It comes from the tools that the theory gives us.

Take GNS Theory. While it's easy to criticize, GNS provides a useful vocabulary and framework for talking about games. It suggests that different players might have different goals, and we would probably enjoy our games more if all the players at the table had the same goal.

Is GNS an accurate description of what really happens at the table? My answer: "Who cares?" It is a useful tool for talking about games.

Similarly, I hope that anyone reading this blog comes away with a strong mental picture of the types of games I like to run. Hopefully my essays also offer some tools that help support that particular style of game.

In the end, I'm more interested in tools than explanations.

The Greatest Hits

I've been hit by a small barrage of freelance writing projects, and the for-money work has to come before my mad rants here. But, the site's been getting a lot more traffic lately, and I didn't want to just leave you guys waiting.

A lot of people haven't seen my earlier posts--and some of them are very good. So I decided to put together a quick Greatest Hits episode. These are, I think, the most important essays on the site, and they form the core around which I wrap many of my other ideas. I hope you find something that you like.

• Story is Structure


• Scenes


• Gaming Vs. Writing


• Magic Systems


• Conflict: Evolve or Resolve


• Character Integrity


• Decisions that Matter

P.S. If I missed a post that you particularly liked, please mention it in the comments.

Preparation Hell

I admit it. I prefer rules-light systems, and apparently I'm not alone. Most narrative games seem to lean towards simpler, more streamlined rules.

There are several obvious explanations for this. Pragmatically, small development teams have an easier time writing, editing and testing simple rules, and narrative games are almost exclusively small shop productions.

More significantly, complex rules tend to reward players who can master the system. The players, in an almost pavlovian reaction, will rise to this challenge and manipulate the rules to their advantage. This creates a feedback loop that inevitably drives the game towards tactical play. Unfortunately, this also tends to distract from the story.

The concept is simple: if you're designing a story-focused game, the game should reward story focused play. Most game designers recognize this, at least subconsciously, and they tend to shy away from rules-heavy mechanics.

But I think there is an even more important reason to avoid complex rules. Complex rules typically place a heavy burden on the GM. The more complex the rules, the more preparation you must do. Before the characters can challenge the Ogre Chieftain to a game of Brokk'Tak, you need to gen up the ogre's stats. If you want to have a mad chase across rooftops, then you need to look up the rules for moving across difficult terrain, balancing, jumping and falling (and probably other things as well). You probably want to take notes.

This creates three problems. First, if the GM invest time in creating a scene, he is more likely to force the scene down the players' throats--railroading them if necessary. Second, as a GM you never remember to pre-generate everything you need. Even if the scene goes exactly as planned, sooner or later you will find yourself digging through a rule book (or just making shit up). Finally, if the characters go off-script, the GM often has real trouble improvising.

Again, the GM should not create the story. He does not write the plot, then merely let the players experience it as they go along. No, the plot should evolve naturally at the table. It should be a collaborative effort between the players and the GM. For this to work, the system must not merely let the GM improvise, but actively encourage improvisation.

As a GM, I want to introduce NPCs at a drop of the hat. If the characters attack my social-skill-statted courtier, I need to keep the scene rolling without batting an eye. I need a system that lets me come up with reasonable difficulty numbers and modifiers without resorting to charts, tables or high school math.

Sure, some rules-heavy games try to help out. Many provide character templates, allowing the GM to more-easily improvise--provided he stays within the scope of those templates. Others use simplified NPCs.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer et. al. take abstract NPCs to the extreme. Almost all the crunchy rules are kept firmly on the player's side. The GM never even touches the dice. When a player tries to stake a vamp, the player rolls against the vamp's defense number. Likewise, when the vamp tries to bite a piece out of someone, the player makes a defense roll against the vamp's attack score. All things considered, this is a pragmatic compromise. After all, the players have less to worry about, giving them more time and energy to focus on rules. Indeed, managing the rules may help fill some of the downtime while others are in the spotlight.

But what should a Story-hungry GM do when he's stuck in a rules-heavy game?

As I've mentioned before, I want to like White Wolf's games. I have many fond memories of old WOD. Whenever I pick up one of the new books, I'm pleasantly surprised. The back stories are intriguing, and the systems seem to encourage interesting characters. Most importantly (to me), I can always find players for a White Wolf game. Sadly, it's often hard to convince people to try indie games.

So, I want to like White Wolf, but--damn--those games have a lot of rules!

Want to know a secret? Mostly, I just fake it. My NPCs succeed or fail based more on the dramatic necessity of the scene, than on the actual rolls. I don't like it, but it's true. Shhhh. Don't tell my players! I do it for the story, but I always feel guilty. I know I'm breaking a social contract with my players. After all, they expect the world's physics to operate as advertised.

But, really, what choice do I have?

Task vs. Conflict Resolution Revisited

OK, I just had one of those inspirational shower moments. Hmm, "inspirational" might not be the right word. It's not like a 5-point plan to bring peace and twinkies to all the children of the world suddenly jumped into my head. Rather, I uncovered a problem with one of my long cherished beliefs. Or, at least a potential problem. No, not inspirational at all--more de-inspirational. Distressing, but still instructive.

In previous posts I've argued for favoring conflict resolution over task resolutions (Resolve or Evolve and Character Integrity). Now, as a theory that sounds simple enough. Don't focus on the individual actions--focus on the conflicts themselves. This helps prevent the game from becoming bogged-down by rules, it favors story-focused gaming over tactical gaming, and it gives us more freedom to describe how our characters fail (and how they face their failures).

However, all's not well in paradise.

When I'm actually gaming, I find myself frequently calling for knowledge/perception rolls. These rolls determine how much a character knows about left-handed target pistols, or whether he spots the sniper on the K-Mart's roof.

As I stated previously (Eyes and Ears) one of the GM's most influential rolls is acting as a filter for the character's perceptions. Ideally, each character's view of the world should be hand-tuned to that character. A cage-match, bare fist fighter will undoubtedly see the world differently than the graduate chair of art history at a small, New England liberal arts college. Using knowledge/perception rolls provide a simple mechanic for automatically filtering the character's perceptions.

However, these rolls are profoundly task based.

So, what's a poor GM to do? I'm not sure, but here are a few, largely inconsistent, thoughts:

1) Ignore It

So, it's a little inconsistent. Does it matter? Perfect is the enemy of the good. My desire for a perfectly consistent system may set me upon a quixotic quest, began with the best of intentions, but ultimately doomed.

In play, I take a purely pragmatic approach here. Knowledge/perception rolls work within the context of my games, so I use them. And, really, is that so wrong?

2) Stop Using Knowledge/Perception Rolls

On the other hand, the mere thought of inconsistent rules may keep you from sleeping at night. And it raises the obvious question, are these rolls necessary?

The simple answer is, "no." There are many gaming styles that do not use these rolls (or do not use any rolls as all). The GM can simply determine what the character sees, and what the character knows.

Of course, this puts you at the whim of the GM. But, that's the same paper tiger always raised by opponents of diceless mechanics. You have to ask yourself, why do these rules exist? Are they there to accurately simulate a situation? Are they there to protect the players from the GM? Or the GM from the players?

If your primary goal is the creation of good stories, then you don't need to worry about accuracy (or the illusion of accuracy). And if you trust the other players at the table, you shouldn't need the armor of rules. We already trust the GM with maintaining consistency across large swaths of the game. Why should perception and character knowledge be any different?

3) Justify The Task Rolls

The knowledge/perception roll example really brings up a bigger, stickier issue. Namely, there are a lot of good reasons to use Task resolutions. Tasks are immediate. It's often much easier to deal with the tasks as they occur, then to manhandle the situation into a one-bite chunk.

And, really, conflicts are fractal. You can take a conflict and break it into ever smaller and smaller chunks. Within each chunk, you'll find new layers of conflict. Why do we call conflict at one level "a task" and say it's bad, but call it "conflict" at another level and say that it's good.

Obviously we're looking at the wrong thing. Task vs. conflict really isn't important. What's important is how we handle success and failure.

Having the ability to decompose different conflicts into different levels of detail is actually a very good thing. If the conflict is minor or unimportant, you can handle it at a high level of abstraction. If it's the climax of the entire campaign, then you can break it down into a step-by-step epic struggle.

The problem with traditional games is not that they focus on the tasks, but that they trap you at a single level of conflict decomposition. Regardless of the conflict's importance, the method for resolving the actions are always the same.

The second problem is one of GM laziness. The GM assumes that, if the character fails his roll, then it was obviously the character's fault. As I described elsewhere, if not handled properly, this can erode the character's concept. Every time my master thief fails to pick a lock, he becomes a bit more ridiculous in the eyes of everyone at the table.

There are many reasons why an action might fail. Most of them are not the character's fault. The lock's mechanism could be rusted solid. Guards might show up and interrupt my attempt. The door might be barred from the other side--so, even if I do pick the lock, I cannot open the door. No-fault failures can occur whether we resolve things at the action level, or at a higher level of abstraction.

One of the reasons I like the Resolve or Evolve mechanic is that it lets me initially resolve the larger conflict using the knowledge/perception roll. If the character fails that roll, he can take a disadvantage (for example, having an NPC killed by the sniper's first shot), and allow the conflict to evolve.

So, don't worry too much about it. Knowledge/perception rolls (indeed all task rolls) are just handling conflict at a lower level of abstraction. And, when done properly, that's a very good thing.

One More Thing To Worry About

If we're going to assume a winner-gets-to-narrate mechanic (e.g. Evolve or Resolve), then there's one last, little sticking point.

The GM's roles include managing the mysteries and maintaining consistency. Yet, if I succeed on a knowledge/perception roll, I get to narrate the results. These seem to be pulling in opposite directions. How can I narrate the result of searching a crime scene, yet still allow the GM to maintain consistency?

The easiest solution is, just pass the buck back to the GM. Just because you narrate the result doesn't mean you need to specify all the details. Just describe what you find at a high level, and let the GM provide the details. "I find an important clue" or "He tells me everything he knows" or "my roommate in college owned several left-handed target pistols" works just fine.

However, there is a more exciting option. Just narrate the details as you would any conflict. The GM can use their regular toolbox (e.g. evolving the conflict, the power of the period and outright vetos) to manage the results. Again, why are these actions different from any others.

Of course, narrating these results can give the players a lot of control over the story--and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Donjon takes this to it's logical extreme. The players can create encounters by succeeding on a perception roll. "I see a troll lumbering towards us down the hallway". Poof. There's a troll.

Similarly, players can use knowledge rolls to create weaknesses. "Ah, I remember from Monster Hunting 101, trolls are terrified by hamsters, gerbils and other small rodents."

And the rolls can be used to eliminate obstacles as well. "There are no guards at the south gate." Poof. Now you can enter unopposed.

This can be a great tool for giving the players more control over the story. Of course, all players need to be on the same page. If one player is trying to play a wacky comedy, and everyone else is trying to play a serious drama--well, the results will not be pleasant. As always, with great power comes great responsibility.

Defending One-Trick Ponies.

Ok, I'm a little late to the game, but I just saw Chris Chinn's post on specialization in point-buy systems.

Let me start by saying that there are a number of things at least potentially wrong with point-buy systems. First, I have trouble with the whole concept of building balanced characters. Characters can never truly be balanced. Different players have different meta-goals within the game. Some want to succeed in combat. Others want to be the center of attention. While you can affect some aspect of these goals through the choices you make during character creation. Other aspects will always emerge from how you play the character, or how you interact with the other players. A "strong" role-player with a "weak" character can often "dominate" the table. This is true for nearly any definition of "strong", "weak" and "dominate."

This leads me to my second, more critical complaint. Point-buy systems force players to master the system in order to build their desired characters. Lets say I want to build a master swordsman. If I'm playing a point-buy game, then I (as the player) must have a strong sense of how to tactically manipulate the system to build an effective sword combatant. If I do a poor job, then the character's in-play abilities will vary significantly from my original intent.

For me, that's a design flaw. I shouldn't have to master the system to build my character--my character should be a master swordsman because everyone at the table buys into the idea. We agree that he is a master swordsman, and as a result, he can do master swordsmanly things.

Of course, none of this really addresses Chris's post. He argued that specialization reduces the opportunities for conflict. Basically, within their realm of specialization, the character dominates. Outside that, they are dominated. Since the conflicts are a foregone conclusion, they are not interesting.

While this seems straightforward enough, something about it bothers me. Sure, overspecialization could be a problem--but I think specialization is an effective way to ensure that each player has a role within the story. Having unique roles is, to me, much more important than trying to balance power levels.

I think there's an assumed definition of conflict here, that is much too narrow for my tastes. I feel that Chris's argument applies to what I call "Mechanics Based Conflicts". Here, success or failure is determined by the roll of the dice. Character decisions are largely tactical. The conflict is considered interesting when it requires several rounds of decision making and die rolling before anyone becomes the clear victor. There is also a strong, underlying assumption that success is always good and failure is always bad. Combat is the most common (and most overused) example of mechanics based conflicts.

Personally, I feel that mechanics based conflicts are incredibly weak. They focus on game play, not story.

Instead, I would like to focus on internal conflicts within the characters. A small innocent child has been possessed by a demon. Do I kill the child, thus removing the threat. Or do I let the child live--struggling to prevent the demon from harming others while I search for a way to banish it. Here, the conflict is the decision that the character must make. Say that I choose to kill the child, the actual combat is unimportant. I should succeed easily--I probably don't need to make a single roll. But, the results of my actions are important. How will I deal with the guilt? How will the child's parents react? How will the townspeople? Once I make a decision to act, the world is profoundly changed, and I must live with the results.

Also, failure should not necessarily be a bad thing. Let's say I make a character who sucks at combat. I get into a fight with the bad guys, and draw my sword. Again, the actual combat doesn't matter. They disarm me and beat me bloody. Big deal. Then they drag me off to their camp, where I'm tied to a tree. Sure, it looks grim, but now things get interesting. I have a chance to uncover clues about their plans, and I must use my silver tongue to try and worm my way out of this mess. In many cases, a good failure can create more interesting stories than a simple success. Had I fought off the attackers, the conflict would have ended. Now, it has grown deeper and more intriguing.

Once the conflict is bigger than simple actions, then the actions themselves loose their significance. We no longer need to balance PCs and NPCs at the action level. We can often get rid of multi-round, multi-roll resolution systems. We're not focused on the action's result, we're focused on the changes those results make in the world. And, from this vantage point, Chris's problems largely vanish.

One last example, look at the Princess Bride. No singe opponent ever comes close to matching Westley with a blade. Yet, he is forced to surrender when outnumbered by Humperdinck's guards. While in the pit of despair, he is completely at the bad guy's mercy, and he is reduced to using trickery and deceit when recovering from a bad case of the mostly-deads.

Looking at it with an action-focused view, he either dominates or is dominated at every step. Yet, the resulting story is quite satisfying. The movie created numerous, interesting conflicts for Westley, without ever feeling the need to pit him against an opposing sword master of equal skill. We should strive for the same in our stories.

-Rich-