October 26, 2011 · 12:23 pm

Survival Games Clarification

Right from the first Survival themed post here on the blog, I’ve struggled with something and it’s come into focus as I’ve tried to find other survival situations to give stats to. I’ve wanted to do a river passage stat block. I kept trying to come up with ways to include situations where survival is less of an issue. For example, you can walk along a river or you can ride a raft or a canoe or a speed boat. All of them are possible but at what point is it no longer survival and becomes travel?

For instance, what about the first set of stats I made up for a hot desert. What if the characters are crossing that desert in a car? How does the GM deal with that? If the dessert is large enough the characters could still be in a survival situation if they’re lost without adequate supplies. Now what if they’re on a horse or camel?

These travel issues change the scope of a survival situation. In many cases they nearly eliminate the danger of a hostile environment. When looking into the effect of riding a horse or a camel, I found that they travel about as fast as a human does over long distances. They primarily relive the traveler of exertion, which can have a significant impact on survivability. It’s only when man is unaided by motorized transport that a situation remains a survival situation.

When the Car Breaks Down

So what that means, in a modern setting as long as the characters have a vehicle, they are traveling. When the vehicle breaks down and they are in a hostile environment, they’re surviving.

I know that may seem obvious but I was imagining that survival was a sliding scale, which it is but the scale jumps when a motor vehicle is involved to a point where survival is such a small issue that it’s difficult to simulate. If it were a number from ten to zero on the survival scale, it’s a .4 and may as well be a zero.

So if the characters are accustomed to taking a car, if you want to introduce a survival situation, you have to make them get rid of the car. Maybe the car can’t go where they need it to go, maybe it’s an old clunker and dies on them. However you do it, if you want survival and not just travel, get rid of the motor vehicles.

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October 25, 2011 · 4:47 pm

Gender In Roleplay

I’ve wrote about this before and I was thinking about it again after watching the difference between the difference of how boys and girls play.

There is a little game that I see kids play, the particulars of it are not important but I have had to stop the game when boys are involved. Girls never have a problem playing. The reason the boys have to be stopped is because they push the game too far and they could hurt themselves. Girls don’t have that problem and as I saw the game being played I realized that they were in it for the experience, the feeling the game gives them. The boys want to push the boundaries of the game to see who can be the best.

I don’t know if this is a learned behavior or if it’s something intrinsic to the difference between genders. I am fairly certain you can train a boy or a girl to play in a way that I would naturally see the opposite gender playing. Especially when you tell the boys they can’t play because they’re going to hurt themselves. They quickly settle for playing the girl’s way.

Why do kids fall into this behavior? That’s a bigger subject than I can answer but it plays into something I’ve wrote about before. Girls traditionally haven’t played roleplaying games in the same numbers as boys. This has changed as the hobby has matured and the same can be said for video games. That leaves me to wonder if it’s that the boys are learning how to play in a way that doesn’t annoy the girls. As roleplay has moved away from number crunching and strategy where you can prove who’s the “best” and toward narrative and story, there have been more women getting into the hobby.

Is that a causal relationship or simply a coincidence? It would seem like there is something there to the connection because when girls have gamed with us (okay that’s 95% of the time) they’re not interested in being the “best” mechanically. They seem more interested in the story.

Even after years of playing the ladies that game with us have a basic understanding of the mechanics of the game, where the guys are picking up mechanical tricks to improve their character’s effectiveness. The girls are there for the experience and see how far the feeling it gives them can go. The boys immediately want to see how far the experience can be pushed mechanically.

Over time, guys will start to reach back and start testing out all the nuance that they rushed past before. Is it at this point that the ladies decide that the guys are worth hanging around?

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October 24, 2011 · 9:20 pm

Points of Disinterest: Episode 9

One of the things I predicted for The Artifact was a different kind of battery technology. A polymer battery that acted like a capacitor and a battery at the same time. I was just making things up at the time.

A battery or more accurately a dry cell, converts chemical energy into electrical energy and the reverse when recharged. A battery’s voltage is determined by its chemistry and how many cells are in it. How much total power the battery holds depends on its chemistry and how much of its chemical storage it has (bigger battery=more juice).

A capacitor is made of two plates that build up opposite charges. A capacitor can be given different voltages, some can store thousands of volts of charge. Normally at a certain point the charge becomes too great and it starts to jump between the plates. Now normally the amount of energy a capacitor can store is very small. Ultracapacitors are a capacitor technology that can actually store a good amount of power but batteries still outdo them. Their main advantage over batteries is that they can charge and discharge very quickly and have many more charge and discharge cycles.

Now the National University of Singapore’s Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Initiative (NUSNNI) has made my wild speculation a less wild speculation. They’ve essentially made a polymer ultracapacitor that they say will make lithium ion batteries obsolete. It is reported to store power more cheaply than lithium batteries. Whether they will or not remains to be seen. There have been a lot of battery advances in the past few years so they’ve got to hit a moving target. It usually takes ten to fifteen years for a technology like this to come to market. That’s right, you’ll probably have to wait until 2021-2026 to see this in stores.

The big deal is that the material is dirt cheap to make. As long as you can make it in large quantities, large capacitor batteries can be built and used in electric cars or a laser pistol, er if those existed.

The one thing I couldn’t find was how much volume the finished capacitor took up or weighs. From the information given, it’s supposed to be light but I have no idea about its bulk.

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October 21, 2011 · 4:38 pm

Character Development Inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle

I’m currently reading The Lost World and a while ago finished reading a marathon of all the Sherlock Holmes books. Something that struck me is his characters are purposeful contradictions so I thought it would be good to examine why it creates interesting characters.

When Doyle makes the characters, it seems that he forms them the way he’d make them. It starts off with the necessary business of why the character exists explaining the points you would expect from the person. For example, a cantankerous professor, scorned by his peers. And then proceeds to why this character is not “just” that description. He’s not just a cantankerous professor, he also has a violent nature. Not only does he have a violent nature he’s got broad shoulders, a barrel chest and a virile beard to boot! But then Doyle tones the character down. If he didn’t the character would start to take on unbelievable proportions. Professor Challenger stands up and we discover that he is a short man. He still shows his muscle on a number of occasions but he has been prevented from reaching Olympian status.

Sherlock Holmes is also a juxtaposition of strength and weakness. He has a keen mind for detail but is untidy. He is a thin almost gaunt man, but is professed to be a formidable boxer and swordsman. He has an indomitable will but is addicted to tobacco and cocaine.

Of course this mixing of strengths and weakness is not haphazardly slapped together. They were chosen to modulate the characters so that they stay interesting while being introduced. How these characters play out in their roles is also a matter of interest. Some qualities are mutable while others are fixed. Professor Challenger stays a dangerously cantankerous man throughout the book. His threats quickly become more intellectual and less physical though. Holmes is reported to kick his cocaine habit for a time, only to relapse somewhat.

Self Contradicting NPCs

Just understanding the concept of how a character that contradicts themselves makes it simple to make NPCs that follow this formula. What will take skill, is introducing the character in a way that will allow the proper interest to build in them. Doyle is the master of the reveal here and his methods will work in an RPG too.

First the character should be introduced through either their reputation or a messenger. If it seems the player characters would have a good chance of recognizing the NPC by reputation, something to the effect of “You’ve heard something about him, people were talking about something he did when you overheard their conversation.” Then follow up with what the gossip they would have heard about.

A messenger can bring news of the NPC coming to meet the PCs and leave off with a warning about how to not upset the NPC.

The next step is describing the NPC’s appearance. It should be thought through to reveal something more about the character. This is often where the first contradiction comes in.

The next step is the interview where the PCs talk with the NPC and the final limiting contradiction is introduced.

Making Self Contradicting Player Characters

At times, randomly generating a character can produce just such a self contradicting character. This can also happen simply by including an interesting background to the character. So how can a GM encourage his players to  develop interesting characters like this? Some games have ways of giving limits to a character (The Artifact does this) but they’re rarely targeted to make the most interesting character. Opening up the appeal to the players to develop such a nuanced character may involve offering a bonus to the character but offset it with some kind of limitation is sometimes the best way of balancing the character and sparking the player’s interest.

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October 20, 2011 · 5:52 pm

Social Conflict

There are other kinds of conflict in RPGs but social conflict is sometimes viewed as unsupported by the rules of an RPG. Rules for social conflict may also make players and GMs uncomfortable because it may mean that a player has to act out that they loose control of their character. For example, if Darth Vader had won the social conflict when he tried to get Luke to join him, doesn’t that mean that Luke would now go help his dad rule the galaxy as father and son? If you were playing Luke in an RPG and you lose the conflict, that would usually be the conclusion by most players and GMs. I actually would venture to say Vader did win the conflict. Luke just took a third path, he gave up in a way he found acceptable.

The trick is to give the player who has lost the conflict a few options. This way they can lose and keep some control of their character. So how can this be modeled?

I Don’t Believe It

A communication attack can come in two forms, intellectual and social. An intellectual attack is an argument based on facts, they may be disputed facts but facts none the less. In this kind of attack the defender can choose to defend themselves with their own knowledge or simply refuse to believe the facts being presented. In this situation an intelligence (I.Q. attribute) test would be made and the opposing side would make a defending roll vs. their intelligence (I.Q.) or their willpower (Psyche) (player’s choice).

In a social attack, the argument is based on persuasive arguments that undoubtably have some facts associated with them but are based on value judgements. This kind of attack is based on how convincing the argument is made. This is best modeled by a Charisma test (plus skills like Bluffing, Command and Persuasion and defended against by an intelligence (I.Q.) or willpower (Psyche) test. This would usually be the player’s choice, but in some arguments the GM could rule it would have to be one or the other.

Yes, But!

When people argue about something they feel strongly about and one person persuasively makes a point, the opposing person rarely will say “Oh I guess I was wrong, you win.” The fact is that it usually makes them more upset. Their further arguments may be more constrained than they were before in their logic though. So in other words, their stress level goes up and their ability to argue or defend their viewpoint gets weaker.

This would suggest a level of social hit points of some kind and some games have gone with this kind of a mechanic. I would suggest against a Social HP though for the sake of simplicity. Adding another accounting task is not really what players usually want but it’s on the right track. Instead, I suggest a system that counts up instead of down. What’s the difference? When you have a social HP you have to track the value even when it’s not used. It also means that something happens when you count down to zero.

What we in fact want is a system that shows a level of stress that the person is under that counts up (Hey we already have that in the Fraction Column system, Stress Points) and tie negative consequences to those points building up. This way, the player gets to decide when they’ve been beat up enough to start agreeing or to bow out. Another good option is to have the stress degrade the character’s ability to attack and defend. For the Fraction Column system each successful attack (the attacker wins the contest) should inflict one Stress Point. Each Stress Point would act as a CDF (Character Difficulty Factor, a negative skill modifier) against the character’s IQ, Charisma and Psyche. There are other repercussions to Stress Points and those would stay as they are stated in the book. Once the Stress Points overwhelm the character’s ability to argue, they’re reduced to physically running away, screaming or violent outbursts.

Stalling

Another option that the player has is to stall. What this means is that the character just stops arguing, perhaps stating that they aren’t going to discuss the matter anymore. By making this move, the character is tacitly admitting defeat socially but not intellectually. The character stalling takes two stress points but does not take any more in this conflict. The hope is that once they have lowered their stress points, they can take up the argument again.

Okay I Give

At some point, someone should be compelled to give in. When this happens there is a resolution to the conflict. The winner is vindicated and the loser is, strangely, relieved. When this happens the winner gets to drop all but one of the Stress Points they accumulated in the conflict. The character that concedes keeps half of their stress points. This gives an incentive to win but also gives an incentive to end the argument to relive social pressure.

We’ve used the opposing rolls method of social conflict but we haven’t used Stress Points in this way before. I got the idea for this from the Social Combat post over at Reality Refracted. I like recycling components that already exist, so I’m excited to have these systems mesh together like this. What do you think?

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October 19, 2011 · 1:28 pm

Incan Mecha?

I love this picture. It makes me think of Incan or Mayan artwork.

This is another one by Bathron (age 8).

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October 18, 2011 · 5:16 pm

Tortuga Cover Art

I’ve been working on the cover art for the Tortuga Sourcebook. This is my progress so far. The background and foreground need some work but it’s getting there.Tortuga Sourcebook Cover Art

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October 17, 2011 · 9:35 am

Survival Games – Playtest

We finally got to playtest the Survival Games premise and mechanics. We did a short trip through a Cold Dessert of only 20 km and then a 60 meter Rock Wall.

I don’t have the pacing right yet. I kept just letting the players roll repeatedly to progress instead of putting in the random hazards. Even then, I think a random hazard on every survival turn is a bit much. I’m not sure about all of them but especially for the Rock Wall obstacle, I’d only insert a random hazard once every 1D6 turns.

Still it did go well. The players kept expecting to handle things the old way we used to handle this kind of obstacle. One wouldn’t climb the rock wall after failing a few rolls because she was afraid that a failed roll would mean she fell. I think they got the idea after a while though. The fatigue seemed to happen at the right pace. It felt a little fast until I realized the players were still in all their gear climbing a wall. Maybe I should have a slower fatigue mechanic for if a character removes their gear and hauls it up later with a rope.

One thing that did throw me was the fickle nature of the dice. One player kept rolling very low and aced the rock wall with very little fatigue. Another player failed a few rolls right off the bat, got fatigued and then couldn’t make a successful Con roll to recover. Maybe recover should be one point plus the roll’s value? I’ll have to play with that.

I think that I’ll keep playing with it and see if there are further adjustments that need to be made. My playtesters weren’t the most cooperative group I’ve ever had. This was an experiment and it went reasonably well. I can’t expect more than that.

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October 14, 2011 · 11:28 am

Points of Disinterest: Episode 8

This is a piece that I used to do on the forum. Since the news has moved to the blog here I haven’t done any until now. It’s mainly about real science that I’ve projected out for The Artifact and progress either for or  against what I’ve predicted. It’s called “Points of Disinterest” because I figured I was the only person that was actually interested so it’s a comment that yes I realize I could be talking to myself here.

In today’s episode, I’d like to talk about something I’ve been watching for a while. Cloaking technologies. Star Trek has ’em, so they’re well known in a science fiction setting but I never thought they’d come anywhere near a real technology. Recently however there have been a number of advances in a technology called Metamaterials that have made progress toward a cloaking device.

Metamaterial Cloaking

So what is a Metamaterial? Well I’m not an expert but from what I understand, they are a structured material that gets an unusual property because of the material used and the shapes in that material. What can these materials do? Well the first time I heard about Metamaterials was when scientists first made one that had a negative refractive index. A refractive index is how much a material can refract or bend energy like light or sound. The thing is that refraction usually only happens in one direction, and this Metamaterial bends it in the opposite direction. This means that electromagnetic energy can be bent in ways not previously possible, like bending light around an object making it invisible. (There are other uses of Metamaterials that I won’t get into here.)

So far Metamaterial cloaking has been accomplished on a small scale in a lab. The big question is, how far will this technology go? Will it be like lasers? At first people were expecting ray guns but we eventually got optical communication, Blu-ray discs and cheap laser pointers. Did lasers change things? Yes they did but in clever low power ways. I wonder what will happen with these cloaking devices? will they eventually make the dream of invisibility possible or will they find applications in bizarre new technologies.

By far the strangest cloaking device so far is one that cloaks a moment of time (up to 120 nanoseconds so far). I’ve read about how this is supposed to work and seriously, I’m stumped. This is one I don’t understand. I’m having a hard time just conceiving of what the effect is. From the description, it hides a moment of time so that it appears like an event never happened. But it does, and I’m confused. I can’t wrap my head around it. If someone could explain that to me I’d be grateful.

A Different Cloaking Device

Here’s a different kind of cloaking device. It uses refraction of hot air to make something disappear. I have the strong feeling that an infrared camera would make this device stand out like a sore thumb but it’s cool to see it happen.

An electric current heats the air around a sheet of nanotubes. The hot air bends light and creates a switchable mirror of sorts. At a steep angle, and with a simple enough background the object vanishes from sight. I can imagine a shield that could be hidden behind with a sight glass to point at who you wanted to hide from and get the angle right.

These are technologies that I did not imagine and I see a big future for, but I can’t imagine where they’re going to go. Do you know? Fill us in by commenting.

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October 12, 2011 · 4:35 pm

The Chezbah Criminal System

When a person in Chezbah society is suspected to be guilty of a crime, select men that have been given the title “Strong Man” are responsible for catching and detaining the criminal. These are usually physically fit upstanding men in the community. They are not paid for this job but are revered for their authority. Once detained, it is primarily the role of the Priests to act as judges. This can be a problem as not all communities have resident priests, small communities have to wait months for a traveling priest. The Strong Man now presents his evidence and the Priest examines the case. Because of their access to vast knowledge, Priests are reasonably well suited to this task.

The Strong Man has to be careful, if the Priest disagrees with his findings he can be stripped of his title or even charged with the crime he accused the detained person of.

The Sentence

As one might expect, punishment for crimes, especially those against Loc are particularly harsh. They can at times result in death for an entire family. Most crimes that do not involve religious or governmental matters will involve incarceration of one form or another and prison sentences can be lengthy.

Prison also includes re-education programs that brainwash the prisoner.

There are two possible options available to a prisoner to get them out of jail time. They can opt to be Scourged or they may be offered to take combat hazard duty.

Criminal Scourges

Since the Chezbah are a strongly patriarchal society, if a family head is to be incarcerated, it usually sentences his family to poverty. In this situation a man can opt to be Scourged instead. These are not the combat Scourge in the The Artifact game book but specific criminal Scourges that turn the prisoner into an agricultural or industrial commodity.

First the prisoner is subjected to a period of re-education to obey. The scourge is usually reduced to a drone that just takes commands. He is rented to businesses and most of the money goes to the family, the rest goes to the priesthood for providing the rehabilitation. The rent is usually enough for the family to live on. The family can care for the scourge in their home if they choose, sometimes the families don’t want to be seen with the scourge and let the companies keep them in their facilities. When this happens the scourge usually suffers physically due to mistreatment.

Social acceptance of criminal scourges ranges from place to place. Sometimes they are viewed as noble for sacrificing themselves for their families. Sometimes they are viewed with disdain because they were criminals.

Pickers
The scourges hands deform and the thumb and the index finger separate from the rest of the fingers. The hand becomes very long. The arms fold upward while at rest now and the hand folds downward looking like a praying mantis. Even in this position the index fingers and thumb reach the ground. Ridges form along the extended hand and eventually can be moved in an undulating motion. The fingers also develop fine hairs that increase their sensitivity to touch and an acute sense of smell. This allows them to find fruit and vegetation for picking without actually seeing the item being picked. The ridges convey the picked item up or down the hand. A bag is carried by the remaining three fingers of the hand and picked items are conveyed into the bag.

There are some other uses for pickers like reaching high places in construction etc and the scourges can adapt to these uses.

1 Month  -5 to AGI -5 DEX +10 cm reach
2 Months -10 to DEX -5 from PSY +10 cm reach
3 Months -10 to DEX +10 cm reach
4 Months +5 to AGI -5 from PSY +15 cm reach
5 Months +5 to AGI -5 from PSY +15 cm reach
6 Months +10 AGI +5 INT-5 from PSY +15 cm reach
8 Months +10 AGI +5 INT-5 from PSY +15 cm reach
1 Year  +5 INT-5 from PSY +20 cm reach

Sorters
This scourge is used to sort food items or industrial parts. The pinky finger rotates and becomes another thumb. The middle finger falls off and the rest of the fingers elongate. the hand separates into two individual hands. The brain starts to process information from each eye individually and the eyes are now independent of each other so that they can be pointed in different directions. The pupils become larger to increase the peripheral vision. The brain also handles actions in three separate zones. One for each hand and one for the legs.

1 Month  -5 to AGI -5 DEX
2 Months -5 to DEX -5 from PSY
3 Months -10 to DEX +5 REF
4 Months +5 to REF -5 from PSY +5 cm reach
5 Months +5 to REF -5 from PSY +5 cm reach
6 Months +10 REF +5 INT-5 from PSY
8 Months +15 REF +5 INT-5 from PSY
1 Year  +15 REF +5 INT-5 from PSY

Brutes
This scourge is similar to the Wall in that it increases strength but the brute lacks the armor and regeneration abilities of the Wall scourge. Brutes are actually much stronger than the Wall but have less of a negative agility and dexterity modifier.

1 Month  +10 STR +10 CON -5 DEX
2 Months +15 STR +10 CON  -5 to DEX -5 from PSY
3 Months +15 STR +10 CON
4 Months +15 STR +5 CON  -5 from PSY
5 Months +15 STR +5 CON  -5 from PSY
6 Months +15 STR +5 CON -5 from PSY
8 Months +20 STR +5 CON -5 from PSY
1 Year  +20 STR +5 CON -5 from PSY

Counters
These scourge are not altered physically. However their brains are rewired to handle numbers in huge quantities. The scourge can easily handle monetary transactions and do numerical analysis of data. They also rarely forget numerical data.

1 Month  +5 IQ
2 Months +5 IQ +10 Mathematics Skill -5 from PSY
3 Months +5 IQ +10 Mathematics Skill
4 Months +5 IQ +10 Mathematics Skill -5 from PSY
5 Months +5 IQ +10 Mathematics Skill -5 from PSY
6 Months +5 IQ +20 Mathematics Skill -5 from PSY
8 Months +5 IQ +5 INT +20 Mathematics Skill -5 from PSY
1 Year  +5 IQ +5 REF +25 Mathematics Skill -5 from PSY

Combat Hazard Duty

With the readily disposable Chezbah Hound available, a criminal taking hazard duty is more likely to get a tedious assignment that requires some human intelligence. This can mean sitting in outposts for months on end at a Kelrath contested region with only fellow criminals as companions and Hounds as jailers. The Hounds will prevent the criminals from leaving their posts, especially when attacked.

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