The balancing act…

12. January 2010 by admin.

Roleplaying is about stories. But roleplaying games are also about numbers. GEARS is an odd mix of rules light and rules heavy; there are a lot of things to use, but they all use a very, very small set of actual rules. There is only one real dice mechanism, for example: Roll the number of dice and check how many roll ‘good’. There are only two fundamental things a character needs to have: Abilities and cash. And anything else is built like those, such as Disabilities working just like a standard simple check or Relations being basically just the Abilities to get someone to help you out.

There is one ‘rule’ that is less notable, however, and yet it is pivotal to game balance. Game balance, of course, is the idea that a player (or Narrator!) cannot make something insanely powerful, or end up puny, by simply choosing one Ability or the like over the other. Once the game starts, everything else being equal, you get what you pay for. ‘Minmaxing’, the dreaded ability of math-skilled players to figure out how to make something far more powerful than the allotted CCP should make it, should be non-existant. The rule that much current debate revolves around is the unwritten “1/10″ rule.

Now, the 1/10 rule is in place to make GEARS easy to handle and easy to remember. Throughout GEARS, either something is handled straight forward, with 1 of something meaning 1 of something else (every Ability level is 1 CCP for 1 level, for example), or 1 of something is 1/10 of something. The obvious example is Talents, which provide 1/10 of their level as a bonus to certain other rolls. But Relatios also have a Base built on 1 level equalling 10 CCP put into the Relation, and Income is 1/10 of the point-to-cash rate per CCP. 1/10 is found in several places throughout GEARS. The current debate is, is 1/10 the right number?

The key worry is in Talents (or rather, the way they provide a bonus; in Fourth Draft, this is renamed Benefitting, and Talents are just Abilities that are often used for their Benefit). At 1/10, it takes 11 relevant Abilities to make it worth investing in a Talent solely for its Benefit. True, Talents have other functions, but this is a Big One. So if 1/10 is making Talents look useless, should it be 1/5 instead? That would put them back into the game, making them a serious assett to characters built around certain concepts (”a precise and quick-thinking pilot”, “a natural with animals”, etc.). But the 1/10 rule is a very serious concept in GEARS, even if not explicit (maybe it should be made explicit….), so that would mean changing 1/10 to 1/5 throughout the game, or accepting that numbers will become harder to juggle. The latter is definitely not a wanted option, so the former, making 1/10 into 1/5 in general, looks like the only option left.

What would that mean? Talents will become more powerful, but will they become too powerful? Will they unhinge and unbalance the game? It would take 6 related Abilities to make a Talent worthwhile, and Talents have Specifics, too, so the player might make the Talent more relevant to one or two Abilities or situations than the rest. It seems doable, but it is in the end a choice, which way to balance it (fractions like 1/7 or 1/8, or decimal numbers, will be too great a math presence to be truly wanted).

Relations may work with a Base of 1 per 5 CCP the relation is built on. A Relation relies on Base, Loyalty and Availability, so one level in each still makes it seem worthwhile (1 level of each costs 3 CCP, ‘paying out’ 5 CCP in Relation creation).

Income is a bit less clear. 1/10 of point-to-cash rate means it takes 10 weeks for a character to ‘earn’ the equivalent of 1 CCP of Wealth. With 1/5 as a rule, it will take 5 weeks. Will that make Income outshine the prospects of investing in actual Wealth? For the first adventure a character has, it really doesn’t matter; Income pays out later no matter what. But when the characters have 3 weeks of R&R, the character just gets more than half a CCP’s worth of money dropped on it! Does that make Wealth seem useless in comparison? Or does it perhaps make Income just seem more worthwhile?

These questions are not rethorical. This is a serious matter for GEARS, as it pits the balance of minor versus major effects of multiple rules against each other, and pits all that against the ideal of One Fraction To Rule Them All. And there is no easy answer, so the debacle will continue for some time, before it becomes clear whether Fourth Draft will usea 1/10 rule or a 1/5 rule…

Posted in Human Template, Abilities, Relations, Fourth Draft, Character creation, Disabilities, Wealth | 1 Comment »

Finally, improved Relations!

7. December 2009 by admin.

Though it is still in very early testing, there seems to be a solution to the problem sorrounding Relations. If it works, characters will be able to have friends and enemies, connections and rivals, pets and stalkers, and all sorts of people, creatures and more exotic beings surrounding them, as part of who the character is at the very first character creation! The goal is not just to make a quick rule for attaching others to the character, but to make a core concept, sleak, streamlined and versatile, that can make characters a part of a vibrant world instead of forcing them into the role of ‘lone stranger’ again and again.

It has not yet been expanded into a platform for the Organizations rules, which are meant to provide complex organizations (duh) in the game world, created as richky as characters and acting as actual, integrated parts of a campaign, should the Narrator want it. Once the new Relations rules grow to that point, players can create corporate representatives with access to their employer’s trillions worth of resources (on company jobs, that is!), or infiltrator agents able to call down orbital strikes on picked targets in the fight for freedom or oppression. They can even take down monolithic enemies facility by facility, and their encounters with that enemy will bear the mark ofevery little victory… or failure!

It should be clear by now that I am very excited about this. The toss of the old Relations rules was probably the best thing to come from playtesting, because the new ones make better sense, offer more options and customization, and are generally just cool. You can have powerful allies who will trust you with advanced technology and sniper support, but who will abandon you the minute they see significant consequences of their involvement. Or you can have die-hard friends, who will fight to the death for you, even if all they have is a gun and a prayer. You can base a Relation on fear, or you can hire your muscle for cash alone. And those nasty people looking for you, well, it’s called Determination, and for a simple game stat, it will mean the world for you when your ancient nemesis stands on the other side of certain destruction and has to decide if you’re worth the risk…

I’m getting all giddy

Posted in Character creation, Pets, Relations, Game worlds, Narrator, Wealth, Weapons, Vehicles, Teams, Cash, Playtests | No Comments »

Support the Brains in Jars!

30. November 2009 by admin.

Just a note….

Posted in Mind control, Superpowers, Wealth, Teams, Magic, Machines | No Comments »

Looking ahead

23. November 2009 by admin.

Second Draft and the website seem stable, and the first work is already being done on Third Draft. For the moment, the writing part is centered around the Ability List, and the ‘Medical’ category is progressing quite nicely. Talents are still hampered by three different versions of the list existing, with a few variations of even those. There are some aligning choices, but there will have to be a bit more testing to pinpoint the exact list desired for the game. Hopefully, most key Talents will be chosen soon.

The real debate, however, is on two matters that are arguably a bit farther ahead: Non-standard items, and powers. The items refered to are those that are not bought, not even through black markets or special contacts. Experimental gadgets, alien devices, ancient enchantments and the like seem to break the current system, and there are multiple rules versions on the drawing board for them now. The question is acquisition; how does one handle the acquisition of such items during character creation? GEARS is not currently built for, nor fully meant for, a system that uses character points to define items. Systems like GURPS and HERO are famous for their in-depth methods of assigning special abilities (or Abilities; sometimes, they put actual skills and powers into items, in game terms) to gadgets, weapons and the like. Their systems are impressively versatile, but certain concerns have already been aired in Entry 19 (of the old blog) about transfering the same philosophy to GEARS. These items seem caught between character and equipment, and there are early signs that other items may have similar problems: Powerful exosuits (which supply strength, senses and other things thought to be character territory), cybernetics (ditto), enchantments on the body (which can improve anything in the character, theoretically), and so forth. They are all in a strange area between item and character Abilities.

But even more important, they are essential to many genres and styles, and they influence game balance immensely. What worth is a fancy Ability if gadgets outmatch character experience? At some point, items become close to substitutes for actual characters. In worlds that exist on powerful technologies, that makes sense; even today, having a good gun beats years of bodybuilding and martial arts training. But when some such powerful gear is not openly available, character creation becomes the explanation for how a character can have something like it, especially from the start. This gap between the character creation rules and the still forming equipment creation rules needs to be closed before GEARS can be considered fully functional in respect to unique or complex gadgets.

The question about powers is a bit more diffuse. Testing of GEARS with high-power settings has been limited so far, mostly enough to ensure that the dice mechanism scales well (which it fortunately seems to do, in nearly all regards). What is still causing some problems is the definition, in game terms, of highly complex powers and relations between powers. Concepts like physical, mental or other drains with power usage, side-effects, limiting circumstances, etc. are still only roughly defined in (unpublished) GEARS notes. Simple powers can be made, and a surprisingly simple system for constructing them is being drawn up at this very minute, but the highly complex powers of quality comics and well-written high-power fiction are still causing problems with game balance and character point accounting (powers are here assumed to be built into characters during character creation). For example, if a system of magic has powerful spells, the spells can be easily created with the methods being drawn up (in fact, playtesters are creating some rather interesting things on-the-fly). But if using those spells drain a character, is that just a fact in the game world, or is it something to build into the magic system? Or perhaps into each individual spell? The game world will have a lot to do with it, in that some worlds will just accept that spells or the like cause some drain, while others handle each power uniquely. But whatever the in-world circumstances, GEARS needs a system for handling it, one that provides game balance without neglecting the uniqueness of such powers. Ironically, the problem is not that such systems are hard to make; the problem is there are too many already in use! Playtesters have modified the original (now horribly obsolete) concepts heavily, and recombining the results in a way that allows easy power design while maintaining game balance os proving hard. If that game balance is to become game world dependent (i.e. different game worlds provide different game balances, to support genres and styles better), that is merely another mighty hurdle.

Essentially, none of this is anything new in terms of design problems. GEARS is a system, and what has been described are components. Making components work together in a larger system, especially one designed to provide this amount of flexibility, always results in problems connecting Component A to Component B. It is a headache, but it is a good headache, because the problem is too many options, rather than no way forward. It comes down to choice. And with the design philosophy of GEARS, some of that choice will turn into options for campaign versatility, turning the current problem into a future advantage. Right now, it’s simply about getting there from here.

Posted in Wealth, Superpowers, Character creation, Equipment/Gear, Old blog, Second Draft, Magic, Playtests | 1 Comment »

Entry 19: Wealth & Possessions

9. November 2009 by admin.

.::: Entry 19, 2009/11/9 :::.
The topic of equipment has already been dealt with in earlier entries, to a certain extent. But what has not really been talked about is how such gear is actually acquired. Both in character creation and in later games, there are more ways of, and more views on, acquiring gear than most assume. I want my game to include a better explanation for characters having their gear than just “they buy stuff” or, even worse, “that kind of character just has that stuff”. I do not want purchased gear to be marginalized; buying your things is a logical and meaningful way to get them! But I do not want it to be the universal default, nor do I want to enforce ‘the universal shopping list’ that many games seem to go by. Even if it is a small part of the character, I want the acquisition of gear to make sense for the character, and reflect the kind of world the character lives in, not to mention his or her place in it.It might seem like a lot, but this is not just some insane demand for more detail. While the matter of where a knife was acquired can be painfully uninteresting, a lot of gear can spark up questions, especially when its effects are taken into account. A cybernetic eye enhances eyesight, for example. So does the player pay for it with points during character creation, or with cash? And what if it is surgically installed later on, what then? And what about that ‘priceless’ magical sword, if it is so priceless, how was it acquired?

Even beyond such questions, a thoroughly created game world can toss some frustrating questions into the process. If a character is from a certain region, will gear be acquired at the local prices? What if the character was briefly in a city with cheap gear, did he or she go on a shopping spree and get everything the character now has at low, low prices? And just how much can a character afford?

:: Cash, Card, Credit! ::

One of the most basic questions when creating a character in almost any game is “how much money does my character have?”. Cash allows the characters to get gear either immediately or later on, and it pays for a lot of other things during an adventure, too. I have stuck with a method of character cash for years now, and it works: Buy cash like it is an ability, then multiply the final level with an amount of cash set for the given game world. So if the cash-point value of a game world is 20 doubloons, buying Cash[14] will start a character out at 280 (20 times 14) doubloons. Needless to say, there is no learning or experience for this ability.

But while cash-in-hand will start the average adventurer character off nicely, some like more advanced options, if nothing else then to simulate real-life options. Two come to mind: Borrowing and earning. Whereas the cash option is just what a character has, these two are more about what that character can get later on. The idea of character income has already been thoroughly tested, and can be molded like cash: Buy an ‘ability’, and the character gets a weekly income equal to 1/10 of the aforementioned cash-point value. If the value is 20 doubloons, for example, the character gets 2 doubloons per week times the acquired ability. Easy, efficient. ‘Credit’ has undergone multiple tests, however, and none have shown satisfactory results. Essentially, it would be ‘the skill of borrowing money’, getting bigger sums at lower costs and for longer terms. The details are still out.

:: The Tool Ability ::

Money solves the gear-purchasing problem for shopping-list items. But too many genre conventions involve gear that is not purchased outright, from the magical sword to genius gadgets or inherited books of power and mystery. Without a pricetag, an item cannot be solved by throwing money at it.

Several existing game systems try to solve this by making the items a part of the character, rather than independent gear. A battlesuit thus becomes a set of abilities acquired for the character, just like that character might acquire the ability to read a language or fly a plane. An item might have unique abilities, or problems of its own, things that would make no sense for a person. Or ‘normal’ abilities would be somewhat different for an item. But a lot of fascinating and unusual items can be created by viewing an item as a set of abilities ‘in a box’, especially if ‘ability’ and ‘bonus’ are made fairly interchangeable.

I do have some disagreement with this method, though. There are the strictly practical problems that turn up when a character has his or her abilities ‘in a box’, which can basically be handed to someone else to use, or even stolen. This set of problems can bog a system down in rules to prevent abuse, all on its own! But beyond even that, I dislike the idea for the simple reason that gear suddenly does not feel like gear any longer. In a superhero game, the idea that a hero (or villain, or whatever) can fire bolts of lightning from the hands can definitely be an ability. If this person needs to wear a funny suit for it to work, I can still see it as an ability, with the suit being like what a sword is to a swordsman: Something that allows an ability to be used. But if it is the suit that fires the lightning, the ability that the character has is merely to use the suit! How the suit has this power is a different thing. And if the suit is not uniquely available to that character only, if the suit can actually be taken by others who will try to activate it, the idea that the bolts are the character’s ability goes right out the window for me. I don’t even want to get into what would happen if such ability-gear is acquired long after character creation…

In the grey zone between what is character ability and what is purely a gadget, there are interesting possibilities for whole fields of gear. Abilities can exist to tap into the gear, gear can exist to allow a character to tap into abilities, and so forth, creating amazing bonds between character and gadget (and we haven’t even looked at potions or strange energies yet!). But I would like that fascinating complexity to remain uniquely its own, rather than translate items entirely into character traits. This way, the abilities involved also have the chance of being an expanded part of the game world, something to be understood and handled in different ways. Maybe the suit is not the only way to focus an ability. Or maybe the abilities locked in the suit itself can be dismantled, examined, altered… or simply broken!

:: Point Acquisitions ::

One method that has been tried and tested thoroughly with a fair degree of success since my work with TAYDS is to have a general rating for items in overall power (which includes things like versatility, ease-of-use, durability and so on). A proper rating system for items allows them to be bought like abilities, setting a ‘point cost’ pricetag on the item. It works with basic items that do not fit shopping lists, but mainly because those items have a fairly linear progression of power. Once items become complex, typically through multiple uses, complex requirements and so forth, this ‘point cost’ method begins to break down.

The question is whether a better system can be built to charge points for items that are acquired at character creation (acquisition later would be handled by whatever in the adventures made it happen). Arguably, the basic notions of the aforementioned ‘tool is abilities’ may suddenly apply again, but somehow it seems the system would need to be adjusted, or balance goes right out the window; if a tool doing something costs the same as the ability, the idea of losing it will make the natural ability a better choice, and if it cannot be lost, the realism and idea of it being actual tools is ruined. Other flaws in the ‘tool is abilities’ method follow the same logic, and there remains also the problem of making tools feel less like gear and more like some detached piece of a character.

Of course, just because items are acquired via points does not mean it has to function this exact way. The idea in the above is to have an item wear a pricetag for what it can do, i.e. pay for power more or less directly. Another option is to pay for having access to certain kinds of gear, and then acquire some of that as a (perhaps) permanent possession. For example, having experimental super-toys might require having access to the labs that make them, something acquired as a presumably social part of the character (friends in the right places, so to speak). Inherited things may require an appropriate family history. This deflects some of the problems with point-acquired gear by making it part of something bigger. How a value-of-purchase figures in is still a harder issue; will it now be worth the investment to get the items, at all?

A lot of gear can be handled by making it actually equipment, stuff to be bought. The types that are not shop available will need to be defined by their origins, and how the gear is acquired will probably end up building on that. The consequence of this is that there will not be any fixed way of equipping characters: If it’s store bought, the cash rules provided will deal with it nicely. If it is special-made, it takes the connections and will be ‘priced’ according to how the world handles those things, probably handled by social backgrounds. Family heirlooms, strange acquisitions, alien gifts etc. will need their own reasons for being in the possession of the characters.

Posted in Wealth, Shopping, Cash, Equipment/Gear, Vehicles, Old blog, Weapons | 1 Comment »