Solutions, solutions, solutions!

25. November 2009 by admin.

The first real round of playtesting has ended. Five different groups, three different countries. My gratitudes to you all, and looking forward to the next round, hopefully soon.

With that one adventure (a CoC/X-files-style monster rump) played by little over twenty fantastic people, under five equally fantastic Narrators (for those new to GEARS, that’s the term for GM or DM or Referee or whathaveyou being used), there is enough feedback to put me to work for the next year or so. Not that I will let it take that long, of course; there are problems needing my immediate attention, and suggestions (a lot!) that need digesting quickly, to include them before the next tests! And since the next tests will be re-blind (in that it will be roughly the same groups (hence re-) but without any influence from me at all (hence blind)), I need to get this stuff down, hard and good!

A lot of the feedback has been on suggested tools for creating content. Many games either provide little but premade content (monsters, especially), while others provide demanding systems for creating even simple content (vehicles and monsters, especially!). GEARS needs to provide a flexible system that is easy to use and can provide any content imaginable. It is a big goal to have, but with a pile of suggested ways to do it that is about knee height, there is not a lack of options

Thought has also been given a lot to the goal of ‘assisted learning’. Not to removing it; the games of today need an easy way in! But a lot of the things that were simplified during Second Draft seem to have been too much so. The rules that were considerd ‘not simple’ are apparently easier to handle than originally thought. So the GEARS Quick line will not be simplified as much as originally intended, but will simply streamline many choices, Specifics will not be included, nor will Automatic Growth, and some of the more advanced options will be toned down or removed, as well. And on the subject, the matter of Automatic Growth and low-life characters still needs attention.

In any case, there are already 6000 added words (circa 8 pages) in the Third Draft rules section. The Alice setting is still unchanged, but what is to be written there is pretty well known, since it has been used before, long before the now finished playtests. Also, Third Draft will be available as both free PDF and low-cost (circa US$6) paperback, probably at around 50 pages.

Things look good. Things look real good.

Posted in Third Draft, Monsters, GEARS Quick, Character creation, Narrator, Second Draft, Alice, Playtests | No Comments »

Entry 11: Basic Thoughts on Conflict

25. October 2009 by admin.

.::: Entry 11, 2009/10/25 :::.
As stated before, and this is no great revelation to anyone, I have casually noted that combat seems fairly integral to the roleplaying experience. Or at least, no ruleset can be without a combat system, unless it is actually built around the idea of ‘no combat’. Which remains a pretty experimental idea still.

While I have no particular beef with combat or combat rules in a RPG, I feel the focus it is given is excessive. What probably bothers me most is that combat gets such unique and separate treatment from everything else; massive rule resources get put into it, and it alone!

In my game, I would like combat to be treated as an equal to other methods of direct conflict. The other methods could be racing, dance-offs (has street dancing contents ever been treated in a RPG, I wonder?), psychic attacks (to hurt, dominate, read minds, etc.), hostile negotiations, and so on. A basic underlying system should be possible to create for all such direct conflicts, with each specific conflict adding its own details. So maybe a knife thrust is not the least similar to will penetration or an aggressive in-curve overtake, but the way these actions are used in their respective type of conflict is similar enough that knowing one set of rules will let the player understand them all. The rest is strategy and, as always, details.

:: The Essentials of Conflict ::

To get a broader conflict system, I need some things universal to conflicts. A few off the top of my head:

- It’s about pitting abilities against one another. In combat, it’s weapons skills and basic physical moves, in racing it’s car maneuvers, and in exotic conflicts, it’s something about those exotic abilities. Opposing abilities must be compatible to allow an actual conflict; you cannot solve a gunfight through hacking, nor can you hack a computer by shooting it (hacking is a conflict between hacker and security designer).

- The objective is to either get out of the conflict or win it. The former could mean fleeing or actually convincing the opponent(s) to stop the fight. Winning usually means picking away at the opponent(s) until a decisive defeat is possible. Hit points, in many shapes and sizes, may provide a way to determine victories. They have worked for combat for years!

These two, the opposition of abilities and the indications of defeat, seem at the core of any conflict system. So at the very basic level, I will need the skills used in a fight (like weapon use), and something to cut the opposition down through (like hit points).

:: Extensions of Conflict ::

That only covers the bare necessities, though. Around that core, I would like to see more aspects of a conflict to be implemented. Even in combat, the reduction of the conflict to blow-by-blow attacks is overly simplistic to me, and definitely lacks a lot of drama, a lot of options, and a lot of (I am so sorry about the repetition) details.

Let’s stick with combat for a moment. You only need to watch a few dueling or fighting tournaments (or, if that is your taste, get in a a few fights) to see that opponents do not simply trade blows in an equal and balanced fashion. Most of the time in a fight actually involves opponents scoping each other out, looking for a way in, and then making some initial blows that hardly anyone believes are meant to do serious damage. They try to open up the defenses of their opponents, get the opponent off his or her guard. Feints, pokes, jabs, and other physically weak maneuvers reveal the opponent’s fighting ways and holes in the defense, and gets the opponent to act like the fighter wants it. Of course, the opponent is probably going for the same. The exception is vicious, brutal fights in which fighters just go straight for each other, and even then, the fight is about getting through to a soft spot without letting the opponent get control of the action. The difference is that the fighters are already at each other’s throats, probably quite literally!

This method of fighting is surprisingly universal! Hackers scope out security systems which are monitoring strange activity and relaying to the system administrator. Racers poke and spoof rivals into making bad turns or overlooking good ones while they get an idea of the machine the other is riding. Even court engagements and chess use preliminary moves to get a feel for where the opposition is, mentally. In short, there are plenty of conflict skills to get the upper hand without trading actual blows, literally or figuratively speaking.

Hit point have also been a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Not that they are used, but that they seem to be the sole measure of success in combat. Throwing someone off balance, causing pain, causing frustration or even fear, it all erodes the opponent’s ability to fight, and a lot of it is easier to get at than what physical constitution hit points may represent. Even the core functionality of hit points seems a bit shallow; people are not just cut down and then die, they bleed and suffer, the initial damage almost less important than lack of treatment afterwards. Most people who die from fights bleed to death, externally or internally. Ironically, many who die without bleeding to death (i.e. die spontaneously inside the fight) die from incapacitating injuries, often to the spine, and hit points really do not matter much against and elbow planted hard between two vulnerable vertebra. The importance of hit points in all those combat systems seems to almost be a fighter’s agreement: “We fight by cutting each other’s bodies apart until one of us drops from having been sufficiently turned to mulch”.

Again, there are parallels to other conflicts. Provoking a race car driver into a flameout is a death blow that ignores position and vehicle condition. A ’smoking gun’ in a court case does pretty much the same. And the ‘alternate hit points’ (pain, confusion, etc.) have their equals, too. Come to think about it, death blows often have to do with getting the right position for it and then executing it, so position, or equivalents, can perhaps be seen as yet another kind of hit points, even if they disappear the instant the fight is over. Similar concepts should be available in other forms of conflict.

:: Tension, Drama, Action! ::

As I have hopefully made obvious over these last many posts, my obsession with detail is not an attempt at creating some master behemoth, the most complicated game system alive. I find that details add to the sensation of a game, and by making the system itself support and structure details, that load is taken off the GM’s mind quite a bit. After all, few would expect a GM to wing combat in a dungeon crawl, and then expect him to get everything right. Rules make it possible. Likewise, if the tension of watching vital gear slowly fail as you fight to survive, the drama of characters struggling against inner demons, or the action of trying to make your magic mesh with the surroundings for optimum power are of interest, having rules to handle the details will let you keep it up without constantly having to improv your way out of it.

And if there is an area that should be ripe with these things, it most certainly is conflicts. The added rules will need to exist to promote this feeling, and there should always be quick and easy alternatives for games that do not care about a specific kind of conflict and therefore must resolve it quickly. More than in any other area of the game, there has to be a quick option in conflicts, so the game can focus on conflicts that the players enjoy!

Overall, conflicts will hopefully encompass many of the things described in other entries, and many of the concerns discussed there will take on a whole new light when they become part of a conflict situation.

Posted in GEARS Quick, Old blog, Conflict, Combat, Weapons | No Comments »