December 26, 2011 · 11:26 am

Steampunkfitters Is Here

It’s time I let you in on that project I’ve been working on. Steampunkfitters.com is the website for the new game.

The basic book is about as rules light as I could manage without skimping on setting the basic mechanic of the game down. The idea is to have a basic version of the game available to start things off. Then, in time, develop an advanced book with more skills, animals vehicles, etc.

The game’s tagline is “Steampunk your way” and we mean it. The game is designed for you and a group to create a game based on story seeds that the players choose. The wiki is there to add elements to the game that you want to see there. If you ever wanted to have your artwork in a gamebook, now’s your chance! We’re openly taking submissions. I feel that artwork is vital to a game and so far we don’t have any yet. All contributors will get full credit for their work.

Why The Name Steampunkfitters?

From the game book.

A tradesman that works with steam pipes is called a steamfitter. In this game the players are putting together a story about the steam age with an emphasis on technology breaking through the culture of the day, thus the “punk”. Put it all together and you have Steampunkfitters.

So take a look Steampunkfitters is here!

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December 23, 2011 · 3:47 pm

The Joys of Playtesting

We had a playtest session last night. We were testing an entirely new system that works very differently from what we’re used to so the action was halting. I wrote it but I didn’t know if I was doing it right, mainly because I don’t yet know what “right” is for this system. That’s one of the unique things about playtesting. It’s not like GMing where you are enforcing rules and interpreting them. With playtests there are a lot of times when you don’t know what the rules should even be.

Playtesting is also a weird mix of GM fiat and paying attention to what the players want, even subconsciously. One of the first things to look for is frustration. If you spot it in a playtest session, you have to quickly go from GM to product development and ask them what makes the situation frustrating. Unfortunately in most situations the player won’t know how to answer that. A second line of questioning can go along the lines of what they would want to happen in that situation.

As the game writer, playtesting is also an odd experience because players are used to me knowing how the game is supposed to work. One of the players that was there for the initial development of The Artifact remembered this stage and how you’re not really sure how any of it is supposed to work. Keeping up the illusion of system mastery is tricky because I don’t have a mastery of it, there may barely be a system to master. Letting the illusion drop is problematic because then the players want to change everything. When that happens, the game grinds to a screeching halt because no one has the confidence to proceed.

For the whole session, as a designer and as a GM, I may realize that something is just not working. If I change it mid game, it will break the illusion of mastery of the game’s vision. There’s the temptation to change it right away but sticking with a bad rule can be very informative. It tells me not only that the rule is bad but can also show why the rule (or concept) doesn’t work. With that information it’s far easier to come up with a rule that does work well.

Playtesting can be deeply frustrating but it is also frequently rewarding. Some of the simplest solutions to problems come up when you’re under the gun to explain to a player how they can do what they want to do.

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December 22, 2011 · 10:51 am

On The Making of Legends

Today I’m doing a dual purpose post. This is partly a continuation of the post Why Go To The Collector Wells? and partly instructional.

In the last post I talked about a weird new “treasure” item for the game. For it to work and draw the player characters to it, the characters have to have heard about it. So how will they have heard about some esoteric misapplication of an industrial process deep inside a vast and dangerous expanse? It’s not like the local farmer and his brother are going to be raising Pettok here and say “Hey guess what we did?”

No, to draw the player’s into the web, they’re going to have to hear a story that tells of a grand hero or villain that they probably couldn’t compete with. We need a legend. Now in game legends are mostly there to deliver a single clue about how to get to the fabulous treasure mentioned therein. The rest of it is all glamor and fluff but it’s needed fluff. A good legend revolves around a central premise that sounds impossible (joining two people’s minds?) and goes on to explain why that impossible thing is so cool. The catch is to then present players with some form of evidence that some element of that coolness really happened. Usually something concrete that they can hold in their hand. It then is up to them to decide if the evidence then means that the impossible thing must then be possible.

To recap: Something “impossible”, tangental evidence that the impossible thing really happened.

So lets make one for our treasure item. In this case we need something that will make zapping your head in a dangerous machine sound good and explain exactly how to  do it.

Legend of The Peasant King

In the days before the Tanroc Fredar there rose up a king* cruel and powerful. All people bowed to his power and none could stand against him. The people groaned under the oppression of their forced labor. The king’s son was irresponsible and he knew that the boy would not be able to maintain the kingship. As it happened, this also became well known in the kingdom and the boy’s actions were a scandal.

One day as a group of peasants brought their tribute to the king one of them approached the throne and presented the king with a solution. He explained that in his land there was a device called the Lover’s Knot. It was used to ensure that a marriage mate would be faithful, although this tale didn’t interest the king, the next thing the peasant said did. When two people are joined in this way, they never betray the other and they know everything the other knows. If the king and his son were to enter the Lover’s Knot the son would gain the father’s wisdom and carefulness.

This intrigued the king but he was doubtful. As proof the young peasant produced a man and his wife that had entered the Knot. He had the king place them in separate towers. When one was told about a matter, the other instantly knew it, when one saw a thing the other also saw it.

After fully testing them the king and his advisors agreed to having the king and his son enter the knot. They journeyed to the land of the heart# and to the place of the Lover’s Knot.

The peasant accompanied the king and after showing the king how the Knot worked, the king and his son prepared to enter into it. As the king entered the Knot and at the last moment, the peasant pushed the king’s son away and entered the Knot with the king.

The wicked king instantly saw the life of the peasant and felt his suffering. His heart was crushed by the weight of his pain, the king was stunned but spared the life of the peasant. They returned to the king’s fortress and the peasant was given the same luxury as the king. The king’s rule softened and the people rejoiced. In time the king died and the man once a peasant ruled in his place.

*some Chezbah translations add “in opposition to Loc.”

#An old name for the Collector Wells.

Cementing The Story

Although the legend indicates the collector wells as being the location of this “Lover’s Knot”, it does not give enough detail to find the device. It also can be dismissed as fanciful and possibly a morality lesson or underdog story. To make it more solid, the players need more detail.

The players or someone the players encounter discover an ancient text written with charcoal on a CCC tablet. Although it is faded and smudged, the original text can be made out either by study or with technology. It is a letter from a father to a son, admonishing him to take his young and apparently unfaithful wife to the Lover’s Knot. More importantly the father gives explicit instructions on how to get to and to find the Knot chamber.

With some more details we have a genuine quest in the making. I’m sure that this wouldn’t entice all players but with the right group or even the right two individual players this could become a desirable goal.

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December 21, 2011 · 12:59 pm

Why Go To The Collector Wells?

One of the regions of The Artifact that has always scared me is the collector wells. They are vital to the life of the planet, its heart if you will. There are things that I know about them and a lot of things I don’t. For the Chezbah sourcebook I’d like to have a map of them but I don’t want to just have a map to fill in the space, I want a map that makes players say “Oooh I want to go there!” The problem with that is the Collector Wells are crawling with Chezbah and that so far has always made players say “We’ll avoid that area.”

There are two easy ways I can think of to get players into the collector wells. One is to make them a safe haven. That doesn’t seem like it would work with tons of Chezbah walking around. The second way is to make there be really cool toys there that players will want to have. To do that, the lure would have to be pretty big. That I think can be managed. I’m thinking something akin to the dark tiles, they had a purpose but people have found alternate uses for them. Ideally I would also like it to be something you can’t buy from someone else. That way the character with tons of cash can’t just say “I’m not going in there, I’ll just look for someone who has one and buy it off of them.”

What Do I Know?

I don’t want to just throw some kind of unobtainium into the game without knowing why it’s there. The dark tiles make sense (to me anyway) as to what they do and why they exist. So let’s look at what I do know about the wells and try to build something from there.

The Collector Wells are sitting at the bottom of a huge well. This well funnels high energy particles from the solar wind into a collection point using the planet’s magnetic field. Unlike the Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts which deflect solar wind, the magnetic field of The Artifact is designed to draw in the oppositely charged solar wind of the star it’s pointed at. This collection point then converts the charged particles into the superheated plasma that powers the rest of the planet.

To that end, the collector wells must have a massive furnace inside it. There’s our first landmark in the wells. Obviously there’s nothing in the furnace except a lot of hot. There’d be some heavy duty magnetic containment tech to focus the incoming radiation into a single point, and then there’d have to be some kind of an anvil that the radiation would strike in order to convert it to plasma. That anvil could be made of gas or liquid, any normal solid material would be vaporized over time so it would make sense to be able to replenish the face of the anvil quickly and continually. But does that gas or liquid have to be of a mundane kind? Of course not. This could be our unobtainium or at least a link to it.

Speculation

I like to keep things on The Artifact based on real science going on now. A whole mess of it is speculative but science none the less. At first a lot of the core technologies were from me throwing cool stuff I’d read or seen, together into one place. As the story has progressed, I’ve had to take look for developments in science that do what I want them to do.

So let’s speculate. Something really cool that I haven’t done anything with yet is energy teleportation (see Points of Disinterest Episode 6). Maybe the best way to move energy from the anvil to the plasma generation system is to teleport it. The anvil could be made of liquid sodium that is entangled with another pool of sodium in the plasma generation system(s). I imagine a cluster of these plasma generators at the head of each primary plasma conduit. To do this energy teleporting the two pools of liquid sodium would go through some kind of entanglement device that could link the atoms on a massive scale. It is this entanglement system that has interesting possibilities. Although Earth teleporter technology in theory could do something similar, maybe it’s the types of particles they entangle and the energy states of those particles that makes the technology exotic.

So why might this be interesting RPG candy that players can’t resist? I turn to the theory of the quantum brain (or mind). The specifics of the theory are not immensely important but let’s speculate that the mind (or neurons in general) may be sensitive to entanglement. By putting a body part of one character (hand, foot, head, etc) into this device, and the body part of another character in the device the neurons become entangled and suddenly the neurons of different characters can communicate with each other no matter how far away from each other they are.

So what would this do? That’s a good question, in reality it may do nothing. That’s no fun though. So I’d like to speculate that if two hands were placed in the device, the two characters could sense each other’s hand. Even more so, they may be able to control each other’s hand! Why would you want that? It could be a useful tool. Both players would always know how the other person’s hand was doing. That sounds funny but if the other character was hot, or cold, maybe even very hungry, the other character might be able to tell. If they can control each other’s hand, they could use sign language or even writing to communicate with each other.

So what if two character’s head’s were placed in the machines? The two player’s minds would become linked. They would effectively become a hive mind. All their skills, knowledge, history and secrets would now be shared. I can only imagine that would be disorienting for quite a while. They would probably even see what the other sees. Could two brains really signal each other this way? If blasting someone else’s FMRI data into you brain can transmit usable data, then I’d say yes, it’s possible. It might take some training to sort through the new input but just like monkeys using robotic arms takes training, in theory, it should work.

In Game

By placing their head into a compartment near the entanglement mechanism and having another character do the same in a corresponding compartment at the same time, the two characters become linked. They add their IQ attributes together (no upper limit to the score) and share all their skills. (I wonder about muscle memory though, maybe non mental skills are half shared?)

This isn’t a peasant process. Both characters take 1D10 damage (remember x2 for the head, 1/4 for the hand). Roll 1d6 Stress Points for a hand (or foot if you really want to) entanglement. Roll 3D10 Stress Points for head’s being entangled. In theory a hand could be entangled to a foot or a head to a hand or any combination there of, but mismatched entanglements only allow for vague and unusual sensations to be picked up. Characters might be able to interpret this over time but it’s functionality would be limited.

The entanglement devices in the collector wells are huge, and cannot be removed without knocking out a huge part of the power generation of the planet. That makes this not something you can sell to someone else. In addition these devices would be protected by hordes of Chezbah.

The next question is how did anyone figure out to do this in the first place? I’ll write about that tomorrow.

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December 20, 2011 · 1:56 pm

Tortuga Progress, or Lack of

Actually I have worked on Tortuga but not as much as I was expecting to. The nice thing is that I usually burn out on a project and have to let it lay dormant for a while as my thoughts on problems crystalize. In this case I was getting to that point but I didn’t completely burn out. I’m hoping that as I ease back into it, I’ll have a burst of energy again.

I’m hoping to get some time to draw in these next few weeks and I’ve been working myself up to it. That’s my one big obstacle right now. The second obstacle is the last two posts here. I know how to do what I want to do, explaining it is a different matter.

As for now I’m still working on my Steampunk project. It’s getting to be pretty exciting. The players had a blast making characters and I think I’m ready to run a scenario.

That’s all for now.

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December 19, 2011 · 1:33 pm

Skill Checks Past 100

Here comes the hard part. I talked about scales for stats going past 100 on a BRP or the FCS. 1-99 is the A scale, 100-999 is the B scale and 1000-9999 is C scale.

It’s relatively intuitive to have a character with an Agility of 200 to go up against a character with a Reflex of 300. Both roll on a percentile (1d100) against the two most significant digits, in this case a 20 vs. a 30.

What about a character with an agility of 200 hitting a target? Obviously if it’s any kind of normal target the character should always pass. If there are negative modifiers to the number like extreme range (-50), fast moving target (-40) and darkness (-40) the base to hit would be 70 so that still is within the realm of comprehensible.

What about an Agility of 400? First of all, I can’t really imagine what an Agility of 400 would mean. To roll on it for a straight skill test (B scale) means that any task that a human could normally do would be easy as breathing. In fact the only thing that would be a challenge to such a character would be something roughly ten times the difficulty of what a human could accomplish.

Ten times is easily said but what would that mean? What kind of example would illustrate that? Remember this isn’t a task ten times more than a human normally does, this is a task ten times harder than a human could possibly do.

With Strength, that’s easy. Ten times stronger is easy to quantify, that would be about four tons, real superhero range. Constitution is similarly understandable. Numerically IQ (or intelligence) seems understandable, but what would it mean to be ten times smarter than a human could possibly be? Is that like putting ten people in a room and set them to a task?

Would then a person with a Agility of 400 have a 40% chance of being able to do what ten regular people could do in a turn? I suppose that’s one way of thinking about it but it’s still kind of strange. Remember it wouldn’t mean that this super human would ten times more, it would mean he was ten times more accurate.

In some ways the only way to give real world examples of that would be to use animals or machines as examples. It’s doable, just not intuitive. I’ve tried to wrap my head around that.

Any thoughts?

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December 16, 2011 · 7:17 am

Past 100

In BRP games and in the Fraction Column System (FCS?) that use percentile die (1d100) in a roll under mechanic there is an inherent limit to skills or attributes.

I’d like to get rid of that limit. Mainly because there are certain monsters, equipment and effects that really should bring those stats over 100. They already exist in The Artifact when it comes to strength but how would you roll for a strength contest between two E-Suits with Strength stats of 800? It’s not practically done.

Once a stat has passed the 100 mark, there is no chance of a failure. FCS modifies this with fraction columns so that a roll contested by another character can be defended against but uncontested rolls would never fail. This caps the functionality of stats to 100. With roll modifiers as minuses (darkness, extreme range, etc.) maybe a stat as high as 200 would be desirable but most players don’t go that far.

Scales

I want to implement a system of scales in FCS but I don’t know how intuitive my approach is. My thought is if you have two stats that are over 100 they move up to the next scale. To prevent number confusion, the scales are lettered. So A scale is from 0-99. B scale is 100-999. C would be 1000-9999 and so on to Z.

So how would this work for a B scale contest? The players would roll against the two most significant digits on a 1d100. For our Strength 800 E-suits, this would be 80. If someone had an IQ of 120 they would roll against a 12 on the B scale.

If an E-Suit with a Strength 800 rolls against a human with a Strength of 30 both would roll against the A scale (and the human would loose 96% of the time.)

Contested rolls I’m fine with, I’m not sure how clear this concept is. I’ve been thinking about it for a while so it’s crystal to me, I don’t know what this looks like to others. Any input in the comments is appreciated. Monday I’ll get into the even hairier world of a skill check with higher scale stats.

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December 15, 2011 · 7:10 am

Lost

We’re lost. The Eric’s laptop got smashed in a cave in and that had our mainframe map in it. Please stop giving him so much explosives, he uses way too much. I only have this I-CA communicator and I can barely figure out the functions, the manual is all in Chinese and I don’t know what language the other ones are, maybe Arabic. That means that even if you send us another map I won’t know how to use it or even if it can be used on this thing.

There’s supposed to be a Scimrahn tribe camped out for the next week somewhere around here but we’ve been searching for days. Eric’s truck is running out of fuel and my S-15 is starting to get a nasty wobble in the chassis. I told you I didn’t want anymore company refurbished equipment. At least get a Scimrahn repairman to show those guy’s how to fix these things.

I need the network jockeys to look around and see if the Scimrahn are sending any messages out. I know they don’t usually, but we’re not near any Chezbah, they might feel safe. It’s the only way I can think of to find them. I don’t think we can make it out of here unless we find them.

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December 14, 2011 · 12:49 pm

Making Failures Drive Progression

Making failures fun isn’t a new thought, literature is full of tales of heroes failing before they get strong enough to overcome their nemesis. Quite a few games model this, usually by giving a spendable die roll to amp up rolls at the end of the game and overcome a big challenge. That’s cool, I like it but can that idea be tweaked a little more?

Often, the players are encouraged to use the added die rolls in the current game. This is probably to keep them from hoarding them and then busting through stories with improbable rolls. But what if we made the bonuses permanent? What if instead of added die, you gave the characters experience for failing a roll? Could the phrase “learn from your mistakes” be used to model RPG progression?

The main problem with this is that usually XP can only be spent in between games. I think this convention was implemented to prevent a character from suddenly becoming an expert at something they weren’t a moment ago and messing up a challenge the GM had in mind. It’s less of a problem for level and class systems than it is for point buy systems where a fighter could suddenly know how to perform surgery on a fallen comrade in the middle of a fight. Let’s cast that fear aside for now and say that XP actually has to be spent as it’s earned (within certain limits).

What if every time a character failed a roll, they got an XP (or several dependent on the system)? At first the characters would advance quickly. Slowly that progression would level off and as the players reached a peak, they’d stop progressing all together when they are proficient in their skills.

One way to game this system is to keep a skill or stat low and keep failing, using that stat to boost others. At first that sounded like a problem to me. In a way that actually sounds like it could be pretty hilarious. Imagine a player forcing their player to try using their dump stat all the time just so that they can progress. The way we play, Charisma is actually a very useful stat so most players amp it up. Beauty on the other hand is seldom used. So imagine a character purposefully trying to think of ways to use their beauty and failing at it miserably over and over.

Still that does start to break realism, so if that kind of silliness isn’t your thing, tweak it a little. A lot of games link usage to progression, so if you use a skill several times in a game you get better at it. Well, now just do the opposite. When a character fails, on that skill, that skill progresses. To fail at a skill you don’t have is pretty easy. You try to use it untrained. When you fail, you go up.

Why would this be a useful model? It does two things for progression. One it makes it harder and harder for the characters to progress. Now at a certain point, if you’re not failing, you don’t really need to progress do you? In a game not ready for this type of system that could happen but the right conflict resolution systems would be able to keep up. Two it might drive the players to seek more and more challenging tasks to advance.

Food for thought. It might be interesting to give this a try. Getting the right balance might be a challenge for an existing game but letting the system set the balance of the game is where I see the most potential for this.

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December 13, 2011 · 12:57 pm

The Technobabble Monster

I’m going to do what I can to build a template for a technobabble monster. Remember that the babble can be medical, technical or science based so ideally this would model most Sci-Fi show tech problems. The purpose of this tool is not to make the story process a mechanical one but to give a GM a structure to add an element to the story and keep it interesting.

Story Points

The first thing a Technobabble monster needs is a number of hit points. It would also be good to have some skills that take it down faster. To do this some successful skill tests might take down one point, others will take down two points and the right skill will take down three points. To match a TV show structure, you want three main attempts to take it down before it goes down so start with at least nine. There will also be a few random attempts during the game so add three extra for a total of twelve. Your monster can have more or less but it’s good to have a base number to work with. This number may have to be multiplied by the number of PCs that can help with the problem because if you have six sciencey PCs the problem will go down too fast. We’ll call these points, Story Points (because I’m starting to become fond of that term).

Take Down Skills

Next decide what skill should be the most effective skill to tackle this technical problem. If this is a medical problem so you’re going to pick a medical skill. If it’s a science task, pick an appropriate science skill. A successful roll of this main skill will take off three points. Related skills take off two points. So if the required skill is Surgery, then General Medicine could be a related skill. A GM could also rule that someone with a biology skill would also be a related skill. Basic intelligence (I.Q.) successes take off one point.

Second choose skills that the monster is resistant to or may actually help it. For example, if a PC walks up to the problem and decides to blast it, maybe it does nothing, maybe it makes the problem worse. These skills add three SP to the problem.

A PC can use skills as a probe, testing if it will be effective. Doing this takes time but if the roll is failed, it will not trigger a story transform.

Progression

Most technobabble monsters don’t just sit still. They grow more powerful as time goes on. At first they only have weak effects that seem to come out of nowhere. Slowly, they progress to ever more obvious and dangerous. At their earliest stages the players should notice something but probably not know what to do with the information or even if they should do anything. The GM should keep this in mind as they apply the story transforms.

Transforms

Next we get to the monster’s ability to fight back. In some cases the monster may be an actual creature that is growing in strength. In others it may just be an effect of the environment. In any case, an interesting monster will change up it’s tactics and defenses. For every 3 points of SP that are reduced the GM may choose or roll for a story transform.

Roll 1d6

1- Problem fades for a time but comes back growing stronger.
2- Solution does nothing but gives a clue to the PC as to real cause.
3- Problem is partly fixed but the skill required to fix the problem is now different.
4- The problem appears to be fixed but has only moved.
5- The symptoms become less pronounced but the danger continues to mount.
6- The last fix attempted takes off double SP but an exotic ingredient is now needed to continue attacking the problem.

If a player tries to fix the problem but fails their rolls, they trigger a different set of transforms.

Roll 1d10

1- Problem rapidly gets worse.
2-3- A second problem is created, something important is damaged or fails.
4- The character failing the roll gets severely injured. There is no saving roll for this.
5- Someone else gets severely injured. They may get a chance to dodge or save vs the damage if the GM thinks it necessary.
6- Any further rolls require putting crew in danger because of a hazard like fire, falling equipment, explosions, infection etc.
7- An NPC involved dies.
8- The problem spreads in a way not normally thought possible. ex. Computer virus to human or vice versa, problems with the warp drive spreads to life support.
9- The problem is now immune to the skill used.
10- The problem gains 3 SP.

Time

There should be a time limit to the problem. If it isn’t solved in a certain number of hours, the ship explodes or the infection spreads to two more people or a PC dies. Something dire, something that will motivate the PCs. If you have a particularly unmotivated bunch make the technical characters reliant on some more combat oriented characters but the combat characters need the techs to keep them alive.

Each attempt to fix the problem takes a block of time if the characters dilly dally they’ll run out and the hammer drops. Skill probe attempts may not take as long as the attempt to fix the problem but still take up a significant amount of time (say a half to a quarter of an actual attempt).

Conclusion

Again, the idea here is to give some structure to the challenge of handling a task that the players can’t be expected to solve with their own knowledge. While a fighting character has something to do in most games, a technical or brainy character can be left twiddling their thumbs or relegated to strategy. If you need something story based to keep a technical character busy this could be a fun way to do it quickly. Ideally you’d want to come up with some kind of a technobabble explanation that they need to solve. I don’t think you need to hide the SP structure from the players. Knowing that there is a limit to the problem and a way to reach that limit will make the challenge more reasonable for the players. Some of the transforms would keep me on my toes if I were GM. Trying to figure out how to apply them may take some creative thinking. Any obvious transforms that I missed? Let me know in the comments and I’ll add them.

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