There is no standardized, consistent, approach to how long it should take to do things in an RPG. It’s time that changed.

A strongly-related question is how long is a skill roll good for, before a new roll is required.

I was musing about what to write for this week’s post when I saw something about changes to the “Detect Traps” spell. After a first reaction to that issue (see below), it triggered a thought process which ultimately yielded just such a standardized approach to the broad question, and that’s principally what today’s article will present.

A couple of key criteria that are worth mentioning before I get too deep into details: this is about enhancing, not supplanting, player agency. It’s about roleplaying, not roll-playing, and how the two can interface to create a result better than either on their own. And that means that it’s also about the player-PC interface, and the PC-Game World interface, with the GM as moderator. The goal is to enable the GM to be a better, more consistent adjudicator of what the PC wants to do, and how that derives from what the player wants the PC to do. In turn, because sauce for the goose is good for the gander, it also applies to NPCs – so it’s a far-reaching and influential change, even though (in the absolute scheme of things) it’s actually a fairly minor rules tweak.

If anything, it’s more about creating a framework for the consistent application of rules, though individual skill descriptions might be impacted.

I think the place to start is by clearing the decks, so let’s get underway by talking very briefly about “Detect Trap”.

Sidebar: “Detect Trap”

I have a deep dislike for this spell. I concede that it’s a logical spell to exist, and that (compared to some of the other spells and their impact on the game world) it’s even appropriate for it to be a relatively low-level spell.

But, at the same time, it takes agency and spotlight-share away from an entire character class, and that’s not right.

There’s a metagame factor to be considered, as well: the use of such a spell can obviate a whole boatload of tedium that derives from some GM interpretations of a thief’s / rogue’s ability to detect traps.

The challenge is to keep the spell useful – arguably, even, make it more useful than it is at the moment – while preserving the agency of that character class (and any related ones with similar abilities).

In particular, I think that Rangers and the like should have a commensurate ability to detect snares and pits and other traps in an outdoors setting, on a game trail for example. Under most game systems, they don’t.

Rule Change #1: Traps In Natural Environments

• Rangers and any related character classes have the ability to detect traps, pits, and snares in a natural environment. Simply look up the abilities for a Rogue of the same level and read off their base “Detect Trap” level.
• For the purposes of this ability, a ‘natural environment’ will be one in which the character has an appropriate survival skill.
• If the environment is some variation on the natural, eg an alternate plane of existence that resembles a natural environment, the base chance of success is halved.
• Detecting a trap does not imply awareness of how the trap is triggered, how it functions, or how to disarm it. It simply conveys awareness that the trap exists, enabling the character to look for ways of bypassing it.
• If there is no more specific game mechanism provided, additional ‘Detect’ rolls may provide those additional details, at the GM’s discretion. If the function is magical in some way, there is either no such opportunity or the chance is halved (at the GM’s discretion).

Rule Change #2: “Detect Trap” spells

• Casting a “Detect Trap” is the equivalent of successfully rolling a “Detect Trap” check. If there is anything present that could be construed as a trap, it will glow in some color that contrasts with the natural lighting of the environment.
• This glow is visible to anyone with an optical sense, not just to the mage.
• It is blocked or obscured by any material objects or barriers.
• The glow is undifferentiated and uniform. For example, a trap that fires darts from the walls when certain tiles are trodden upon would lead to both walls and floor glowing.
• Detecting a trap does not imply awareness of how the trap is triggered, how it functions, or how to disarm it. It simply conveys awareness that the trap exists, enabling the character to look for ways of bypassing it.
• Characters are free to impute logical triggering mechanisms and behave accordingly. These assumptions / deductions may or may not be correct, and hence those behaviors may or may not actually prevent activation of the trap.
• Traps detected with the spell do include passive effects like poisoned coatings on a book’s bindings.
• Disarming trapped mechanisms requires (1) access to the mechanism in some form, and in particular to the trigger; and (2) a Rogue or other mechanically-inclined class to intervene in preventing that mechanism or sub-mechanism from being triggered. This may involve making considerable noise, eg hammering pitons / wedges in between tiles.
• If there are multiple traps present within range of the spell, it will only detect the trap that is either most obvious (in the GM’s opinion) or closest – GM’s choice, but be consistent.

So, the Spell detects a trap in/on a chest. Taking reasonable care, a character can lever up one edge and look beneath it to ensure that it is not connected to some external mechanism, i.e. that it’s “relatively” safe to pick it up and stow it in some convenient storage location – but actually disarming it needs to be done by a professional, and any ‘mercury switch’ traps could still be activated by this process.

This yields a spell that is inarguably useful, especially at lower character levels, that does in fact actually detect traps, but that does not undercut the specialist character class that deals with such. It does permit (most of the time) small-sized parties to retrieve trapped items to take to an outside specialist (NPC) (for a fee of course).

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s now refocus attention onto the main subject for today.

A Common Misconception

Some players and GMs have the impression that every skill roll operates for one “turn”. It doesn’t take much thought to realize that this is a ridiculous assumption:

“I run across to the tree-line and take cover..”

“Okay, it’s 140′ away, standard movement is 50′, so that will take three turns plus one to take cover, make three ‘Running’ rolls and a Concealment roll.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Or,

“I add up the takings for the year –”

“Okay, that’s 365 numbers, so 364 additions, so make 364 arithmetic rolls…”

“You ARE kidding me!”

Some tasks are bigger than others, and will take longer, no-one can dispute that. The answer isn’t to break those tasks down into sub-tasks of 1 round’s duration, it’s to stretch a single die roll to cover the entirety or a task (or a primary sub-task if the sub-tasks are qualitatively different.)

Basic Definitions

Thinking about that for a bit permits some basic definitions of the way the processes should work.

• A Die Roll applies to the entirety of a task
• Duration of task is defined as a certain number of fixed time intervals called a ‘standard unit’.
• The ‘standard unit’ is skill-specific, but there should be restricted options to select from.

Standard Units

The options that I see as being relevant are:

1. 10 years
2. 5 years
3. 1 year
4. 6 months
5. 3 months
6. 1 month
7. 2 weeks
8. 1 week
9. 3 days
10. 1 day
11. 6 hours
12. 4 hours
13. 2 hours
14. 1 hour
15. 30 minutes
16. 15 minutes
17. 5 minutes
18. 1 minute
19. 30 seconds
20. 10 seconds
21. 1 second

Sizes of Standard Units

In most cases, the GM can simply apply common sense to choose the appropriate standard unit for any application of a particular skill. But, if you need some guidance, try the following:

1. Estimate the Typical Total Time for such a task by someone qualified to undertake it.
2. Double the estimate.
3. Divide by the Basic Skill level that the GM thinks is reasonable to consider someone qualified to undertake it, i,e. the skill that will yield success at least half the time, and more likely 90% of the time.
4. Select the entry on the table above that comes closest to the result. If about mid-way between two, choose the lower of the two.

Let’s see how that works for a couple of example values:

1. An entire working day = 10 hours.
2. Doubled, = 20 hours.
3. 15 threshold = 20/15 = one-point-something hours.
4. Standard Unit = 1 hour.

 

1. An entire working day = 10 hours.
2. Doubled, = 20 hours.
3. 8 threshold = 20/8 = two-point-five hours.
4. Standard Unit = 2 hours.

 

1. An entire working day = 10 hours.
2. Doubled, = 20 hours.
3. 6 threshold = 20/6 = three-point-something hours.
4. Standard Unit = 4 hours.

 

1. Two hours.
2. Doubled = 4 hours
3. 10 threshold = 4/10 = 0.4 = 24 minutes.
4. This is roughly midway between 30 minutes and 15 minutes (it’s slightly closer to the former but not by very much).
5. Standard Unit = 15 minutes.

 

1. 20 minutes.
2. Doubled = 40 minutes.
3. 8 Threshold = 40/8 = 5 minutes.
4. Standard Unit = 5 minutes.

 

1. 5 minutes.
2. Doubled = 10 minutes.
3. 12 threshold = 10/12 minutes = 50 seconds.
4. The official answer is 30 seconds, but this is close enough that the GM should probably consider the 1 minute unit. Which he chooses is up to him – but there are consequences, as will be seen later.

Ideally, you want to end up with a number between 5 and 10 standard units = the Typical Total task time required.

Number Of Standard Units from Task Complexity & Scale

Note that these estimates take no account of unusually complicated forms of the task, or unusually large ones. This is the estimate for the most basic form of the task.

So the next step has to be adjusting the number of standard units required for this specific task, under these specific conditions.

It’s usually better to evaluate each of these factors separately, but that isn’t necessary. The key thing to remember is that they will compound if they are applicable.

I have to also point out that some tasks will be simpler or more straightforward than the ‘Typical Standard’ that you are using, for whatever reason.

Your ultimate number should be somewhere between x 1/2 and double the standard number.

Circumstantial Modifiers

Since you’re already thinking about the difficulties, now is a good time to set any modifiers to the skill roll that reflect these complications.

Now comes the fun part: you tell the player of the PC how long it will normally take and what their chances of success are. They can then decide whether or not that’s unacceptably slow, or if they have more time to spend on the task.

Cutting Corners for a faster result

Let’s deal with doing a faster job, first.

For every standard unit they reduce the time spent, they get a -2 modifier to succeed, until they get down to less than two standard units of the indicated size.

The scale of the modifier – and the scale of the standard unit – should be adjusted if your game system uses anything other than 3d6 or d20 (those are close enough in scale that the -2 works).

• For d% systems, use -10%, for example.
• For 2d6 systems like Traveler, use -2, -1, -1 in sequence, or use -1 1/3 and round off (I know which of those I would prefer).
• d30 systems should use -3.

When they get that far, reduce the size of the standard unit to the next lowest value and increase the number of those units to equal the time. This permits the character to continue to speed up and worsen his chances of success if he chooses to.

Repeat until the player is satisfied with his chances.

Significance: I want to highlight the significance of this process – there is an inherent limit to how much faster the character can be than normal. If the standard units are too big, this will automatically correct for that. The smaller the standard unit, the harder it is to reduce the time required by a significant amount.

Read that last line again.

While the system offers some protection against incorrect standard units, that’s just a lucky accident; don’t rely on it. Getting the standard unit right defines how many of them are needed for the task at hand, and that determines how much capacity the character has for cutting corners in a pinch.

Failed Checks

If the character fails his check as a result of these modifiers, the GM MAY permit the character to make a second roll at the same chance in order to complete the task in the normal estimated time, indicating that whatever went wrong resulted in a salvageable situation.

This option is purely at the GM’s discretion and will be dependent on the actual skill concerned and the task to which it is being applied. If you’re making a horseshoe and mess it up, it’s usually a salvageable situation; if you’re cooking a fancy meal and make a meal of it, the only answer is usually to throw the failed disk away and start again.

There can also be positions in between, for example painting a fence or a wall – exercising too much haste produces spotty coverage, but you might be lucky and there are only a couple of spots that need retouching.

To determine this, progressively add back the reductions in time until the roll actually succeeds; the result is how long the task takes this character under these circumstances including his attempt at breakneck speed.

Taking Extra Time to get it right

When they have the luxury, a lot of characters will invest extra time to increase their certainty of success.

• Increasing the chance of success by 1 adds 1 standard unit.
• Increasing the chance of success by 2 adds 1+2 standard units of time.
• Increasing the chance of success by 3 adds 1+2+3 standard units of time.

…and so on.

Maximum Time

Characters cannot spend longer on a task than would prevent them from failure. So there is a cap on how much extra time can be invested.

Beyond that cap, the time required doubles for each +1 to the chance of success because this is actually applying the principle of “do it over until the results agree”, or “testing the result for validity”. This sort of practice happens all the time in accounting, and is the reason why double-entry bookkeeping is considered the only way to go, even though it takes at least twice as long.

It’s even more critical in IT / software development. No computer program more complicated than “See Spot Run” is sure to be without bugs, and (if anything) the certainty runs in the other direction. Only in the most dire of circumstances would any competent analyst / programmer / developer release an update without testing it – and, in such circumstances, they would be even more hesitant to do so because there would be less scope for recovery from an error. At least, this used to be the case; sadly, some corporations no longer want to spend the development time to do more than weed out the most critical of errors (everything else can wait until the next release / patch – effectively doing their testing in public on real people and real data).

(Fighting to not get sidetracked here).

The additional time does not improve the chances of first-time success – they have already reached maximum. Instead, it buys insurance against failure.

Insurance Against Failure

Let’s say that, despite taking the maximum permitted time, the character fails his skill check. If he has invested in Insurance Against Failure, it’s not yet the end of the world.

The character can make a second attempt, using the original chance of success, plus two for each level of Insurance. if this second roll succeeds, then the extra time has been well-spent, detecting, identifying, locating, and correcting the flaw.

What form this takes at the game table in terms of what the character is doing will vary from one skill to another. It might be making a second pot of stew, or casting extra pieces of pottery so that one is more likely to survive the firing process, or verifying totals with double-entry bookkeeping, or testing software, or any number of other things.

Insurance Against Failure is totally at the discretion of the GM, and is dependent upon his having some appropriate description of the activity (as per the previous paragraph).

Some tasks are more variable

For the most part, most skills are relatively straightforward in assessment. But there are a few in which there are important sub-options of style. making the task more variable than is usually the case.

A great example is painting a portrait. You have the classical styles, in which great time and care is required; you have styles like Impressionism, in which speed is emphasized by the style; it might turn out three or four paintings in the normal span of time, from which the artist then selects the best one. The same is true to some extent of things like architecture and music and, well, anything creative. Including cooking, I should add!

The problem is that most skill systems don’t drill down to this level of detail. You take a skill in “cooking”, not a skill in “French Cooking” or “German Cooking” or “International Cuisine”.

If your game mechanics don’t afford you this level of detail, then a few assumptions are necessary whenever a particular style or school of creation becomes important.

1. There is a basic commonality that the skill represents, eg “Home Cooking”.
2. The GM should evaluate specialist subtypes with reference to how difficult they are relative to this basic style, and how much longer they take.
3. The difficulty applies as a modifier until the character has successfully executed examples in the required style equal to the skill level (excluding any stat contribution). So if a character has +3 in painting, they incur the penalty until they have three successes in that particular style under their belt.
4. It is recommended that the most difficult styles get a -6 modifier (d20/3d6 scale), while the most common modifiers would be -2 or -3.

It Only Looks Unfair

At first glance, it may appear that this discriminates against characters with higher skill levels, but that’s not actually the case, because these are works in the nominated style that are successfully executed to the skill level of the individual.

Characters can always choose to spend the extra time to compensate for the penalty – which means that, with a higher skill level, the odds are that they will “master” that style before a character with less skill, even though they have a higher standard of achievement.

Or they can lower their standards – that’s the underpinning foundation of the “cutting corners” subsystem – getting a successful result of a lower standard – which is why it won’t count against their target.

Dealing with Interruptions, Delays, etc

One of the examples that I’m going to present a little later is “Riding from A to B”. At the start of the trip, the character rolls his Riding Mount skill (or whatever its equivalent is). Ignoring for the moment all other considerations, what happens if, half-way through the trip, there’s an encounter with a Wandering Monster (or a Wandering Mendicant, for that matter?)

Once the encounter is resolved, the question arises: A new riding roll, or not?

Or, how about the situation in which the character is building a birdhouse and runs out of nails. No problem, he just nips off to the nearest blacksmith and orders a gross of them. “Fine,” says the Blacksmith after demanding (and accepting) payment, “Come back Wednesday.” So, days later, the craftsman collects the nails, but other things have happened in the meantime that are demanding his attention, so it turns out to be another two weeks before he can get back to working on his birdhouse. A new roll? Even though he succeeded on the first?

A lot of people would say, “The circumstances have changed. That demands a new roll.” The character may have been wounded in the wandering monster encounter, for example, or the mount. Or maybe it’s just been spooked.

Demanding a new role is punishing the PC for the GM’s introducing story to the task. They rolled once, they succeeded, the GM is fully entitled to tell the story of the task including any setbacks along the way, but because the character succeeded the first time, they should be reasonably able to expect to succeed despite such setbacks; requiring a new roll provides an additional risk of failure.

None of these interruptions were the player’s fault (unless the GM requires micromanagement to the point of keeping track of how many nails the character has left, which seems ridiculous). Nor was the player responsible for the “other things coming up” – that’s the GM’s doing again, he is responsible for plot and story.

Therefore, the same roll should resume as if there were no interruption or delay, though if the circumstances have changed, the GM is entitled to say that it takes longer because of the change. In essence, he determines a modifier to the original roll that accounts for the change in circumstances and then compensates for that modifier using the ‘extra time’ subsystem above.

Where I would draw the line is if the player decides to interrupt the journey without prompting from the GM – and even then, the scale of the interruption relative to the journey should be taken into account.

When I’m writing an article, pausing long enough to make a cup of coffee doesn’t invalidate the progress made or the expectations of continued success at the task of completing that article. Nor does interrupting long enough to go shopping, or do laundry, or cook a meal, or even play a few minutes of a video game.

If the interruption extends too far, however, I make completing the article more difficult; I risk losing contact with the thread of the narrative, forgetting things that I meant to say, and so on. That’s when a second die roll may be required. (\Note that it can also go the other way – if I return to an article refreshed and alert, and have left myself a ‘road map’ to the content, then the outcome may be better than that originally indicated).

Phased Outcomes

“I search the room.”

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“I don’t know WHAT I’m looking for, so just anything that doesn’t quite fit.”

“Okay, make your roll….”

I run search rolls as follows:

• Get the chance of this character closing his or her eyes and groping at random to find the subject of the search. That’s basically the relevant skill plus an absolutely huge negative modifier.
• The controller of the character searching makes their roll. Because of the negative modifier, they can be and should expect to fail.
• Every time the PC or NPC are able to refine the parameters of the search, they get +2 to their chance of success.
  • “I’m looking for documents that have been altered.” — plus 2.
  • “I’m focusing on the desk and the filing cabinet.” — plus 2 more.
  • “Checking for false backs, false floors, and other hidden compartments. — plus 2 more, even if there aren’t any.
  • “Checking under blotters and the like.” — plus another 2, even if there’s nothing of note hidden there.
  • “Some of the files will be larger and older than others. I’m going to look for ones that have newer papers mixed in with those that are a little yellowed with age.” — plus another 2 for more precise targeting of the search, and 2 more again for a plausible method of recognizing something suspicious. So far, that’s +12 to the chances of success.
• That sort of adjustment will only take you so far. The rest gets handled as “extra time spent” – further increasing the time spent searching until the character either gives up, or achieves success. The amount of extra time is a function of their skill and the size of the negative modifier that represents how well hidden the subject of the search is.

This is an example of a phased outcome, in which the results of the skill check are dynamically varied by in-game interaction between the character and the environment / process. The approach can be applied to everything from Search rolls to Deduction rolls to scientific analysis rolls – or Detect Trap rolls, for that matter.

Layered Outcomes

A Layered Outcome is something similar, but that doesn’t have an absolute success or failure. A good example that’s already been mentioned is executing a painting. There are so many ways in which it can be made better or worse – color, lighting, positioning, ‘cosmetic flattery’, symbolism, background. action, dynamism, appropriateness of style, recognizability of the subject(s) – that a successful artwork doesn’t even need to get all of them right. The more you get right, the higher the quality of the resulting artwork; the more regularly and routinely you get such things right, the more reputation you can accrue in terms of mastery of the art form.

You can apply this principle to almost any skill check not dealt with as a Phased Outcome.

Consider a day’s Ride from A to B, for example. Some terrain will be easier, some more challenging. It’s normal to slow down somewhat on the latter ground, and make up the time by riding harder on the easier ground. At some point in proceedings, rider or mount may be wounded (as discussed earlier), making all terrain that little bit more challenging. Fording a broad lowlands river and fording a small but fast-moving stream can be quite different challenges. Put all these together, rank them from easiest to hardest, apply -2 for each, and the principles of the phased approach tell you exactly when the character’s skill is no longer enough without slowing down, i.e. taking extra time.

GM: “You lose more time fording Hollandaize Stream than you expected because it is deeper and the terrain more rocky than you thought it would be. You were able to make up some of the lost time on the downhill slopes that afternoon, but you are still (1 or 2 standard time units) behind expectations when the sub begins to dip below the treeline. You can either make camp early or press on in gathering twilight.”

Two sentences and a decision to be made bring the entire day’s travel to life, assuming that maps are consulted regarding terrain before setting out each morning (so there’s no need to describe it en route).

Many Hands

How much help will an assistant be? How about a team of them? At what point does an action stop being about how much relevant skill you have and how well you are able to direct and manage others who are doing the work for you? When do you stop being an expert and become (shudder) an Administrator?

I’ve seen many attempts at describing the application of “many hands” to a problem. I’ve even written a few, myself! None of them have been able to provide satisfactory answers to all the questions posed above. In particular, when it comes to research teams and work gangs, things tend to get very complicated, very quickly.

I guess it’s time to take another swing at it. What I propose below is going to be some resemblance to the techniques given above, and to approaches employed to solving this problem that I’ve offered in the past – I’m going to be building from both foundations and employing stepwise refinement to the old answers in hopes of getting better, simpler, and more comprehensive answers.

One assistant

This is the simplest possible example.

• If the assistant’s skill level is within 4 of the team leader’s skill level, allowing for stat contributions, they reduce the number of standard units to 1/2, +1, and they effectively add +2 to the chances of success.
• If the assistant’s skill level is less than this, they reduce the number of standard time units by 1 and they effectively add +1 to the overall chance of success.
• The project leader makes the (adjusted) roll to determine the overall success or failure of the project.
• If they fail, the assistant then rolls with the same modifiers to chance of success to determine whether or not they made the mistake that doomed the project.
• Only then can extra time be applied to turn failure into success – GM permitting.

Even an inept assistant or apprentice can take some of the ‘heavy lifting’ out of a project or task. But supervising them takes some time and attention from the overall execution of the task. This is the simplest approach to simulating both phenomena that I can come up with.

It could be refined – the “within 4” is a very blunt, black-and-white all-or-nothing measurement – but every variation that’s more specific that I have been able to come up with adds massively to the complexity and I don’t think it’s worth the added complication.

Two assistants

The impact of multiple assistants is determined from lowest skill level to highest (you’ll see why, in a moment).

• If the weakest skilled character is within 2 skill levels, allowing for stat contributions, of the next weakest-skilled character, they add 3 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character.
• If the weakest skilled character is within 4 skill levels, they add 2 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character.
• In both the above cases, the presence of a second assistant ‘reduces’ the time requirement to 2/3, +2. Note that if the number of standard units involved is low, this can end up higher than if the second assistant wasn’t involved.
• If the weakest skilled character is more than 4 skill levels removed, they add 1 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character, and they add 1 to the time units required to complete the task.

This folds the most inept assistant’s contribution into the effective contribution of the less-inept assistant. At which point, the problem can be treated as a “single-assistant” problem.

Importantly, this shows that even completely unskilled characters can make a contribution to a project, even if it’s only supplying manual labor.

• If the project fails, the most inept assistant makes a skill check with all the applicable modifiers to see whether or not they are the ones who messed it up. If they succeed, the next most inept assistant checks, and so on.

A team of assistants

The approach outlined above becomes unwieldy when there are more than two assistants; it needs to get simplified and slimmed down. The solution is to group assistants into “buckets” of like skill level. The contributions of those in the lowest tier all accumulate and feed into the best-skilled character of the next tier up (which may elevate that character entirely out of the ‘bucket’ to which they were initially consigned. If that happens, then the remaining members of that tier have their contributions accumulate and feed to the overall team leader (the character with the highest skill), and so on, until you end up with a single character focal point and one or two assistants whose contributions are supported and enhanced by everyone else participating.

The above sounds good, but it’s easy to miss something or misunderstand something, so let’s illustrate with an example:



• Let’s say that there’s a group of eight characters working on a project. They have skills of 15, 13, 11, 5, 2, 1, 0, and 0, respectively. The project is based on 8 units of 15 minutes each, or a base time-span of 2 hours.
• Start at the top to define the ‘buckets’: 15-4=11. Two characters fit into this top ‘bucket’ – one will be the leading assistant and the other will be the second assistant.
• 11-4=7. There’s no-one who’s just one band below. 7-4=3. There’s one character in this tier.
• The remaining 4 characters occupy the bottom tier, with skills of 2, 1, 0, and 0 respectively. That gives a work party configuration as shown to the right.
• We start by assessing the group of relatively-unskilled workers relative to the 3rd assistant. If there were two individuals in that tier, it would be relative to the one with the highest total skill).
  • 2 is 3 less than 5. That’s more than 2 but less than 4, so that adds +2 to the 3rd assistant, taking his skill to 7.
  • 1 is 4 less than 5, so same deal, taking the 3rd assistant to skill 9.
  • The two characters with skill 0 each add +1 to the 3rd assistant, taking him to effective skill 11.
  • The two characters with skill 0 add 1 time unit each to the total, which becomes 10 units of 15 minutes.
  • The other two characters reduce the time requires to 2/3 and add 2, so: 10×2/3=6.666=7; +2 = 9. 9×2/3=6, +2=8.
• The third assistant is effectively equal to the 2nd assistant thanks to the unskilled workforce. That’s “within 2 skill levels” so the adds 3 to the second assistant’s value, raising it to 14. His contributions also change the time requirements: 8×2/3=5.333=6,+2=8.
• Because these sundry contributions have elevated the 2nd assistant to a higher total than the first assistant, we evaluate the latter next. 13 is within 4 of the 2nd assistant’s adjusted score, so we add +2 to that total to get 16, and adjust the time factor 8×2/3=5.333=6, +2=8.
• That leaves us with a project leader of skill 15 and a collective effort of skill 16. Which means the project leader contributes to the collective effort and not the other way around. Since this is the top two tiers, we’re into “one assistant” territory. 15 is well within 4 of 16, so this gives +2 to the total chance of success (16+2=18), and reduce the time requirement: 8×1/2=4, +1=5.
• So the grand total is effective skill 18 for 5 units of 15 minutes each, to do the work of skill 15 for 8 units of 15 minutes each. 45 minutes faster and +3 to the likelihood of success (or -3 to the chances of failure, if you prefer.
• The project leader might decide to invest extra time – an extra 15 minutes (1 time unit) still brings the project in a half-hour ahead of schedule, and takes the effective skill level from 18-20.
• Still more certainty of success is possible. An additional 2 time units takes the project back to the expected completion time of 4 hours and raises the effective skill level to 20.
• Alternately, if time is a factor, the project leader might decide to cut corners. -1 time unit (=4 total) for -2 effective skill results in skill 16 (still one better than him on his own) and completion a full hour ahead of schedule.
• He could press further ahead. – another time unit completes the effort in 45 minutes and brings the effective skill to 14. a third time unit completes the work in just 30 minutes (2 time units) and takes the effective skill to 12. To further shorten the time, he has to change time units – instead of 2 at 15, he has to use 6 at 5. Which means that shortening the time proceeds in 5-minute jumps from this point, each of which earns another -2. This may or may not be worth it, it depends on just how tight time is actually perceived to be.

Project Management

Using the above principles, you could have a workforce of thousands building a Great Pyramid over a period of several years, at least in theory. Which means that there needs to be a further refinement in the form of rules for large-scale project management.

There is a maximum size of each tier, equal to one more than the project leader’s management skill (or equivalent) divided by 4.

There is also a maximum number of tiers, equal to one less than the project leaders management skill (or equivalent) divided by 4.

In the case of our 8-person project, if the project leader only had management 12:

• Maximum Tier Size = 12/4=3, +1=4. No problem.
• Maximum number of Tiers = 12/4=3, -1, =2. Oops.

Subordinates can contribute to management skill in the same way that they contribute to a projects chances of success, or they can contribute to the project’s chances of success, but they can’t do both.

The only person with a foot in both camps is the project leader.

Furthermore, the GM can require the project leadership to be determined by effective management skill and not technical ability.

Total Subordinates

Ignoring for the moment any contributions to management by subordinates, it’s easy to calculate the total number of subordinates permitted: (X+1) x (X-1) = X^2-1, round up, where X is Management / 3.

Management Skill vs Subordinates:

1: 0 2: 0 3: 0	4: 1 5: 2 6: 3	7: 5 8: 7 9: 8	10: 11 11: 13 12: 15	13: 18 14: 21 15: 24
16: 28 17: 32 18: 35	19: 40 20: 44 21: 48	22: 53 23: 58 24: 63	25: 69 26: 75 27: 80	28: 87 29: 93 30: 99
31: 106 32: 113 33: 120	34: 128 35: 136 36: 143	37: 152 38: 160 39: 168	40: 177 41: 186 42: 195	43: 205 44: 215 45: 224
46: 235 47: 245 48: 255	49: 266 50: 277 51: 288	52: 300 53: 312 54: 323	55: 336 56: 348 57: 360	58: 373 59: 386 60: 399
61: 413 62: 427 63: 440	64: 455 65: 469 66: 483	67: 498 68: 513 69: 528	70: 544 71: 560 72: 575	73: 592 74: 608 75: 624
76: 641 77: 658 78: 675	79: 693 80: 711 81: 728	82: 747 83: 765 84: 783	85: 802 86: 821 87: 840	88: 860 89: 880 90: 899

Of course, the only way you are going to get to an effective management skill of 90 (or scores a lot lower than that) is by having an army of assistants boosting it.

But there’s a limit to how many you can have. If your skill is 12, you can have a maximum of 15 assistants pushing your management skill, at no more than +3 each. 15×3=45,+12 skill=57; less the 15 management assistants = 42. So the 12 management assistants permit you to have 42 workers contributing to the project. If your skill is improved to 13, you can have 18 assistants; 18×3=54;+12=66; less 18=46. So that gets you another 4 workers.

The one exception to all of the above restriction is in the “relatively unskilled” category at the bottom, which can have one member for each point of relevant skill in their supervisor, with stat bonuses, to a maximum of 10 per person in the next tier up.

Bureaucrats and laborers make a massive difference. Even if they are only contributing +1 each, and with a cap of 10 for each person in the second-lowest tier, that can easily run to +50 on its own. Pf course, they will expect to get paid….

With that exception taken into account, our Project Leader with a management skill of 12 is still in trouble – he needs one more tier, which he can only get at skill level 15. In order to properly handle the crew of 8, he needs a pair of subordinates assisting him to supervise. Or he could detail the first assistant to that role (so that he is no longer contributing directly to the success of the project), but reducing the tiers to be managed by 1. At which point, he no longer needs that support, but that’s the way of management, isn’t it? Someone always seems to be superfluous and contributing nothing!

Or is that being too cynical?

One final note

Don’t look at this subsystem too hard when it comes to military units. While the general principles would still apply, the numbers could be and would be vastly different, depending on the way the military think and are structured in the era in question. Do NOT presume that what we consider best practice today is in any way applicable to other time periods; the number of supporting non-combatants varies enormously with communications and information technology.

Ten Examples

I’m going to close out this article with 10 examples. These will be very brief, concentrating on the size and number of standard time units that makes the most sense, but highlighting how those units play into questions of extra time, shortcuts, and so on. They are not intended to be comprehensive.

Example #1: Constructing a Castle

The construction of a full-blown castle, including interiors, furniture, etc, can easily run into man-centuries – but a large labor force is used to knock that back into a more reasonable number.

Depending on scale and location, the right choice could be 3-4 units @ 10 years, or more, but it’s more likely to be 6-8 units @ 5 years each.

Natural advantages or a large workforce could reduce this to 5-10 units @ 1 year each, but this is about as unlikely as the ten-year interval. Recruiting an army of mages with Levitate wands would definitely put you into the shorter time-frame, however!

Example #2: Constructing a Fortification

Fortifications tend to come in two distinct varieties: “Permanent” structures like Forts, Towers, Strongholds, Great Walls, etc, and “temporary” Field Fortifications that will be abandoned or taken down the next morning (no-one bothers removing Earthworks, though)

Permanent fixtures are simpler than castles, but otherwise employ the same basic engineering and management approaches. That “simpler than” reduces the size of time units by one step, as a general rule of thumb – so instead of units of 5 years, you’re talking basic units of a year, and throwing lots of manpower at the problem might just get you down to 6-monthly or even 3-monthly intervals. 10 x 6-monthly units is still 5 full calendar years, remember.

Field fortifications also tend to use numbers to speed the process, but those numbers tend to be ‘whoever’s at hand’. Sometimes, a force will be split – one third defend the workers while the other 2/3 create the fortification.

Most field fortifications are constructed in less than a calendar day, a few might be a full week of ‘real time’. But numbers are used to compress those a full time unit – so 4-hour units, and occasionally 1-day units are the general answer, respectively.

Example #3: Riding from A to B

Depending on the GM’s tastes, this either encompasses a full day’s travel, a half-day’s travel, or maybe a full week’s travel.

But a ‘day’ in this sense (absent modern technology) means daylight hours – 8-10 hours.

So that gives a range of possible correct answers:

• 1 week of 24-hour days: 7 @ 1 day.
• 24-hr days: 6 @ 4 hours.
• 12-hr half-days: 6 @ 2 hours.
• 1 week of Daylight travel: 7 @ 1 day, reduce distance covered.
• 1 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 1 hour.
• 1/2 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 30 minutes.
• 1/4 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 15 minutes.

Example #4; Building a temporary bridge

Unless you’re talking about two rope-lines spanning a river or a ravine, you’re generally speaking of 24 man-weeks. You can go longer to represent something more permanent, or shorter to represent something more transitory – but strong enough for armies and/or vehicles to cross.

These are very sensitive to the number of workers pressed into duty.

• Much more permanent: 24×4=96 man-weeks, generally /10 people so 10 weeks, so 1-5 @ 2 weeks or 1-10 @ 1 week.
• More permanent: 24×2=48 man-weeks, generally /8-to-10, so 4-6 @ 1 week.
• More permanent II: Still 48 man-weeks, but /20-to-40 workers: 8-16 @ 3 days.
• Basic standard: 24 man-weeks, 8-16 workers = 3-7 @ 3 days.
• Basic standard: 24 man-weeks, 24-32 workers = 5-7 @ 1 day
• Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 5-10 workers = 3-6 @ 3 days
• Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 10-20 workers = 4-8 @ 1 day
• Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 20-40 workers = 4-8 @ 6 hours, halved for 24-hour construction
• Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 2-3 workers = 4-9 @ 3 days
• Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 4-6 workers = 2-4 @ 3 days or 3-7 @ 2 days (yes, I know that’s not on the chart)
• Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 6-12 workers = 3-7 @ 1 day
• Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 12-36 workers = 2 – 7 @ 6 hours, halved for 24-hour construction

Note that technology can also be a time divisor. It’s possible to accomplish in minutes or seconds what would have taken a week in more primitive times.

Example #5: Painting a Portrait

Traditional styles can take a man-month to execute, but will more commonly take 1/2 that. So the correct unit is 3-day intervals.

Plainer, simpler styles can take half that much, so 2-day or 1-day intervals.

Speedy styles can take 1/4 that, so 6- or 2-hour intervals.

Preliminary / design sketches can take 1/16 of that, or less,so 1-5 minute intervals.

Example #6: Breaking a Bronco

The total time, from what I’ve read / heard, is 20 minutes to an hour. So 2-6 ten minute intervals or 4-12 5-minute intervals.

Example #7: Writing a Computer Program

It can take more than 1,000 hours to write a good program, tested and debugged. More sophisticated programs like web browsers can be 10-100 times this much, but they have programming teams focusing on different aspects of the development.

When I wrote a relational-database app for the commodore-128, it took me around 900 hours, and I knew exactly what I was doing – creating something with a similar look-and-feel (but restricted functions) to something that I had used professionally..

As a typical rule of thumb, 1/2 to 2/3 of the time is spend finding and fixing bugs.

At the other end of the scale, 10 minutes is enough time to do something of extremely limited application – what I call “See Spot Run” programming. Most useful apps, at the smallest end, are 120 minutes of work, minimum.

This sets up a table of exponential factors:

Difficulty Modifier	Complexity	Time	Time Units
+8 +6 +4	1 see-spot run 2 see-spot run 4 see-spot run	= 10 mins = 20 mins = 40 mins	1 minute 2 minutes 5 minutes
+2 +0 -1	8 see-spot run 12 see-spot run    = 1 useful app 2 x complexity	= 80 mins = 120 mins = 2 hrs = 4 hrs	10 minutes 15 minutes 30 minutes
-2 -3 -4	4 x complexity 16 x complexity 32 x complexity	= 8 hrs = 16 hrs = 32 hrs = 3 days	1 hour 2 hours 4 hours
-6 -8 -10	64 x complexity 128 x complexity 256 x complexity	= 64 hrs = 6 days = 128 hrs = 12 days = 2 weeks = 256 hrs = 4 weeks (1)	1 day 2 days 3 days
-12 -14 -16	512 x complexity 1024 x complexity    = 1 major app 2 x complexity	= 512 hrs = 8 weeks = 1024 hrs = 16 weeks    = 3 man-months = 2048 hrs = 32 weeks    = 7 man-months	1 week 2 weeks 1 month
-19 -22 -25	4 x complexity 8 x complexity    = 1 major app 16 x complexity	= 64 weeks    = 14 man-months (2) = 128 weeks    = 30 man-months = 256 weeks    = 60 months = man-5 years	2 months 3 months 6 months
-30 -37 -45	32 x complexity 64 x complexity    = 1 colossal project (3) 128 x complexity	= 10 man-years = 20 man-years = 40 man-years	1 year 2 years 5 years
Notes:    (1) This is about the maximum for one programmer on his or her own.    (2) This is about the maximum for a computer game of serious sophistication.    (3) Google itself is an apt comparison. Or Windows.

Example #8: Checking For Traps

Total time is generally going to be 10, 5, or 1 minute, depending on the GM’s inclinations.

I would actually take those inclinations out of the picture and instead base it on the difficulty of accessing a tell-tale – any telltale.

If the mechanism is hidden within a thick stone statue – one that takes a combined strength of 20-something to shift and 30-odd to lift, for example, it’s incredibly hard to examine the mechanism, or even to know that it’s there, to say nothing of disarming it. So that’s a 10-minute total and a 1-minute interval.

On the other hand, if there’s an obvious tell – gears on display (intimidating) but behind glass, with some sort of yellowish gas wafting around within the enclosure, things are fairly obvious, wouldn’t you say? So that’s a 1-minute total and a 10-second interval.

And, in between, we have the standard – at 5 minutes total time, and a 30 second interval.

Example #9: Picking a Lock

Picking a lock is in line with the “obvious trap” example above. But trained escapologists can do it in 1-tenth the time (seriously) – so that would be 1-second intervals.

Example #10: Surveying a scene

The final example to throw you way is simply looking out at the horizon, or the walls, from left to right, and making whatever sense you can of what you see there.

This is primed for the Phased approach, in which things are presented (or not) in order of obviousness, from most to least, until the perception roll made on behalf of the entire party runs out.

Broader Application: Skill-like abilities

I want to wrap this article up by pointing out that some game systems give selected characters specific abilities that can be considered “skill-like” – though this often varies by edition.

Everything from a Ranger’s tracking abilities to a rogue’s Pick-pocketing capacity can be seen in this way – and that permits them to be subjected to this set of rules.

There are lots of benefits to doing so, but especially the interplay between difficulty, ability, taking extra time or cutting corners, and phased or layered outcomes.

These abilities are transformed from “all or nothing” to nuanced, and responsive to the controlling players’ will and intentions.

That can only be a good thing.

Looking for more tips on skills?

The Blogdex is the place to go. Start with the page devoted to Rules & Mechanics.

After that, RPG Theory and House Rules Theory and Game Physics are all covered on the Metagame page.

Puzzles & Mysteries are dealt with on the Adventures page.

And, of course, huge amounts of the Characters page is likely to be relevant.

Have fun!

I employ a structured and systematic approach to NPC design. Today, I’m going to give readers the low-down – everything they need to use it for themselves.

The system revolves around a text document or sheet of notepaper, and an 8×4 grid on another sheet of notepaper – and something to write with.

As ideas come to me or are generated, they get listed in the text document / notepaper and numbered, and then allocated to one or more specific positions in the matrix. That’s the ‘structured’ part of the approach.

Those ideas are frequently generated based on the spaces to be filled – that’s where the ‘systematic’ part of the approach comes in.

The columns of the matrix deal with the usage / relevance within the campaign of the content indexed; the rows categorize the content by type.

I deal fully with the first column (with the occasional side-trip into the second column) to start with – and for many NPCs, that’s as far as I need to go.

The Columns

Column 1: Immediate Needs

The first column deals with the attributes that the NPC needs to have to satisfy his or her purpose or role in the immediate adventure, i..e. the first one in which they are to appear.

Every NPC is created for a purpose, even if that purpose is nothing more than “there would logically be someone.” This column exists to make sure that the NPC is fit for that purpose.

Column 2: Interesting & Unique

I like to make most of my NPCs at least a little distinctive. If their role in the intended adventure is minor, there doesn’t need to be too much in this column, but if the NPC is too have a more substantial role in the adventure, it might need to be more substantial, and if the NPC is to be a focal point, they definitely need significant entries in this column.

Column 3: Long-Term Usefulness

If the NPC is intended to be a recurring character, this column contains material related to any anticipated future appearances, even if those plans are vague at the time of creation.

However, just because there are entries in this column, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s certain that they will appear in future adventures; this simply prepares for the possibility, and ensures consistency over those potential repeat appearances by listing attributes that might make them useful in a future appearance.

In particular, I like every NPC to have an ongoing storyline of their own, a personal life character arc that the PCs are going to intersect at one or more points. This is where ideas for the NPCs future get listed.

Column 4: Long-term Potential

Even more vague and nebulous, and less-likely to ever actually materialize in game, this column deals with in-adventure roles that the character might occupy, depending on all sorts of X-factors – the course of the campaign, prior interaction with PCs, possible future adventures, and so on.

Or, sometimes, the lack of same. One NPC that I created was a businessman’s secretary, and in this column I noted that every time the PCs interacted with that businessman, he would have a different secretary. Nothing about why, just an ongoing minor plot point about the businessman burning through Secretaries at a relatively extreme rate.

As it happens, the businessman never became a recurring character, so this trait of the ‘secretary revolving door’ was never triggered or explained; the idea is still out there, ready to be grafted onto another character should it fit.

The Rows

Row 1: Concept / Archetype

The first row deals with broad ideas that define the NPC. These then act as guidelines to the development of content in the other Rows.

Row 2: Stats & Abilities

This deals with things that I need the NPC to actually be able to do. Sometimes there’s a lot of content in this Row, sometimes there’s not.

Row 3: Equipment & Possessions

This row frequently has only one or two entries; the contents are not considered an exhaustive listing, these are just the items that are potentially significant.

Row 4: Personality

Depending on the NPC in question, there might be a lot of little details here, or there might by only one or two, which might be described more expansively. There can even be a single brief referent which signposts greater depth – “Max Klinger from MASH”, for example.

Row 5: History & Motivations

It’s natural to segue from a character’s mental and emotional state to questions of why they are doing whatever they are supposed to do within the adventure. There’s nowhere near enough space to be comprehensive. This area of the matrix only contains the most important, key, points.

Row 6: Ambitions & Plans

From the reasons they are doing whatever they are doing to what they actually hope to accomplish. It’s worth noting that this might have absolutely nothing to do with the role that they are take within the immediate adventure beyond leading to a circumstance of “wrong place, wrong time” – but it would mean that they weren’t in that place at that time for no reason at all.

Every character should always have a reason to be wherever they are when encountered, even if that reason is “habit” or “routine”.

Row 7: Relationships

Entries to this area of the matrix get an additional notation – a single asterisk if the relationship is to a PC, a double if it’s to a significant NPC.

Row 8: Visuals

Entries in this row are often single-word elements that can provide the foundations for a narrative text-block description.

Abstract Example

I put hours of effort into creating a visual example to present only to realize the morning after (as I write this) that what was supposed to be dragon-scales looked like baked beans in tomato sauce. One hasty edit later yielded the image below – one that I’m not totally happy with, but which will at least do the job.

Trying to fit a substantial amount of text into the label space was another challenge, and again, I’m not totally satisfied, but the results are good enough.

Idea / Content Generation

There are six sources that I rely on for ideas. The first three only generate content, the last three both generate content and filter other ideas to exclude unwanted ideas.

1. Idea Generators posted at Campaign Mastery, especially those covered in The Characterization Puzzle series, and
2. those described / listed in the Breaking Through Writer’s Block series (yes, there is some overlap).
3. Stereotypes & Variations Thereof
4. Playing against type (the opposite or inversion of a stereotype)
5. Free Association based on the intended adventure role
6. Free Association based on being different to recently-appearing characters
7. Free Association based on being different to characters that have occupied a similar role in the past.

Intended Role as a Filter

The number 1 filter is to reject ideas that don’t contribute towards the character serving their intended campaign purpose (or worse yet, actively oppose that purpose), at least for the first column. There’s greater flexibility in the other three.

Recent Characters as a Filter

This is less important in the first column but significant in the third and fourth and absolutely critical in the second. At the same time, though, you have to be careful not to go too far – the character must at least be plausible within their role, and you can only justify deviating from that plausibility so far before you enter “fish out of water” territory. Sometimes, that’s acceptable or even desirable, but most of the time, it does nothing but erode verisimilitude without gain.

Similar Characters as a Filter

This filter follows the same pattern as the previous one, but instead of looking at the characters that have recently appeared in the campaign, it seeks comparison with others placed in similar roles within past adventures.

How similar is ‘similar’? Every GM is different. Is a Personal Assistant the same thing as a Secretary? Is a Gopher too much like a Personal Assistant to tolerate similarities in character traits?

It’s often a good idea to view the character holistically when making these judgments, because its easy to confuse function with personality. Two characters who excel in similar roles for entirely different and distinct reasons are probably distinctive enough to be going on with. But, again, your tolerance levels for such things, and those of your players, might be different to mine / my players’.

Regardless of where they come from, you need a source of ideas. Once you have one, you’re ready to move on.

The Process

I like to start with the biggest ideas, the broadest strokes. Sometimes those will belong in column 1, sometimes column 2, and on rare occasions, columns 3 or 4.

Ideas should be expressed as a single, short, declarative sentence, one to a line. Number each and place a number in the matrix in the appropriate cell.

It’s worth observing that for reasons of clarity, I made the example above a lot neater and more legible than the real thing would probably be. In particular, division of each row into sub-rows probably wouldn’t happen unless you were using pre-ruled notepaper.

Everything that you’ve already listed becomes context and inspiration for everything else – inconsistencies have to be avoided or explained Immediately, and everything else that even gets considered has to be judged in light of the context provided by the existing content.

At the same time, though, some ideas can explicitly nuance, refine, color, or shade that context. Even at the end of this process, nothing is set in immovable blocks of stone.

I also want to remind readers to follow the principles outlined in Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep and Holistic NPCs: Creating Special Characters!

The first column – Immediate Needs

Only list those items that are absolutely essential to an internally-consistent character on this pass. I can’t emphasize that enough.

1. Ramifications & Expressions Of Core Concepts

The first items that I look for or try to generate are any logical consequences or ramifications of the core concept. Is there anything that the character logically has to have about them to make the core concept work?

Secondly (but usually at the same time), how can that core concept manifest itself so that the players & PCs can observe it – or how can it be concealed, if I don’t want them to be able to observe it?

2. Additional concepts

One primary idea is rarely enough for a realistic characterization. So the next step is to bolster the main concept with something supplemental or secondary. While this will often go into cell 1, column 1, there will be be times when it’s a better fit in column 2 because it makes this character more unique.

3. Further Ramifications & Expressions

The obvious third step is to further list ramifications and methods of expressing the additional concepts, and to note any variation on the existing information that result from an interaction of the concepts.

4. Stats & Abilities – Implied and Explicit thoughts

There may be one or more entries in this cell as a result of steps 1-3 above, already, so there may be no further work needed. So the focus has to be on the role within the adventure and any stat levels or abilities that will be needed to fulfill that role. These are generally expressed in general / relative terms, and sometimes relative to a particular PC.

5. Equipment & Possessions

This category might well be empty if there’s nothing noteworthy. On this pass, specifically exclude anything that comes with the archetype / character level as a default assumption – for example, if you are generating a medium-high level D&D / Pathfinder Fighter, it can be taken as read that they have a magic weapon, enchanted armor, and possibly a magical shield as well.

If the character were a Lich with multiple levels in Fighter (a “Martial Lich” being the core concept) then they might have Necromantic Weaponry and Armor – and that would definitely count as something noteworthy.

6. Personality & Focus on Distinctiveness

A general personality type can often be summed up in just one or two words – such overarching summaries are what generally get listed in this pass in column 1.

But you rarely think of these ideas in isolation, they usually come with thoughts regarding distinctiveness or uniqueness – so, at the same time, skip ahead to enter those details into column 2.

7. History & Motivations

There’s certainly (and intentionally) not enough room for a detailed biography or psychological assessment. Instead, one or two critical moments / concepts, which can be built upon later, will do. It will often be the case that there’s nothing critical to the intended role in the next adventure that needs to be listed in this space, though if there are to be any particular motivations to assist or resist cooperating with the PCs, they should be spelled out at this point.

8. Ambitions & Plans

For the first time, this looks beyond the immediate needs, because nothing makes a character seem more integrated into the campaign world than having some ambition or plan, especially if it goes beyond the immediate. That said, it needs some concrete manifestation within the immediate encounter, which is why it gets listed at this point.

For example, a functionary might have a poster or painting of a beach, or snow-capped mountains, and something to indicate that they are saving for a trip. It doesn’t matter how near or far this ambition is – its in-progress, is all you need to know.

9. Relationships

At their simplest, inter-character relationships are a series of nested bubbles, with other characters occupying a position within a bubble.

The number and definitions of such bubbles are matters for the GM to decide; often, genre will make a difference.

An example hierarchy of bubbles might be:

   a. Complete Strangers
      b. Reputation of one known to the other
         c. Each known to the other by Reputation
            d. Mutual Acquaintance
               e. One’s Friend is an acquaintance of the other
                  f. Mutual Friend
                     g. One is directly connected to an important NPC of the other
                        h. Directly connected to a PC

In the diagram example above, this has been simplified to a three-tier system:
   a. No direct connections to anyone noteworthy
      b. Direct connection to an important NPC;
         c. Direct connection to a PC.

Decide on your strata of relatedness and indicate if the NPC being generated has such a connection, and if so, to whom and at what level it is.

10. Visuals

There will often be nothing in this category at the end of this pass. But sometimes there will be a significant marker to be placed here.

I once generated a character whose core concept was “Dumb Blonde” (a cliche, and recognized as such). In this category, I listed “brunette, dies hair b/c she feels more comfortable as a blonde”. And, notably, in the stats section, “Not as dumb as she likes to pretend” and “Shy, lowers expectations.” — The cliche in this case is just a gateway to a far richer and more plausible characterization.

The Second Column – Distinctiveness

The second pass fills in enough items in Column 2 to make the character distinctive, i.e. to pass the ‘filtering’ idea-generation tests.

You go through the same steps as above, but this time with a different focus. You shouldn’t list anything that doesn’t directly contribute toward making the character unique / distinctive, but you also should not skip any space, even if the decision is ‘nothing to enter here, move on’.

Beware of making the character too complicated to roleplay while you are doing three or four other things at the same time, for obvious reasons of practicality. And if voices / accents aren’t amongst your core skills as a GM (they certainly aren’t in mine), you may need to note a way of working around that limitation – or you may need to deliberately exclude them from your creation.

If you list only the essentials in this pass, you generally don’t go too far wrong.

Column-spanning entries

If you look closely at the example matrix above, you’ll note that some entries appear to span two adjacent columns – I actually did my best to make this fairly obvious, but haven’t explained it until now.

An example is entry #1 on that example matrix. By now, you know that this refers to the core concept of the character – by having it span both columns 1 (Immediate Needs) and 2 (Distinctiveness), it is a note to yourself that you think this core concept is itself a point of uniqueness or distinctiveness about this NPC. Obviously, that won’t always be the case.

A column-spanning entry, also occasionally thought of as a ‘bridging’ entry because it bridges the gap between two different sets of considerations for the character design, simply means that you think that entry is relevant to both.

It’s not impossible to have a single entry bridge all four columns, but that would be comparatively rare.

The First Column – Clarity & Nuance

The same ten steps again – but this time, you want the uniqueness / distinctiveness to manifest in the immediate at-hand appearance / behavior of the character, so you are looking for ways to do that. Again, you want this to be something the players, and of course the PCs, to notice.

Assessment #1: Fit For Purpose

By this point you have the first two columns pretty much fitted out with everything you need for immediate play – at least in theory. Time, then, to take stock: Is the character that you have created sufficiently fit for the intended purpose within the forthcoming adventure?

The inclusion of the term “sufficiently” is an important one. It’s entirely possible to have a character that is only just adequate to the immediate intended purpose because you can already see glimmers of a character arc or longer-term functionality for the character – purposes for which they are sufficiently well-suited to compensate for the immediate shortcomings.

So this can be a quite nuanced decision.

Decision #1: Start Over or Accept

If the answer is “no”, then file this character away for the next time you need to create an NPC – either this one will or won’t be a fit for that purpose, but it’s not a fit for this one – and go back to square one.

If the answer is “yes”, then you can proceed to Assessment #2.

Assessment #2: Recurring or One-Off?

No-one can see all ends, but it’s often possible to see glimmers of potential. Sometimes players relate particularly strongly to an NPC, encouraging the GM to give than NPC a recurring role; you can’t be certain of that in advance.

A useful metaphor can be the campaign as the painting of a scene, and the NPCs, the tones and shades of paint. Sometimes, having used a particular color, you’re done with it; sometimes, you can use it again for something else, especially if you mix it with a different color to create a tonal variation.

Suggestion: One Toe In The Water

It can often be a good idea unless this NPC is deliberately to make a one-time appearance, to dip one toe into the water. That means that instead of a full pass through columns 3 and 4, you simply list one or two entries of ways that you might reuse the NPC if the campaigns’ long-term plotline develops in a particular direction – that’s usually more the result of the tension between the players and GM pulling the campaign in the direction they want it to go, and isn’t particularly subject to accurate prediction in advance.

Or it might be that you can see a definite future role for this character in one or more adventures, in which case, the choice will be “recurring” and it should be given the full treatment.

Assessment #3: Potential Roles in Future Adventures

That leads into Assessment #3, spelled out in the section title above. Remember that a lot of water can flow under the bridge in between – sometimes life for an NPC can be fairly crappy. So you’re looking mostly at ways that the unmodified character can or logically would make a return appearance, AND ways that the character can evolve to achieve suitability for a different role in a future adventure.

Sometimes, that evolution can be positive – someone gets a degree, or gets promoted, or gets lucky in some other way; sometimes it’s not, and oftentimes you have a blend of good and bad.

Make note of any contradictions in assumptions – if a character is evolving, they may no longer fit into a picture for which the character is currently suited. But otherwise, don’t sweat them.

“If the character evolves toward Role X, they can be used as a flunky in Adventure Y.

“If not, they could be used as the Victim in Adventure Z.”

Decision #2: Commit or Further Develop

Time to fish or cut bait. You already know that the character fills your immediate adventure needs; the question is whether or not you have good reason to invest additional time, attention, and creative juices into them, or if you should commit to the character as they stand.

If the character is likely to have a recurring role, or if there’s some potential for a repeat appearance somewhere down the track, then the answer should be “Further Develop”; if not, then “Commit” and be done with it.

If you choose to “Commit”, skip the next couple of steps (labeled “Further Development,” logically enough, and head straight down to the “Commit” stages of the process. Otherwise, move on to the steps listed below.

Further Development: Column 3

Before you start on Column 3, you need to make absolutely sure that you understand the differences between columns 3 and 4.

Column 3, “Long-term usefulness” is about adventures that you already have at least vague plans for, and is about what makes this character potentially useful within those specific adventures.

Column 4 is more speculative. It’s investing in the potential of the character to be useful in the long-term; that potential might never be tapped, that depends on all sorts of factors beyond your control at this time.

Each of these columns has one additional nuance – “Character as is” or “Character evolution”, as suggested above. But “Character as is” holds a particular trap.

As shown in Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background, “Character As Is” doesn’t meant that the character will not or should not evolve following their immediate appearance – on the contrary, they definitely should! It means that the evolution of the character does not relate to making them fit for a future role, it’s just the passage of time manifesting itself.

If you can make that evolution some consequence of their appearance in the immediate adventure, i.e. interaction with the PCs, so much the better, for what should be fairly obvious reasons..

So, having clarified all that, go down column 3 and think about your plans for the future of the campaign, and how this character can fit into them. Make notes on any required character development that would be needed, and don’t be afraid to say to yourself “this character could potentially fill role X, but there are others better suited to that”.

Further Development: Column 4

Once you’ve gone through the eight rows looking for connections to existing plans, it’s time to go through them looking for future potentials. Be as speculative as you want, but bear in mind the probability of those speculations being relevant – if development effort never gets used, it’s essentially wasted time.

I love characters who can be transformed by a plot twist in their personal or professional lives into something completely different. A key theme of my superhero campaign at the moment is “Allies becoming enemies, and enemies becoming Allies”, and there have been several examples of that happening within the campaign already. I’ll mention a few by name without going into specifics (there isn’t enough time for that here, and many of these developments have been described in other posts already):

• Voodoo Willy.
• Thanos (see: Pieces of Creation: Mortus)
• Behemoth, founding member of the team.
• House Ares of Demon (limited)
• E-III
• Dr Heinreich Vossen, the Monster Maker
• Skygge
• UNIT
• Holo (ongoing)
• Dr Muerte (limited)
• Maynor Estuado Morales
• The Rheezok (ongoing)
• The Zhehu (ongoing)
• Three Hazelwiches (ongoing)

Those are, I think, enough to show an ongoing pattern. Some of the Reformations came easily, and some of them required significant effort to achieve. Some seemed almost inevitable, others seemed highly improbable before they happened. In some cases, the current relationship is more a netter of Neutrality than full alliance. And there’s still lots of scope for relations to sour.

But it’s enough to demonstrate the concept.

Further Development: Back to Assessment #1

Once you’ve finished going through column 4, it’s time to go back to assessment #1. Columns 3 and 4 can amount to significant revision of the character design, or more specifically, making room for the possibilities can create that sort of revision. So the assessment process needs to be redone, just to make sure you haven’t made a mess of the immediate plans.

Continue through the assessment process until you reach decision #2, which should now flow automatically to the “Commit” process below, because you’ve already done the “Further Development” that you can anticipate as being useful.

Commit: Concept, Description, Personality, Manifestations, Other notes

It’s time to turn the compiled notes into narrative text, ready to refer to. This is the first stage of turning concept into executed reality. After this is done, you can attach whatever hard numbers you consider necessary and have an NPC ready to run.

As you can tell from the above, I’ve subdivided the Commit process into 5 semi-stages, each of which is contained within its own narrative block.

Commit: Concept & Role in Adventure

These are notes from you to you. It’s probably never going to be necessary for a player to read them. As such, be as succinct and to-the-point as you can be – you will have a lot on your plate when the time comes to reference them, remember.

Commit: Description

This is the first narrative block that is likely to be read, in whole or in part, to the players. I tend toward brief semi-paragraphs that can be inserted into the adventure as seems reasonable; there are lots of occasions when the full details won’t become apparent until after some level of interaction between NPC and PCs. I’ve lots of advice for making these more compact and more useful, presented following the rest of the Commit process.

Commit: Personality

Ideally, you never want to quote from this section; instead, the manifestation of personality in play should be such that the players could recreate this section.

The real world is rarely so generous. Accordingly, I divide this information block in two, which I have listed separately. This part is one big paragraph that outlines the personality, and any psychological quirks and their (apparent) sources.

Commit: Manifestations

The second part of describing the Personality is a series of small memos-to-self on how to convey the personality to the players – how it will manifest in appearance, speech, mindset, etc.

But I also throw in any manifestations of other parts of the character design that should be noted – think back to the “dumb blonde” example.

Commit: Other Notes

Finally, I synopsize related notes from columns 3 and 4 into a coherent passage of text, again essentially a memo-to-self. It’s important to spend time on this; while you should remember everything clearly, having just compiled it, once the immediate appearance of the character is complete, you might not even look at these notes for months or years. Your thinking now needs to be completely clear to the you that will be reading the notes then, and that can be more easily said than done.

I have seen others suggest waiting a day or two and then returning to these notes just to make sure that they are clear. The problem is that this is long enough that important details may be lost to memory, and not long enough that all the important details will be forgotten – so it neither fully tests the notes you’ve made nor fully protects you from any inadequacy.

Unfortunately, the only alternative is to either wait longer (even more dangerous) or spend what feels like an unnecessary amount of time getting it all on paper here and now. Which isn’t much of a choice at all, really.

Tips, Tools, Techniques, and Further Reading

There’s lots of content here on Campaign Mastery that can help you polish your creations and the narrative used to describe them. I thought it worth the effort to list some of the most useful:

• The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative
• Stealth Narrative – Imputed info in your game
• Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative
• The Flunkie Equation – quick and easy Hors d’Combat
• How Much NPC Description Is Enough?
• An Excess Of Character: Faster NPCs

There are also a number of race / species oriented articles that will apply in some cases:

• Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species
• The Four Frontiers Of ‘Alien’
• Ergonomics and the Non-human
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves

So that’s the more systematic method of designing NPCs. This is a process that I use regularly (though I haven’t previously formalized it) and can vouch for. The intention is to invest prep time in the parts of the NPC that will matter, while not ignoring the longer-term potential of the character being created.

Sure, you can just whip out a set of dice and start rolling stats, then try and hammer and file the resulting character into shape – changing the adventure as necessary. It can be a lot of fun reducing Chaos to Order, and if your improv skills are up to it, you can save a lot of prep time – time that you might not have (we all lead busy lives these days).

And every now and then, it will all go pear-shaped on you. While there’s lots of advice here at Campaign Mastery and elsewhere on how to recover from these disasters, its usually better to avoid them in the first place.

That’s where this article fits in. Hopefully, readers will find it useful!

Cuisine is one of the ultimate distillations of culture. This is how RPGs can harness this fact.

Introduction

I watch a lot of travel documentaries and short videos, especially those that compare cultures. Not only are they inherently interesting to me, they give me vital cultural reference for games that take place in those nations, or that feature NPCs from that part of the world. On top of that, they can provide foundational building blocks when creating cultures that don’t exist in the real world, be they alien or Elven or whatever.

A recurring theme is that, to truly assimilate the local culture, you need to eat what the locals eat, and try to understand how that is reflective of the populace and their history.

Seems obvious, right? But apparently a lot of tourists don’t feel that way – for whatever reason, they seek out the food that is most like what they eat at home. They have that luxury because the modern world ensures a diffusion of major world cultures into any and every regional destination anywhere in the world.

If an American comes to Australia, lots of the foods will be exotic to them, but they will have no trouble finding something that will be palatable. If a Canadian visits Poland, they might be a little more challenged, but there will still be something they can access that will be at least vaguely similar to what they might eat at home, and so on.

The In-game Culinary Experience

In a Fantasy campaign, there will be little choice – you will eat like a local, whether you like it or not, unless moving in the most rarefied strata of society, and possibly even then. And the same is true when visiting an alien world in a Sci-Fi or Superhero game; the absence of engagement between the two cultures makes diffusion of one into the other problematic if not impossible. You either bring food with you, or you eat like a local.

Even in a Pulp campaign, there would be insufficient contact for there to be much diffusion. Again, in general, you have to eat like a local or go hungry.

That makes the food a cultural touchstone that – with a little research and imagination – can be evergreen within a campaign. Yet, looking back, I could count on one hand the number of campaigns that had even touched on this, let alone made active use of it – with fingers to spare.

Specifics

In my Zenith-3 / superhero campaign, one of the PCs has decided to be a foodie, inspired by an ongoing in-joke in which a semi-divine being cooks up exotic muffins and sympathetic refreshments which appear each morning on the pillow next to the team leader – no matter where she is. If she relocates somewhere exotic, it might take a while before they start turning up, but they will catch up with her eventually. Because this divinity was supposed to be one the greatest chefs in existence, I searched out a whole mess of exotic 5-star culinary creations (with pictures). This became a social ritual and bonding experience between the PCs within the campaign.

It occasionally gets brought up in the Pulp campaign that I co-GM.

And, most recently, it got a mention in my Dr Who campaign because he was visiting a culture that was home to a really exotic life-form, and their concept of nourishment helped cement verisimilitude for the species.

I have a vague memory that the subject got mentioned once or twice in a Traveler campaign a long time ago – but I’m not sure of that, so I’m not counting it.

And that’s it.

I already had, in the back of my mind, an article exploring these matters, when my inbox served up an article by Atlas Obscura about Fan-culture fictional food (link later) as a bonding agent within a given sub-community that crystallized the notion. The latter part of this article owes its existence to the above article. The first section covers the content that I already had in mind.

Research

To be fair, until modern times and the wonders of the internet, it was hard to properly research the subject. Unless you bought a cookbook focusing on a specific cuisine, all you had to work with was whatever you knew locally.

But Google Search is a perpetual exercise in the old programming maxim of GIGO – “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Unless your search term is highly specific, highly directed and purposeful, it’s blind luck whether or not you find something useful.

The last time I visited my father, he got me to help him figure out why he was having so much trouble searching out recipes on Pinterest (conclusion, after considerable testing and experimentation: parts of the Pinterest infrastructure don’t play nice with the Firefox browser). But he made the point, in making the request, that there were thousands of recipes and variations posted there. I forget the exact recipe he was looking for – Asian Chicken with Plum Sauce maybe? – but the point wasn’t lost on me, because a number of the exotic muffins (see the text insert above) were also Pinterest-derived.

The process that I use these days starts with deciding what the direction should be, entering that into a Google Image search, and selecting the item that looks most interesting. Once you have a target, “Open Link In New Tab” (or the non-Chrome equivalent) brings up the page on which the image is featured. Much of the time, there are little or no specifics included – to get those, you often have to add ‘recipe’ to the search term – but I prefer to start with the more general search because it helps refine the ideas and provide additional inspiration. If I need to, I can then refine the search term and add ‘recipe’.

I’ll go into where the process can go from there, a little later in the article.

First though, I want to focus on getting that Direction.

Article Road-map

There are nine types of connection between a culture and its cuisine:

• National Character I: Reflections
• National Character II: Nationalism Amplification
• Echos Of History I: Tribulations Of Yesteryear
• Echos Of History II: Past Glories
• Sublimations Of The Forbidden
• Osmotic Pastimes
• Celebratory Specifics
• Religious Expressions
• Yesterday’s Favorites

Each of these needs specific examination. I particularly want to call attention to the last item on the list, because it speaks to generational change and nostalgia and the role that they play.

After that, there are a couple of broader topics that need scrutiny:

• Environment & Local Ingredient Restrictions
• Stories Of Sun and Rain
• You Need A National Character
• You Need National Pastimes
• Specific-Occasion Cuisine
• One or Many? The Ubiquitous vs Multiple Expressions
• Abstract / Narrative References

And then, we get into the parts inspired by the Atlas Obscura article:

• Blind Culinary Creation
• Directed Culinary Experimentation
• A Foundation
• Substitutions & Variations
• Exotic Flavors
• Delivery Vehicles
• Recipe Creation
• Sample Size
• Accompaniment
• Socializing The Society

Lots to get through, so without further ado:

Cultural Connections

There are nine ways in which elements of a cuisine reflect or connect to the culture. Most specific dishes will only connect in one or two of these ways. Direction therefore comes from choosing one that is appropriate to the contemporary moment in which the cuisine is being experienced and then developing the cuisine to match. Over time, the basic cuisine will be supplemented by a sprinkling of the others, sometimes frequently or regularly, sometimes only on specific occasions.

National Character I: Reflections

A National Character is a generalized set of philosophies and cultural traits that, in combination, create a generic persona. Individuals usually diverge from this generic persona, but share in some or all of the traits to some extent. It is easy to drop a reference to the generic archetype to convey a perceived foundation for a personality. Some examples, each of which should instantly conjure an impression of the archetype to the reader: A typical Frenchman, a typical Scot, a typical Texan, a typical New Yorker, a typical American, a typical Australian.

Particular foods can be reflective of this specific character, or are considered so by the locals. Australians are generally considered to be outdoors types, big on sports and social activities, and so the Barbecue would be considered reflective of that character. Barbecues are also cultural touchstones in the Texan sub-culture, but there is a substantial difference in terms of what foods get placed on the grill, and how they are spiced (or not) – Australians will barbecue steaks, meat patties (rissoles), sausages, seafood (occasionally), ham, pineapple slices, eggs, and chopped onions. We may lightly toast buns. Selected salad items may be added to the hot meat, most chilled or at room temperature.

Texans will frequently have spiced or marinated the meat first, this is far less common in Australia, and they might roast bell peppers (called capsicum, here in Australia). The meat is usually beef, chicken, but can sometimes be lamb, kangaroo, or even more exotic types. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a Texan barbecuing any meats other than beef and maybe shrimp. So while there is a certain degree of overlap, the overall cuisines are quite distinct.

National Character II: Nationalism Amplification

There are certain foods that are considered especially evocative of what it means to be Australian. This goes beyond simply reflecting the national character, there is a more tribal social element.

America views itself as a melting pot, but its many imported cultures tend to agglomerate into small regional clusters of people of like ancestry – Chinatowns and Italian Quarters and so on. Australia doesn’t actually characterize itself this way, but there’s more actual “melting” here – we’re totally fine with blending different cuisines together to create a hybrid that is quite distinct from its roots. I’ve had a Beef-and-black-bean Pizza. I’ve had Turkish Kebab meat with Greek Salad in a wrap. I’ve had Mexican Tacos in which the meat was seasoned (in part) with Chinese 5-spice.

99% or more of these fusions don’t catch on. But occasionally, there will be something that does – and that then feeds back into the traditional preparation of the base food. Australian Chinese food tends to be a blending of several different Chinese cuisines – sometimes represented by different menu items, sometimes with one influencing the other.

But even more than that, we tend to take something we like and make it Australian. Turkish kebabs, certain Greek foods, Italian pasta and Pizza, Southern-style fried chicken, and so on. Spicy Portuguese Chicken is the most recent of these assimilations. We take the American burger and add cheese, beetroot, a fried egg, and pineapple – and feel shortchanged if any Burger with “the lot” doesn’t include these items.

And that’s all a reflection on the egalitarian nature of Australian Society. America is all about ‘equal but separate’ – Australia is more ‘equal and inclusive’. Their approach keeps the cuisine more pure and representative, ours creates more cross-pollination and makes the members of those sub-cultures more “Australian’ in the process. In the US, you hear regular references to “Irish Americans” and “Italian Americans” and so on – there is no such nomenclature here, they are either “Irish” or they are “Australian,” and the functional definition of “Australian” expands to include the new cultural referents. Nothing wrong with either approach (though both have their pluses and minuses), they are just different.

Because there is so much unique wildlife here in Australia, it’s possible that we are more aware of this than other places.

Echos Of History I: Tribulations Of Yesteryear

Some foods are reflective of some past period of privation or trouble. April 25th is ANZAC day in Australia (and New Zealand), when the soldiers of past conflicts are commemorated and remembered, somewhat like Veteran’s Day in the US. While they are available all year round, each year at this time there is a peak in the availability of Anzac Biscuits.

Interestingly, there is no one accepted recipe for these, despite the impression created by the Wikipedia page to which I’ve linked, but recipes tend to fall into two different families – the hard, dry, version (probably closer to the original), and a softer, chewier version (my personal preference). Some versions achieve this by including molasses with the golden syrup. Does the US even have Golden Syrup?? Okay, you have something almost the same, called “King brand syrup”. So, a least some of you will know what it tastes like.

Such foods tend to be plainer and simpler fare than normal. They reflect the restrictions and limited diet that was forced upon the populace during the hard times, and serve as a reminder of those times and commemoration of those whose lives were lost or ruined in the events.

It is possible for the date to be shifted forward or back, where a particular date is already taken by an event with strong cultural connections, or for the existing celebrations to be modified to incorporate the influence of the more recent events.

An example would be the long-term impact on the Australian city of Darwin of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Tracy.

Darwin and Cyclone Tracy

I can’t personally vouch for the authenticity of the following beyond the bare facts – it might be just urban legend.

Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that all but destroyed the city of Darwin, the night of December 24, 1974.

A cyclone is called a Hurricane, Tropical Storm, Typhoon, or Tropical Depression in other parts of the world. “Tracy” was expected to pass clear of the city, but it changed course without warning. After 10PM (local time) wind gusts began reaching 217 km/h (117 knots, 135 mph) before becoming so severe that the instrumentation failed. Residents were celebrating Christmas and left without warning, partly because an earlier Cyclone, Selma, had passed the city by without harm, partly because news outlets only had skeleton crews on-hand due to the holiday, and partly because of overconfidence.

70% of the city was leveled, including 80% of housing. 94% of dwellings were uninhabitable. 66 people were killed, and more than 25,000 of the 47,000 inhabitants were left homeless. Over 30,000 had to be subsequently evacuated, and many never returned.

This was not the first tropical cyclone to strike the city; others had occurred in January 1897 and March 1937. Nevertheless, in the years after WW2, and in particular in the 20 years from 1954, the city had undergone rapid expansion. The building codes of the time were required to give attention to the possibility of cyclones, enforcement was slack and standards inadequate to cope with a direct strike. Complacency had set in long before.

Selma, which had been forecast to strike the city just ten days earlier but which had turned aside, added to the local complacency; there was an element of “the boy who cried wolf”. Not enough took the real message of Selma – that such storms could change course unpredictably – out of the event. As a result, life went on as normal even while the storm was gathering, with residents attending parties and wrapping Christmas presents.

The intensity and track of the cyclone destroyed virtually all telecommunication and radio equipment in the city, so it took a while for news of the event to reach the rest of the country. By mid-morning, though, contact with emergency services had been made; because of the skeleton-staff situation nationwide, it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that most of the country learned of the disaster.

Of course, there were consequent crisis points in the aftermath, but there was also an up-swell in public support extended to the population. Many charity drives were held in the immediate aftermath nationwide, most of them completely unofficial, as the rest of the country rallied around the devastated city. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised either in cash or donated goods within a 24-hour period. Most evacuees had lost everything on that Christmas eve; it was not uncommon for them to arrive and disembark from the air transport that ferried the majority to be informed that free accommodation had been arranged for them at such-and-such an address, here’s some cash for immediate living expenses, here’s a week’s groceries, and a small gift pack for the children. In less than a month, the #1 single on the charts was a charity single, “Santa Never Made It Into Darwin” – it felt at the time like it was only a week later, but memory of time at that age is spotty at best.

I was 10 years old at the time, and remember the reactions of the children most particularly. The youngest seemed to cope better with the disruption, and the older teenagers; it was the kids aged around 8 to 14 that were old enough to have some appreciation for what had happened but not mature enough to cope with it. Since I was right in the middle of this age bracket, I sympathized.

Over the next 4 years, the city was completely rebuilt, all to new building standards. Enough reconstruction had taken place that the city was able to accommodate fully a population of the size that had been resident before Tracy. Nevertheless, some 60% of those evacuated never returned to the city; their places were taken by others. In the 2021 census, there were 139,902 residents, almost triple the pre-cyclone population.

You can glean all of the above from the Wikipedia articles to which I linked earlier in this section. What isn’t adequately covered are the recovery and long-term impact that the event had, according to some reports.

They state that affected residents tend towards simpler foods in the week prior to Christmas, in memory of the privations that occurred after the events of Christmas 1974, with emphasis on charitable donations of goods and services. The money saved is then expended on a bigger and more lavish celebration on Christmas Day. However, there is limited take-up of this tradition by the newer arrivals, and memories of the event are fading as the population ages. Within a generation of this writing, it will either be cemented as part of the cultural landscape, or have died out almost completely.

I could find no canonical references to certify the above. For all I know, it was someone’s speculation on what they thought would happen; it’s certainly plausible enough to be believable, but with no evidence to back it up, it remains just a (possibly apocryphal) story. There is no mention of it on the “Darwin After” page of www.cyclonetracy.au, for example.

I did find reports that many survivors actively avoid engaging in normal Christmas activities due to PTSD arising from the disaster. Certain Christmas Carols and loud noises can be triggering, according to reports, especially to parents who lost children and those who were too young at the time to understand what was happening, according to this report from 2019, the 45th anniversary of the disaster.

I can certainly see such people avoiding any reminders of the events. At the same time, those who returned have been lauded for their resilience, and it remains plausible that some have found this to be a stress-relief mechanism. So I just don’t know.

It’s certainly not without antecedent. Similar patterns of privation-and-blowout have occurred elsewhere, such as following WW2. So it’s plausible, but unconfirmed.

Echos Of History II: Past Glories

This logically leads on from the preceding social connection – feasts to celebrate past achievements and, in some cases, simple survival of harrowing events are hardly uncommon, and even part of the normalization of response to tragedy.

Sublimations Of The Forbidden

People can sometimes express things normally forbidden within the culture through food. They don’t break the taboo in question, but they sublimate the restriction into a culturally-acceptable form – a normally ascetic population who permit one night each year of extravagance, for example.

Osmotic Pastimes

Another aspect of American culture exemplifies this behavior, but variations are common in cultures all over the world. Food deemed suitable for sporting events, and especially social practices surrounding grand finals and events like the Superbowl – easy to prepare in advance, easy to eat informally tend to predominate and be part of the ritual celebration of such events.

It’s the weekly routine leading up to those events that has generally has the greatest impact on a cuisine, though its the social practices surrounding the big event that have the greatest cultural impact. For that reason, it’s often easy to dissociate the two.

In Australia, the Australian Meat Pie, Sausage Roll, and even (to some extent) the Sausage Sandwich, are all foods that are easily prepared and consumed while enjoying the game, either directly at the sporting venue or indirectly by gatherings around the television set.

The US cultural equivalent is probably the Hot Dog.

This cultural connection generalizes this behavior into a cycle: Sporting event influences culture, culture produces appropriate cuisine, cultural events surrounding the sporting event popularize and focus around the cuisine, which becomes part of the traditions surrounding the sporting event, which further influences the culture.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that something similar took place in Ancient Rome surrounding the Gladiatorial combats.

A snapshot: Game-day food in Australia

Often, the cuisine spreads beyond the association with the sporting event which caused its development, normalizing it as a regular part of the culture. It’s quite common for workmen to have a meat pie or two for lunch, for example – the virtues that make them acceptable fare for the sporting event translate into advantages at other times.

A 2003 survey found that the average Australian consumes more than 12 meat pies per year. The resulting once-a-month average seems rather low to me; I would put the figure at 2-3 times that. From which I can only conclude that there are parts of Australia that consume vastly lower quantities than those sold in all the areas that I’ve lived in.

But let’s accept that official average; the current population of Australia is about 26 million. So that’s 312 million meat pies per year, or about six million a week. Throw in Chiko Rolls (a fried snack made from cabbage, barley, carrot, green beans, beef, beef tallow, wheat cereal and onion, all enclosed in a thick egg-and-flour pastry tube, designed to survive enthusiastic handling at football matches) at 17 million a year, and an unknown number of sausage rolls (my estimate: about 70% as many as meat pies) and you get a strong picture of the local everyday takeaway diet.

But then there’s the fish-and-chips, (350,000 tonnes of seafood a year, or about 13.5 kg per person each year, or 260 g a week per person – so that’s 2.6 average servings according to the official dietary recommendations, but I would expect it to be 2 larger servings than standard!), and 289 million hamburgers added to the total – and none of those are the most popular take-away food here.

That honor is reserved for the Chicken, with the average consumption per person being 47.46 kg per year – that’s around 2.7 billion servings a year of slightly less than 0.5kg each.

I almost overlooked Pizzas! Australians eat 264 million of those a year, all told.

The average Australian has takeaway food (‘fast food’ in America-speak) 60 times a year – delivered, 28 times, and pick-up in person 32 times. That’s 5 times a month, or a little over once a week – at least, that was the case before the current cost-of-living crisis. According to new research, home penny-pinching has led to a massive increase in takeaway in our diets – to the point that per capita, we are eating it more often than the US does.

And none of that counts game-day food cooked at home. Anyone who doesn’t think this is reflective of the cultural landscape must be blind.

Celebratory Specifics

Certain times of the year have their own special dietary traditions. I’m excluding from this category non-secular events, I’ll get to those in a minute.

Two examples come to mind more readily than any others – Christmas (different in every country), and Thanksgiving (US only).

Australian Christmas Foods

Australian Christmases take place in temperatures ranging from the low 30s (Celsius – around 90° Fahrenheit) to the low 40s (111° Fahrenheit). Despite this, a baked meal (usually lunch) is traditional, often with several different meats (ham, chicken, turkey, beef, seafood) and vegetables, plus a Christmas pudding and hot custard, plus other sweets like Pavlova and ice-cream.

On past occasions, bombe alaska (link is to a google search showing up how many different recipes for this dessert there are in Australia) has been sometimes served up. Plus, of course, fresh fruit and salads.

It’s also common for gingerbread houses and fruit cakes and chilled cheesecakes to be consumed at this time of year. You can buy eggnog in milk-style cartons, but those aren’t as popular here as they are elsewhere, and things like mulled wine are practically unheard of.

Another quite common practice is to have a barbecue for Christmas.

I did a google search for “Australian Christmas Food” just to be sure I wasn’t forgetting something iconic – here are the top 11 results:
 

• • Australia’s top 50 most popular Christmas dishes of all time
     
  • 10 iconic Aussie Christmas foods, ranked
     
  • 70 traditional Aussie Christmas foods
     
  • 39 essential recipes for the ultimate Aussie Christmas
     
  • A Very (Easy) Aussie Christmas Feast
     
  • Australian Christmas recipes
     
  • Reddit: What do Australians eat during summer Christmas
     
  • The best recipes for an Australian Christmas (Jamie Oliver)
     
  • 60 Australian Christmas Lunch Ideas
     
  • It wouldn’t be an Aussie Christmas without these iconic recipes
     
  • A Guide to Australian Christmas Foods

 
That list makes it very clear that this is a much bigger sub-topic than I have time to pursue any further! That said, there are a couple of general statements that I can make.

Half of Australia observes something fairly traditional in terms of Christmas cuisine – mostly sourced from England, with a few domestic recipe inventions, and the occasional imported influence from elsewhere (Asia and Europe, particularly). The other half has compromised with the climate to a greater extent, developing local variations (for the season) on more summer foods like chilled salads, seafood, etc. But it’s absolutely central to the ‘normal’ culture to do something extraordinary for Christmas, even if its just a couple of family members at home.

There have been past occasions when more than 50 of my relatives have gathered for the Christmas day dinner, coming from all over the country (but most especially from all over the state). (It’s easy to reach those numbers when about 20 relatives still live in my old home town of Nyngan, about 1% of the total population – and that’s down as a percentage!).

Every culture has its own Christmas traditions, including Christmas cuisine – but they all have a Christmas Tradition of some sort.
 

• • Christmas Around the World
     
  • The Eight Strangest Christmas Traditions on Earth
     
  • 8 Christmas traditions from around the world
     
  • Unusual Christmas traditions from around the world
     
  • 20 Unique Christmas Traditions from Around the World
     
  • Christmas Around the World (for Kids)

 

Thanksgiving

From the ubiquitous to the not quite unique – according to Wikipedia (via Google), Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in October and November in the United States, Canada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil, Germany and the Philippines. It is also observed in the Dutch town of Leiden and the Australian territory of Norfolk Island.

The culinary associations focus on ingredients native to the Americas, including turkey, potato, sweet potato, corn (maize), squash (including pumpkin), green bean, and cranberry. — Thanksgiving Dinner | Wikipedia

Because the majority of my readers are from the US, with Canada in a strong third place, I don’t think I need to go too much further with this – the point is made. But here are a couple of links, just to compliment the Australian ones listed above:
 

• • 11 Traditional Thanksgiving Menu with Recipes
     
  • Best 50 Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner Recipes
     
  • 33 Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner Menu Ideas
     
  • 31 Thanksgiving Menu Ideas That Are Solid Holiday Gold
     
  • A Classic Thanksgiving Menu to Feed a Crowd
     
  • Quora: What is a ‘traditional’ Thanksgiving dinner and is there a time that it is traditionally served?
     
  • A Traditional American Thanksgiving Dinner Menu

Again, the clear takeaway is that special occasions demand a special cuisine. And, the constituents of that special cuisine are usually iconicly connected to the subject of the celebration or the national identity, though that’s a slightly more problematic connection to make.

Religious Expressions

I listed Christmas amongst the traditional secular cultural connections because I’m unaware of any especially strong religious influence over the cuisine on offer. Other expressions of religion are more strongly influential (I’m not going to go into as much detail here, purely to try and avoid offending anyone).

Lent

Lent is a christian religious period of the year. It is a 40-day period that starts on Ash Wednesday and culminates in my second example, Easter.

Lent | Wikipedia

During Lent, On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday: Everyone of age 18 to 59 must fast, unless exempt due to usually a medical reason, and on all other Fridays, everyone of age 14 and up must abstain from consuming meat.

Fish, on the other hand, are perfectly acceptable, presumably because they were not considered “meat” back when the rules of the festival were laid down.

Some religious subgroups go a lot further. I know some people who refuse to eat red meat or chicken at all during the 40 days, some who have updated their practices to go full vegan for the 40 days, and some who also ban sweets and confectionery (other than fresh fruit). Abstinence from Alcohol is also not uncommon.

In terms of the impact on cuisine, it will obviously depend on how restrictive individual practices are, but a healthy and nutritious diet is still required, most sources describe the onset of malnutrition as taking only a week or two, though overt symptoms might not lead to diagnosis for some time (Search for ‘dangers of fad diets’ for more information).

There are two schools of thought: the traditional, in which only approved or approvable meals are acceptable, and the modern, in which nutrition is taken into consideration within the confines of the restrictions being required.

The stronger the restrictions, the more dependent on a restricted diet people become, and the greater the incentive to provide culinary variations of flavor to maximize the variety within those restrictions. There are innumerable fish recipes, for example.

Easter

Easter foods traditionally involve a feast to end the period of privation of Lent. There aren’t many specific foods that are associated with the holiday, and they are quite secular these days; here in Australia, they are Hot Cross Buns and Easter Eggs.

The latter are just a particular way of presenting chocolate, though there are frequently more decadent examples on offer than at other times of the year.

Hot Cross Buns originate in England. A hot cross bun is a spiced bun, usually containing small pieces of fruit and marked with a cross on the top, which has been traditionally eaten on Good Friday in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, India, Pakistan, Malta, United States and the Commonwealth Caribbean. — Hot Cross Bun | Wikipedia

In my Australian experience, Hot Cross Buns become available up to 2 months prior to Easter (from the start of March) and are consumed far more frequently than just Good Friday. It’s also quite common for them to be consumed cold, but accompanied by a hot drink, though some people do heat them up in the microwave and serve them buttered. It’s quite uncommon to add any sort of topping, however, perhaps because the flavor profile of the spice doesn’t go with many jams and spreads.

A couple of singular experiences need to be mentioned in this context: Last year, some stores began stocking hot cross buns in the week following Christmas (notably much earlier than usual), and this year, supermarkets began stocking unusual varieties – a caramel hot cross bun (not very nice), a coffee-flavored hot cross bun (sold out before I could try them) and a banana-flavored hot cross bun (ditto). I have had a variety with diced and baked apple in the past, and that was quite nice. And I have once heard of a ginger flavored variety that might be quite nice, but I’ve never seen it offered for sale.

It’s my suspicion that these are secular ‘refinements’ to the traditional hot cross bun, the result of viewing them as a ‘seasonal commodity’ more than anything else.

There are, nevertheless, a number of different recipes out there – largely because a lot of hot cross buns are very dry and somewhat tough and dense compared to normal buns. It can actually be quite hard to eat two of them, if they are particularly bad in this respect – you really do need to accompany them with something liquid!

Beyond these, there are obviously the Jewish festivals as examples. I don’t really know enough about these to be able to unpick them without giving offense to someone. For example, I know nothing about any connections between diet and Yom Kippur. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, has an obvious culinary connection in the form of a celebratory feast, though I don’t know what dishes would traditionally accompany that date. There are many more, but I don’t know the culinary traditions associated with them – I just know that there are some.

Yesterday’s Favorites

Each generation generalizes the food they grew up with into the foundations of cuisine, then build on that foundation. It can take multiple generations for a given food to work its way out of popularity, or to become a fixture within a national cuisine.

Or it can happen very quickly if there is a connection with a traumatic event of some kind.

A tradition begins with a set of circumstances shared by a large segment of the population, which catches on as a solution to whatever the restrictions imposed by those circumstances might be.

These imposed solutions are normalized in the experiences of children growing up in that time – not in all cases, but in some. The reasons can vary – it might be a connection to their childhood, or a structural element to their lives, or simply because they enjoyed the food.

One generation later, and if there is any sort of structure to the practice, it becomes institutional and a tradition.

And a generation after that, its origins are largely forgotten.

Most of these generational ‘landmarks’ are accompanied by some refinement or variation, often being made over by advances in technology, culinary practices, or accessibility of ingredients.

I have two examples to offer that shed more light on the rise of new ‘traditional foods’.

The Great Potato Famine

In the second half of 1845, Potato Blight caused a partial failure of the potato crop on which the Irish depended. A year later, the blight returned and had an even more severe effect on the potato crop, driving the country into a nightmare of hunger and disease. On the eve of the famine, the population stood at 8.5 million; one million died as a result over the next 6 years, and another million emigrated. The most severe impacts were in the west, where some counties lost more than 50% of their population. The death toll alone was enough to be nationally significant – almost 12% of the population. But the migration, which became normalized practice, which saw as many emigrate in 11 years as had done so in the preceding two-and-a-half centuries, was at least as devastating to the country; between 1841 and 1900, some 6 million would leave the country, and in 1901 the population stood at just 4.4 million, despite decades of recovery. — Source: Blog by Ambassador Mulhall, 3 December 2018, on Black ’47: Ireland’s Great Famine and its after-effects. After the famine, many Irish women migrated to America to escape poverty, and were exposed to new ingredients and foods not common in Ireland, such as a greater variety of meats and produce. Entering domestic service in America, they had to adapt their cooking to please the upper-class in America. This was problematic at first due to Irish women clinging to foods and ingredients common in Ireland. This caused much prejudice towards Irish women and many would mock the Irish’s lack of cooking skills without considering the famine and poverty Irish women grew up with. Newspapers, including the Women’s Journal, published articles which contained prejudice towards Irish women for seemingly being unable to know how to cook. Irish women in domestic service later gained the experience with ingredients abundant in America and altered Irish cuisine to be foods for pleasure. In Ireland food was designed based on caloric intake, instead of for pleasure, such as foods in America. Traditional Irish dishes started to include more meat and fruit and allowed for Irish food to stray from the stigma of being bland. The last quarter of the 20th century saw the emergence of a new Irish cuisine based on traditional ingredients handled in new ways. This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish (especially salmon and trout), oysters, mussels and other shellfish, traditional soda bread, the wide range of cheeses that are now being made across the country, and, of course, the potato. Traditional dishes, such as Irish stew, coddle, the Irish breakfast, and potato bread have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. Chef and food writer Myrtle Allen – an early protagonist of such attitudes and methods – went on to play a crucial role in their development and promotion. Schools like the Ballymaloe Cookery School have emerged to cater for the associated increased interest in cooking. — Source:Irish Cuisine | Wikipedia

WW2

This example is another of those items that I’m not 100% sure of. I think that I either read, or heard in a documentary, about it, but cannot remember when or where.

The story, as I remember it, is that anti-German sentiment imposed additional constraints on the British diet beyond even those deriving from the wartime restrictions. Anything that was too Germanic in sound or social association became wildly unpopular, and could even lead to social ostracization and suspicion of collaboration.

At much the same time, a sense of solidarity with the French led to a rise in popularity of French Cuisine, though this was retarded by wartime restrictions.

Is it true? As with the earlier example, it sounds plausible, but without a source to cite, it has to be taken with a substantial helping of salt.

Wow, around 6000 words on just the social connections with food. I may have to abbreviate my thoughts on the remainder of the article just to make deadline!

General Discussions Of Specific Subjects

Having amplified the ways in which cuisine connects with a society, it’s time to start thinking about the restrictions that need to be taken into account when crafting a dish for an in-game society, plus a few random associated thoughts..

Environment & Local Ingredient Restrictions

What you can grow limits what can be cooked. Obvious, right? Well, it’s not entirely true – even in the middle ages there was trade in foodstuffs. What usually had to be done was to preserve it in some way, and that hasn’t changed. In the real Middle Ages, of course, they didn’t have refrigeration, but wizards and their wand-crafting capabilities solves that problem rather neatly.

Of course, Wizards with the appropriate skills don’t necessarily come cheap. And that means that imported ingredients will also be very expensive, so only the wealthiest can afford to break the limits posed at the start of the previous paragraph. That usually means Kings and elite specialists who can charge like wounded bulls for their services – top-tier clerics, for example.

So, those with government or religions backing them, or really significant individuals.

It’s also very true that nature wizards and druids can enhance crop yields with appropriate magics. These used to be (rather disparagingly) called “Hedge Wizards” in the campaigns I played in when just starting out. It’s entirely possible that a little encouragement might enable crops that otherwise would not survive to prosper. And, because you only need the services of such a wizard once a month or less under normal circumstances, this probably expands the pool of available ingredients considerably, and makes them available to the merely wealthy.

On top of that, there should be edible plants around that never existed in reality. And, of course, there are sourcebooks absolutely full of strange wildlife that might make tasty – and different – meat for a table.

The first rule in a Fantasy environment has to be to take these considerations into account.

The story is vastly different in some sci-fi environments – starships tend to be able to carry frozen product from one planet to another with no difficulty whatsoever. Whether or not they can do so in bulk is more uncertain, but the fact that we can do the equivalent is a solid indicator that it’s possible. The more that can be carried at a reasonable cost, the further down the social classes of society these ingredients can permeate.

Which is really not all that much different from the Fantasy situation, when you think about it. Just more-so.

But the technology involved suggests that a better process would be to decide what the market penetration should be; knowing either the cost per ton or the amount that can be freighted in then gives you the other factor, then all you need do is justify that in game terms. Maybe the region of space is unstable, or blocked, forcing ships to go the long way around? Maybe there are hostile forces out there? Or, to go in the other direction, maybe there’s something about the trade route that is especially conducive or easy?

You are likely to end up with several ‘classes’ of goods, either way. Identifying those classes and what’s in them is the desired end-product of this process.

Of course, you can also design your game world in such a way that no-one has thought of doing this, or there is some reason why it can’t be done, or is prohibitively expensive. There will still be exotic local ingredients, but most of the potential gets locked away. But, be warned: if you take this lucrative potential industry away from NPCs, you leave yourself open to PCs deciding to be food magnates…

Stories Of Sun and Rain

Seasons and specific time periods demand variations in cuisine that can outlast the practices / circumstances that inspired them.

The more primitive the society, the more dependent on natural seasons they will be. Ultimately, you can define the technical prowess of a society by the strength of their ability to break free of this dependence. Three technologies are especially significant: storage / preservative tech (or magic); glasshouses or some other sunshine / climate control; and irrigation.

Of course, industrial-scale glasshouses are a rather more difficult proposition than smaller ones, even if the latter are scattered all over; you still won’t get bulk crops out of them. Smaller quantities or more concentrated ingredients are a different story.

You would expect the primary protein to be a locally-sourced product, either wild or domesticated, or some combination. To this basis would be added locally-sourced vegetables and grains. But there would be exotic herbs to supplement whatever can be found naturally, and there might be a few small-scale products like mushrooms and fruit that can also be profitably produced.

The availability of ingredients is not a year-round constant, and once again this factor can be overcome (at least to some extent) with advanced magic or technology. Bear in mind the lesson of some fruits – they actually the cold of winter to trigger fruit production. And there are some Australian plants that need the heat of bushfires on a semi-regular basis to prosper, too.

So there are going to be seasonal variations in available ingredients to at least some extent, and that extent is a food-tech / magic issue. This in turn will dictate that certain dishes can only be produced at certain times of the year, again to a variable extent. The wealthier an individual, the later in a season they can have products that others can’t, simply because they can afford the cost of importing them from somewhere whose growing season runs just a little longer.

The final portion of my opening statement is that even when these restrictions are overcome, the practices of serving up such dishes as used to be seasonally-restricted will tend to continue to follow those restrictions (at least for a while) due to social inertia. There might be no good reason anymore why Doltrop Soup is only consumed in late winter, but it’s a tradition that dictates that this is the best time of year for that particular dish, and those who consume it outside the ‘natural’ time of demand will be seen as pretentious, at the very least.

On top of all that, working habits (especially in rural / agrarian areas) will also be dictated – to some extent – by the dependence on the climatic cycles. Pick somewhere reasonably analogous here on Earth, in terms of climate, and a reasonably representative time period, and see what you can find out about the agricultural year. Do farmers have to be up early to harvest? and so on.

The second step in creating a cuisine for your society is to take the underpinnings from your first answer – the level of access to magical or technological solutions – and apply it to this secondary question.

You Need A National Character

Even where a cuisine isn’t directly reflective of some aspect of the national character, that character still provides a guideline, because the other cuisine elements have to fit into that picture somewhere. So you need a defined national character to reference.

These don’t grow on trees, and can take weeks or months of study of real cultures to define and adapt – and 99% of that effort will probably be wasted, ultimately.

Fortunately, this is a problem that I have solved in a previous article: The Poetry Of Meaning: 16 words to synopsize a national identity (5442 words).

A related article might also be useful: A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities (1783 words, a short one!)

You Need National Pastimes, Holidays, etc

You’ve probably got at least some of this worked out already, but a more systematic approach will fill out the picture of the society even more – and you will need all of that detail to integrate the cuisine and the society. Again, this is a problem that has already been solved – my 4-part series Distilled Cultural Essence (1021 + 1703 + 1897 + 2149 = 6770 words) is full of detailed and specific thoughts and questions to define a culture.

You don’t need to answer all of them – you’re unlikely to ever need that level of detail – but you should at least think briefly about each, and then cherry-pick the ones that seem the most definitive to you of this particular culture. In particular, if you’ve already thought of an answer to a specific topic, it’s fine to skip over it – though reviewing the questions posed might elicit additional details that you haven’t considered.

Again, there’s another post that might be of value: Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture (5367 words).

And, from WAAAY back in prehistory (Roleplaying Tips #296, to be exact), I listed 31 Questions To Define a Culture (1165 words) – and then spent several times the length of listing the questions on how to use them.

Expressions

How do the locals demonstrate their support of their pastimes, holidays, and festivals? Are there changes in what they wear, are there decorations of a specific type, are there particular greetings?

Consider Christmas. Consider Halloween. Consider the local sporting team… those three sources of ideas will get you through this question quite handily.

Rivalries

Most sporting teams eventually acquire a rivalry, an opposing team that fans of the first team love to hate. Who are the rivals of the local team, and how do their fans express support for the team?

Sometimes, things get even more complex – two rivals can come together to oppose an even more substantial rival.

Consider the State Of Origin series (Australian Rugby League). There are two teams – the NSW Blues and the Queensland Maroons.

Every week in the regular competition, teammates are expected to work together against whichever other team they are confronting. But in the middle of the season, those teams are (temporarily) broken up; the cream of those players that derive from New South Wales are selected for the Blues, the best players who derive from Queensland get selected to play for the Maroons, and the two sides then meet in a best-of-three series, before the regular season resumes. It’s quite often literally teammate against teammate.

Or think about the State-level cricket competition, where players from the different teams get called up to play for the national team in one of the different incarnations of the sport. In modern times, that’s often all they do, play for the national team, but in times past, they would return to their state squad when not required in that capacity. Teammates become rivals become teammates again.

Remember how I said “often all they do, play for the national team”? Well, it’s not quite true – outside of our regular seasons there are additional competitions, both international and domestic, and – you guessed it – sometimes rivals end up as teammates and vice-versa.

Sporting subcultures can be extremely complicated…

Opinions

Some opinions are so ubiquitous within a culture that they can be considered another aspect of that culture. Beyond that, there’s the question of socially-acceptable ways of expressing an opinion (if there are any) vs socially unacceptable approaches. Opinions and how they are handled by the society can definitely be definitive.

Long ago, in the super-spy spin-off of my Superhero campaign, Team Neon Phi, an NPC member of the Secret Police entered a bar to test the loyalty of those present (in a fairly repressive culture). His technique: to posit an opinion critical of the regime and observe who spoke out in support of the opinion, and who didn’t speak out against it but remained silent. The first group were then apprehended as they left the bar by other members of the secret police, while the silent ones were placed on a suspect list for close examination. What the NPC didn’t know was that some of the ‘patrons’ were actually the PCs in disguise to conduct a mission against his country… One of the PCs suspected (rightly) that it was a trap, and vocally condemned the offending statements, but the others didn’t pick up on his signals to them, and remained mute…

Legends Of The Game / Legends Of History

Some players will achieve legendary status. The reasons can vary, depending on how good the local team are – anyone who exceeds the typical standard will be lauded.

Similarly, in the broader context, there will be some people who are legends of the culture, the society; they will stand out in the History books. How are they celebrated? Statues? Annual Holidays? Songs? Stage plays? Oral traditions? Holograms?

Legendary Encounters

Most sporting codes will also have certain matches that had something extra that pass into folklore. These will frequently get inserted into conversations almost at random in most cultures, but sometimes a society takes this an extra mile. What are the legendary encounters, what made them memorable, and how are they celebrated?

Seasonal Fevers

Does anyone remember Major League, the baseball-based comedic movie? How the team of misfits went from almost being reviled by the despairing fans to household names and heroes?

Every year, every team approaches a do-or-die moment, a point in time that cements their position in the pecking order for that year. Those on top want to show no weakness; those close to the top want to topple those on top, while making sure that they make the playoffs (or whatever the equivalent is); those almost good enough want to squeeze their way into the playoffs at the expense of someone else (‘win this or our season is over’), and those at the bottom want to avoid what we in Australia refer to as ‘The Wooden Spoon’, i.e. coming dead last.

Fans respond to the imminent approach of these critical moments with increased fervor, reaching fever pitch when the moment itself arrives. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the team are, there will be such a moment and the fans will drink it in.

How will behavior change? How will the moment’s imminence be expressed?

These considerations construct a national character, refine it, and apply it, bridging the gap between the culture and the connections-to-culture of the cuisine.

Which means that, at last, we’re ready to think about specific dishes. Well, almost – let’s segue into that with a couple more relevant questions to pose…

Specific-Occasion Cuisine

There are three considerations that define special occasion cuisine. They are Preparation, Socializing, and Tribal Food.

Preparation

Any preparation required must be either extremely simple or able to be carried out in advance. This restriction generally runs all the way through to the cooking and serving of the food.

Socializing

Whoever is doing the cooking / service has to be able to socialize while doing so. That happens naturally at a Barbecue, it can take a little arranging in other settings. That can be ignored if the operation is commercial retail at a sporting venue.

Tribal Food

Finally, the food has to have a tribal quality, something that the fans (all of whom presumably barrack for the same team) can bond over. It’s a description practically begging to be filled with ‘fast food’ or its cultural equivalent (rat on a stick?)

When it comes to different occasions, though, the requirements can vary. Contrast the above with the Christmas Feast, for example. Nevertheless, the three considerations still apply in some measure.

One or Many? The Ubiquitous vs Multiple Expressions

Sometimes, one specific food is iconic to a particular social connection / event, sometimes there is a whole range of them. Sometimes, even though there is a range to choose from, only one is required to satisfy the expectations of the occasion.

This is an important question because it defines how many dishes you have to come up with. If there’s only one, then you can afford to generate two or three and pick the one that you like best; if you have to come up with a 6-course feast, or a 12-course degustation, that’s not going to happen. You might still generate two more than you need so that you can exclude the ones that are the least satisfying, though.

Abstract / Narrative References

All of the above means nothing, unless and until it manifests in-game, with descriptions. You need to be able to set the scene (Special decorations? Costumes? Behaviors?), get through the opening sequence (Special Greetings? Social Faux Pas to avoid?), and match the description of the event itself with the food while allowing the PCs to interact with the scene and achieve whatever their purpose in participating is – even if that’s nothing more than “getting on with the locals”.

The time to start planning all this is before you actually create any dishes. There is an emotional trajectory to such occasions – a buildup, a cool-down, another buildup, a climax – that you need to take the players (and their characters) through, or the whole plot sequence will fall flat. Your cuisine needs to invoke drama of the required level, not more and not less.

But what if it’s not that big a deal? Once you have a rough outline, you can compress the heck out of it. Yes, this often means making the assumption that player agency is irrelevant until you get to the important moments, and can be assumed / glossed over (provided that you are careful to incorporate anything the players say specifically they are doing to achieve their goals), but the players will forgive that if you are clearly doing so to get them to the “important bits” more quickly.

Practical Expression

When I originally conceived this article, the path forwards was somewhat different, in that it was aimed more at re-purposing adapted reviews of a particular dish to derive narrative text, as described above. But then the Atlas Obscura article lobbed into my inbox and changed everything.
 

Food is threaded throughout all sorts of fannish practices and experiences. The officially sanctioned offerings are often the most visible – think of a theme park, where most things you put in your mouth will have an ostensible connection to a fictional world. This can vary from simple branding to full-on recreations of something characters eat or drink. Official cookbooks span this range, too – and often have mixed results. Really trying to capture the food of a fictional world often falls to fans themselves – after all, they’re the ones who have the time, interest, and collective imagination to get canonical food from page or screen to the table. That might mean cataloging every food reference in a work, or creating themed meals to pair with a re-read or re-watch. Sometimes it’s about direct recreations: on the wildly popular Binging with Babbish YouTube channel, for example, chef Andrew Rea recreates screen-accurate versions of fictional food – say, the nachos from The Good Place, or the ratatouille from, well, Ratatouille. Fans can simply enjoy watching fictional foods come to life, or they can cook them in their own kitchens, too [Emphasis mine]. Many amusement parks, such as Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, offer themed food to appeal to fans. …because of the free-form nature of fanfiction… that can mean actual recipes included directly in the stories. Arrow … wrote one Hunger Games fic where a now-elderly Peeta bakes a series of dishes that remind him of long-gone friends, with the prose in one column and the recipe he’s baking running alongside it. There’s a long history of fans publishing recipes for other fans: on the communal wiki Fanlore, you can browse scans of beautiful fannish cookbooks from the pre-internet zine era. There’s Star Trek, of course, but also cookbooks for fandom cult classics like the ’60s horror soap Dark Shadows or the ’80s live-action Beauty and the Beast TV show. …There’s a long history of fans publishing recipes for other fans: on the communal wiki Fanlore, you can browse scans of beautiful fannish cookbooks from the pre-internet zine era. There’s Star Trek, of course, but also cookbooks for fandom cult classics like the ’60s horror soap Dark Shadows or the ’80s live-action Beauty and the Beast TV show. …a Supernatural fic … read more than a decade [earlier], where the protagonists sampled wedding cakes [included a] description of their favorite cake – a peanut butter-pumpkin one – which led [Lyndsey] on a years-long quest to find a perfectly matching recipe. “Authors already invite readers into our heads,” says azriona, who’s written recipes into multiple fics centered on food, including a series where the characters of BBC’s Sherlock are professional chefs. “I’m just also inviting them into my kitchen.” Her experience writing that series reflects the communal and at times beautifully amateur nature of fanfiction on a whole – she says some readers assumed she had professional culinary training, but she was just testing out recipes as she wrote. — Source: How Sharing Recipes Brings Fans Together – Elizabeth Minkel | Gastro Obscura | Atlas Obscura

 
(wow, I didn’t intend to quote from it so extensively – Kudos to the author). Now, I’d known about the fannish gravitation to food, and cosplay, and filking, and all sorts of other activities since way back in the early 80’s. Heck, I’ve even been a judge on a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster competition (the difference between the winner and the field was astonishing).

But I had never before put that thought together with the concept of RPGs needing recipes for fictional meals. The balance of this article was going to be an intellectual exercise in changing existing recipes to simulate the culture in an abstract way; suddenly, a window opened into the possibility of practical, tested recipes that were quite unlike anything players had experienced before. What’s more, there were resources for recipes out there that I had never considered.

GMs who needed the assistance could recruit the best cook they had access to, even if they didn’t game, bringing the world to tangible life for players and learning a potentially valuable skill along the way.

But it meant that I needed to actually invest a bit more care into the gastronomic process than the original concept required – which should explain the comment from early in this post to the effect that the Atlas Obscura article left fingerprints all over the final section.

I had visions of long shards of thin toffee that had been dusted with chili powder and salt while still liquid. Or toffee-coated glace cherries infused with alcohol.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned my own culinary discovery here, before. Take a packet of glace cherries and place them in a bowl. Cover with a spirit-based alcohol – scotch or vodka or whatever. Add chopped whatever for flavoring and stir – then leave the bowl in the refrigerator overnight. The alcohol, carrying the added flavor, penetrates the glace cherry to its hollow center, creating a literal flavor bomb – bite into the cherry and you get a burst of the flavored alcohol. What’s more, the alcohol can survive the fruit being baked into a cake or used in some other recipe.

So, with things taking a turn toward the practical, let’s explore the process of crafting a recipe to fit the concept arrived at in the earlier parts of the article.

Blind Culinary Creation

To start with, there is a significant choice to be made. You can either craft variations on dishes that are well known to your personal culture – proven recipes from family and friends, manipulated until they deliver the outcome you want.

There are a couple of Benefits to the approach – the source cuisine will generally be well known to the players, providing a cultural referent that makes the distinctiveness of the results more accessible and potentially more palatable.

But there are some massive downsides to consider as well – the results are going to be a lot more limited and less exotic than they could be – and there is no certainty that you will be able to get where you want to go due to the restricted foundations. That can lead to a lot of time wasted on failed experimentation.

Directed Culinary Experimentation

So, what’s the alternative? Answer: deliberately crafting a dish to suit a particular Social Connection even if the base recipe is from outside your own cuisine.

Upsides: can bring the exotic front and center, but can be more challenging to cook, and recipes may be less vetted than you would like. That can mean that you learn more, and maybe expand your personal world in the process, so it’s by no means all doom and gloom.

Downsides: You’ll need to make adjustments, sometimes blindly (because it’s not always obvious from which country a recipe originates) – did you know that the Australian measure of a “teaspoon” is different to the US “teaspoon”? Google is your solution to this problem. And you might need to source exotic ingredients – or substitute best-guess equivalents. And you might need exotic cooking implements, or to again make arbitrary substitutes. Finally, it’s probably fair to expect a greater percentage of failed experiments simply because of unfamiliarity with the foundation cuisine.

But the biggest advantage to this approach is that it opens the world to your internet browser, making it more likely that you’ll find what you need.

Another culinary discovery of mine. Preheat a fry-pan with a little vegetable oil. Take a slice of 6-8″ diameter Devon (called bologna or baloney in the US). Lay the slice of meat into the pan – as it cooks, the sides will rise to form a natural cup shape, and the flavor deepens considerably. As soon as the cup is large enough, or the devon stops rising, break an egg into the cup. Fry until the white starts to show white, then very carefully (using a spatula and a wooden spoon) invert the cup (spilling as little egg as possible). You may need to use the spatula to lift the edge so that you can tell when the egg is done. Top with a sprinkling of dried breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper. Do two at once per person for a meal – you’ll probably want a vegetable-based side dish as well.

The process

Regardless of the approach selected, the process is pretty much the same.

A Foundation

You start by selecting a foundation recipe that shares some of the qualities that you want in the finished dish. It’s often helpful to narrow the search to the cuisine of a particular nation, based on a similarity of climate and geography between the source nation and the fictional one.

Try to avoid the most obvious ones if you go down this route – Swiss, yes, French, No; Danish over German; Scandinavian over British; African or Central or South American instead of the USA – only if you are using the directed approach, of course.

It can often be hard to judge what a food will taste like from the recipe alone (though I’m told that some people can do so). Food blogs and TV shows on cooking can be massively helpful through reviewing a particular cuisine; what they describe probably won’t precisely match the recipes you find online, but it at least gives you a starting point.

Substitutions & Variations

Next, you may need to replace one or more ingredients due to availability. But that just gets you some local interpretation of the dish – for a human culture, that might be all you need, but if you need something more exotic, you’re going to need to get more creative.

Contemplate a meatloaf made from diced apple and slices of apricot instead of meat, for example. Or making it with a meat other than ground beef. Consider a different sauce or a marinade – a soy-sauce and honey chicken-based meatloaf (pre-cook the chicken, obviously)? Why not?

.Making one change often demands making another, as the resulting recipe isn’t quite right. Something will often be clashing with the introduced flavor. Fried tomato doesn’t go half as well with fried eggs as I thought it would, for example, but plum sauce isn’t too bad.

You may well need to adjust the cooking time – watch your culinary creation closely. I found the hard way that some of my own experiments cooked brilliantly on the outside but were still too raw in the middle – drop the temperature a bit and lengthen the cooking time was the obvious answer, but that didn’t quite work either. The solution was to microwave the dish for about 10 minutes and leave it to rest for 5 more before finishing it in the oven. But cooking the dish in layers and then assembling it worked even better, and gave me more control over the process.

Exotic Flavors

The more unusual the flavors that you are incorporating, the less likely it is that your first attempts will succeed – and the more likely it is that you will end up with something genuinely unique at the end. Making a sponge using ginger beer instead of milk? With chunks of glace ginger stirred through the cake mix? It ends up being a strange batter – not great as a cake, but chopping up the ginger bits makes for an exotic way to batter chicken or fish prior to frying them.

It helps to have a solid understanding of the science behind the common cooking practices. There are shows that can help you with that – start with Alton Brown‘s Good Eats.

Two questions to perpetually ask yourself are “Why do this?” and “Why not do that?”

Why rest dough? Why rest meat? What’s the relationship between thickness of cut and how the meat cooks?

Why not add diced fried onion and bacon to a bread roll dough? Why not add grapes and wine to a cake? Why not stuff a bell pepper (capsicum) with diced tomato and braised pork mince? Melted gummies coating fresh fruit or fruit segments? Replacing the cashews in a cashew chicken recipe with pistachios – I’m not sure that the flavors will play nice with each other. Adding chopped pistachio to the crumb for a fried fish, on the other hand…

Delivery Vehicles

There’s quite often an element or ingredient in the recipe that exists purely to carry the flavor of other ingredients, or that can be used for that purpose. If a recipe calls for vinegar, imagine chopping some mint or herbs and infusing the vinegar first.

Alternately, you might find that your culinary creation needs some sort of delivery vehicle to convey a flavor through the whole dish. Milk, Yogurt, Vinegar, sauces and gravies in general, are commonly used for the purpose, but so are infused oils and pureed fruit, and jams and cream. Essentially, just about anything that’s liquid can do the job. But there some things that are rarely considered for this purpose – caramel, for example.

So start by looking at the liquid and semi-liquid ingredients you’ve already got. If the recipe has apples, think about dicing and baking the apple to turn it into gelatinous chunks of fruit and then adding whatever the flavor is that you want to carry through the dish.

Recipe Creation

Quite often, it will be a case of two steps forward and one back – you substitute one ingredient, add an exotic one for flavor, change the cooking time and then the cooking process to harness a delivery vehicle, only to find that one of the ingredients isn’t playing ball and also needs to be replaced.

Learn what ingredients frequently get paired, and why. And keep an eye out for the occasional oddball – raspberries and steak, I’m told, are such a combination if handled correctly.

Sample Size

Always bear in mind the purpose – you don’t want to feed your players a whole meal, you want them to just get a little sample so that they can associate the flavor with the setting. So think about how much you will need, and how it is going to be served.

Accompaniment

Most foods are not consumed in isolation – there’s usually a side dish, or a drink, or both, to accompany it. Don’t neglect this. DO make sure that the combination is palatable.

Socializing The Society

Finally, do your best to make the tasting an event. Try to source some exotic music that seems appropriate to the culture, for example. The more you can bring it to life for the players, the more real your game will seem.

Conclusion

So, wherever the PCs in your campaign are now, what’s the local ambrosia – and what’s the meal it’s supposed to be paired with?

What is INT, and (in practical terms), what can it be used for?

I was strolling down the street the other day and noticed a logo consisting of a name and a number of dots, and for some reason, it sparked a new way of looking at INT scores, one that emphasized a practical application of the stat which would make a measurable and definitive difference of a single point of stat gain (on the 1-25 scale used by most game systems – adjust as necessary for systems like Traveler which runs on 2-12, from memory).

Champions / Hero Games represents a particularly thorny conversion problem that I’ll tackle separately a little later in the post.

Apprehension Of Number

Let’s start simple. If you look at the image below,

then you can see at a glance that there is one spot or counter. That’s just too easy.

Second Test

So let’s make it a bit harder, and see how people do. Can you count the spots below with a glance lasting 3 seconds or less?

Who got something other than 5? No-one? That’s what I expected. Anyone who can read a d6 would have no trouble.

Third Test

Let’s get harder again. Remember, 3 seconds or less.

Most people will still have succeeded. The answer, of course, is 12. But a few people will have to have counted four across and three down – each possible with a second or so of observation – and then put those numbers together to deduce 12. That’s still doable in 3 seconds, but it’s cutting it close.

Applied INT

This method of interpreting INT posits that the number of counters, coins, or whatever – when arranged in a simple pattern – that a character can count at a glance is equal to their INT score.

If the average person is defined as INT 10, then a character with that 10 can’t count this many at a single glance – but they can grasp 4 with one, and 3 with another, and multiply those to get 12 in the rest of the three-second window.

A character with INT 12 or better has no need for that – one glance is enough.

Fourth Test

It’s my experience that most RPG GMs and players rate fairly high in the INT stakes. They might not be in the genius bracket, but they are well above average – let’s suggest that their INT scores, on the D&D/Pathfinder scale, are between 12 and 18.

How many counters are depicted in the next image?

A few people could answer with a glance, but most people will have to break this down into 5 and 4 and then multiply to get 20.

Second and Third principles

The few will have INT scores equivalent of 20 or better. The majority won’t have that, and will have to have applied a process of simplifying the problem into three steps – and those steps each take as long as a single glance. That’s the Second Principle.

Furthermore, because there are two separate perception events to be performed, characters with INTs less than 10 taking this test would not be able to get the ‘5’ with a glance, they would have to actually count them. That’s the Third Principle but it’s not complete yet.

Fifth Test

So let’s look at something a bit more challenging. Same rules – let’s see how you do with this one:

What’s going on? Well, most people won’t be able to get the number of columns or rows without counting them – and it’s complicated because there are some missing counters on two rows of the pattern. I think you’ll agree that subtracting 1 from a count, or 2, is a trivial exercise – but it adds a process. So now we have five processes – count the number of token columns across, count the number of token rows, do the multiplication, count the number of missing tokens, and subtract that count from the previous total.

For the record, there are 9 columns, 6 rows, and 2 missing tokens, giving a total of 52 tokens.

• There are too many tokens for anyone to count at a glance – unless they have INT 104 (the INT score is halved because counting at a glance requires two operations – putting the missing tokens back in, then taking them away once you have a total).
• Characters with INT 18 or more might be able to tell at a glance that there are 9 columns, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Once you have more than 5 or 6 in a row, almost everyone has to count them – which means that the ‘extras’ count for more. Maybe 2 each, maybe 3 each. Simply putting them in a long row without a gap separating them into smaller groups makes a difference – instead of 9 (requiring INT 18), it’s 13 (requiring INT 26) or 17 (requiring INT 34) to count them with a glance. So we have to allow for this in our Third Principle.
• Counting: everyone starts at 1 unless they have trained themselves not to. If you can get 5 tokens at a glance – and anyone with average INT can do so – then it’s a lot faster to start counting at 5. I probably would accept an argument that characters with INT 20+ employ this trick instinctively. So that’s a Fourth Principle.
• Most people will count the number of rows correctly, but the lack of alignment makes it harder to do so with a glance. 6-at-a-glance usually requires INT 12, but those gaps would boost this by +1 or +2 token-equivalents each – so INT 14 or 16. That’s a Fifth Principle.
• Centering the columns that are missing tokens will also have thrown a lot of people off. Under time pressure, many will count two half-counters missing from each side as two counters missing on each of the affected rows, and so will get the wrong answer. Adding a couple of seconds to the time available – 5 seconds instead of 3 – is enough to relieve that pressure and overcome the problem for most people. For those with INT of 6-10, you might have to add this extra twice, and for those with INT 1-5, you might have to add it four times (exponential relationship). So that’s a Sixth Principle.
• The observant may have noticed that I’ve added a bit of shadow to the image to make the counters look more three-dimensional. That was in preparation for another image in the series that would examine how much difficulty was added by vertical stacking, but it quickly became apparent that a single glance was only enough to count a small stack, one small stack at a time. That means that a character with INT 1-5 can count or estimate one stack at a time; a character with INT 6-10 can do two (using relative heights to short-cut the second, if there’s a difference); a character with INT 15 can’t do any better; a character with INT 20 can do three stacks at once; and it would take INT 40 to do four stacks at once. But it’s not all doom and gloom – square counters placed side-by-side halve these INT increases above INT 10, so 3 columns INT 15, 4 columns INT 20, and 5 columns INT 30. 7th Principle.

It should also be pretty clear that I’ve thought very carefully about the examples that I need to demonstrate the principles!

Sixth Test

Having taken simple numbering about as far as I can – going any further wouldn’t really show anything you haven’t seen already – it’s time to move in a different direction.

In the tests so far, you will have gotten a big advantage from the structured arrangement. But Test 5 showed that this advantage is easily negated. So let’s look at that.

The image below has a number of tokens positioned randomly. At a single glance, can you tell how many of them there are?

My testing (on myself, naturally) has shown that this is right on the cusp of being too much. My single-second glances either moved up and right (missing the counter bottom right) or moved down and right (missing the counter at top right). A second glance usually filled in the missing piece of the puzzle. So Nine counters, arranged randomly, are just as hard to get right as 15 counters arranged in a pattern.

15/9 = 1 2/3.

In other words, random placement increased the INT requirement 66%, or multiplies the number of tokens that can be counted in a 3-second glance by 0.6.

But that’s a fairly inconvenient number – so let’s make it +50% INT requirement or 2/3 the number of counters at a glance.

That specific impact is my Ninth Principle,, while the general statement that ‘complications multiply the INT requirement by ‘a factor’ is the Eighth Principle.

This should come as no surprise – the 52-counter Test as good as demonstrated the general principle – but this makes it explicit.

As a confirmation, I simplified the problem:

Seventh Test

Taking one or more counters away should make it a lot easier to count them at a glance, despite the random placement (which I re-randomized for this test):

I still found myself getting “six +1” from a glance, but a single glance was enough to get the correct total. The correct answer is 7 tokens, of course.

7 = INT requirement of 14 × 1.5 = 21. That’s a little high, but I wasn’t quite getting them at a glance. 6 = INT requirement of 12 × 1.5 = 18, which is about right.

So I consider this validation of both the general principle and the specific +50% requirement.

Eighth test

The job is also made easier by the counters all being the same size. So let’s see what happens if that is no longer the case.

How many did you get at a glance? My results were “4+1 = 5”. That +1, as demonstrated in Test 7, is significant, but even more important is that this is the wrong answer. The correct answer is 6, not 5, and this time, a second glance wasn’t enough – the problem was that my brain wasn’t associating the big one as being the same as the smaller ones, I had to consciously remember to count it.

Adding it in is trivial, as noted earlier – you just have to remember to do it. That’s an extra process, so the +2 second rule comes into play with a second ‘complicating factor’, and suggests that a third complicating factor would add twice that, or another 4 seconds, to the time requirement.

Okay, so that takes care of the ‘error correction”, and means that I can turn my attention to analyzing the “4+1” part. The impact of the diversity of sizes was to make what was a “6+1” into a “4+1”.

6 / 4 = 1.5, or +50%.

There it is again. So two complications = two +50% INT requirement increases, compounding – or 4/9 the capacity to count at a glance. Again, let’s simplify the latter to 1/2.

Ninth Test (Virtual)

This test demonstrates a moving window, so that you can’t see the whole image at once – presuming the movement takes 1 second to show the whole image, you would only have the equivalent of a single glance to get a result. If it takes 3 seconds, you would have enough time for two, and putting them together, which is the minimum requirement. The slower the movement, the more time you have to deal with the situation and get an answer.

I wasn’t able to generate the series of animations that would be required to actually demonstrate this – I made do with a piece of scrap paper into which I cut a window, which I then moved at various speeds to get a sense of the impact. The image shown is illustrative only.

My estimate is that it would NOT take +4 seconds, but WOULD take +2 seconds – a total of 7 seconds, not 9. So that separates additional difficulties (Sixth principle) into two compounding effects – one based on INT and one on the number of difficulties, and inserts an additional clause to the principle: additional difficulties multiply by whatever the indicated INT-based time adjustment is to get the net increase.

Putting it all together

The principles, as they are currently arranged, are clunky and ill-defined. With a little effort, it should be possible to compact and compress them down into something more useful – so let’s do that before progressing. To start with, i divided them into General Principles and Specific Counting Principles, the latter only applying to this specific task.

General Principles

1. Characters can apply their INT score to tasks, which are measured in ‘Operations’ or ‘Ops’.
2. Tasks use a defined number of Ops per Task.
3. If a character’s Ops count is not sufficient to complete the task in two or less glances, it must be broken down into sub-tasks that are within the character’s capabilities.
4. The number of sub-tasks dictates how long the Task takes:
   1. An at-a-glance task takes 1 second.
   2. A two-sub-task task takes 3 seconds – one for each sub-task and 1 to integrate the results.
   3. If two sub-tasks are not enough, a time penalty applies. This time penalty is equal to the product of an INT-based time multiplied by the number of additional sub-tasks.
      • INT time penalty for INT 11+ = 1 second.
      • INT time penalty for INT 6-10 = 2 seconds.
      • INT time penalty for INT 1-5 = 4 seconds.

Perception / Counting of objects

1. Characters can count objects at a glance in an ordered pattern for 1 Ops per item.
2. If they have insufficient Ops to complete the task in a single glance, they have to grasp the number of columns and rows and combine the results for a 3-second glance. Each of these sub-tasks has an Ops cost of 2 pts.
3. Characters with INT 20+ get an advantage in that they can start counting at INT/2 entries in the row/column.
4. It takes 3 seconds to count INT/2 entries in a column or row. This is referred to as the Base Count.
5. Gaps are considered 2 or 3 ‘entries’ in a column or row count.
6. If items are stacked in a third dimension, characters with INT 1-5 can count / estimate 1 stack at a time; characters with INT 6-20 can count / estimate 2, characters with INT 21-40, 3, and characters with INT 40, 4.
7. If the stacks can be placed next to each other and are of a shape suitable for comparisons of stacking to be made visually, these change to INT 1-5, 1 stack; INT 6-14, 2 stacks, INT 15-19 3 stacks, INT 20-29 4 stacks, and INT 30+, 5 stacks.
8. Every complication to the count increases the Ops required for a task by +50%, compounding.
9. Complications include: Random / disordered arrangement, significant size variations, windows blocking perception or other animated phenomena, three-dimensional stacking, and a column or row count that is more than the Base Count in line.
10. An incorrect answer can be identified by spending an additional time unit (refer general principles) on verification. This also counts as a complication for the purposes outlined above.

So far, so good. But I promised practical application, and while being able to instantly count the number of steps in front of a building a-la Sherlock Holmes, or the number of poker chips in a stack, is a neat party trick, I doubt that it will be of practical value very often.

So, let’s talk about Mathematics.

Maths

Depending on the game system, it may or may not require a specific skill to utilize INT this way. If it does, the processes outlined below still apply but the character will have extra Ops to use – see “Applied Skills” later in the article.

Let’s start with a calculation that is pretty much at-a-glance for most people of gamer caliber – in fact, anyone over INT 10:



A Fourth Addition Element

Adding a fourth element to the addition and for most people, it becomes a two-step operation – usually the first three at a glance and the fourth then has to get ‘read’ separately and integrated.



That means that each element to be added in a column of numbers normally consumes 4 Ops to do at a glance. As before, if you have to break the task up into two or more separate sub-tasks, it takes additional time.

Thus, INT determines how many single-digit numbers you can add up at a glance:

• INT 1-4 = 1, and presumably the arithmetic is done on fingers and toes.
• INT 5-8 = 2.
• INT 9-12=3.
• INT 13-16=4.
• INT 17-20=5.
• INT 21-24=6.
• INT 25-28=7.

Each additional number beyond this maximum adds 1 to the time-count, plus one for the integration of results.

But there are complicating factors to consider.

Totals more than 10

If the total comes to more than 10, it takes more mental capacity to do the calculation. We’re just not as good at instinctively grasping the total.

There are multiple ways that this can be broken up. My instinctive method is to add the two largest numbers together (7+6=13) and then add the 1 and the 4 together (1+4=5), and then put the totals together (13+5=18) – but some people will do the 1+7 first. while others will instinctively notice that 6+4=10 with their first glance.

Whatever the method you use, the mechanics so far as Applied INT are concerned are the same: Each element in a total greater than 10 has an Ops requirement of +1, and each element greater than the resulting ‘at a glance’ total adds +50% to the total:

• INT 1-5 = 1, the arithmetic is done on fingers and toes.
• INT 6-10 = 2.
• INT 11-15=3.
• INT 16-20=4.
• INT 21-25=5.
• INT 26-30=6.

… and so on.

So, four numbers, total more than 10:

• INT 1-5 = 1, plus 3 more = 5 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 16.875 = 17 Ops for at a glance; so +3 time units of 4 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 sec each = 13.5 sec each = (3+40.5 = 3+41) = 44 sec.
• INT 6-10 = 2, plus 2 more = 5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 11.25 = 11 Ops for at a glance, but 2 +1 sub=processes is enough to solve the calculation, so 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 = +9 sec each additional sub-process, giving a total of 3+18=21 seconds to solve the calculation.
• INT 11-15=3, plus 1 more = 5 × 1.5 = 7.5 = 8 Ops for at a glance. Total time = 3 seconds.
• INT 16-20=4, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.
• INT 21-25=5, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.
• INT 26-30=6, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.

Upping The Ante: numbers greater than 10

In the calculation below, I’ve added a 5th element, and three of them are double digits. Obviously, the result is going to be two digits, maybe even three (depending on how big the numbers are). Each element that’s more than 1 digit counts as two elements.

So the base number of Ops per element is 5 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 (for three double-digits) × 1.5 (for a total greater than 10) = 25.3125 =25 Ops for at a glance. Only characters with INT 25 could do so, everyone else will have to break the task up.

And it now matters what sequence you do the math in. My mental process instinctively does the easiest part first (3+8=11), then the next easiest part (11+12=23), then the next easiest part (23+23=46), and then the hardest part (46+34=80). But my mental capacity is enough that the first two of those (three numbers) can get done at a glance, so it only takes me 2 additional sub-tasks at 2 seconds each, or a total of 7 seconds, to do the mental arithmetic – and most of it (the four additional seconds) is devoted to that last calculation.

• INT 1-5 = 1, plus 4 more = +3 time units of 4 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 sec each = 20.25 sec each = (3+81) = 84 sec.
• INT 6-10 = 2, plus 3 more, so 3 additional sub-tasks at 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = +6.75 sec, giving a total of 3+20.25 = 23 sec.
• INT 11-15: but adding two numbers both >10 at a glance is now possible – Ops count of 5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 11, and the initial 3+8 is an at-a-glance 1 second calculation. Three sub-tasks thus gets this and the next two calculations done in the initial 3 second burst, leaving 2 more at 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 4.5 sec each, or a total of 3+9=12 seconds.
• INT 16-20=4 so the first 4 numbers get totaled in the initial 3 seconds, +1 sub-task at 4.5 seconds as above, for a total of 7.5 seconds.
• INT 21-25=5, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.
• INT 26-30=6, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.

A more serious calculation: Subtraction

Here, every number has at least two digits, two of them have three, and there’s a negative number i.e a subtraction, buried in the middle. Unsurprisingly, the triple digits are an extra complication, and the double digit subtraction is another. What’s more, any non-trivial subtraction takes twice as long as an addition, so the subtraction counts not as a 5th element, but as a 6th element as well.

At a glance: 5 × 1.5 ^ 6 elements × 1.5 × 1.5 (triple digits) × 1.5 (result greater than 10) × 1.5 (result greater than 100) = 288.3251953125 Ops. NO-ONE is solving this at a glance unless they have some freakish ability (Lightning Calculator exists in the Hero System and GURPS, but not in several other game systems).

Fortunately, our powers-of-ten maths permits us to deal with each column separately – so this is 3 calculations:

1+3+5-4+5 = 10, keep the zero and carry the 1;
1 (carried)+3+2+8-3+3 = 14; keep the 4 and carry the 1;
1 (carried)+1+2 = 4; integrate the total to get 440.

Trying to do the math any other way is a LOT slower, as the trends from previous calculations clearly showed, and the at-a-glance made clear.

First calculation: 6 elements, all single digits, but we can save one since 1+3=4 and there’s a -4 in there – so (1+3), then (-3), then (5+5) to a result. That’s 4 sub-tasks. Some characters will be able to do this at a glance.

Second calculation: 6 elements, all single digits – but the last element is a 3 and there’s a -3 right above it, so (3-3), then (2+8=10), (10+1 carried=11), (11+3=14). Again, four sub-tasks. Same.

Third calculation: 3 elements, all single digits. Many characters will be able to do this at-a-glance.

Fourth calculation (integration of results) – include in third calculation for an additional sub-task.

• INT 1-5 = 1. Calculation 1 is plus 3 more sub-tasks= +3 time units of 4 × 1.5 sec each = +18 sec total = (3+18) = 21 seconds. Calculation 2, same as calculation 1, = 21 seconds. Calculation 3 is 1 + 1 more at 6 seconds = 9 seconds. Total: 51 seconds.
• INT 6-10 = 2. Calculation 1 is plus 2 more sub-tasks at 2 × 1.5 = +6 seconds for both, so 3+9 = 12 sec. Calculation 2: same as calculation 1, 12 sec. Calculation 3 is covered under the 3-seconds / 2 sub-tasks rule. Total = 27 seconds.
• INT 11-15 = 3. Calculation 1 is +1 sub-tasks at +6 seconds = 9 seconds. Calculation 2, same as calculation 1. Calculation 3 is 3 seconds. Total = 21 seconds.
• INT 16-20=4. Calculations 1 & 2 & 3 all take 3 seconds each, for a total of 9 seconds.
• INT 21-25=5. All three calculations are at-a-glance, so 3 seconds total.

On Paper

Let’s calculate the time required for totaling 40 two-digit numbers.

The total might be less than four digits, but it probably isn’t – (40 × 100 =4000, -20 (max is 99, not 100) =3980; average = 1990; 999/1990 = 50.2% chance enough numbers are low enough that the total is 999 or less). However, an average of 1990, divided into 4 columns, means that each column is likely to be only 3 digits in length.

This would be a lot easier to do it on paper, and that’s not something we’ve looked at – how much faster is it?

For a comparison, we need to work the problem both ways. Fortunately, this is already broken into 4 calculations of 10.

Doing it the hard way: 4 × 9 = 36 sub-processes, plus 3 more integration steps, plus trying to remember each total. Okay, I’ll let you write those down. Or, one at a time, 39 sub-processes, no integration, but there are massive penalties for complications – all 2 digits, probably 4 digit answers. No, that’s not viable, there’s too much overhead. 36+9 it is.

I’ll bunch the calculations together even though that’s harder to read.

At a glance: 5 Ops (base) × 1.5 ^ 10 (all double-digit numbers) × 1.5 × 1.5 (triple-digit results) = 648.73 Ops. Not going to happen unless the character has a freak talent.

• INT 1-5 = 1. Calculation 1 is plus 8 more sub-tasks= +8 time units of 4 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 sec each = +13.5 sec each = (3+108) = 111 seconds. Calculations 2, 3, and 4 are the same. Calculation 5, the integration, is 3 sub-tasks at 4 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = +20.25 seconds. Total:444+20=464 seconds = 7 minutes 44 seconds. And an incredibly high chance of making a mistake. And that time is probably being generous; if I assume that there’s an additional penalty because we have ten numbers in a row, it inflates to 686 seconds, or 11 minutes 26 seconds. Working flat-out. Most people can’t concentrate that hard for that long, and a low INT character would find this especially challenging. So that’s probably another 2 complication levels, elevating the total to 1519 seconds, or 25 minutes, 19 seconds. Finally, remember that this represents 39 INT rolls – maybe at +2 because the character can take his time, but INT is not his strong suit – the odds of multiple mistakes along the way are pretty enormous. In conclusion, then this is probably beyond the abilities of such a character.
• INT 6-10 = 2. Calculation 1 is plus 8 more sub-tasks at 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 sec each, × 1.5 (ten numbers in a row) × 1.5 (concentration) = +15.1875 seconds each = 121.5 seconds, +3 seconds = 124.5. Calculations 2, 3, and 4 are the same. Integration is 3 sub-tasks at 15.1875 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 34.17 seconds each. In total, 601 seconds, or 10 minutes 1 second, and again with virtually zero confidence in the answer.
• INT 11-15 = 3. Calculation 1 is +7 more sub-tasks at +15.1875 seconds each = 106.3125 seconds, +3 = 109.3125. 2, 3, 4, are the same, so 437.25 seconds total, Integration is 3 sub-tasks at 34.17 seconds = +102.51 seconds. Grand total = 540 seconds – which is 9 minutes. If you did it enough times to get three totals that agrees, you’d be reasonably confident that it was error-free – but that could take hours.
• INT 16-20=4. Calculation 1 is +6 sub-tasks at +15.1875 seconds each = 91.125 seconds, +3 = 94.125. Calculations 2, 3, and 4 are the same, so 376.5 seconds. Integration is still 3 sub-tasks at 34.17 seconds = 102.51 seconds. Grand Total = 479 seconds, or 7 minutes, 59 seconds – call it 8 minutes. But, for the first time, there’s a fair likelihood of getting the right answer at the end of that 8 minutes. You would probably do it again to check your work, though.
• INT 21-25=5. Calculation 1 is +5 sub-tasks at +15.1875 seconds each = 75.9375 seconds, +3 = 78.9375. Calculations 2, 3, and 4 are the same, so 315.75 seconds. Integration is still 3 sub-tasks at 34.17 seconds = 102.51 seconds. Grand Total = 418 seconds, or 6 minutes, 58 seconds – use 7 minutes. And, for the first time, you would be confident in your answer first time around.

Now, the easier way: 4 calculations of 10 single digits, a 2-digit carry, so 4 more calculations of 10 single digits and the carry. But there’s a trick that makes it even easier, since we’re doing this on paper.

Cross out all the zeros in the column you’re adding up. Do all the digits that add up to 10, and cross those off as you go as well. These multiple single-digit 2-item sums are all going to be at-a-glance, pretty much, and they vastly reduce the complexity of the rest of the calculation by eliminating elements.

A 7, but there are no 3s – skip.
8 & 2 make 10.
4 and 4 and 2 make another 10.

And here’s what’s left:

That’s a single addition of 7 and 5. Column total = 20+12=32, determined with just 4 sub-processes.

Repeat the trick with the tens column:

7 and 3 (carried) = 10. 8 & 2 = another 10. 5 and 5 = third ten. 6 and 4 = a fourth ten. 7 and another 3 = fifth 10 There’s even less left over.

And there’s no doubt about the accuracy because these small calculations are so simple. So the first string of 10 double digits total 572.

For characters of INT 1-5, these small calculations will take 3 seconds each, plus 14 seconds for the final integration – a total of 44 seconds.

For everyone else, 10+14=24 seconds. But take an extra 20 seconds, no need to rush.

No need to continue – the results are blindingly obvious at this point. Instead I’ll leave the other three columns for readers to practice on. (BTW: When I’m adding time – minutes or seconds – I look for total of 10s and 6’s).

5. Doing maths on paper or a blackboard or whiteboard or whatever – doing it written down – divides the Ops requirements by 2, round down, minimum 1 – unless there is some identifiable trick that makes the math easier, in which case it’s divide by 4, round up, minimum 1. This divisor gets applied to the Ops cost per process.

Troubles Multiplied

Multiplication is all about technique. If you know how, it’s not hard at all, especially if you can do it on paper.

It doesn’t take much longer than addition, really – on paper. Multiplication has a cost of 6 ops for the first one, doubling for each additional multiplication (if you’re doing them mentally).

There are shortcuts that I use all the time. Doubling is easy, tripling is a little less so, quadrupling is doubling twice, five-fold is add multiply by ten and halve, times six is x2 x3, times seven is times 10 – the original number three times (but still the hardest calculation on this list), times eight is x2 x2 x2, times 9 is times ten minus the original number, and times ten is trivially easy.

But the calculation offered above is a little more complicated than that, because it is multiplying three numbers together.

You could go 3 × 8 = 24, and you’re left with 23 × 24 – which is 4 at-a-glance calculations, plus the first one. On paper, you can solve that as fast as you can write – 3 × 4=12, 2×4+1 carried=9, write a 0, 2×3=6, 2×2 = 4, add 490+92=582.

If I were doing it mentally, I’d employ the shortcuts and look for the most efficient route: 3 × 23 = 69, double, double, double again. It takes about twice as long as doing it on paper – for this particular calculation.

Division

Mental division can be hard. Even very hard. Making life easier is the fact that errors also shrink in proportion to the divisor, so you can approximate and generally get away with it.

There are also some shortcuts, but they are a bit trickier.

• /2 is easy.
• /3 can be slightly easier – add up all the digits, keep going until you have a single digit. If that’s 0, 3, 6, or 9, the original number is evenly divisible by 3; if there’s a remainder, that’s also the remainder of the original. Then see below for the ‘perfect divisibility’ technique – it’s so simple, you won’t believe it!
• /4 is /2 /2.
• /5 is x2 / 10.
• /6 is /2 /3.
• /7 is a royal pain. It’s usually faster to do /6 and /8, add, and /2. This isn’t quite accurate – it gives 49/48 of the correct answer – but I can usually live with that margin of error. You can even minimize it a bit more by always rounding down.
• /8 is /2 /2 /2.
• /9 is /3 /3 but that’s also a bit of a palaver. Sometimes it’s easier to average /8 and /10 and live with the error – 81/80ths of the correct answer. You can estimate the error by dividing the original number by 80 – you’re only really interested in the integer results. You can also check your results by dividing by 3 and repeating the sum-the-digits trick, but that’s usually not worth the effort, either.
• Divide by 10 is easy.
• Divide by 11 is messy, but you can get within 1% of the correct answer by dividing by 10 and subtracting 1/10th of the result. You will be 1% low, but rounding up will usually more than compensate.
• Divide by 12 is /4, /3.
• Divide by 15 is x2, /3, /10.
• Divide by 16 is /2, /2, /2, /2.
• Divide by 17 – I can’t remember ever having to do so. I don’t have a shortcut for this. It’s going to be about 6% less than the division by 16, for whatever that’s worth.
• Divide by 18 is /3, /3, /2.
• Divide by 19 – another painful calculation. No satisfactory shortcut
• Divide by 20 is /10 / 2.

So let’s look at the problem stated above. 532 / 3, to start with: 5+3+2=10, 1+0=1, so there will be a remainder of 1, and 531 is what we should be dividing. That’s 300/3 + 231/3.

The perfect divisibility trick

Here’s a peculiarity: run through the multiples of 3 and note the final digit each time: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30. Strip out those tens digits and you get 3, 6, 9, 2, 5, 8, 1, 4, 7, 0. Let’s arrange those: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. So the final digit of a number is diagnostic of the division by 3 – there are No repeated digits in that list!

300 / 3 = 100; 231 / 3 = 21 / 3 + 210 / 3. so 532/3 = 177 1/3.

177 / 3?

1+7+7 = 15; 1+5 = 6 – so perfect divisibility by 3.
177 – 27 = 150. So 177 / 3 = 50+9 = 59.

59 / 2 = 29.5. But there would be a small fraction left over from the previous calculations – enough to tip the rounding to round up. Call it 30. Or 29 and a remainder – whatever’s most convenient.

Higher Maths

The same principles can reveal a character’s facility with higher maths, simply increasing

There is a progression to the higher math elements. Each step of the progression adds 1 to the cost of that operation, plus a base value of 6 Ops.

• Algebra = +1
  • Exponent 2: Squares = -2 – this is just multiplication
  • Exponent 2: Square Roots = +1
  • Exponent n, greater than 2 = +2 per, or per part thereof.
  • Areas, simple shapes = -1
  • Areas, complex 2-dimensional shapes = +0
  • Areas, three-dimensional shapes = +2
  • Volumes: simple shapes = +1
  • Volumes, complex 3-dimensional shapes = +3
  • Each additional dimension = +1 to the above
• Basic Calculus
  • Simple Differentiation = +2
  • Simple Integration = +3
  • Complex Differentiation (involves math below this point in the list) = +4
  • Complex Integration (same definition) = +6
  • With discontinuities: +1 to the above
• Trigonometry
  • Basic (2-dimensional) with right-angle triangles= +2
  • Basic (2-dimensional) with non-right-angle triangles = +3
  • Complex (3-Dimensional) = +4
  • Additional dimensions over three = +5, base, plus 1 per extra dimension
• Logarithms = +3
• Three dimensional vector sums = +3
• Exponentials = +4
• Probability
  • Simple = +4
  • Factorials = +4
  • Complex, 2 independent variables = +5
  • Complex, 2 dependent variables = +6
  • Additional variables = +1
• Harmonic Motion & Elasticity problems = +5
• Partial Differentiation, Partial integration = +5
• Fibonacci Numbers, Primes, etc = +6
• Multi-variable Analysis & Simulation = +7
• Higher Applied Math = +8, +1 per additional difficulty
• Higher Theoretical Math = +10, +1 per additional difficulty
• Unsolved Mathematical Problems = +12, +1 per additional difficulty

The reader will appreciate that I didn’t want to bog down in specifying a lot of exotic math types that they will never have heard of, so the last three are fairly generic and the GM gets to assign whatever he thinks appropriate, starting at the base value.

Everything prior to those I’ve had occasion to use or study. For example, at one point I became really interested in studying that rate of change of probability with increasing numbers of dice – there’s a lot of this sort of math buried in the Sixes System.

Rate of Change is differentiation, in this case of probability, with each additional dice after the first being an additional variable. So Rate of change of probability = 6+1 (algebra) +2 (simple differentiation +4 (simple probability) [+1 per additional dice] = 13; 2-dice=14; 3-dice=15; 4-dice=16, and so on. Which seems really impractical to do when you’re getting up to 10 or 15 dice!

But each step up that chain is a partial solution to the next problem up, and don’t forget the ‘doing it on paper’ modifier, and it becomes a lot more practical. Once you’ve identified a pattern of change from one number of dice to that number +1, the whole world opens up before you, and solving the individual problems become much simpler, because you don’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ each time..

Quite honestly, the housing price calculator (see: The Price of Bricks and Soil (and more)) with it’s multi-variable analysis – some of them dependent, some independent, and some partially both – was a little more difficult.

Mysteries & Puzzles

Okay, so now things begin to get a bit more interesting. I mean, who really cares how long it will take a character to solve a maths problem? On the rare occasions when it’s necessary, most GMs (including me) will simply pluck a number out of the air that seems reasonable, and move on.

Hopefully, the math tricks and shortcuts will be worth reader’s time.

But now, we’re looking at a question that’s not so easily answered, and one in which the difference between what the player is capable of, and what the character can do, matters massively – with the GM expected to make up the difference, without messing with player agency, and while keeping the game-play interesting and role-playing, not roll-playing.

Let’s say that the adventure revolves around an Agatha-Christie style murder-mystery, the PCs gather clues and have to then use those clues to eliminate the suspects who are innocent in order to apprehend the guilty party.

If we knew the INT score of the player of the smartest character when it comes to solving this sort of puzzle,, we could simply let the player work at his own pace while applying a conversion factor to go from ‘real time’ to ‘game time’. We could then use that conversion factor to schedule plot developments in ‘game time’.

We have the basic tools – more than enough of them to actually test a player’s applied intelligence. ‘Total a column of ten 2-digit numbers’ would work fairly well, for example. We then calculate how long it would take their character, and we have an instant conversion rate from one to the other. Or perhaps some of the simpler mental arithmetic challenges.

It would probably be better to run a number of small tests and average the results, that’s up to you.

Solving mysteries – Ops and Sub-tasks

Analyzing each clue to determine its significance relative to the bigger picture is a sub-task requiring 1 Ops points. Integrating that clue with the state of the investigation to this point is a sub-task requiring 2 Ops points. So that’s a total of 3 Ops points and two sub-tasks per clue.

Because clues tend to be more abstract than numbers and numeric operations, the time penalties are increased × 2.5 to 5 seconds and 10 seconds, respectively, rising by 1 second for each clue after the first.

Number Of Clues

As a general rule of thumb, it takes 1 clue to eliminate 1 suspect. At least, it would if no-one lies or tries to fabricate an alibi (which is a specific kind of lie, in my book).

It takes an additional clue to prove that someone is lying and another additional clue to determine the motive for the lie, and it may well take a third additional clue to establish the truth – sometimes, that 3rd extra isn’t necessary.

On top of that, the GM is likely to throw red herrings across the party’s path, each of which needs still another clue to identify. Another way to phrase this is that some of the clues may be misleading and need another piece of information to clarify their significance. That adds another clue and another sub-task to the total, per red herring.

And, just to make matters worse, each clue is probably buried amongst a mass of other information, with the rest being irrelevant – so you often need to analyze three or more pieces of information just to determine what’s an actual clue and what isn’t. That adds one more sub-task per clue.

Furthermore, not all the clues may be available – someone (either the criminal or someone protecting someone else for whatever reason) may have actually destroyed key evidence.

Finally, mysteries that would be easy to solve if the information was arranged and delivered in logical sequence become a lot harder when the clues are delivered in a more random and realistic sequence.

I’m reminded of the episode of MASH in which BJ Hunnicutt is sent a mystery novel, The Rooster Crows At Midnight with the last page missing, and the whole camp tries to figure out whodunit.

Put all this together and you might be forgiven for thinking that no mystery can ever solved! But that’s no fun.

The Process Of Solving A Mystery

1. Crime Scene. What would be required to actually carry out the crime?

2. Initial Suspects. Rule out – provisionally – anyone who doesn’t possess the attributes necessary.

3. Interview Suspects. Analyze their statements to determine which information is relevant and which is chaff.

4. Analyze clues for verifiability. Verify everything that you can. Anything that can’t be verified is a possible lie.

5. Investigate possible lies and deceptions. Now that you have better questions, re-interview suspects.

6. Look for pieces of the puzzle that don’t fit. If all the evidence except one indicates that a person is guilty, focus on verifying that one; if you can do so, then some of the evidence against that person is a red herring. Theorize that each, in turn, is a red herring and look for a way to use the evidence, or additional evidence, to test that theory.

7. No Red Herring exists without someone attempting to construct a false narrative to cast blame on that person, and that means a lie or misdirection. Look for evidence of falsification and motives for doing so. If you find it, you can eliminate that red herring.

8. Means, Motive, Opportunity. Focus on these one at a time (and not necessarily in that order). If you get stalled on one front, turn to one of the others.

9. If evidence is missing / destroyed, treat that as a separate crime committed in furtherance of escaping justice. This is often a simpler puzzle to solve, and successfully doing so will often tell you what the missing evidence was.

10. Construct a set of theories of the crime in which each of your remaining prime suspects is the guilty party. Look for ways of testing those theories. For a theory to pass, it has to satisfy all three evidentiary legs listed in 8. Failure to pass doesn’t mean that the theory is necessarily wrong – but it does make it possible wrong. Determining the case in respect of a theory is the purpose of testing that theory.

11. One or more theories may pass, becoming your leading theories – test those looking for ways to disprove them.

12. Continue to narrow your field of prime suspects and eliminating theories. Each theory you bust may eliminate a prime suspect, each suspect that you eliminate also busts all theories based around them.

13. If you run out of theories or prime suspects, it usually means that you have eliminated someone you shouldn’t, often as a result of a flawed assumption. Double-check everything looking for both.

14. Ultimately, there will (hopefully) be one single theory (and only one) that satisfies the Means, Motive, Opportunity triangle and explains away any apparent reason why they could not have been the culprit. That is the solution.

As a Function Of Intelligence

Each of these 14 logical stages is a separate task in its own right. They do not have to be conducted concurrently, but neither do they need to be conducted in isolation. Breaking things down into their stages of investigation in this way is the equivalent of the simplification into fewer and/or simpler sub-tasks that was demonstrated in some of the math examples.

The higher the INT of the character, the more they can do simultaniously, and the faster the character can reach a conclusion. The total number of sub-tasks remains the same, but the number of them that can be processed at once makes the smarter character more efficient.

A critical quantity is the number of suspects. A high-INT character might be able to consider them all concurrently, whereas someone less-gifted might have to do so one or two at a time. Everything else is proportionate to the number of suspects, which is why heavy emphasis is placed on reducing that number as quickly as possible in the process.

There’s more that could be said – I could do a breakdown by INT, for example – but time is beginning to press, so I’ll leave it at that and move on.

Plans

Characters make plans all the time. Each step in a plan is a sub-task to achieving the overall objective. Planning a sub-task requires 4 Ops, plus 1 for each sub-task after the first in the unified whole.

The higher the INT, the more sub-tasks can be planned in advance; when you run out of available Ops points, the remaining sub-tasks become vague and non-specific.

The Unpacking Example

Unpacking after my forced relocation back in March was troublesome. Quite often, things could not be stored where they were eventually supposed to go, because I needed the empty space to unpack something else. In the meantime, the things to be unpacked had to be kept in storage. A lot of my planning for the task involved creating the space needed to accomplish the next step.

Each step in the process therefore became dependent on the successful completion of the previous step. To unpack the fiction library, I needed to have unpacked the non-fiction library. To unpack the magazines, I needed to have unpacked the fiction library. To unpack the non-fiction library, I needed to have unpacked the “to read” library. To unpack and set up my office space, I needed to have finished assembly of all the bookcases. And so on.

It was not dissimilar to solving one of those sliding-panel puzzles. There was only so much operational space to employ at a time, which limited the size of the process that could be carried out, breaking the overall task into sub-steps that would fit within the space available. Right now, the end is finally in sight.

Viewed from another perspective, to unpack something you need (1) to be able to get to where it is stored; (2) a location in which the contents will be stored when they are unpacked; (3) space to unpack and organize the contents of one or more boxes; and (4) a place to store the empty box. Put all four steps together and the contents in question go from ‘packed’ to ‘unpacked’. And the space used to store the previously ‘unpacked’ becomes empty and available for some other purpose – temporary storage space or working space or whatever.

You can get some impression of the scale of the problem by the fact that there were more than 500 boxes to be unpacked. Most of them were relatively small in size because of limitations of physical capacity. And a big complication was needing the space to assemble the furniture that would eventually be filled with the contents of those boxes. Which in turn was a function of the planned layout of the new residence.

Characters Planning

It’s exactly the same when a PC makes a plan. Or rather, when the character’s Player makes a plan. The question is, how much assistance does the GM need to provide? How much will ‘go right’ simply because the GM is able to presume that a character of that level of INT would get that planning right – and how much is he justified in having things go awry because the character’s INT could not anticipate every contingency?

To answer these questions, you need to break the main plan down into its necessary sub-steps, at least in general and vague terms. The number of Ops points available gives the maximum number of sub-steps that can be employed, but most tasks won’t need anywhere near that number.

Zenith-3 Mission Example

Team Zenith-3 were handed the problem of intervening to stop a bunch of domestic-US terrorists from utilizing a black market nuclear weapon that they have purchased from a Russian General. At it’s simplest, this is a fairly basic operation:

1. Contact Agent
2. Get Specifics of the mission
3. Plan the mission
4. Carry out the plan.

In-game politics had to be taken into consideration. The PCs are not welcome in the country where all of the above had to take place.

So they had to adopt new identities. And enter through Central America. And travel through post-Ragnarok Central America and post-Ragnarok Mexico to get to that country.

But to enter Central America, they needed the support of Brazil, which is under the control of an enemy. So they had to go to Brazil and obtain that assistance.

So now, the plan looks like this:

1. Adopt new identities.
2. Brazil.
3. Get Local Assistance (i.e. navigate Brazilian Politics)..
4. Central America. Insertion.
5. Meet Guide arranged by the Brazilians.
6. Travel through Central America.
7. Travel through Mexico.
8. Leave the Guide.
9. Enter the target country.
10. Contact Agent
11. Get Specifics of the mission
12. Plan the mission
13. Carry out the plan.

Steps 1 through 9 were a lot of work to carry out for a one-off mission, and it seemed more prudent to take advantage of that effort to establish a longer-term operation that could not only deal with the immediate, known, problem, but could also handle other problems as they arose.

So the plan was modified to incorporate this as part of the mission.

10. Select a region to contain ‘home base’.
11. Search the region for a suitable dwelling to use as a ‘home base’.
12. Purchase said dwelling.
13. Adapt and install facilities to make it an actual home base.
14. Contact Agent.
15. Get Specifics of the mission
16. Plan the mission
17. Carry out the plan.

Additional mission requirements were identified and inserted. Establishing the new identities and forging a working relationship with the local police forces, for example. Arranging the finances need to purchase the property and refurbish the resulting base. Settling on the parameters of the search. Obtaining vehicles to carry out the search. Establishing some operational procedures for performing missions in the target country.

A big one was that there would not be enough time in the schedule to achieve everything. So that added a time-travel item to the list. Deciding how far back to time-travel. Avoiding paradoxes as much as possible and working around the ones that were inevitable, like being in two places at the same time.

And so on. Few of these could be planned in advance; each one had to be planned out as it became imminent. And there were unexpected developments – in each region that they traveled through, they would have to earn the right of passage from the local ruler. Their guide would initially be, officially, an enemy – they had to keep him or her in the dark as to their true purpose (by the time they parted ways, they had cemented a loose alliance with him and come clean about their primary mission).

Here’s the key point: most of these steps weren’t aimed at the primary mission (the terrorist plot) or even at the secondary mission (establishing a base of operations); they were necessary simply to get the PCs into a position to execute the next step.

You can read a lot more about what actually happened and why in the series A Long Road (be warned, it’s very long – about the length of a typical paperback novel).

Analyzing The Process

This is a great example of the planning process because it demonstrates the principles of Step-wise Refinement and Iteration, explained in more detail in Top-Down Design, Domino Theory, and Iteration: The Magic Bullets of Creation.

In essence, start with a simple overall plan, factor in the complications one at a time even if you don’t know what the specifics are going to be, yet, and repeat this simple process until you’ve covered everything you can think of.

This takes a hugely-complicated plan and breaks it down while not pushing anyone’s INT capabilities too far. As each step gets encountered, it then gets broken down further into specifics.

Flawed Plans

Very few plans can be made without an error creeping in, somewhere. There will always be unexpected plot twists and surprises. It doesn’t matter if it’s a PC plan or an NPC plan.

The more of your INT that you aren’t using for a broad plan, the more you can anticipate things going wrong and preparing contingency plans.

That was the whole thesis of Making a Great Villain Part 1 of 3 – The Mastermind, in which I looked at ways that the GM could run NPCs who were far smarter than the GM himself.

Early In A Plan

When a plan is just getting underway, it’s far easier to roll with the punches and find an alternate route to achieving a goal, no matter what surprises get thrown at you. Some characters will develop resources and capabilities with no idea of what they will eventually do with them – they are simply accumulating resources that might be beneficial in achieving their overall ambitions.

The Midpoint

At some point, though, they will recognize a pathway to their goals that derives from these capacities, and the specific additional needs that they have in order for that plan to succeed. This marks a transition from Early Planning to Late Planning.

Late In A Plan

Once a pathway is seen, activities become more purposeful. Flexibility gets traded for greater certainty, and the closer the character gets to achieving their goals, the more flexibility will have been traded in this way.

Complicating factors that the Intelligent character will take into account will be misdirection and security. Most plans fail because not enough attention has been paid to one or both of these – and GMs are usually careful to preserve these blind spots to give the PCs a reasonable chance at successfully stopping the plot.

The more Intelligent the villain, the better they should be able to respond to the exposure of such flaws in their plans. There can be exceptions, when obsessions and blind spots come into play, but as a general rule of thumb, unused Ops points should permit the formulation of alternatives and contingencies at the rate of 1 per 2 available Ops points.

The simpler the plan, the more routes to victory. The more detailed the plan, the more restrictive it is.

That means that a character with INT 18 has markedly different capabilities than one with INT 16, for example.

But beyond Masterminds, who can often be characterized as simply having “enough INT”, the more important application here is for determining the capabilities of a lower-INT villain – one with INT 8 vs one with INT 9, for example.

INT 8: A 4-step plan with 2 contingencies.
INT 9: A 5-step plan with 2 contingencies – or a 3-step plan with 3 contingencies.

Applied Skills

Mathematics as a skill simply adds one Ops point capacity per skill level, and – at the GM’s discretion – reduces the Ops cost of specific tasks by 1 for every 5 skill levels. It is also entirely reasonable to restrict characters from even understanding certain mathematical tasks unless they have a total skill (INT bonus plus skill points) sufficient to that task.

The same can be applied to every other INT-based skill – in fact, to every skill, period.

Carpentry, for example, is more commonly DEX based than INT based. But why should we let that stop us?

Estimate By Eye

The golden rule of carpentry is measure twice, cut once. It’s therefore incredibly impressive when someone eyeballs a job and cuts a piece of timber accordingly – and it fits perfectly.

But let’s be honest – any fool can cut more-or-less to length, in fact, to within 3 inches or so. Furthermore, if the cut is too long, that’s easily corrected – it’s just a little wasteful of wood. It’s coming up short that’s the real problem.

So let’s assign the basic task – sawing the piece of timber – and appropriate number of Ops points. It’s fairly basic, so maybe 2, maybe 3. For every Ops point unused, the character can use them to improve his ‘by eye’ measurement for 2 Ops points each step. These are in 1/2 inch increments until the error is 1 inch, then 1/4 inch until the error is 1/2 inch, then tenths of an inch.

So,
3 Ops points = 3 inches plus or minus.
5 Ops points = 2.5 inches short or over.
7 Ops points = 2 inches short or over.
9 Ops points = 1.5 inches short or over.
11 Ops points = 1 inch short or over.
13 Ops points = 0.75 inches short or over.
15 Ops points = 0.5 inches short or over.
17 Ops points = 0.4 inches short or over.
19 Ops points = 0.3 inches short or over.
21 Ops points = 0.2 inches short or over.
23 Ops points = 0.1 inches short or over.
25 Ops points = perfect fit.

Planning ahead

Being able to visualize blueprints in your head and execute them is another impressive trick. Initially, this is only enough to create the parts list in their general shapes (5 Ops). Being able to shape them exactly as you need is the next step – either 10 Ops points and +1 per component after the first four. Knowing how they are to fit together and designing them to so is 15 Ops points +1 per component more than the first four.

An example: A drawer to fit a certain-sized cavity. First four components gets a box the right size (measured) with no top and no bottom. 5th component adds a bottom. Sixth and Seventh are a pair of rails for it to slide along, or a groove to fit an existing one if the cabinet was designed in advance. Eighth is a face-plate, with holes pre-drilled for a handle. Ninth is the handle itself, and Tenth would be the assembly.

So, 21 Ops = do it all without blueprints.
20 Ops = do all but 1 component without blueprints.
18 Ops = do all but 2 components without blueprints.
…
16 Ops = do 5 components without blueprints OR do all ten without blueprints but needing to add intricate details as you go.
15 Ops = 4 components without blueprints OR do nine without blueprints but needing to add intricate details as you go. One piece will have to be measured.
14 Ops = do eight without blueprints but needing to add intricate detail. Two pieces have to be measured.
…
10 Ops = do four pieces without blueprints (the open box) but everything else needs to be measured.
… and so on.

Hero System Conversions

The hero games system defines 10 in a stat as normal human, but permits scores less than zero, there is no minimum. So a score of 1 won’t mean the same thing. Each +5 doubles capability, which is often undefined. Each -5 halves it. The rate of change in capacity is not defined in the d20 system.

All of which makes conversion difficult, and why there are dozens of conversion regimen to choose from.

The simplest is simply to read the stats from one into the other. STR 18 in Hero = STR 18 in D&D. The most complicated, and potentially the most accurate, uses character Lifting capabilities to map conversion rates for every possible d20 stat value, then arbitrarily equates the results to all the other stats (except body, which does the same thing using hit points).

There are no right answers. So let’s use a wrong one.

HERO -> D&D	HERO -> D&D	HERO -> D&D	HERO -> D&D
0 = 0 5 = 5 10 = 10 15 = 12.5 20 = 15 25 = 17.5 30 = 20 35 = 22.5 40 = 25 45 = 27	50= 29 55 = 31 60 = 32 65 = 33 70 = 34 75 = 35 80 = 36 85 = 37 90 = 38 95 = 39 100 = 40	110 = 41 120 = 42 130 = 43 140 = 44 150 = 45 160 = 46 170 = 47 180 = 48 190 = 49 200 = 50	thereafter, +20 = +1 so 400 = 60 600 = 70 800 = 80 1000 = 90 1200 = 100 and so on.

I have chosen these values because the flavor that I expect this system to generate (based on the D&D scale) matches the in-game flavor that I would expect of the Hero scale equivalent indicated.

In other words, the look-and-feel is about right, and the mathematical niceties are not so important as that.

Wrap-up

And that, fortunately (because I’m out of time) is where my notes for this subject come to an end. Can the system be tweaked / refined? Yes, endlessly. But down that road, eventually, comes the hard reality of a different scale for every stat and skill, and that’s not an end worth achieving. This is a close-enough system that yields results useful in the real world from a generic basis.

And that should be good enough.

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns.

Part 2 took a solid look at Science Fiction campaigns (and was supposed to also include everything I cover this time around.

These genres were not chosen capriciously; between the four of them, they comprise fundamental structural elements that encompass every other genre that I could think of. But let me not get ahead of myself.

I should start with a reminder:

Recapping The Process

This and the next section are repeated verbatim from Part 2. Read over them if you need to refresh your memory or if you haven’t been here before, otherwise, you can skip down to the next colored panel, below!

0. Make a list of possible Mundane Activities (optional, but it helps).

1. Pick A Mundane Activity.

2. If it’s not something the PCs will perform in this game session, go back to step 1 and make a different choice.

3. Imagine a more genre-appropriate method.

4. Check for game balance issues. If necessary, vary the method to something that avoids the issues, or go back to step 1.

5. Apply genre-appropriate color language. Document the language for future consistency.

6. Create the bubble of narrative and attach it to the day’s play.

Recapping the Genre Discussion Structure

The Genre discussions focus on the considerations that generally apply to the most common and instructive genres – the application of the technique, in particular those that apply to steps 3, and 4. Fantasy RPGs were covered in Part 1.

Sections are arranged in a logical structure:

The existing parts of play that connect directly to the Genre.

Discussion of the points at which the process described above connects to the simulated reality within this particular genre.

Third, any conceptual tools that can help with the transformation of a mundane activity into a genre-specific activity.

Finally, any potential Game Balance and Campaign Issues get briefly examined.

That’s enough naval-gazing – let’s get to it…

If you skipped the above, resume reading here!

Genre Discussion 3: Superheros

Someone posted a survey on X (formerly Twitter) the other night asking for readers’ favorite RPG Genre. The choices offered were Modern, Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror. My response was that my superhero campaign encompasses all four.

The setting is modern – well, it’s actually near-future and recent past. But the near-future is somewhat more advanced, technologically, than we are actually likely to be by the time our calendar catches up, and even the recent past sections have slabs of sci-fi content tacked on.

Magic exists, and the campaign occasionally diverts into outright Fantasy, but often views it through a sci-fi prism for internal consistency. Whenever the Fantasy isn’t the immediate focus, though, that generally gets hand-waved, as does a lot of the sci-fi – it’s hard sci-fi when it has to be, and very sift sci-fi the rest of the time.

There are “Gods” (both ‘real’ and ‘wannabe’, and all the trappings that go with them. There’s healing so advanced that it might as well be labeled magical, but it has hard restrictions that are more sci-fi oriented. There are psychic powers and ancient evils and would-be destroyers of reality. Those are definitely trending into Horror territory – and some of the consequences of the other genres are horrific in nature.

Consider, for example, the fate of a parallel-world version of one of the PCs, who suffered near-fatal injuries before crash-landing in the primary campaign (near-future) setting; her life was saved by technology, replacing damaged biology with cybernetics, but in the process, parts of her humanity were also stripped away, leaving her a twisted reflection of what she once was. Barely recognizable, even when you know her origins, everything that she was has been removed and replaced, either physically, mentally, or emotionally. If that’s not a horror concept, I don’t know what is!

Multitudinous Genre Connections That Sometimes Miss The Mark

That’s the real power of the superhero genre – it contains just about anything you can think of, wrapping it all in an idealistic moral coating that propels the characters into these situations whatever their personal preferences might be.

But this heady brew comes with its own imperatives and rules; the superheroic genre is not simply an amalgam of other genres, it is an internally self-consistent genre that reinterprets the trappings of other genres within its own framework.

It’s not enough simply to combine the list of Fantasy genre connections with those of the Sci-fi genre. While they will be relevant and useful some of the time, on other occasions, the same genre-reference will miss the mark quite badly.

The Superheroic Genre

The difference in circumstance is, perhaps, best rationalized as the superhero genre sometimes needing to supersede the constituent genres, which are subordinated to it.

Moral issues, drama, plot twists, questions of fate and destiny and good and evil, and the soap opera that comes with the superheroic territory – when any of these are directly connected to the events in-game, the superheroic genre itself takes prime position, and any other genre reference takes a back seat unless it can serve the superheroic genre itself.

Objectives and Motivations

Fantasy elements and trappings usually have to be ‘filtered’ through another genre to some extent (but not always; when the Fantasy is a dominant sub-theme, it’s the non-Fantasy elements that get filtered. That’s the difference between a Dr Strange campaign and an Avengers campaign in which Dr Strange just happens to appear).

The primary difference between a ‘straight’ Fantasy campaign and a Fantasy-oriented Superheroic campaign lies in the Objectives and Motivations of the participating characters. If the primary objective is one of gaining wealth, or prestige, or social standing, or simply surviving in a dog-eat-dog world, its a straight Fantasy campaign; when there is a higher purpose involving the protection of others, it can either be a Straight Fantasy with some superheroic elements, or it can be a Superheroic campaign within a Fantasy environment.

Those two alternatives actually comprise a continuum – any given campaign of this type can occupy any position along that spectrum, and there ultimately aren’t a lot of differences.

Perhaps the biggest one is that – for the most part – superheroic campaigns have self-sufficient characters who may seek artifacts for a specific purpose but otherwise rely on their own innate capabilities, while Fantasy campaigns are about acquiring the power needed to achieve the end. Under this model, the Lord Of The Rings is more superheroic than Fantasy, which only goes to show how subtle some of these distinctions can be.

The Filtering Of Fantasy

The only rival for this is the “filtering” that I’ve mentioned several times. This is principally an intellectual and philosophical difference, and as such can be very hard to pin down. Fortunately, I have a fairly extensive example to which I can point.

A while back, I published a summary of the basic in-game concepts of “How Magic Works” from within the campaign in The Meta-Physics Of Magic.(7576 words).

This incorporated a number of in-game mini-lectures from a Master magician to the more self-educated PC who was the spellcaster of the party. I worked very hard on these conveying the impression of someone who had studied “Magic” at a University level, and who knew more about it therefore than most practitioners of the art. Along the way, he discussed the internal physics, philosophy, and practical application of Magic – and, in the process, captured the perfect example of a Fantasy campaign element viewed through a science-fiction / superheroic lens.

If you want more of the backstory and context, and a slab of lecture from the same NPC on time travel, that’s available too (in a three-part series), A Long Road – Zenith-3 Notes for all (aka Zenith-3 synopsis & notes).

Be warned, these are LONG posts – 16,072 words, 35,147 words, and 53,566 words respectively, a total of 104,785 words. If I accept Amazon’s stats of 250-300 words per page, that’s 346-420 pages – a thick paperback! (You may want to use the Print-on-demand feature at the bottom of each post to save it as a PDF for off-line reading).

Interactions with Sci-Fi

Examining Sci-Fi content in a superheroic content actually brings us closer to the primary thesis of this series. Again, the differences between straight sci-fi and sci-fi in a superheroic context are subtle and hard to pin down; they boil down to a difference in emotional focus.

In straight sci-fi, conveying a sense of wonder to the players is key. The subtext is “the universe is amazing”, even in a hard-nosed Traveller campaign. This can be tricky because to the characters in the campaign, it might not be all that amazing – they live, breathe, and work in that environment. For comparison purposes, a Star Trek campaign explicitly focuses on the sense of wonder, and the characters share in it. It’s all about exploration and discovery.

In a superheroic campaign, sci-fi elements can occasionally project that sense of wonder, but the focus is suborned by the needs of the superhero genre – action, drama, soap opera, and so on. That makes the sci-fi in a Superheroic context more akin to a Star Wars campaign, if that helps!

An ongoing strand within my superhero campaign is always the ordinary lives of the characters. These are ordinary people who have become extraordinary and who find themselves living in an equally-exceptional world within the broader reality, aware of things that the “man (or woman) on the street” rarely notices.

For the November 2016 Blog Carnival, the subject that I pitched up to participants was “Ordinary Life in RPGs”, divided into three alternate strands – The Ordinary Life of the GM, The Ordinary Life of the Players, and The Ordinary Lives of the PCs. It’s the last one that’s relevant in this context, obviously, but all three strands came in for attention. You can read the Carnival Roundup at this link for a synopsis of the posts.

In particular, Ordinary Lives in Paranormal Space and Time (5520 words) seems directly relevant.

Rather than conveying a Sense of Wonder, you are mostly trying to convey the exact opposite – that however extraordinary the technology around them, dealing with it is just part of the PCs daily routine.

All that having been said, there are a few direct connections to the Superheroic Genre, which either supersede or superimpose themselves on any other genre elements.

Existing Genre Connection: Using Powers

The most obvious one is when the PCs (or NPCs) use the powers that make them superheroic. These should never be matter-of-fact or vanilla game-mechanics (even though the game mechanics tends to dominate such occasions); that just means that the GM has to work that little bit harder. Rather than a sense of wonder, though, what should be conveyed is a sense of Extraordinary Agency. These are the shticks that separate these characters from mere mortals, and that should be emphasized and celebrated each and every time (though not necessarily to the same intensity each time – as with many things, familiarity breeds contempt; overuse can blunt the impact and make the flavor rather blase).

I pay particular attention to how other capabilities interact with powers, and how different powers interact with each other, simply because the variety provides subtle nuances that help keep these interactions distinctive, while adding verisimilitude to the fantastic.

One final point that I need to make before I move on: I am firmly of the opinion that these extraordinary capabilities are just something that most PCs and NPCs have at their fingertips whenever they want them, and that this means that they would be used for convenience as well as for dramatic effects. When applicable, they should be used casually, just as someone who was a bit stronger than most would get used to that strength and adjust their ordinary life to exploit it. That might mean carrying grocery bags that are too heavy for most people, or whatever. Comics are full of this sort of thing; and it always adds to the sense of verisimilitude of the extraordinary abilities in question. So I’m always pushing my players to embrace this concept – with, it must be admitted, only limited success so far, despite decades of trying. This in no way invalidates what’s been written above; there is a huge difference between the casual use of extraordinary abilities and the dramatic use of such abilities in a life-or-death context!

Existing Genre Connection: The Edge Of Dystopia

The mere existence of supervillains that need to be opposed – or invaders from other realities, or whatever – automatically places the PCs as the shield between the ordinary world and world-shaping / destroying calamities. By definition, all superheroic campaigns occupy the thin boundary between a prosaic (and protected) existence and the edge of dystopia.

Sometimes, the best that can be salvaged from a situation is a “recoverable, temporary, dystopia”; at other times, dystopia can be prevented completely, though dramatic requirements generally require this to be by the skin of the PCs teeth.

This all contrasts markedly with most Sci-Fi – with Star Wars again being the stand-out exception. As a general rule, most sci-fi where this isn’t the case (2001 A Space Odyssey, for example) lacks the drama to make a good adventure / campaign setting. There can be exceptions, but this is a useful rule of thumb.

Existing Genre Connection: Subterfuge and Paranoia

Is James Bond a superhero? Tell you what, I’ll come back to that in a moment.

The existence of enemies, not just of the PCs, but of all existence as it is currently experienced by the man on the street, demands a certain level of paranoia when encountering something strange. In a straight sci-fi or fantasy campaign, the dominant attitude is often “We have to understand this” or “What does this explain?”; in a Superhero campaign, it’s “Who’s behind this and what is their agenda? How do we fight it if we have to? DO we have to?”

Coupled with this and accompanying it is a second phenomena, exemplified by Clark Kent’s glasses. Secret Identities are part and parcel of the universe, and everything that happens to that disguised character has to be considered in terms of the impact on that secret. So much so that it’s an almost-ubiquitous ongoing trope in superhero comics: trapped in his secret identity, the character can only watch as an emergency unfolds, and he has to use his wits to get into a position to intervene without revealing his secret.

I have often thought that Kent should have some subtle body prosthetics to make him look a little less “perfectly in shape” as his superheroic identity – he should be able to wear a superman suit for a charity gig and it should be immediately obvious that he is not the man of steel. Nothing so obvious as a pot belly, just a somewhat less defined musculature, a slight ‘softness’ around the middle.

But, beyond that, there is the whole trope, shared with some Horror campaigns, of “things man is not meant to know”, redefined in this case to mean “things ordinary men are not ready to be told about.” Secrets and subterfuge are an inherent part of a character’s role within the campaign. Everyone has their secrets, and those secrets need to be protected, and that mandates a level of paranoia about exposure of those secrets.

Which brings me back to James Bond, and the super-spy genre in general. If your concept of superheroics can encompass ‘street level’ characters who wear ordinary clothes instead of spandex (or equivalent), then James Bond ticks every box for a superheroic campaign. I would argue that if Batman is a superhero, then so is James Bond. The only thing really missing is a personal life divorced from his “day job” – but, logically, if he has a cover identity (and he implicitly does, in the original novels), then he has to spend some time keeping that cover identity ‘alive’. Just because it’s always off-camera doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. In the spy game, this is commonly called a “Legend” – for more, see Wikipedia’s article on Espionage, in particular, the section on Organization.

Points Of Contact: All this and Melodrama, too

I’ve mentioned drama and soap opera a number of times already. Put those together, and it spells Melodrama. Most of the time, Melodrama is used as a contrast to the action-oriented main sequences, often for light relief.

In melodrama, molehills cast shadows so long and intense that they appear to be mountains. Even relatively trivial circumstances are depicted as possessing a significance far in excess of the way normal people would view them in real life. Because of the superheroic reality hidden beneath the ordinary lives of the characters, these exaggerations are perceived as being of genuine substance – the example offered earlier of a character who needs to use his wits in order to intervene in a situation in his heroic identity while protecting his secret is a good example.

Rather than belabor the point further, I’ll simply point readers at Melodramatic Licence: Drama in RPGs and move on.

Potential Game Balance Issues

I’ve covered a lot of ground in this discussion, and the potential for game balance issues hasn’t even been mentioned so far. That’s because, as a rule of thumb, these are the same as those already discussed in reference to the Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres – i.e. the application of abilities to circumstances for which they were not intended to be relevant.

Read almost any story set in the 1970s or earlier, and consider the impact on the plot of ready access to ubiquitous mobile telephony, were such to be available. Leave out Google, and Google Maps, at least for a first glance; the mere access to instant person-to-person communications from wherever characters happen to be unravels a lot of plots directly, and distorts most of the rest, sometimes greatly, sometimes only a little.

Take, for example, a basic Agatha Christie story. You have a crime, and a list of suspects, none of which can initially be ruled out. Inevitably, investigation follows, and either triggers another criminal act, or the original act demands a second act. This is supposed to provide clues to narrow down the suspect pool. At the instant of the second crime, you telephone the first name on your suspect list and establish their whereabouts – if they are not alone, or their location can be verified, they have just been eliminated as a suspect. On average, by the time you get about half-way through your suspect list, you will have identified the perpetrator and can subject them to intense scrutiny to understand their motives. And the story has all the impact of wet spaghetti.

It must also be pointed out that because the characters (generally) already have extraordinary capabilities, many such game balance issues fade into insignificance. Of greater import, generally, are relative power levels within the range of those extraordinary abilities.

That’s both good and bad – good, because it makes the whole question less of an issue, and bad, because it encourages you to stop looking for these problems, leaving you to be blind-sided on the rare occasions when they are not quelled into insignificance.

As a general rule, game balance issues only matter in a superhero campaign when one PC makes another redundant or irrelevant. When one character can do 80-90% of the story on their own, they have gone too far.

Genre Discussion 4: The Wild West

Westerns aren’t my forte. I’ve never run one, and the genre holds little appeal to me. Nevertheless, I’m familiar with most of the basic tenets and tropes. This puts me in a position to undertake an analysis but not to back it up with actual experience – so take what’s below with a grain of salt.

As a general rule, Western campaigns are distinct from all the other types discussed so far. But that doesn’t leave them completely isolated; much of what is written below will apply to any low-tech non-fantasy campaign (Sherlock Holmes for example) and even most low-tech campaigns with a fantasy element (Call of Cthulhu, for example).

In most campaigns, the things that a character can do in-game that are not possible for the player in the real world are generally employed as a genre connection. In Westerns, the exact opposite is true – it’s more about how much harder activities are that we take for granted that provides the strongest connection to the time period and hence to the genre.

There is often a technology employed that has been superseded by more modern innovations, and this also permits the GM to load his narrative with genre-specific flavor text. The more research that has been done (even if it’s only watching genre-related TV and movies), the more the GM will have picked up almost by osmosis – and it doesn’t even matter very much if it’s historically inaccurate, because the players will share the same zeitgeist and referents.

Existing Genre Connections: Grit

‘Grit’ has a double meaning in this context. First, there’s the ‘grim determination, never-say-die’ meaning which was a necessary attribute on the frontier. All characters should exhibit this trait to some extent, but no-one will notice unless the GM makes doing so clear. It might not be going to far to list it as an additional stat for whatever game system you are employing, assuming it (or something equivalent) is not there already.

Way back in the day, I even saw the suggestion that it should be (24-CHA) on a 3-18 D&D stat scale – implying that characters without “Grit” are effeminate pretty boys (and the female equivalent, shrinking violets). On a d20 scale, that should be (26-CHA). I’m not sure that I agree with this, and I certainly didn’t think so at the time, but there is a certain plausibility to it, perhaps exemplified by the logic described in “A Boy Named Sue” – or, to put it in the Australian vernacular, characters who look rough as guts tend to have what it takes to survive and prosper, no matter the challenges.

The second meaning is the one that I originally had in mind when I outlined this part of the article: people didn’t bathe as often; there generally wasn’t as much opportunity to do so, for one thing, and it could be dangerous unless you had trusted ‘friends’ to watch your back. While there could and would be exceptions, once a week was considered adequate, even normal. Attending court or some public festival would generally require either an extra bath, or more likely, bringing forward your next scheduled one.

The GM should construct a list of adjectives and short descriptive passages for each day after a character’s last bath and sprinkle these into his flavor text at the start or end of each day. For example:

0 days – pristine and polished, scrubbed clean
1 day – clean and natural
2 days – a little trail dust. Pronounced 5 O’clock shadow.
3 days – feeling like you are part of the country around you
4 days – feeling a little gritty. The beginnings of a beard, still scraggly.
5 days – the grit has become grime and the body odor is a little distracting
6 days – feeling filthy and grubby, itching, caked with dust. You need a shave.
7 days – body odor makes your eyes water, the itching is constant and persistent
8 days – food tastes like garbage, your sense of smell has shut down
9 days – you feel like a horse’s rear end, shaggy and unclean, way overdue for a bath.

For characters who are part of their local community, or who want to be, they will likely attend Church on Sunday, and that requires them to have bathed and changed into their best clothing. Afterwards, before changing back to workaday outfits, you might wash them or (more likely) hang them from a tree-branch and beat them clean with a stick.

Soap at the time was generally fairly caustic and harsh, and many avoided using it on themselves for this reason (it was regarded as fine for clothing). It didn’t have the purity or consistency of the modern stuff and often felt as grainy and gritty as the dust you hoped to wash away. Poor examples might be akin to washing yourself with coarse sandpaper. From the mid 1860s, the same soap would be used for everything, no matter how harsh – there’s no such thing as shampoo, at least for most people, at least until the late 1870s. It was also common to share bathwater, possibly with a top-up of heated water (one of the great controversies of the era was whether hot or cold water was to be preferred).

Two articles that may be of value:

• Washing the hair in the 19th century – Mansion Musings
• The History of Shampoo and better haircare – eco hair and beauty

Emphasizing cleanliness, or the lack thereof, provides a useful connection to the genre, especially given the double-meaning of ‘grit’.

Existing Genre Connections: Weapons

Of course, even if the game mechanics involved are fairly generally unchanged from one weapon to another, the more specific you can get in this respect, the better, because those specifics are a direct line to the genre – and can help avoid mistakes that a knowledgeable player will expose.

I make extensive use of a 1983 game product from Firebird Ltd called ‘The Armory’ (by Kevin Dockery), designed for MSPE and Espionage/Champions. You would expect this 41-year-old game supplement is in short supply these days, but see what I’ve found:

• Amazon no longer list it.
• The Shop On the Borderlands list it for £10.50, but have no copies available.
• I did find four second-hand copies on eBay for prices ranging from AU$8.27 to AU$494.54 (plus postage in both cases).
• Hero Games list it for sale as a Dark Champions supplement for US$7.50 – which I presume to be a PDF version, though the Hero Games listing doesn’t say.
• I think that’s a PDF because Hero Games also list it through DriveThruRPG for the same price (AU$11.39) and they are explicit about the format – this is a PDF of scanned images.

I think it says something about the ubiquity of the product that it’s still so widely available, even if it is in PDF form. But, if you can wait a little while (a few months), there is another option.

My Pulp Co-GM and I recently backed a fundraising campaign through GameFound for what is (in effect) an updated version by Evil Genius Games (funded in just three hours!) designed around the Everyday Heroes game system based on d20 Modern (“5e compatible”). I’d have told readers about it, but it came to my attention too late to do so.

Evil Genius’ website list their version as available for purchase from “Later This Year”, the expected delivery date quoted on the fundraiser is February 2025. So, maybe 4-6 months from now, you’ll be able to buy this “in color” version from the link supplied. Of course, being a new product and of modern production standards, this option is going to be a fair bit more expensive – maybe US$45 or US$50, plus P&H.

Beyond that, there are any number of websites out there dedicated to old weapons, some useful, some not. Wikipedia can also be an extremely valuable resource – start with the manufacturer’s page (if you know the name) or do a “nationality weapons-type manufacturer” search, eg “French Pistol Manufacturer” or “Swiss Rifle Manufacturer”. The same search in google, bing, or duckduckgo can also be fruitful – and don’t neglect an image search while you’re at it! Nothing helps immersion quite like an image, especially of something exotic or fancy.

Existing Genre Connections: Human Activity

The past is increasingly a foreign country to those used to modern life. Two examples highlight just how different things were back then.

The first is a sequence in Back To The Future III, in which a traveling salesman is touring the country selling the latest invention, Barbed Wire. Before this, people didn’t fence off their herds; they relied on cowboys to keep them together, brands to establish ownership, and generally let the cattle or horses wander where they wanted to in search of food. Confrontations were inevitable when those herds wandered onto someone else’s land, and rustling was a constant danger. Landowners had to look after the hands they employed, because they were completely reliant on them; mistreat or abuse them and they would move on to someone else’s employ, perhaps taking part or all of your livestock with them!

The second is more general – back then, everything had to be done by hand. And that usually meant a skilled specialist. The further out you went, the fewer of these there would be. Another way of looking at this is that specialists would have growing ‘sales territories’ depending on how essential their specialty had to be.

Some tasks were ubiquitous and would be found almost everywhere – blacksmiths, saloon-keepers, undertakers, carpenters – but many more would not. Bakers, Lawyers, Dentists, and Stonemasons for example. And some professions would fall somewhere in between – doctors, for example. So that’s three different progressions.

The US, north to south, is roughly 1650 miles. I looked up an 1850s map of Mississippi and noted the distances between communities, finding that one of two situations generally held true: (1) a triangle formed between three townships would have two sides 20-30 miles long and the third side would be 15-20 miles; or (2) the third side would have a fourth community in the middle, 5-7.5 miles removed from both the vertices. There were 4 of the first for every example of the second, so that works out to an average distance between communities of 20.22 miles.

That says that there would be roughly 81.6 communities along the north-south line, maximum. Call it 82. Assuming that this is the maximum settlement density west of the Mississippi, and the further west you go the more it declines until you get to the coast – not an entirely true assumption, some areas would have more (Texas) and some less (Arizona) due to geography / climate, you can create a set of tables which combines distance West of the Mississippi with the distance to the nearest town on the other axis to determine a % chance of a particular service being present.

I estimate that the relationships would hold for a distance of about 1700 miles (then you get too close to the west coast), so that gives horizontal units of 85 miles for a table with 20 entries, or 170 miles for one with 10 entries.

An example progression might be:
82/1.1 = 75; 1650/75 = 22 miles separation; 100%.
75/1.1 = 68; 1650/68 = 24.265 miles separation; 100×22/24.265 = 91%.
68/1.1 = 62; 1650/62 = 26.613 miles separation; 100×22/26.613 = 83%.
62/1.1 = 56; 1650/56 = 29.464 miles separation; 100×22/29.464 = 75%.
… and so on.

Note that I plucked the “/1.1” out of thin air; the correct answer might be higher (a greater sparsity of professionals) or lower (a slower decrease in professionals). It might even vary from one table to the next.

I didn’t have time to actually do a full table, and don’t really know enough about the genre to do so definitively, so I’ll leave this as a proposed general principle.

The key point is this: For everything that needs doing, it has to be done by hand. While there might be someone who knows what they are doing available, the further west you go, the less true that is likely to be, and the more will have to be done by willing (unskilled) amateurs. They can compensate for that lack of skill to some extent by increasing crudity of product, but that can only take them so far. There’s more to be done than there are people to do it; everyone should always be busy doing something, and usually doing it the hard way. Describing what someone is doing, and how difficult they are finding it, gives a line into the socioeconomic reality of a region, and that connects what the PCs see and encounter with the genre.

Existing Genre Connections: Animal Life

The creatures that inhabit the wild west (aside from people) are genre staples – cattle, horses, coyotes, rattlesnakes, eagles, vultures, and so on. While you can sprinkle the occasional oddity – a thunderbird or bigfoot or whatever – into the mix, at least 95% of the creatures seen (not necessarily encountered) should be one of these iconic staple creatures, because that connects that encounter directly to the genre, and by extension, also connects those rarities. If the reality is mundane (but challenging), the PCs won’t bat an eyelid at the occasional Zombie Were-Panther (or whatever).

Existing Genre Connections: The Natural World

The other (related) beat that you should regularly hit is descriptive scenery, emphasizing the natural quality of everything from horizon to horizon. It’s very easy to take it for granted, and it’s also easy to overdo it; so you need to master the art of efficient narrative. I know that I harped on about it in part 2, but it bears reemphasizing!

The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative. and Part 6 in particular (because it offers the entire series as a downloadable PDF and a checklist) should be helpful.

Ideally, you want to be able to drop three or four words into a narrative passage now and then to remind people of the environment in which their characters exist. “The sky and desert are a watercolor swimming in heat-haze” is a good example. “It’s dryer than an old cow skull” is another, “and the sweat dripping from your brow the first water this land has seen in a decade.”

Point Of Connection: It’s Harder

This actually follows on from an earlier point – anything that the PCs want to do, or want to have done, will be harder work than the players are used to. But don’t just tell the players that – show how and why, break the task down.

“You want a new hat? The nearest milliner is in Jefferson City, 80 miles away. Or you can try the Widow Goode’s place in town, if you are willing to accept less expertise. Ideally, you will want a calf-hide or maybe a piece of horse-hide, and it will need to be treated by boiling it in urine for a day or two. If you want to die it, you’ll need to buy the die from the general store – their stocks will probably be limited…”

Point Of Connection: It’s Unusual

It goes almost without saying that if there’s something that’s normal in the setting but unusual from the perspective of the players, it needs to be spelt out. A couple of sites that might be useful in this regard:

• 10 Strange Ways People Did Things Before Modern Conveniences – Listverse
• Ten Harsh Realities of Common Jobs in the Old West – also Listverse

Point Of Connection: Social and Societal Issues

Perspectives on a lot of issues have changed massively since the era of the American Frontier. That leaves the GM a lot of scope – he can approach some issues from a modern perspective that will resonate with the players, but should equally tackle some from the perspective of the people living in that era.

It can be extra work to bring a society from that era to life for the players, but doing so establishes and re-establishes a direct connection between campaign and genre.

Point Of Connection: Servants

One interesting dichotomy that’s sure to show up at some point is the issue of Slavery. There won’t be a lot of it in evidence on the frontier, people can’t afford to buy slaves, and on the frontier there would be a lot more pragmatism, a lot more acceptance of a man’s (or woman’s) worth being based on what they can do; the wealthy just over the Mississippi is where it would be encountered more commonly. In modern times, the divide on the issue is viewed as a north-south thing, thanks to the civil war, but that hasn’t happened yet. However, for those with the eyes to see and the news to observe, there are already rumblings and discontent, storm clouds on the horizon.

One of the tools that my Co-GM and I regularly use in Pulp is to use newspaper headlines and controversies of the day to regularly establish the game world (with the occasional twist, of course). Tracking the course of the debate, one step at a time (with suitable delays – it takes time for news to spread, based on proximity to the nearest telegraph office / railroad) can serve a similar function in a wild west campaign. Plus other relevant news, of course.

Potential Game Balance Issues

The biggest possible game balance issue stems from players applying modern attitudes to old-world problems. The assembly line is not even a glimmer in Henry Ford’s imagination – everything is hand-crafted and this is viewed as only natural and right.

I suggest establishing a code phrase that you can have an NPC drop into a conversation whenever this sort of thing becomes an issue – a ‘staying in character’ way of warning a player that their proposal (whatever it is) is stepping too far out of genre. Something like “That’s just not the way things are done,” for example.

Not only should you actively pull strings and metagame to stop genre violations (after delivering this warning, of course, giving the player warning of what’s coming if the continue), but there should be social ramifications of violating social norms. Everything and anything from trumped-up charges and a threatened hanging to characters being run out of town.

Other Genres

I said at the start that these are iconic representations, between them, of most genres. Adapting the principles described covers just about everything you can imagine.

There are a couple of principles to keep in mind – the filtering of one genre through another; resolving conflicting genre elements; the dichotomy between “what’s possible / easier” and “what’s harder / not possible, and what gets done instead.”

One final point remains to be made: Connecting a campaign to genre is easily done, but often risks game balance issues and other problems. If your focus is on doing so through mundane tasks and “everyday life,” those problems don’t go away, but they do shrink in scope and threat. As a GM, you still need to be on your toes whenever an “interesting question” gets posed, because the rulings you make under such circumstances are more likely to have repercussions.

GM: “The Purple Worm opens its mouth to swallow you whole.”

Player: “I cast blade barrier down its throat, snout to tail. If I can. How much damage does it do?”

GM: “An interesting proposition…”

This is an example from real life – it happened in my Fumanor campaign. Since I couldn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work, I permitted it, and arbitrarily ruled that its HD were effectively divided along its length given the nature of the attack, because every 10′ length of Blade Barrier was triggered. It very quickly became puree.

But I made it clear that this only worked because there was enough room within the creature for the blade barrier to fit – don’t try doing this to a Dragon, where that is not the case, it won’t work!

Player: “This is the 1950s, right? I’ll patent the basic design of a color television camera and receiver, then set up a factory to make both. I’ll give the cameras away for free to any studio that wants them, and sell the receivers. I’ll use modern automation in the factory and train employees as necessary to keep the costs down, and put a really low level of profits on the price-tags – I want to undercut or price-match the manual assembly-line black and white models. As the manufacturers of those sets go bust or look like going bust, I’ll buy their TV manufacturing arms off them, and modernize to keep up with demand, while rehiring all their workers…”

GM: “It’s going to take time, and it’s not going to be that easy. A lot of the basic patents have already been issued, and you’re going to have to make the assembly-line automation yourself – what they can do locally isn’t up to job…”

Dangers to a campaign come in many shapes and sizes, but genre-busting is one of the most deadly, if you’re not careful.

Wrap-up

I’m sure some readers thought, when reading the basic tenets of this article, “But that’s all so obvious, so simple. I Already do that.” If you’re one of them, congratulations on being next-level as a GM – but I bet that you’re doing so in a fairly piecemeal fashion.

For others, especially beginners, this powerful technique may never have occurred to them, though they may have been looking for a way to achieve this, or have felt that something was lacking but didn’t know what.

And, I’m sure, in some cases, a GM wasn’t even aware that something was lacking; the status quo of mechanics breaking immersion was the price you paid for the ability to interact with the setting.

Whatever your level of ability as a GM, this technique can step it up a notch, possibly into a whole different league.

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns. This time, Science Fiction!

Recapping The Process

0. Make a list of possible Mundane Activities (optional, but it helps).

1. Pick A Mundane Activity.

2. If it’s not something the PCs will perform in this game session, go back to step 1 and make a different choice.

3. Imagine a more genre-appropriate method.

4. Check for game balance issues. If necessary, vary the method to something that avoids the issues, or go back to step 1.

5. Apply genre-appropriate color language. Document the language for future consistency.

6. Create the bubble of narrative and attach it to the day’s play.

Recapping the Genre Discussion Structure

The Genre discussions focus on the considerations that generally apply to the most common and instructive genres – the application of the technique, in particular those that apply to steps 3, and 4. Fantasy RPGs were covered in Part 1.

Sections are arranged in a logical structure:

The existing parts of play that connect directly to the Genre.

Discussion of the points at which the process described above connects to the simulated reality within this particular genre.

Third, any conceptual tools that can help with the transformation of a mundane activity into a genre-specific activity.

Finally, any potential Game Balance and Campaign Issues get briefly examined.

That’s enough naval-gazing – let’s get to it…

Genre Discussion 2: Sci-Fi

There are people who would argue that sci-fi GMs have it easier, because there is a collective zeitgeist that can be broadly tapped into by GMs and players. If you mention a “control panel”, everyone will immediately be able to visualize what you’re talking about, even if their individual visions diverge wildly.

This diverges from Fantasy, where worlds and perceptions vary more radically, and are often mutually incompatible, or so this argument goes.

It can even be argued, and has been on occasion, that getting more specific in your narratives can be detrimental, interfering with that collective zeitgeist.

This school of thought states, therefore, that the bare minimum of details be provided in description, and only important details should be mentioned.

The Contrary Argument

Of course, there are also those who disagree. They point out that imagination is not an all-or-nothing deal, that people can take new details and refine what they are seeing in their minds’ eyes, and that there are times when it’s important for everyone to be on the same page.

Furthermore, they point out, if only important details are specified by the GM, it naturally calls attention to those details even if that should not be the case; there are times when you need to camouflage those details in a cloak of other specifics. Nor can you only do so when that’s important, or the practice becomes self-defeating; the only solution is to make descriptive text more ubiquitous.

My take on this debate

Personally, I think both sides have a point, but they are not so far apart as it might seem; the first group argue that minimal description is better than an excessive amount of description, which is obvious by definition; the second group argue that there are purposes beyond the immediate, raising that minimum level higher, but not to the point of excess.

Restated in this way, the differences between the two lines of argument and their adherents largely vanish, and debate can turn to more productive nuance like “how much is excessive?” and “what is the minimum of description needed?”

Individuals Will Vary

I have to point out that the minimum required will vary with individuals. The concept of a shared common reference frame is all very well, but it will be granular, different for everyone, depending on their exposure to science fiction in both visual and literary form, and on the power of their imaginations.

What’s more, simply because he or she is focusing on the campaign world and relaying that vision as necessary to the players, I contend that the worst-possible judge of those limits is the GM.

I visualize the situation as 2d6 x 2d6 – the first 2d6 is the power of individual’s imagination, the second is their exposure to the genre (others might prefer 3d6 x 3d6). You would expect the GM to score highly in both departments, anything else would be unusual. If you graph such a compound die roll, it looks something like this:

Lowest Common Denominator? Less? More?

Let’s pick someone who’s dead average in both criteria – 7 and 7 (2d6) which yields a score of 49, scaled down to 12. Out of what? 12 x 12 = 144, / 4 = 36. So 12 is about 1/3 of the way down the chart.

Satisfy them, and your narrative will frame the situation for half. That’s not good enough – everyone has blind spots and you don’t want your game falling into one of them.

Apply some efficiency to the narrative and you are well into the 85-90% range. Maybe more, depending on how efficient your text is. This works because those with a lack of genre reference (a lack of zeitgeist) can often supplement it with imagination, and vice-versa. Anyone truly deficient in both is probably not going to be participating in a sci-fi campaign in the first place!

So how do I make my narrative more efficient?

I regarded this as so important that I wrote an entire series about it: The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative. But you might like check out Part 6 in particular, because it offers the entire series as a downloadable PDF and a checklist.

Touching Base – what does all this mean?

What we’re trying to define here is how frequently you reference something that reminds players of the genre of the campaign. Do it too often, and you risk desensitization and hence a lack of impact; too infrequently, and players can’t fully visualize their environment and surroundings, and that risks disconnection from the genre and the campaign. Somewhere in between is the sweet spot for maximum immersion without bogging down.

The analysis says that most of the time, pitching your narrative at the average player, and applying some efficiency of narrative, will encompass that sweet spot. If you have a player who is relatively unimaginative, or who has relatively little genre zeitgeist to draw on, may require slightly more fulsome descriptions, but not as much as most people think.

With that target in mind, let’s see existing genre connections we have to draw upon.

Existing Genre Connections: Tech Challenges

Some challenges that the PCs have to overcome are directly tech-related, for example “Calculate the orbit of the planet and the navigational changes needed to take us there” – or simply, “Navigate to the planet”. Anyone with any expertise in space travel immediately knows not to aim for where the planet is now, but where it will be when you get there, which complicates the roll – but, ultimately it is still just a skill roll, made according to the appropriate game mechanics.

The character acting as Navigator makes his die roll, the GM interprets the results, and announces, “Two hours / days [or whatever” from now, the planet will loom large on the viewscreen.”

Job done.

Existing Genre Connections: Tech Dramas

Equally, there are some situations that can’t exist without tech. This is easy to lean on too heavily, something that various Star Trek franchises were often criticized for, but that doesn’t mean they should not be part of your campaign.

“We’ve blown a plasma conduit, we’re only at 1/3 power until it’s repaired.”
“Alert engineering to get on the job. Can you reroute power around the affected section?”
“I think so.”

That passage of dialogue could have come from almost any episode of Voyager, or from multiple episodes of Next Gen. Each genre has its own tech dramas.

“We’ve blown a Discriminator – R2, see what you can do to lock it down,”

is a Star Wars equivalent that most players will recognize – it seemed to happen every time Luke took his X-wing into combat. And once or twice to the Millennium Falcon, I seem to recall.

Every such situation automatically connects to the genre. Again, job done.

Existing Genre Connections: Tech Weapons

“No Blaster! No Blasters!!”

Every tech weapon is a direct reminder of the genre, if it is described as such. Blasters, Lightsabers, Proton Guns – anything like that counts. But take the word “Proton” out of that last example, and it completely loses its mojo; “Gun” alone is too generic.

Never refer to a weapon as a “weapon”. If you have to, define a class of weapons that the specific weapon belongs to, but most of the time that won’t be needed – “You draw your Blaster” works just fine. Where most game systems fall down is in providing specific model numbers – “Abrams Baster 2277 model 3”, for example. This doesn’t change any of the specifics associated with the generic term “Blaster” (unless you want it to) but it implies that it does, for immediate verisimilitude.

Existing Genre Connections: Vehicles

More than almost any genre, Sci-Fi is about going places in vehicles. The only genre that even comes close is Pirates/Swashbuckling – and maybe Spellajmmers. Pulp also often relies on characters taking transportation from one place to another, but it’s not as ubiquitous as the other examples.

Every interaction with the vessel is, or should be, a genre touchstone. Ditto every interaction with any other type of vehicle that gets encountered.

Forget the term “Car” and anything associated with it. It’s a “Hover-sled” or a “Transport” or a “Grav-wagon” or even an “E-Car”. “Car” should be reserved for internal-combustion engines, and described in sneering tones for how primitive and dirty the technology is – because that implies that the usual technology is NOT so mundane.

Again, most game systems are great at giving you generics and nowhere near as good at specifics. Quick quiz: How many models and manufacturers of Cars has planet Earth produced over the last century or so? How many can you name off the top of your head? How many more can you recall if you are given a few minutes to think about it?

In any sci-fi campaign, there should be at least as many, and they should all have their identifiable characteristics and foibles. Well, specifying the details for all of them is a lot of work, but assigning a specific name and a peculiarity or trait to each vehicle that actually shows up in play is far more doable.

Consult The Care And Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs (Part 1 and Part 2) for more.

Existing Genre Connections: Interfaces and Tools

There is no tech that should not have a control interface. And every control interface is an opportunity to connect to the genre.

Some genre contact can be conveyed through the look-and-feel of technology, but for the real juice, think about the control interfaces and how they are used.

This is so obvious to me that I wrote an article specifically devoted to it: Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech.

The trap that many GMs fall into if they follow that advice is not documenting how the controls are manipulated in canned text, and hence being inconsistent, and that can kill the effect faster than a short-circuit.

Many GMs also don’t realize that they don’t have to explain why. Take a look at any transporter sequence from any Star Trek – the odds of anything being explained in detail are extremely low, but the sheer consistency of the way they manipulate the controls creates its own iconography that translates from one series to another, no matter hoe the tech changes.

The same is true in Stargate. The sequence – announced, sotto voice, military style, is always the same (except when it deliberately .isn’t), and the very deviation from normal is implicit in the dialogue:

“Chevron one encoded – Chevron two – Chevron three – chevron four – chevron five – chevron six – chevron seven will not lock!”

Babylon-5 is normally a standard-setter, but – while they did show some non-human control panels from time to time – not a lot of thought seemed to go into them. Admittedly, they usually had other fish to fry, but this is one case where it’s “do as I say, not as I do” much of the time (there are exceptions).

Existing Genre Connections: Automation & Power

Even the most mundane tool can be ‘sci-fi’d up” with automation and power. A screwdriver is a simple tool. An electric screwdriver applies power. An electric screwdriver that automatically adjusts the torque to the situation and self-rights – sweet! A sonic screwdriver – well, that’s next level, or just showing off.

If you have a spare five minutes sometime, do a little research into the differences in electric plug design from one country to another. Start with UK vs America vs Australia and go on from there.

Then throw in the differences in control interfaces. Australia has a switch for every electric socket, without activating it, no power flows. That means that you can leave things plugged in bit turned off and they won’t run up the electric bill. It means that if you’ve left the device switched on accidentally, it won’t start up as soon as you plug it in. It means that if there’s a wiring fault, you have a chance to notice when you turn the power on but before it zaps you!

Most places in the world don’t have this. The UK requires each plug to be separately fused, or used to, so that there is at least some safeguard against faulty wiring. The US generally (as I understand it) makes no attempt to incorporate such protections except at the whole-of-supply switchboard level, which Australia also does – but I’m not so sure about the UK.

It can be extremely eye-opening!

Point Of Contact: Expertise – Task meets Genre

So much for the easy pickings. Now it gets a little more difficult, but far more important.

The points of contact previously listed make it fairly clear that any GM who makes the effort can translate any contact with game mechanics, and a few more things besides, into a connection to the genre. But, as I assess the collective results, two great gaps appear.

The first are those long stretches of play when there are no game mechanics involved, just one character interacting with another, or simply looking around. And the second is that all of these existing genre references fall a little flat – where’s the sense of wonder, the sense that (from an early 21st century point of view) these people can do Amazing things?

Part of this can be addressed through this point of contact. Many things that are hard for us, or hard work at least, should come easily to PCs and NPCs in a sci-fi campaign. They should have tools that we have barely thought of – though that’s quite hard to do, because we (specifically, the GM) has to imagine them.

The more mundane the task, the less impact there will be on game balance.

Does anyone remember what it was like when the programmable vacuum cleaners first came onto the market? Before too long it was “Show them the terrain to be cleaned and sit back and let them do the rest”. They could be set to clean according to a fixed schedule, or sent into action at the push of a button.

In fact, there have been innovations in just about every field you can think of over the last 30-odd years. Everything from Bread-makers to air-fryers to better non-stick pans to more effective water filtration to home solar panels to dash-cams and google maps.

Back in the 1990s, I spent a period of time writing sci-fi – a short story every day – just to dip my toe in the waters. I would write a new story in the morning, and edit a story written previously in the afternoon. By the time I finished (because I had found full-time work elsewhere – this was a plan “B”) I had written 20-odd stories in 23 days. At the heart of each of these stories was a ubiquitously-common piece of household, commercial, or industrial equipment that I tried to “futurise” – what would it be like in 50, 100, 500 years? What would we use instead? What else could it do? What was the developmental path that led to the improvement, and what else could / would be done with that technology?

Every time a character performs a mundane task, the GM should pull out a piece of advanced tech to do it better, or smarter, or easier, or safer, or some combination of these four. Every time a character attempts a more difficult or technical task, the GM should ask themselves what tech could do to make it more of a mundane task – and how far toward that goal technology had advanced?

Point Of Contact: Customization & Personal Preferences

Such things don’t stop there. The other area that should advance is the ability to customize or personalize tools and technology.

At least, that was my thinking up until Windows 7 was released, back in – what, 2010? No, 2009.

You see, I was a big fan of Windows 98, and its XP successor. It could run any Windows software, and for every function, if I didn’t like the way Windows did something, I could download something that would perform that function exactly the way I wanted. Everything was customizable, and every installation was a fingerprint of the user.

Windows 7 began to erode that, with Windows 10 completing the migration. Beyond the areas that Microsoft let you customize, its mostly one-size-fits-all, these days. And people have grown used to it being that way. Sure, other operating systems still permit customization – but most of them are fiddly and complicated. Some of them will even run Windows software – but not necessarily the software that I want them to run. Drivers and hardware compatibility remained a perpetual concern when I was running Ubuntu on the laptop I was using at the time; I was never confident enough to go-Ubuntu for my desktop computer.

It’s my overall impression that modern PCs have enough processing power under the hood that even an inefficient generic process is good enough – in the minds of the powers-that-be, at least.

Maybe there will come a time when it’s not enough for people, and task-specific apps begin to proliferate again, each offering something that they do better, faster, cleaner, smarter than the app next door – which will have its own strengths and weaknesses. The optimum approach will be to select and employ the most effective tool for each stage of a complex process. Or maybe not. (In fact, we are starting to reach the limits of how far we can push the existing technology to make it more processor-powerful, so any limits in the current paradigm should start showing up in the next decade or so).

But people are NOT cookie-cutter clones. And the ability to customize tools will always be an improvement if key functionality is preserved.

A hammer that extends to the perfect length? With adjustable weights and grips so that its always perfectly- balanced – for you? I’d buy that, assuming that it still worked as a hammer and didn’t cost more than having such a tool was worth to me. And I don’t think that will change all that much into the future.

So customization and personalization will definitely have some sort of role in future tech; what that role will be is up to the GM. But once they have done so, each tool becomes a reference point for the genre, and for the campaign.

Self-sealing Stem Bolts, anyone? (Okay, some readers might not ‘get’ that reference – look it up!)

Point Of Contact: Scale

Another point is that it should be much easier to do things at scale that we would normally consider isolated tasks. The combination of communications and automation should enable a single individual to do the work of dozens.

Exactly how this is achieved is the sci-fi connection. Something will inevitably make this possible in at least some cases, and that something is up to the GM.

This is a decision with big implications, all contained under the sub-heading, “what else can this technology do?” so the GM should think about this very carefully.

A couple of examples:

1. Linked ships so that the best navigator can set a course for multiple vessels at the same time, while less-skilled navigators check his work and function as back-ups.

2. Digging a hole while wearing a telepresence suit that causes a dozen robots, carefully spaced, to mimic every movement.

You can combat some of the resulting problems with an increased emphasis on artisanship. Assuming that core functionality is assured by industrialized processes, this leads to the customization and individualism that I discussed earlier.

The alternative is to stay with very industrialized cookie0-cutter products and accept whatever the consequences are. The choices do result in a very different look-and-feel to a campaign, though, as one would expect the same ethos to extend into ship design and architecture and social processes and even the application of law and custom.

Make the choice that best fits your campaign setting and make sure that the ramifications and style spread throughout the campaign universe.

Point Of Contact: Efficiency & The Lack Thereof

Another area to consider carefully are the effects of future tech on personal efficiency. What can and will be improved? How will that manifest when the PCs attempt to do things?

The decision made in the previous section is obviously also highly relevant. The artisan approach is inherently less efficient than the industrial one; either that is considered an acceptable trade-off, or – more likely – tool efficiency makes up enough of the difference that the manufacture of goods and performance of services is left at whatever standard the GM wants to be extant.

The combination, in other words, lets the GM create and justify an environment and social setting that is whatever he wants it to be – but that mandates the GM making such a choice, and preferably not doing so blindly.

The sheer act of defining and implementing such standards makes virtually every task, every application of skill, another point of contact between genre and game-play.

Point Of Contact: Malfunctions

This is the last point of contact that is inherent within basic gameplay, and it’s probably the most obvious. In fact, little more needs be said about it – when something goes wrong in a high-tech (or low-tech!) environment, there is an obvious and direct point of contact with the genre and sub-genre.

Potential Game Balance Issues

These have been touched on along the way but it should be obvious – making characters more efficient, more effective, and/or more capable, obviously holds potential game balance issues that need to be carefully considered.

These are mitigated to some extent by the fat that whatever a PC can do, an NPC can also do. Sauce for the goose, in other words.

It’s where the PCs can do things that an NPC can’t that trouble lurks, because any such capacity is amplified by the technology, perhaps beyond the point of control – and the same is true in the other direction, as well.

Some differences should be obvious, and celebrated; it’s part of the magic of sci-fi. But always in a controlled manner; sooner or later, if you don’t control the limits of technology, they will control you.

And that’s where I have to leave this article for this week, not for lack of time (as might more usually be the case) but because my eyesight has suddenly gone bad on me.

Scaling the text to 250% makes it legible but blurred, but it still demands intense concentration or a magnifying glass to read or write, and perching my reading glasses right at the end of my nose (most uncomfortably)! At first I thought it was tiredness, but I got plenty of sleep over the weekend and it’s still an issue, so that’s, at best, only part of the problem.

I’m going to have to get this checked out over the next couple of days, not that there’s any room in my budget for new eye-wear in the near future.

In the meantime, I’m going to have to work in shorter stints for a while. So I’ll pick this up with superheros and the Wild West next time around!

UPDATE:

I rested a while, and my vision improved a bit.

It’s starting to get more problematic again at the moment, just as I need to do final editing and formatting of the post… fortunately, in those terms, it’s a simple one. It still took three times as long as it would normally have done!

But tiredness and eyestrain are definitely part of the story, and I’ll just have to accommodate them, at least for now.

It goes without saying that we want players to sense the distinctive ‘aura’ of a campaign’s genre, but all sorts of things get in the way of that, so it only happens occasionally and fleetingly. But there’s an easy solution, and it works in literary applications as well!

When I broke this article down into sections, it quickly became clear that it was too much for one post, so I’ve split it in two. Part 1 discusses the process and looks at the Fantasy Genre; Part 2 will look at Science Fiction, Superheros, The Wild West, and other genres.

If you really want to immerse your players in a sense of the genre of a campaign, the easiest way to do so is to apply that genre to mundane tasks in the same way that those tasks might be carried out if the campaign was “real”.

Throw in a little technobabble or other appropriate language, and you’re golden.

It’s that simple. Well, almost. I’ve broken this down to 7 basic steps, 1 of which is optional. If you carry them out in game prep, that’s generally preferable; if not, then you’ll have to think through steps 1-to-5 quickly and then improvise step 6. Some will find that easier than others.

This article will walk you through those 7 steps, and then I’ll look at some examples of applying them to some specific genres.

0. Make a list of possible Mundane Activities (optional, but it helps).

• Get yourself a clipboard and a pad and pen, and for a week or so, jot down everything you do.
• At the end, put any routine tasks that the PC would not normally have to perform in pencil brackets (so that if/when circumstances change, you can quickly adjust your list), and
• add in any routine tasks that you don’t have to perform, but the PCs would.

It’s a lot easier to pic a mundane activity from a list that you’ve prepared in advance, especially one that breaks the day into time periods.

Here’s an example, based on my typical day, translated into a Superhero campaign list where some tasks have already been noted in-game as automated, needing only a verbal command:

Version 1 becomes Version 2
My Typical Day	Excerpted Campaign List
Beginning Dress Make Bed Shower Breakfast Sort Medications Make Cereal Make Coffee Have Breakfast, Take Medications Rinse Plates / Dishes / Cutlery Morning Sweep Floor / Vacuum Carpets / Chores Do Laundry / Clean Bathroom Answer E-mails Lunch Make Lunch Get Soft Drink Eat Lunch Rinse Plates / Dishes / Cutlery Afternoon Make / Check Shopping List (optional) Go Shopping (optional) Unpack Shopping (only if shopping) Scan Groceries (only if shopping) Put Shopping Away (only if shopping) Take Garbage Out Make Coffee / Get Soft Drink Work Period 1 Start Cooking Dinner Dinner Make Coffee / Get Soft Drink Serve Dinner Eat Dinner, Take Medications Watch TV News Rinse Pots / Pans Rinse Plates / Dishes / Cutlery Evening Washing Up, Dry Washing Put Plates & Cutlery away Check TV Schedule Night Work Period 2 Watch TV (optional) Work Period 3 Emails / Social Media Watch TV (optional) End Of Day Change into nightclothes Put Laundry out Set Alarm (optional) Go To Bed	Beginning Dress Make Bed Shower Breakfast (Sort Medications) Make Cereal Make Coffee Have Breakfast, (Take Medications) Rinse Plates / Dishes / Cutlery Morning (Sweep Floor / Vacuum Carpets / Chores) Do Laundry / Clean Bathroom Check for Emergencies Answer E-mails Daily Training / Exercises (Work Period 1) — not a mundane activity Lunch Make Lunch Get Soft Drink Eat Lunch Rinse Plates / Dishes / Cutlery Afternoon Check for Emergencies Make / Check Shopping List (optional) Go Shopping (optional) Unpack Shopping (only if shopping) (Scan Groceries) Put Shopping Away (only if shopping) (Take Garbage Out) Make Coffee / Get Soft Drink Check For Emergencies (Work Period 2) — not a mundane activity Start Cooking Dinner Dinner Make Coffee / Get Soft Drink Serve Dinner Eat Dinner, (Take Medications) Watch TV News, Check For Emergencies Rinse Pots / Pans Rinse Plates / Dishes / Cutlery Evening Washing Up, Dry Washing Put Plates & Cutlery away Check For Emergencies Check TV Schedule (only if no Emergency) Night (Work Period 3) — not a mundane activity Watch TV (optional) (Work Period 4) — not a mundane activity Emails / Social Media Watch TV (optional) End Of Day Change into nightclothes Put Laundry out Set Alarm (optional) Go To Bed

The only activity that might need further explanation is “Scan Groceries” – A marketing firm rewards me with points for informing them of what I buy by scanning the bar-codes of each item and recording how much it costs; those points accumulate until you ‘spend’ them on a reward. At the moment, I have enough for a brand-new $1000-dollar (Australian) smartphone with points to spare. In the past, I’ve bought color TVs and magazine subscriptions and books and CDs.

1. Pick A Mundane Activity.

• Figure out what period of the day it is, based on other in-game activities that have already been played.
• Pick a mundane activity from the list that immediately suggests that it would be different in-genre.
• If there isn’t one, check the periods immediately before and after. Repeat as necessary until inspiration strikes.

2. If it’s not something the PCs will perform in this game session, go back to step 1 and make a different choice.

I wasn’t originally going to be so pedantic as to include such an obvious step as this. But I was contemplating the difference between activities performed only once or twice a week, such as laundry, and decided it was necessary.

This paid off big-time when I contemplated non-contemporary / non-Fantasy / non-Sci-Fi campaigns, for example a Western campaign. Doing Laundry? Bathing? Maybe once a week, maybe less – but you would always do it before attending a social function. Which would include going to church if the character is a regular.

3. Imagine a more genre-appropriate method.

• Mark the item on the list so that you can tell at a glance that you’ve already translated it into genre terms. This maintains consistency throughout the campaign.
• Decide how that task is going to work in the genre of the campaign.
• If you can, make it interactive.

This is the core of the concept. You want to take a mundane task that wouldn’t normally even rate a mention and make it a genre-affirming activity. Something that takes between 30 seconds and 2-3 minutes to resolve in-game.

In the process, you tell the players a little more about the game world and the local society and the expectations that this society hold toward them, you give the genre itself a momentary piece of the spotlight, and you make the character’s lives seem more real.

Let’s pick a couple of examples (you can use these if you want, as a starting point):

In a Fantasy campaign, one of the most ubiquitous magic items might be a Scarab that crawls over dirty clothes, cleaning them and performing minor repairs. These have to be replenished every now and then. This takes a mundane activity that would normally get in the way of a day’s play, and so would be hand-waved, and turns it into something genre-affirming. You don’t have to include it every time; the occasional mention is enough. One PC, one mundane activity per game session, is plenty.

A sci-fi example: Rinsing plates, dishes, and cutlery is done with a sonic wand that vibrates loose particles of food from the surface. They then get loaded into a dishwasher that cleans them, dries them, applies an antibacterial coating, and automatically places them back in their usual storage location.

Customization

In particular, I want to point out a further refinement as an example of how to make these little scenes interactive.

Think about how this in-genre process might be different for different characters. Phrase it in the form of a standard question to be put to the player about their character’s preferences, one in which you have enunciated the options that are appropriate.

If it’s relevant, do some research in advance – for example, if the character is Norwegian and the task is making breakfast, look online for “Typical Norwegian Breakfast” so that the player can make an informed choice.

This is an opportunity for the player to add some color and nuance to their PC. The Barbarian who likes his woolen clothes to be extra-soft-and-fluffy. The Mage who over-starches their robes. The fighter who doesn’t trust magic and so does everything the hard way – and then carefully oils all the leather fittings – even if it means that he has to get up hours before the rest of the camp, and so always takes last watch.

4. Check for game balance issues. If necessary, vary the method to something that avoids the issues, or go back to step 1.

It’s very easy to make these in-genre solutions to mundane problems too powerful. Clever PCs can then use the ‘technologies’ in ways that the GM didn’t intent, effectively making the PCs more powerful than they should be, and throwing game balance out of whack.

For example, you might have come up with some sort of magical liquid-soap dispenser to make a cleaning task more colorful and less mundane. A PC might take that idea and the next time a difficulty opponent shows up in a battle, uses the dispenser to ‘spray’ soap into the eyes of the opponent, temporarily blinding them.

Oops. You might attempt to cover your mistake by stating “The magical soap cleans his eyes, he’s now at +1 to hit.” Bad move, it will only make it worse – from then on, the PC will spray the eyes of all the PCs as a prelude to combat, and your problem becomes worse.

The time to (try) and nip these things in the bid is before they ever appear in-game.

So think like a PC gifted this new technology and think of how it might be ‘perverted’ (from a GM’s perspective) before introducing it. You won’t get it 100% right, won’t think of everything, but even a lesser strike rate will be invaluable.

The other thing to remember is that whatever a PC can do, an NPC can do too. Use this principle to cover those cases where you’ve let something slip through the cracks – and remember that every such item makes your campaign more distinctive, so it’s not all doom-and-gloom.

5. Apply genre-appropriate color language. Document the language for future consistency.

Write it down as a piece of flavor text so that you can use it again in the future. I would use a separate list for this, indexed by time period and the activity that has been translated, so that I can go from list to prepared narrative very quickly.

6. Create the bubble of narrative and attach it to the day’s play.

It would be traditional to call it a “block” of text, but I wanted to coin a different term for this, one that implies that it is smaller and more ephemeral than is implied by the usual term “block”.

The more generic you can make the Narrative Bubble, the more easily it can be defined more precisely and individually for different PCs and NPCs – so the more useful it becomes as flavor text.

Genre Considerations: Introduction

That’s the whole process. But I wanted to look more deeply into the considerations that generally apply to the most common and instructive genres – the application of the technique, in particular those that apply to steps 3, and 4. That’s what the rest of this post, and the part 2 to follow, consists of.

Genre Discussion 1: Fantasy

I’m putting Fantasy first because it was in thinking about FRP (Fantasy Role-playing) that the problem of genre immersion first occurred to me. It was only when I re-framed the problem into a Sci-Fi context that I realized the answer, which is why it’s second on my list.

As I broke the subject down into sections to be written, a clear logical structure emerged. I start by listing (and briefly discussing) the existing parts of play that connect directly to the Genre, well, all the ones that I could think of.

That’s followed by a discussion of the points at which the process described above connects to the simulated reality within this particular genre.

Third, any conceptual tools that can help with the transformation of a mundane activity into a genre-specific activity.

Finally, any potential Game Balance and Campaign Issues get briefly examined.

Let’s get started…

Existing Genre Connections: Spellcasting

One of the most obvious connections between play and the fantasy genre is the casting of spells and the existence of magic more broadly.

Of course, you can downplay this connection to genre with minimalist description and flavor text, which makes the campaign feel less fantastic and more grounded, more Low Fantasy. Or you can make magic use far less prevalent and play up the fantastic when it does happen with some colorful narrative and achieve largely the same result.

But if you really want High Fantasy, you need to not only have magic use prevalent, but play into that with flavor text.

There’s an art to doing so with minimal verbiage. I employ a technique I call the Half Sentence as a first choice.

The Half-sentence Technique – Low-level Version

The basic concept is that you employ half a sentence of description of the casting, emphasizing unique special effects as much as possible, before describing the effect that the spell has from a character’s point-of-view.

Any sort of joining words are forbidden except at the end of the half sentence. No “and”s or “but”s or anything else of the sort. “Then”, “Before”, and other relative temporal terms are also to be avoided as much as possible.

The Half-Sentence technique – Advanced Version

There are a LOT of spells in most FRP, and coming up with minimalist descriptive text that is unique to that spell can become difficult quite quickly. Half-a-sentence is not a lot.

For that reason, from third level onwards (in D&D / Pathfinder terms), I transition to the advanced version of the technique, which provides 1/2 a sentence per spell level. Third character level, because that’s usually when 2nd-level spells become available.

It’s not necessary to use every one of those sentences – they are just what’s available.

What’s more, I reduce the number according to casting time, halving it for 1-round castings, or dividing by 3 (and rounding up to the next highest 1/2) for instant spells.

I also want to point out that this should not be used every single time. The first spell of a battle – okay. A higher-level spell than the ones already cast? Maybe.

A good rule of thumb is to take the allocation of descriptive sentences and spread them over multiple rounds of combat, keeping some in reserve for higher level spells if those are available to the combatant.

A little can go a very long way, and excessive use can frustrate players who want to get on with the battle.

I also try to make Druidic and Clerical spells different in flavor to Mage spells even if they are exactly the same in the rulebook.

You can balance things out a bit by applying the same technique to physical attacks and other actions by non-mages. Again, a little of this can go a long way.

But really, this is low-hanging fruit – some sources have even done the heavy lifting for you, putting effect descriptions in the sourcebook. Certainly, the better ones have done so!

Existing Genre Connections: Magic Weapons

Magic Weaponry is another potential connection to Genre, but one that’s far more frequently overlooked in a GM’s haste to get to the fight.

Does the magic weapon have a display or sensation when it’s drawn? Does it have a personality?
Does the magic weapon have a special ability that needs descriptive text when triggered?

It’s especially important to impart some flavor text in the event of a critical hit. Arm’s Law, part of Runemaster, can be very helpful when you’re starting out, but learning how to improv such narrative for yourself can only be put off for just so long.

Existing Genre Connections: Magikal Beasts

As soon as a Dragon or a Beholder shows up, you immediately establish a connection to the Genre because these things don’t exist in nature. Huge Spiders, Ogres, Trolls, etc … your sourcebooks are portals to the wonder of the Genre. All you have to do is weave the description of the Magical Beast into your description of the scene, possibly abbreviated or summarized.

A technique that I employ whenever I can is to remove a sentence from the provided description and use it to provide some other sensory trigger – scent, sound, or even taste. That means making the visual description more succinct, of course. The more unusual the visual display, the less I employ this – but for something like a Hellhound? Absolutely.

In some campaigns, I have used “glowing eyes” to indicate that a creature has been buffed up pre-encounter with magic of some kind. You can even hint at the general type of buff using different-colored glows.

Existing Genre Connections: Fantastic Locations

As you might surmise from reading

• Six Wonders: A selected assortment of Wondrous Locations for a fantasy RPG

or the sequel,

• Five More Wonders: Another assortment of Locations for a fantasy RPG,

I work very hard at emphasizing the fantastic when describing locations.

If you need help in this department, a good place to start is with

• Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder for ideas, and
• Adjectivizing Descriptions: Hitting the target for technique.

All of the above were part of the Blog Carnival of September 2013, which I hosted, and you may also get tips and ideas from the other contributions, which were summarized at

• Location, Location, Location! – the Roundup and Wrap-up (for now).

Beyond that, consult

• The Secrets of Stylish Narrative [series] for more technique, and
• Breaking Through Writer’s Block [series] for more ways of generating ideas.

Point Of Contact: Task meets Genre

Unfortunately, the standard / default option of translating a mundane task is the only one generally available for use with the Fantasy Genre, with the possible exception of some exotic vehicle.

That’s not really enough, so let’s add one that few GMs seem to think of.

Point Of Contact: Domestication

Humans, especially, love to take some creature from the wilderness and domesticate it (or try to) – just look at the sheer variety of pets that people can have.

But I’m talking about actively farming creatures either as a working beast (like the dog or the horse), as a tool (the cat, which hunts rats and mice), or as a meat source (cattle and the like). Heck, War Elephants make the point pretty succinctly.

It’s a sure bet that there have been attempts to domesticate virtually every creature in the Monster Manual, if not more. Of course, domesticating sentient creatures is also known as Slavery, so they might be an exception to the above rule.

Most of the time, these attempts would not have a fixed purpose – first, domesticate the animal, then figure out what you can do with it!

Some of these attempts will have failed, some will have succeeded, and some will be ongoing.

But this can be a very dangerous line of thought, as you’ll see when I get to the Game Balance section of this discussion.

The Medieval Lens

When adapting a task, you need to first understand how that task (or its equivalent) was performed in a Medieval society. Or in ancient Rome, or Greece, because most of them won’t have changed very much in between.

This includes factoring cultural expectations and changes. There were times in French History when no gentleman would be caught dead in public without his wig. Since this mandated wearing them daily, there was little or no chance to clean them, and as a result, they frequently became infested with insects and even (from time to time) vermin. Because they bathed not much more often than they washed their wigs, most had a natural stench, which they attempted to conceal with scented powders and perfumes.

Labor-intensive without the Labor

Most tasks had labor-intensive solutions. The higher up the social ladder, the more of this labor could / would be supplied by someone else, either because they were commanded to do so, or because they were paid to do so.

It follows that taking the labor out of a task using magic has significant social and economic ramifications, but this is such an obvious field of magic that continual research would be sponsored. Wave enough money at a problem, that problem tends to go away (eventually).

The problem is those social and economic ramifications, and PC conformity to them. Bathing is almost certainly an infrequent activity, and may involve the use of small fire Elementals to heat water, for example.

Don’t neglect public utilities – streets illuminated by magic lamps, some means of cleansing / purifying water, and so on – describing one of these has the same impact as if the PCs had to do it.

Take those magic lamps – PCs would expect to have some for use in camp, and when exploring dungeons, and would need a darned good reason not to have them.

Potential Game Balance issues

Always, there is the need to consider the game balance impact. Sometimes, these are of negligible impact – that’s a green light.

The more magic is used to supplement or replace labor, the greater the pool of potential labor becomes for other purposes, like standing armies and law enforcement and thief’s guilds. Those are usually acceptable, though they should be pointed out to the players when entering an affected society, especially for the first time.

But it’s domestication that is the real danger. I forget in which article I wrote about it, but when I was developing the house rules for my first D&D campaign, I tested them with a one-off for a set of experienced players. And, because the intent was to stress-test the rules, I asked them not to go easy on me.

One of them asked about domesticated monsters, and especially whether or not Black Puddings or the like had been captured and were being used for garbage disposal. I thought it sounded reasonably easy to capture a piece of a Black Pudding, and all you had to do was then feed it to get a bigger one, so it sounded reasonable. The players proceeded to fill potion bottles with little bits of Pudding. When they encountered a Monster of significant levels, one of them would lob a potion-bottle of Black Pudding at the Monster. Most opposition literally melted away at that point.

That one question-and-answer had a profound effect on Game Balance.

Anytime you extend the range of capabilities of a society, you run the risk of handing the PCs a tool that will have significant campaign effects. Sometimes, you can offset that with additional requirements or downsides, other times you have to say, “heck no!” and abandon that particular technology. And if that means forfeiting this particular chance to connect back to the parent genre, so be it.

That’s where part 1 has to end. Part 2 will pick up where I left off, probably next week, covering the Sci-Fi, Superheros, and Western genres. Well, Sci-Fi at least, there might need to be a part 3!

GMs who only run Fantasy campaigns should still read the rest of the article for ideas, just as some of the Fantasy Content material above will apply to non-Fantasy campaigns.

It will be worth remembering, too, that this two-part post was conceived as a single article; practicality of writing may have forced its division, but that shouldn’t be how it is read.

Sub-stories are akin to small anecdotes of a dramatic nature that can add interest, depth, color, and backstory to encounters. What’s not to like?

I’ve started writing this article at least half-a-dozen times over the years, but it’s always fallen apart on me before I got to the interesting parts, simply because it’s been so difficult translating the concept into words that would make sense to anyone not seeing what I was driving at.

Finally, I think I’ve found a vehicle – an example – that will touch on everything that I want to explain. The text might seem to jump around a little from one topic to another at first, bear with me.

An Encounter Focus

It’s not often that Campaign Mastery focuses down onto an isolated encounter. Generally, I talk here about bigger pictures, and I’ll get to those later in the article, but the focus this time is on a single big encounter, and how to enhance it.

The Sub-story Concept

I want to start by establishing some context to the subject in general. The sub-story is usually attached to the defining encounter of either the whole adventure or a significant part of it. That has to happen when designing the adventure and prepping to run it.

Even if your modus operandi is off-the-cuff improv game-play, i.e. making stuff up as you go along, inventing a sub-story at the start makes so many other aspects of creativity easier that it’s worth doing in your head at the start.

So this article is about designing a significant encounter within an adventure, and (to a lesser extent) about then playing that significant encounter when the time comes.

End-Of-Level Encounters

Video games have had end-of-level or ‘boss’ encounters for what seems like forever. And the recipe is usually pretty much the same – a significantly tougher encounter; a bigger, more significant fight; and, usually, a bigger, more substantial reward for defeating the ‘boss monster’.

Over the years, I’ve seen that same concept applied to RPGs as well, and the recipe has usually been translated across pretty much verbatim from the video game.

It’s a logical progression: you have to dismantle the Boss’ support network and flunkies just to get to the Boss. It’s also not uncommon for the Boss to be pretty much invulnerable until one or more of his protections gets taken down.

The Sub-story can be used to add “Roleplaying” to what is otherwise just a bigger fight – introducing color and narrative and plot and depth – to such end-of-level combats. It can also add more options for the resolution of that end-of-level conflict than simply swinging a sword until the enemies are a smoking ruin or blood-stained smear, which smarter groups will often find attractive. At the very least, it can add some meaning and context to what is otherwise a fairly vacuous slug-fest.

The Two Ghosts Encounter

The vehicle that I’m going to use to explain and demonstrate the concepts and application of those concepts is something I’ve entitled “The Two Ghosts Encounter”.

The situation is that you have decided – either randomly, using tables, or because you think it interesting, or because they are a significantly tougher opponent – to have the ‘boss encounter’ be a ghostly in origin, and the encounter mechanics suggest that, for a party of this level of ability, two ghosts is the right level of difficulty to pose a challenge to the party. When you start designing the encounter, that’s pretty much all you know about it, okay?

So let’s dig into the design process and see where the sub-story fits in.

The ‘Two Ghosts’ Encounter – setting

The setting for this encounter and its surrounding adventure should be somewhere that’s appropriate for ‘Ghosts’ to appear. The first thing that comes to mind is a haunted mansion, so let’s go with that.

The ‘Two Ghosts’ Encounter – foundation

The foundation is where this encounter is to take place, within the context of the setting. You don’t want it to be accessible directly from the outside or the rest of the adventure will be an anticlimax. So, even if our haunted mansion has a graveyard, that can’t be where the climactic encounter takes place.

So, instead, lets put a family burial vault in the basement. Let’s further state that there is some sort of barrier in place that can’t be bypassed until the first floor of the mansion is cleared, the legacy of a past attempt to solve the problems of the haunted mansion.

Those problems, whatever they are, will be the reason the PCs get recruited to deal with the situation.

The ‘Two Ghosts’ Encounter – Ghostly Mythos

I have always regarded Ghosts and Mummies as different to all other forms of Undead. In terms of game mechanics, from the time of AD&D (and through all subsequent editions, so far as I know), Ghosts have been based on Positive Energy and not Negative.

It’s always been a foundation concept of mine that Ghosts need a reason to come into existence, some driving obsession or force that demands that they refuse to be carted off to whatever afterlife there is. The process of resisting such ascension by sheer act of will is what somehow fills them with that positive energy.

Another way to look at it is that they have too much life to be prepared to die.

So motivations and agendas matter, when it comes to ghosts. While each individual case will be different, they will all be variations on a common theme. This has, of course been part of ‘ghost lore’ since ling before there were RPGs – ghosts always have baggage, unfinished business as it were, a reason to stick around on the moral plane.

If you don’t resolve that business to the ghost’s satisfaction, you can ‘destroy’ them all you want, and they will simply reform. I’ve occasionally likened it to the ghost casting an extra-dimensional ‘shadow’ into the Positive Energy Plane, and destroying their manifestation on the Material Plane does nothing to affect that ‘shadow’, enabling the ghost to reform.

In some campaigns, I’ve even interpreted this as resulting in the Ghost becoming stronger and more dangerous – gaining levels / hit dice. I’ve also had (sometimes) a connection forged between shadow and the mortal who ‘ended’ the ghost (temporarily) permitting them to be attacked by the returning ghost, because that mortal has interfered with the ‘mission’ or ‘obsession’ of the Ghost.

Other times, I haven’t incorporated either of those ideas, and simply left matters at “It doesn’t help your reputation when you claim to have cleared a ghost from it’s haunt only for that Ghost to be back in residence as though it had never left”.

The other part of ghostly lore that is fairly ubiquitous across my campaigns is that the Positive Energy of the / a ghost attracts Negative-Energy-based undead and other such creatures like moths to a flame. Even those sentient higher-functioning undead types can’t say exactly what it is that attracts them, just that it does, and they feel more comfortable settling into the vicinity.

So Ghosts tend to be surrounded by Specters and Poltergeists and Zombies and Ghouls and (potentially) Vampires and Liches. And that’s the reason the locals can’t just ignore the Ghosts and leave them alone.

Additionally, in some campaigns, I’ve enabled Ghosts to travel beyond their Haunting for limited times, especially to seek retribution. How far, I’ve kept fairly tenuous.

Oh, and mechanics-wise, simply restoring the status quo to what it was without progressing the ghostly motivation or otherwise developing a long-term solution earns only a small fraction of the experience points.

A Note about Specters

D&D often did a fairly poor job of explaining the difference between a Ghost and a Specter, and why this difference took place – what was different about a situation that led a deceased becoming one and not the other?

Motivation. That’s what I kept coming back to. In the case of a Ghost, it was a quest to complete something or achieve something. Only then could the spirit receive the last rites, which summoned the appropriate deity to convey the once-restless spirit to its final destination or to the next step along the way (according to your in-game mythology).

For a Specter, it’s all about hatred, and possibly jealousy. There is someone or something they hate so much that they cannot rest until it is destroyed. Of course, like Ghosts, they can’t travel very far from their Crypt or for very long, so their chances of ever achieving that goal are slim-to-none.

In campaigns where I’ve given ghosts a power-up, as described earlier, I also generally do the same for Specters, most frequently by giving them the ability to temporarily Possess a living body. Each time they do so, it costs the host 10% of their hit points but not a character level. The Specter can then have the person say or do things to advance its agenda, and then exit the body. The host will vaguely remember doing things, as though they had dreamt doing so, but has no idea why, just that it made sense at the time.

Any healing or cure magics will restore the lost hit points, but they are lost again should the Specter ever return to that host, so the hist gets progressively weaker. If they die from Possession, they become a lesser Specter under the control of the original, taking on its agenda as though it were their own.

This sub-specter gains experience from acts that further the agenda, even if it does so in the most abstract or indirect way, until it reaches full Specter status in its own right.

Until that happens, the original Specter is rendered a little more vulnerable, because any harm that comes to the sub-specter are also visited upon the “parent specter”.

There’s also often a subconscious clash of wills at the time of Possession, success is not automatic. Should the Specter be rebuffed, that ends its activities for the day.

Like Ghosts, it’s not enough to simply destroy the Specter; you have to defeat it’s “Shadow” and you can’t rest or heal in between the encounters; the best that you can do is temporarily inhibit it’s ability to manifest in the Prime Material Plane – one day for every level or HD that it had before your intervention..

So to permanently end one, you have to destroy it on the Prime Material Plane, transit to the Negative Energy Plane, and Destroy it all over again, all without resting or healing (it’s considered part of the same battle).

Should a sub-specter be attacked, the Parent Specter can lend it hit points from itself, effectively taking the blow on behalf of the servant. This flow of hit points can also operate in the other direction, so the more sub-specters a Parent Specter has, the stronger it becomes.

 

Turning Ghosts and Specters

This is the ‘easy’ way of disrupting their presence on the Prime Material Plane. It has no effect on any sub-Specters and does not prevent them from re-manifesting. It generally has a somewhat longer-lasting effect than ‘physical’ destruction of the spirit.

For every point over the minimum result needed to turn the Spirit, a cleric or equivalent adds an extra day before the spirit can again re-manifest.

Sub-specters are not affected by the turning of the parent Specter, and vice-versa, but they will lose purpose and direction, and be able to do nothing but protect themselves. This can make them a lot harder to locate.

 

Messing With The Remains

Something that people often try is messing with the mortal remains of the Ghost or Specter. Cremating them, scattering them, consecrating them, boiling them in holy water, whatever.

Because the Ghost / Specter is a metaphysical construct of Positive or Negative energy, this does little except piss them off. While there is a bond of some sort between the physical remains and the spiritual manifestation, the latter is not affected by actions performed against the former.

Mortal remains are considered to have 1/10th the number of hit points that the Specter or Ghost has, so they can be destroyed. Doing so merely liberates the Ghost or Specter from it’s connection to the location where those remains were housed, permitting them to wander the world freely by night, and making them that much more dangerous.

The mortal remains do serve as the link between metaphysical manifestation and “shadow existence”, however. If the mortal remains are destroyed, the Ghost / Specter cannot restore itself to the Prime Material Plane without reforming them, a process that takes one day per hit point of mortal remains (actually, one night per, but you know what I mean).

There are Necromantic rituals that can speed or delay this process, so one of the things that Specters often do is to create a cult that will perform those rituals should it become necessary.

Eventually, the mortal remains will be restored, exactly as they were before, and the Specter / Ghost can then set about restoring it’s Spiritual Manifestation.

The ‘Two Ghosts’ Encounter – the sub-story pt I

With that big slab of Ghostly Lore out of the way, let’s return to constructing the encounter, and devise a sub-story to explain how the first Ghost became one, and therefore what their Purpose is.

The daughter of a minor or major noble (to be decided) was to be wed to a handsome young man, presumably also of Noble blood. Preparations for the nuptials were well-advanced, and he had journeyed to the home of this noble family for the ceremony.

As such events often are with Nobility, this was an arranged marriage whose purpose was to cement alliances and power structures, but the young woman in question genuinely loved the urbane noble she was to wed.

Those affections were not returned, however. He viewed the union as a political convenience, nothing more. As a result, he was perfectly willing to ignore or abandon it should ‘a better offer’ come along, and as the wedding preparations continued, one such opportunity manifested itself, with the daughter of a more politically-powerful family (and a distant cousin of the bride-to-be).

This led to her being jilted at the altar, publicly humiliated. Her family, of course, declared war on the family of the insincere suitor, but that was not enough for the jilted bride. Unable to avenge the humiliation and rejection, because of the protection created by the new political alliance, she took her own life.

So strong was her sense of being wronged that she refused to pass on until the last member of the groom’s family were made to suffer. She desired nothing more nor less than to make them suffer exactly what she had suffered – rejection, humiliation, and death.

That seems serviceable. A nasty little story of wounded pride, of a young girl’s head full of romantic ideals that were sacrificed to a hard political reality by an insincere suitor.

Of course, the Ghost will have little opportunity to wreak such vengeance unless the family of the groom make the mistake of returning to the Mansion that her restless spirit now roams, or to it’s vicinity, at least.

In the meantime, her Ghost will attack any men that enter her sphere of power as surrogates for the family of the Groom, and will seek to protect any females who do so from suffering her own fate.

Translating the sub-story into detail I

Next, we need to represent the sub-story in some tangible way within the confines of the encounter setting, so that the setting itself reflects at least part of the story.

It’s fairly common for people to be buried with some treasured personal possession, something symbolic of their life or their death. I often refer to such items generically as a personal token.

What could be more symbolic of our sad little sub-story than the Ghost’s wedding dress?

But we don’t want her simply to be buried in it, we want it to be on display somehow, so that we can incorporate it into our description of the crypt.

Funerary customs vary widely from one era to another and between different cultures, so we can pretty much invent whatever such that we want. So why not have such tokens interred behind glass alongside the vault of their owner, displayed behind glass?

Only the wealthy and powerful could afford to do this, so that tells part of our story. We will need some other tokens for the other family members buried in the vaults, so that we introduce the concept to the PCs as they enter the vault. This will enable them to interpret the actual token associated with our Ghost when they get to it.

Adding sensory nuance I

But so far, that’s a fairly static display. I prefer scenes that are more dynamic, containing some sort of motion or change. And we still need to hint at the rest of the story.

If the wedding dress is displayed on some sort of manikin, we could have the end of the sleeves being red-brown with dried blood. And maybe have it dripping, or have arterial spray appear on the walls despite the intervening glass? And, of course, when the Ghost is encountered, it will be wearing a ghostly representation of the same wedding dress.

What other senses can we engage to flesh out the story?

Sound is covered by ghostly moans and groans and female sobbing punctuated by anguished screams of frustration.

Scent – perhaps a delicate feminine perfume lingers in the air? That’s so distinctively unusual that it should get attention.

Taste – perhaps the flavor of bitter almonds fills the mouth (suggestive of arsenic poisoning) or the flavor of champagne, representing the celebrations that were about to unfold? The first doesn’t really fit the suggestion of slashed wrists, the second doesn’t seem appropriate since the celebration would have been canceled following the ceremony not taking place. Unhappy with both ideas, I’ll leave taste out for the time being, and see if anything occurs to me.

Even without it, there are enough clues that the heart of the story should be deduced from them. The Anguished screams of frustration, the wedding dress, the hint of suicide. That’s enough to be going on with.

The ‘Two Ghosts’ Encounter – the sub-story pt II

So let’s turn our attention to the second Ghost. We need to incorporate it into our story, which means adding to it.

My mind keeps returning to the consequences of the suicide, which don’t really seem immediate enough. A grieving father who genuinely cared for his daughter even though he was willing to use her to advance the family fortunes would not have been satisfied.

When his daughter’s lifeless body was discovered in her bedroom, Viscount Kerr was inflamed, in part because he had been the architect of the original ‘arrangement’ between the families, in part because the incident had occurred under his own roof.

He immediately demanded satisfaction from the young Baronet, drawing his sword to emphasize his point. Unfortunately, he was not as quick as he once had been, and the Baronet – one of the better swordsmen in the country – defeated him fairly easily, inflicting a belly wound that would prove fatal just a few days later. Realizing what he had done, the Baronet released his weapon and fled the scene.

But Viscount Kerr’s guilt over his role in his daughter’s death would not permit him to move on. He vowed to protect her until he had earned her forgiveness, no matter how long he might wait. It was some time later that he realized that both of them had become Ghosts, bound to their mutual not-quite-death-not-quite-life existence by their separate goals and motivations.

With that, the sub-story is complete – we just have to devise delivery mechanisms to get it into the players’ hands.

It may be getting ahead of myself, but I also want to point out just how different the encounter has become due to the establishment of relationships between the two Ghosts. There are other significant differences that derive from the sub-story, which I’ll get to in due course.

Translating the sub-story into detail II

So we need to emplace one or more clues in the burial vault that hint at the rest of the story outlined above. We could start with the displayed tokens of his life, being the sword that was the instrument of his challenge, crossed by the sword of his demise. The first contains a number of deep cuts and nicks that show that it was hard-used on the occasion of its last use; the second is marred, but not as deeply, and three-quarters of the blade is still covered in the dried blood of its last victim.

Next, we might think about a couple of inscriptions that go beyond merely naming the victims. Maybe:

• Georgina Kerr, Age 16. Her innocence was taken by betrayal, her life by humiliation.

and,

• Viscount Ferdal Kerr, Age 34, father of beloved Georgina. Wounded pride blinded him, love of his daughter ended him.

Again, those present enough clues that it should be possible to deduce the outlines of the story, though you would need to put them all in the right order.

Adding sensory nuance II

It’s my sense that Viscount Kerr’s ghost won’t go around putting on displays the way Georgina’s’ ghost was doing. In fact, until she is confronted, there will be no hint of his existence – and then he will rise from the floor and place himself between the threat and her shade, perhaps saying something along the lines of “You shall not hurt her again!” – again, reflecting the sub-story.

There would, perhaps, be signs elsewhere in the mansion. Arterial spray appearing spontaneously on the walls of Georgina’s bedroom. A pool of blood and a mysterious chill in the air where the Viscount lost his life – perhaps the main staircase, because that gives the impression that he rushed down directly from the discovery of the body to seek to avenge Georgina. And perhaps the repeated ring of blade meeting blade when standing in the exact spot (before the pool of blood manifests, of course).

If the blood is real enough that whoever was standing in it then leaves tracks for a half-dozen to a dozen paces, then the arterial blood would also be real enough to sustain some creatures that feast on such – and that makes a nice pair of clues that there’s more to these Ghosts than players might have read in their Monster Manuals. My players might expect that of me, but it’s still polite to at least suggest fair warning!.

The ‘Two Ghosts’ Encounter – Delivering the sub-story

The sequence of clues could be important to making rational deductions about the sub-story, as noted in the previous section. So we should think for a minute about how they are to be revealed, and how we can apply a sequence to them that matches what we want to convey.

When the PCs first reach the burial vault, we want to make sure they know that’s what the chamber is. So we probably need a couple more family members in vaults at the entrance to make that clear.

This area appears to be an underground burial crypt, no doubt reserved for the masters of the mansion, which is why you could find no trace of them in the cemetery outside. Each vault is marked with an inscribed brass plate and some token of the deceased’s life is visible behind a pane of glass with decorative frosting around its borders. Immediately within the chamber, on either side, are two vaults:

• Lorhaz Kerr – Birthdate, Death Date, Age 57, “Founder Of A Dynasty.” Token: An Axe and Shield.
• Walthoa Kerr – Birthdate, Death Date, Age 63, “Mother Of A Family.” Token: A half-knitted shawl and ball of homespun wool.

Five more pairs of vaults lie to either side, the last barely visible in the light of your torch at the entrance. You also note oil lanterns affixed neatly next to each inscription. These burial conditions might be rudimentary, but there was no shortage of money spent on honoring the dead.

In the distance, two beyond the sixth pair of vaults that are so hard to make out, the oil lantern somehow lights itself. You can’t see anyone beside it, perhaps there’s some clever mechanism involved. You can’t read the inscription from here, but the glass-fronted memorial chamber contains what appears to be a lacy wedding dress that must have cost a pretty penny even back in the day. There’s something not quite right about it, though – but you can’t make out enough detail at this distance to say what it is.

Then the next lantern ignites spontaneously, revealing two crossed swords. Again, everything is too distant to make out details.

And then the next pair, and the next, and the next, as though whatever agency is responsible is approaching you. There’s a pronounced chill in the air, and you have the distinct impression that something is inviting you in – in the manner of the spider and the fly. You fleetingly lock eyes with each other as you ponder what to do next. What are you doing?

Yeah, that will work. Tantalize with clues, and put them just out of reach.

It goes without saying that every other encounter in the “Haunted Mansion” should be reflective of the situation within, however indirectly. Giant rats, Giant Spiders, Spectral Hounds, Zombies in the Graveyard, and so on.

Making the sub-story significant

So far, we’ve made the Two Ghosts the centerpiece of a small three-level dungeon. There’s more work to be done – the barrier, and tests to be passed before it will be lowered, and that piece of backstory – but the main elements are in place.

But it’s all very isolated; it has no real meaning at the campaign level.

You might be fine with that; some GM’s are. Lots of TV shows are strongly episodic in the same way.

Others, like me, prefer a continuity that links one story or adventure to another. There are lots of options; pick one that suits:

1. If the PCs have a political problem, Viscount Kerr could provide some insight or piece of key (historical) information that sets the PCs on the path to a resolution of the problem – If they get to talk with him.
2. The Ambitious Baronet would also be long-dead by now. But his family would still be around, and still engaged in all sorts of political manipulation. Either Georgina or Viscount Kerr – or both – could open up a new line of adventures for the PCs – again, if they get to talk to them.
3. Perhaps the mansion was built on the remains of an old watchtower, which – unknown to the Kerrs when the mansion was built – contained a connection to some nest of horrors / evils deep underground. While the Ghosts held sway, these were blocked – but they will now be free to make their way to the surface world. (Surprise – there are some additional levels to the Dungeon!)

There are undoubtedly more, but those three examples are enough to demonstrate the principle.

The key point is that the PCs have to reach the point of negotiating / communicating with the Ghosts, not just fighting them, for any of these to come to the PCs attention.

Resolving the ‘Two Ghosts’ sub-story

If the PCs don’t know any better, they have no reason not to simply slug it out with the ghosts. So, at the first mention of Ghosts in the adventure, you should find a way to convey the relevant Ghost Lore to the PCs. Perhaps the party Cleric was given instruction regarding ghosts as part of his general education about Undead. Or there might be a mage in the party who knows about such things from his Brief Introduction To Necromancy – again, part of his basic education. Or maybe there’s an Elf who’s been around long enough to have heard others speak of the subject in huddled tones. The exact choice will depend on the makeup of the Party.

My favorite approach is to divide the information up amongst the PCs, and throw in a little misinformation as well, generally in the form of rumors and superstitions.

There are two approaches to resolving the ‘Two Ghosts’ plotline. The first is to destroy the Ghosts in combat – but the Ghost Lore already tells the PCs that this is just a temporary solution. They can then – if they are able – pursue the Ghosts’ “Shadows” into the Negative Energy Plane and go again.

The second is to find a way to satisfy the Ghosts’ mission, then give the last rites to their mortal remains and send them off to a satisfied afterlife, or to face eternal judgment, or whatever the appropriate situation is within the campaign theology for the region..

Alternate Solutions to the ‘Two Ghosts’ encounter

Satisfying Georgina is the key to laying the Ghosts to rest. While she is obsessed, she can’t even think about why her father is also a Ghost. Once she can be laid to rest, so can he.

Things will be a lot easier for the PCs if at least one of them is female. Georgina will seek to protect her from the males in the party, and that gives the female a chance to start a conversation with the Ghost.

That’s actually fairly rare here in Australia – there just don’t seem to be as many female players as there are in the US. Stereotypical roles may be interfering; I don’t know what else to put it down to, but it’s a fact. One (male) player that I know used to run female characters almost exclusively to balance out parties, and take advantage of any opportunities presented with less competition than usual. And two of the (male) players in my superhero campaign is running female characters. Just thought it was worth a mention.

Without having a handy female to get past Georgina’s defenses, the party will have to get more creative. Are Ghosts subject to Hold Person? That would immobilize them long enough to start a conversation, even if it’s very one-sided at first.

A cleric invoking the God Of Justice (if there is one) and requesting leniency in Georgina’s afterlife Judgment because what happened to her was Unjust, might also wedge the door to a conversation open – just a crack. Promising to punish the Family of the Baronet by exposing one of their plots might then fall on receptive ears.

Being a glib public speaker would no doubt also be an asset.

The approach is up to the PCs – the Ghost Lore spells out that muscle is not enough, what the PCs do with that information is up to them.

Generalizing sub-stories into Themes

This isn’t always necessary, but I find that it helps spark the imagination into the future. In fact, I generally recommend deciding on a few themes at the time of campaign creation, but it’s never too late (at least in this area). A theme is something that can be explored in multiple forms or impact multiple adventures over the course of a campaign.

Possible themes that come out of the Two Ghosts plotline include Justice Deferred, Innocence betrayed, Vengeance, History haunting today (metaphorically), Life, Death, Eternal Rewards, Honesty, Personal Honor, and Infidelity.

That’s too long a list for any reasonable campaign. Pick the three or four for which you have the most good ideas after excluding any that you’ve used in the past, and just go with those.

How do you use a theme?

I’ve dealt with this before, but in brief – every time you come up with an idea for an adventure, go over the list of themes and ask how that theme can manifest within the adventure. Every time the situation indicates a wandering monster, try to integrate one or more of the themes. That’s it, it’s that simple.

The fact that you’ve chosen themes that already give you ideas mean that you can develop those ideas into adventures to specifically explore the theme, which makes it easier. Themes help one campaign distinguish itself from a similar one; the players may never know that you have intentional themes, but they will pick up on the differences in coherence and cohesion that result in the adventures.

Reflecting sub-stories in Random Encounters

This article is fast steaming toward a conclusion, but there are a couple of applications of the sub-story that I have yet to highlight. The first of these is applying the sub-story to Random Encounters.

I always try to look at Random Encounters as a way to extend or enlarge the story, or a way to cement verisimilitude. I may not always succeed but that’s always my initial question – how can I use this encounter to improve the adventure?

Either of those purposes involves connecting the encounter to the sub-story in some way. For example, we might ask ourselves,

With the patriarch of the family and his sole heir both dead, what became of the family and their title?

Lady Urial, the late Viscount’s wife, blamed the family of the Baronet for the events which had devastated her family, not unreasonably. She abandoned the Mansion immediately after laying her husband and daughter to rest in the crypt, dismissing some servants and taking the rest with her. She returned to her family’s holdings in the South and spent her days in the gardens there, scheming the downfall of the house that had destroyed her family. She dissipated the family fortunes – never extensive to begin with – in one maneuver after another, all designed to humiliate and thwart those she deemed her enemies. Only two servants remained to care for the mansion, which she could never bear to sell.

The family title was inherited by a distant cousin of the former Viscount who brought so little luster to it that it fell into disuse. After the death of his cousin-by-marriage, he journeyed to the Mansion, dismissed the last servants (which he could no longer afford to keep) and prepared to sell the mansion, a plan that went awry the first time he encountered the Ghosts. He fled, screaming, never to be seen again; the conjecture is that he tripped somewhere out in the wilderness and perished at the (metaphoric) hands of some wild beast.

Okay, that adds a third chapter to the story. Now we need to connect it to the wandering monster. We can either roll for it’s nature (rejecting anything that doesn’t seem to fit the themes / sub-story), or we can narrow down the options and make a deliberate choice. My general technique is to roll and use the results as inspiration – but to be quite prepared to pick something completely different if that’s better for delivering the story.

In this case, I think a creature that has found the diary of the last servant, which contains the key information that although various visitors have claimed the Mansion to be haunted, she has never been troubled by the alleged spirits, and that she was just a young girl of similar age to Georgina when the latter was alive; they became close friends, and she misses her friend desperately after the tragic events. The diary is full of little touches that pay tribute to the relationship – things like putting a bouquet of fresh flowers in Georgina’s bedroom every morning, in memory of her friend. It also talks of the cousin and his fate.

Getting back to the encounter, I want a creature that’s smart enough to know that written words have value, but not enough intelligence / education to actually read those words. So it’s grabbed the diary and is looking for someone to tell him what its’ worth.

What creatures actually fit this profile could vary from one campaign to another. It could be a band of Goblins, or it could be a Bugbear, or an Ogre. Which of those would make the most sense, given where the mansion is located in the game world? Once that is decided, I next think about how to ‘dress up’ the encounter to make it a reasonable challenge for the PCs, but one that they are likely to win – I want the diary to fall into their hands. I also make the note that it never directly addresses what happened except in the most general of terms; it’s full of the servant’s reaction to the events however, and would also be full of the preparations for the wedding and the fact that the Baronet made a drunken attempt to bed the servant just days before the wedding was to take place.

The sub-story as non-crescendo

The example offered, of Two Ghosts, clearly makes this sub-story the crescendo of the ‘dungeon’, the central trunk of a vine that weaves in and out of every room and encounter. But it doesn’t have to be that way; that just happened to suit this particular example. Sub-stories can be smaller, a little slice of the daily life (or “life” if that’s more appropriate) of whatever is encountered.

The great power of this approach is that every encounter is ‘doing something appropriate to its existence’ when it is encountered. They aren’t just sitting around waiting for a PC to show up.

A blind Goblin woman has taken refuge in the house’s kitchen with her son; he goes out each day to capture food for the duo while she does ordinary home chores. The Ghosts ignore them, first because they are only in the kitchens, i.e. Servant’s country, and because they aren’t human and human standards can’t be expected to apply to them, and thirdly because the woman is blind and cannot perceive most of the ghostly shenanigans. When the PCs arrive, the Goblin woman might be cooking something, or sweeping the floor, or doing laundry.

Right away, the Goblin Woman feels more like she’s part of the game world, real and solid and interesting. It’s suddenly not a combat encounter – unless the PCs are really heartless – it’s a roleplaying situation. She can tell them what it’s like, living surrounded by Undead (“We don’t unlock the door at night”). She can make them see Goblins as something more than sword-fodder just with her very existence – while at the same time making the PCs less sympathetic to the race in general by pointing out that her Tribe or Clan abandoned her and her son to die, and she has survived to spite them..

This won’t be the case with every encounter – some of them will still need to be resolved using drawn weapons and violence – but it gives each encounter a level of substance that you can’t get any other way. And it makes every encounter that bit more memorable – and trust me, players will notice that sort of thing, especially when it starts happening time after time.

A Powerful Tool

Sub-stories are a powerful tool, as this last example shows. You control how far they spread, how they interact and interconnect, whether or not they are the central focus of an adventure / quest / ‘dungeon’ or go no farther than the immediate vicinity. Once you get into the habit, you can usually devise one in the span between two breaths, drawing inspiration from selected key themes, concepts, and existing game prep.

They should be part of every GM’s repertoire!

This post details a more tactical combat system for D&D and similar rules systems than the standard one. At the heart of the system lies not d20 or 3d6, but a standard deck of 52 cards.

The core concept of the mechanism came to me when I was shuffling cards for a game of patience while I waited for the computer to do something (I forget what). It’s biggest downside is that it does require a bit of table space.

All the examples have been generated using a real deck, I’ve just transcribed them into a series of digital images..

0. Allies and Enemies

This system works only for the normal “us vs them’ combat scenario. From the PCs point of view, “us” will be referred to as Allies and every other participant is referred to as Enemies. If there are multiple factions of Enemies, each Enemy can choose to attack a PC as normally described by the system or can choose to attack another Enemy combatant as thought they were a PC.

1. Combat Round 0

Anyone who gets a surprise attack resolves it, in sequence of descending DEX.

2. Initiative, Round 1

All combatants generate an initiative value:

• DEX mod +
• Any Initiative Modifiers +
• Magical attack modifiers +
• any circumstantial modifiers defined by the GM +
• a die roll as usually defined by the game mechanics (d20, 3d6, d6, whatever).

The GM assembles a list of all combatants in initiative sequence. It will be simpler later on if the Allies are listed down the left-hand-side of whatever is being used and the Enemy are listed down the right.

2.1 Ties

Ties are not permitted. Break ties in order from highest total to lowest. Break ties in the following sequence:

1. Highest initial Initiative total goes first (refer to the example).
2. Any combatant with the benefit of Surprise goes first;
3. Highest actual die roll goes first
4. Highest Initiative Modifier goes first
5. Highest Magical attack modifier goes first
6. Highest DEX goes first
7. Highest INT goes first
8. Lowest STR goes first
9. Roll-off between the two, highest goes first

Either the combatant with the “goes first” result gets +1 to their initiative total to break the tie, or the character who doesn’t have the “goes first”

I’ll keep examples fairly simple. So here’s a five Allies / four Enemies list, with invented initiative numbers:

Alan 4+1+3-1+6=13
Alphonse 3+1+2-1+10=15
Alice 3+0+3-1+4=9
Artichoke* 1+0+1-1+8=9
Able 2+0+2-1+5=8

Evans 3+0+2+1+8=14
Emberry 3+0+2+1+5=11
Eckhart 2+0+2+2+7=13
Esther 1+0+2+1+7=11

* “Artichoke” is an NPC working for the Allies in some capacity. He will attack only if directly confronted, and otherwise do his best to stay out of the way.

This shows three ties to break: Alan & Eckhart, Alice & Artichoke, Emberry & Esther, at initiative numbers 13, 9, and 11 respectively.

Initiative 13: Eckhart has the benefit of surprise, so he wins the tie. Someone already has initiative 14 so Alan’s initiative drops to 12.

Initiative 11: Esther rolled a 7, Emberry rolled a 5, so Esther wins the tie. We can’t add one to her initiative because that would create a new tie with Alan; instead, we subtract 1 from Emberry’s total to give him Initiative 10.

Initiative 9: Artichoke rolled an 8, Alice only managed a 4; Artichoke wins the tie. Initiative 10 is already occupied by Emberry, but so is Initiative 8, by Able. This time, we have no choice but to create a new tie. Alice drops to Initiative 8.

Initiative 8: Because Alice had an initial total of 9, she wins the tie, and Able drops to initiative 7.

The integrated list is:

Alphonse 15
                              Evans 14
                              Eckhart 13
Alan 12
                              Esther 11
                              Emberry 10
Artichoke* 9
Alice 8
Able 7

3. Shuffle the deck

Continue shuffling until both the GM and whichever player controls the PC with the highest initiative are satisfied that they are sufficiently randomized. Any technique is permitted.

3.1 Padding

No more than 10 columns is possible with only 52 cards. If 10 columns or more are required, then for each additional column, the deck needs to be ‘padded’ with additional cards from a second deck (preferably one with a different back to facilitate easy pack-up).

The number of additional cards required depends on the number of columns required (see below).

10 columns: +5 random cards
11 columns: +10 random cards
12 columns: +15 random cards
13 columns: +20 random cards
… and so on.

This is an unusual situation to arise, it should be noted; most of the time, a single deck is plenty.

4. Deal cards

Cards are then laid face-up on the table as follows:

Left to right, 2 columns +1 per Ally combatant, -1 if the Allies were surprised, +1 if the Enemy were surprised and the Allies were not. (covers situations in which both sides get surprise).

4.1 Column modifier

Whichever faction has the highest net Initiative on their side can choose to either add an additional column or subtract a column. As a general rule, either decision helps both sides, but fewer columns helps Enemies a little more. But this isn’t quite that cut and dried, so this can be a significant tactical decision.

The Allies have the initiative but the Enemies have had the benefit of a surprise attack round.

Evans and Emberry attacked Alan (obviously a fighter-type), Eckhart targeted Alphonse (appeared to be a lesser fighter-type), and Esther targeted Able (probable spellcaster). Artichoke and Alice received no damage.

Alan’s HP are now 158-27=131.
Alphonse’s HP are now 72-9=63.
Able’s HP are now 39-12=28.
Artichoke and Alice are still on 44 and 83 HP, respectively.

Alan decides to add an extra column, replacing the one lost to Surprise, bringing the total to 2+5-1+1=7. Yes, Artichoke counts!

The diagrams below depicts the tactical situation after the surprise round is resolved.

It’s a terrible thing when you spend a lot of time (about 4 hrs) and effort on an illustration only to find that the text isn’t quite as legible as you thought it would be. So below there is an enlarged crop…

4.2 Column Depth

Each column is laid out five cards deep. The remaining cards are then set aside for the Enemies’ use.

The first row is used to define the number of columns.

Additional cards are then laid in each column to complete the next row down before starting a new row.

Below, the initial 7×5 layout is shown.

Sometimes the initial row will favor one side or the other. That’s the vagaries of random chance mixing things up. If the other side starts with a better set of options, you simply have to weather the storm.

4.3 Allies Surprise Enemies

If the Allies surprised the Enemy faction and were not also surprised, they can take one card each from a row of their choosing. Any cards above this card drop down a row. It is to the Allies’ advantage to create columns of the same suit or matching pairs adjacent to each other either vertically or horizontally, as low down the column as possible.

They may remove multiple cards from the same column.

4.4 Enemies Surprise Allies

If the Enemies surprised the Allied faction and were not also surprised, they can add one card per combatant to the top of an existing column.

They may not add more than one card to any one column.

The cards to be added are drawn from the face-down remainder of the deck of 52.

The Enemies got Surprise against the Allies in our example.

Evans adds the QS above the 9H.
Eckhart adds the 10H above the 8S.
Esther adds the KS above the 2D.
Emberry adds the JS above the 5H.

The layout now looks like this:

 

I took a moment to contemplate this layout if the Allies had surprised the enemies instead, and assuming that Alan would take away the extra column that would otherwise be there. If that had happened, these are the four cards that I would have removed:

The columns then collapse, like so:

This is a bad layout for the Enemy. There are too many pairs in adjacent columns – though they will get to take advantage of some of them if the Allies bring two adjacent to each other at the wrong time – and too many other attacks, as shown below.

With so many danger zones, the Enemy can’t hope to block them all, or even the majority. They can only hope it gets better from here.

4.5 Limited Time

You don’t get forever to make up your mind. 20 seconds per decision.

Enemies get an extra 10 seconds for each Enemy combatant over 2, so if there are 4 enemies, the GM gets 40 seconds to make his decisions.

Allies get an extra 10 seconds for each Ally below 4. So if there are only two Allies, they would get 40 seconds each to decide their moves.

If you run out of time, your combat round ends, and any action points not used are forfeighted.

Each action taken is a decision, so if you make a move, the clock restarts.

The intent is for this to be a fast-paced exchange in which each side has to make decisions and live with them without time to find the ‘best possible’ sequence of choices.

The smart players will be planning their moves before it is their turn in the initiative sequence, and modifying those plans on the fly as the battlemap evolves. The GM has more combatants to look after, and more to keep track of, generally, so the time is weighted slightly in their favor. Nevertheless, expect more of his choices to be instinctive and improvised.

This gives the Allies a deliberate long-term advantage over the Enemies.

5. Combat Round 1

Combat proceeds in initiative order. A combatant may choose not to act, but this drops their initiative total to one less than the next combatant to act (if that initiative slot is free) or to the next lowest initiative slot that is vacant.

Alphonse has the initiative for the allies. He can either choose to act now, or can hold his action; if he does so, his initiative will drop from 15 to 13 (but that slot is occupied) and then all the way down to 6 and last. He decides that this is too high a price to pay, and chooses to act now.

5.1 Action Points

The number of actions that a combatant may perform when it is their turn is determined by their combat bonus, which is equal to:

• DEX bonus or STR bonus (depends on type of weapon) or other Bonus (by character class) [Classed combatants only] or 1/3 of CR or equivalent [Enemies without class levels only]
• + Magical Attack Modifiers
• + Attack Bonus (from Character Level or Hit Dice)
• + any applicable Class Bonuses
• + any applicable circumstantial modifiers approved by the GM
• – the sum of all Magic Defense Bonuses of opposition currently placed within attack range of the character.

Most of these values will not change from round to round, so this is not as complicated as it sounds; unless the character changes weapons midway through the combat, the total of the first three will stay the same, and the fourth is likely to stay the same, too.

Alphonse has a DEX mod of 3 and a Magical Attack Bonus of 2, as shown by the initiative calculations, but his weapon of choice is STR based – let’s give him a STR bonus of +3 to match the DEX.

He gets +5 attack bonus from his character level, a + 1 class modifier, and is within melee range of the weapons of Eckhart, who has a Magical Defense Bonus of +3.

3+2+5+1-3 = 7.

5.2 Action Choices

Each point of Combat Bonus permits the character to take additional actions in addition to a single action that every conscious combatant receives each round (no matter what their Combat Bonus may be).

The available actions are:

• Remove a card from the bottom row of the layout. This also removes any card of matching suite above it without an intervening card of a different suite. For example, if a column has the 4, 7, and Jack of hearts followed by the Ace of Clubs (going up the column), removing the 4 also removes the 7 and Jack. Cards removed are placed in a “discard stack”. All cards above the card(s) removed immediately drop down the column to replace the card(s) removed. If this action completely clears a column, it creates the opportunity for a Critical Hit, if not,then it creates the opportunity for a normal hit. This action abandons the casting of any incomplete spell unless the combatant has already suspended the casting (see below). Available only to Allies or Enemies “acting as” Allies, i.e. attacking another Enemy combatant.
• Remove a card from somewhere else within the layout (costs two action points). Any cards of matching suit that are adjacent to the first horizontally are also removed. Every second card so removed creates an opportunity for a normal attack. Removing four or more cards in this way elevates that attack to a possible critical attack. Cards removed are placed in the discard stack as above. All cards above the card(s) removed immediately drop down the column to replace the card(s) removed. This action abandons the casting of any incomplete spell unless the combatant has already suspended the casting (see below). Available only to Allies or Enemies “acting as” Allies, i.e. attacking another Enemy combatant.

• Add a card from the face-down pool of cards in the possession of the GM. If there are no cards remaining, the Discard Stack is shuffled and becomes the new Pool. Each card placed after the first creates the opportunity for a normal attack. Placing 4 or more cards in a column, or completely refilling a column to the maximum depth of 5 cards, creates the opportunity for a critical hit. Available only to Enemies who are attacking the Allies.
• Remove a matching pair from anywhere in the field of play. The pair must be adjacent either horizontally or vertically. Even if there is a third matching card, only two cards are removed. Cards above those removed immediately drop down into the empty slots. This action creates the opportunity for an immediate Critical Hit. Cards removed are added to the Discard Stack. This action is not restricted by faction.
• Execute an attack action. Only available if you have created the Opportunity for one or more normal attacks using preceding action points. Attacks are automatically deemed a success and inflict whatever the normal damage inflicted by the character / weapon combination dictates, plus any special consequences that are dictated by weapon / class descriptions. A character may execute as many attacks as they have created opportunities, each costing one action point.
• Execute a critical attack action. This is automatically deemed a success and does whatever normal ‘critical hit’ damage is indicated for the character / weapon / item / spell combination. Some weapon / armor combinations restrict the number of effective attack actions, see below.
• Move their full movement allocation or part thereof. Entering an opposing faction member’s melee range does NOT create an attack of opportunity, but departing from one DOES. This action may only be performed ONCE per combat turn.
• Cast one round of a spell, if they are capable of doing so. If a spell has been begin in a previous combat round, the character can spend one action point to continue the casting or to suspend the spell incomplete, permitting them to perform another action. Spells take effect immediately before the character’s next action in the round after casting is complete unless they are instantaneous.
• Use a magic item.
• Use a class or special ability.
• Move a 5′ step in addition to any 5′ step performed as default. If this moves a character out of an opposed combatant’s melee range, it does NOT trigger an attack of opportunity. May be performed multiple times in a combat turn.
• Add +1 to their initiative total. If this results in a tie, the initiative total is increased until it matches an available empty slot in the initiative sequence.
• Perform any other action that seems reasonable to the GM, eg getting back up after being knocked prone or taking cover, dropping a weapon, drawing a weapon, etc.

All conscious combatants, regardless of their available attack points, gets one attack point and one 5′ step of movement each turn. Some magical effects may prohibit part or all of this, as usual for that spell’s description.

If I were to follow the pattern established in the article so far, at this point I would offer the first complete combat round as an example, but there are some additional rules to spell out before that is possible.

5.3 Armor Type / Armor Class

Every armor type has a class of damage to which it is more vulnerable. Attackers using weapons that inflict the ‘vulnerable’ damage type have to pay one less action point to execute an attack (either ordinary or critical).

None – vulnerable to all

Cloth / Padded – slashing
Soft Leather – crushing
Hard Leather – piercing

Bone – crushing
Chain – piercing
Any of the above plus a shield – slashing

Banded – crushing
Ring – piercing
Half Plate – slashing

Full Plate – piercing

5.3.2 Natural Armors

Monsters may not wear actual armor, but may have tougher skin that does the same job. Subtract any magical defensive bonus and stat-based bonuses from the AC specified to determine an Armor-equivalence.

5.3.3 Armor Rating

Each armor type also has a rating that measures how many attacks have to be successfully executed before one will register, i.e. actually do damage.

None = 0
Cloth / Padded = 0
Soft Leather = 0

Hard Leather = 1
Bone = 1
Chain = 1

Banded = 2
Ring = 2
Half-plate = 2

Full plate = 3

Shield = score above +1

Ordinary hits count as one successful attack.

Critical hits count as three successful attacks.

Surprise attacks are always ordinary hits but ignore this requirement.

These need not be from a single attacker. One combatant can ‘pave the way’ for another combatant to inflict harm, or can wear through the defenses of the target over multiple combat rounds.

Spells also bypass this requirement, but count as a successful attack if they damage or impair the target.

5.3.2 The Effects Of Magic

If the armor is enchanted, the amount of magical bonus minus the attacker’s magical bonus adds to this requirement.

Ratings cannot drop below zero.

Ratings cannot increase to more than 2 more than the base rating, no matter how high the magical defensive bonuses; the additional benefit garnered from a higher defensive bonus than this lies in making it harder to undermine / remove that benefit.

So a combatant wearing +2 chain who is attacked by an unenchanted weapon has a rating of 3; if attacked with a +1 weapon, the rating is 2; if attacked by a +2 weapon, the magics cancel out, leaving only the base rating of 1; and, if attacked with a +3 or better weapon, the rating is zero.

A combatant wearing +3 chain who is attacked by an unenchanted weapon has a rating of 3 (not 4, because of the cap); if attacked with a +1 weapon, the rating is 3; if attacked by a +2 weapon, the rating is 2; if attacked by a +3 weapon, the magics cancel out, leaving only the base rating of 1; and, if attacked with a +4 or better weapon, the rating is zero.

5.4 Combat Flow

It’s the objective of the Allies to empty one or more columns, or to remove as many cards as they can. It’s the objective of the Enemies to fill empty spaces as quickly as they can. The more action points that you have, the more you can do in combat.

Initially, the field of battle is congested with cards; this creates more opportunities for Allies. As the Allies empty the field of battle of cards, it creates more opportunities for Enemies – in the process refilling the field at least somewhat. So success by either side gives the opposition a greater opportunity to achieve their own success, and the advantage in battle will frequently switch back and forth from one faction to another.

It is common for a fast-acting combatant to be unable to achieve a significant breakthrough, but be able to set up an attack opportunity for another member of the faction. At higher character levels, it may be possible to do both in a single turn.

Long-term success in combat is as much about manipulating the layout to create sets of cards that other combatants on your side can utilize, or poisoning such to limit the effectiveness of the Allies’ options.

Alphonse has 7 AP and a free action. He is currently in Melee with Eckhart, who is a fighter-type.

Eckhart is wearing +3 Ring mail, which is vulnerable to piercing; Alphonse is using a +2 Mace which does crushing damage.

Ring Mail has a threshold of 2 hits, but Eckhart’s mail is +3 to Alphonse’s’ +2, increasing the threshold to 3 hits. so Alphonse needs to hit Eckhart three times to actually score damage. One of these will bounce off the magic and the other off the ring-mail.

However, a critical hit will count for all three of these hits, so the first thing Alphonse does is look at the field of battle for opportunities for taking a critical. If not, he will simply remove a couple of cards and translate one of them into a regular attack against the threshold (note that if Eckhart’s ring-mail. had been +4 instead of +3, even this would not be enough).

The only critical hit chance he sees is the 10 of spades next to the 10 of diamonds, but one is all he needs. For his free action, Alphonse removes the pair, creating a critical opportunity. The cards above the pair immediately drop down and the two are placed in the discard stack.

He then spends his first Action Point executing the attack, which does 20 damage, reducing Eckhart to 82 HP.

There are no remaining critical hit opportunities. Alphonse decides to invest a couple of his Action points improving the board by removing the 6 of Spades from column 1, bringing the trio of hearts into play, and a second removes the 6 of diamonds, creating a critical hit opportunity with the 2 eights. He has now used 3 of his 7 action points..

He next removes the pair of eights with one action point and executes another critical hit with his 5th action point, this time hitting Eckhart for another 17 damage.

The 10 and King of Hearts drop down, and now there’s a vertical critical on offer with the two Kings. What’s more, removing them would create still one more critical chance by emptying the column, though Alphonse doesn’t have enough Action Points left to actually execute that attack. Still, any round in which you execute three critical hits and deny your enemy a fourth one, AND create an almost-empty column that they will have to refill, is a successful one!

He executes the third critical for another 17 points damage to Eckhart, who is now down to just 48 from his initial tally of 102.

That’s the end of Alphonso’s combat round. Next to act will be Evans, and then Eckhart.

5.5 Initiative Order Is Important

Which gives me the opportunity to point out another tactical consideration. One of the considerations that Alphonso had to keep in the back of his mind was that any opportunity that he left on the table would fall into the laps of the two Enemies that were to act after him. He had to be careful not to give them any cheap opportunities.

Evans, the first of this pair of Enemies to act, on the other hand, knows that Eckhart will follow him, so part of his responsibilities to the team is to leave Eckhart with an opportunity or two if he can – he’s just seen the fighter get ripped sideways by a supposedly inferior combatant, and that needs to get turned around in a hurry if his faction are going to come out on top.

Evans is currently battling with Alan. Equipment alone tells him that Alan is the most proficient combatant on the Allies team, just as Evans is the most proficient of the Enemies.

Evans has 5+2+7+3-3 = 14 attack points, plus a free action.

He is using a +2 Sword (does slashing damage) against an opponent in +2 Full Plate, with a +1 Shield to boot, which is vulnerable to piercing damage, not slashing. Full plate has a base threshold of 3 attacks. Furthermore, the Defensive bonus total (+2+1+1) way outmatches his +2 attack, increasing the 3 to a threshold of 5.

Critical hits will count for 3 of the 5, so every second critical will do damage. This is NOT going to be an easy fight!

He first looks for existing critical hit opportunities, and spots the Aces of Hearts and Spades in columns 1 and 2.

What’s more, when the cards drop, that will align the aces of Clubs and Diamonds in rows 2 and 3 for another critical.

That does one critical worth of effective damage.

The threes of Hearts and Clubs are his next targets, again in Columns 1 and 2:

That then exposes the 2s of Diamonds and Hearts for a fourth Critical Hit – but again, only the 4th one will count, not the third.

So far, that uses 7 of his Action points. In total this round, he has inflicted 66 hit points on Alan.

Refilling column 2 from the face-down deck creates another critical, for the cost of 3 action points plus 1 to execute it He draws and places, from the bottom up, the Queen of clubs, the 4 of clubs, and the 3 of diamonds:

That leaves him with three action points and he needs another critical if he is to score more actual damage this round. Refilling column 6 uses two action points, leaving one to execute the attack, and inflicting another 33 points on Alan; the total is one more than half the total remaining after the surprise attack.

He draws and emplaces the 5 of spaces and the 4 of diamonds, ending his turn with a flourish.

 

I think that’s probably enough of the full descriptive narrative. But here are some highlights from the rest of the combat round:

Eckhart refilled columns 1 and 7, using all the original face-down deck. The combat then entered a new tactical sub-phase in which everyone knew that the refill deck was full of pairs of cards. He was not as effective as Alphonso had been; landing only one telling blow.

Alan used several of his attack points to elevate his initiative total so that he would go first next round. He also doused himself liberally in healing potions. He then took advantage of a new critical hit opportunity in column 1 (a pair of 9s), removed a pair of 10s in columns 6 and 7, removed the 8 of hearts, exploited the resulting critical hit opportunity of a pair of 7s, which in turn created another opportunity with a pair of 8s.

Esther worried at Able, who seemed unable to defend him or herself very effectively – unsurprising, being a mage. But there were no critical hits and few normal ones available, so opportunities were limited, and Able managed to hold on – barely.

Emberry also found the going tough, and was unable to do enough to penetrate Alan’s’ defenses. Three normal hits were scored but that wasn’t enough to beat the threshold.

Artichoke maneuvered himself into a better position of concealment and effectively vanished from the sight of the Enemy combatants.

Alice employed a magic item to create a fog that hid the Allie’s movements for three rounds, and denying them attacks of opportunity.

6. Subsequent Initiative

When all combatants have acted or held their action, the combat turn ends and a new one begins. The first thing that happens is a re-sequencing of initiative, from slowest to fastest.

From the highest current initiative total down, members of the opposing faction increase their initiative values to one less than the last combatant who attacked them. Those on higher initiative totals get +1 initiative as necessary to “make room” on the initiative chart.

This breaks combat up into mini-battles of A vs B; the exchanges are no longer separated by intervening actions taken by others.

This is only done ONCE per combat. Thereafter, the only way to change initiative is to (a) Hold an action; or (b) use action points to increase your initiative total.

7. Subsequent Combat Rounds

These are then executed, one after another, until the battle is resolved, one way or another.

8. Reflex Saves

A combatant who is targeted by an effect that gives a Reflex Save for reduced damage must take that action before the spell takes effect. Unless the spellcaster has the highest or lowest initiative number, this divides the combatants into two groups: those who have already acted in this combat round and those who have not.

Those who have already acted can still attempt a reflex save if they are permitted to by the rules pertaining to such saves. In 3.x, there is a feat that permits reflex saves when you wouldn’t normally get them, for example; I don’t know if there’s any equivalent in later iterations of the game systems, so I am assuming that there is.

8.1 Reflex Saves for those who have already acted

These may be attempted for the cost of 1 action point from their next combat round, and the cost of a second action point from their next round if successful.

8.2 Reflex Saves for those who have not yet acted

These may be attempted for a cost in action points as above, but the deduction is to their available action points in the current combat round.

8.3 The effect of Cover (if applicable)

Cover that is available within a 5′ step reduces the action point cost by 1. It’s up to the GM to decide what is, or is not, “cover”; as a rule of thumb, it must conceal half of the combatants’ body from the point of spell effect. It may be fair game for a combatant to leap into the air so that the torso of a giant creature is between them and the effect, for example.

If the cover is 10′ away or more, it may still be reachable with a dive that automatically leaves the defender prone, requiring an action point to stand up before they can do anything else. The limit is 5+STR in feet, minimum 10′.

Defenders who are small or less in size suffer a -5′ penalty to this value.

Defenders who are large or bigger gain a +5′ penalty, but so little will count as cover that this is largely irrelevant most of the time.

Some forms of cover may only be delaying the inevitable – diving into a vat of oil will protect you from the immediate effects of a fireball, but the damage will still take place when you emerge from under the surface.

Some forms of cover may incur alternate damage – diving into a vat of acid will protect you from a fireball, but….

Design Notes

That’s the end of the game mechanics. Fini, complete.

While there are a lot of options for the use of action points, most characters will only have a limited number of them to spread around in any given turn – in many cases, less than the number of options.

The ability to create opportunities for other members of your faction to then exploit, to plan combat moves in advance over multiple rounds and modify those plans as the battlefield situation changes, and to perceive and execute successful combinations of actions, yields a huge benefit in battle.

While individual combats remain central, the playing card “Field Of Battle” that is used by everyone means that those combat actions are not resolved in a vacuum; what one combatant does, or doesn’t do, has ripple effects that impact others.

The GM – being one person – has an advantage in coordinating his efforts. It’s for that reason that the mechanics give an overall advantage to the Allies.

All that’s left to do is show you a couple of rounds of the combat example.

So here’s how the rest of the battle played out: Using the fog, Alan withdrew from close combat with Esther, Alice taking his place and in position to attack from behind.

When the fog cleared, the Allies were able to initiate surprise attacks on the Enemies. Alan rained blows on Evans, and Alice took down Esther. Alphonse and Eckhart continued their equally-matched knock-down drag-out brawl. A rejuvenated Able took down both Emberry and the weakened Evans with a single well-chosen spell. Eckhart, as the only remaining combatant, then surrendered, his position hopeless.

This was absolutely a team victory; each of them made a contribution to the success of the effort. But it was a very close-run thing; slightly better luck on the part of the Enemies could have taken down one or two of the Allies in that furious opening round, and without them the links in the chain that led to overall victory would also have been broken.

So that’s 52. It’s dramatic, it’s tactical, and it has wrinkles and bones in it enough to satisfy the most hardened of combat junkies. I hope that there’s nothing I’ve overlooked, and there’s nothing unclear. If there’s anything, let me know in the comments below.

The mechanics should slot straight into any version of D&D / Pathfinder. In addition, other games should also integrate the system easily. Anything that uses the same basic combat system should support it’s use.

Variations

I’ve deliberately not left a lot of room for major variations, but some tinkering is always possible. There is one variation that does need to be explicitly spelt out, though: More Rows = More Matches = More Criticals. This is an exponential relationship, or it feels that way; so if you find the example just a little too frenetic and would like to slow the pace down a little, reduce the depth of the standard field from 5 to 4.

It should be noted that all combat with the 52-engine starts very frenetic and then slows down in subsequent combat rounds, though; I chose a depth of 5 to keep the action moving somewhat more quickly in later rounds. Another word of warning, too: such a reduction makes clearing columns much easier, and that’s another road to a critical.

A hybrid option is also possible, in which you start with 4 rows and add a card to the top of each column in the second or third combat round. Nor is there any need to be consistent about this – you can vary it based on how dramatic you want a particular combat to be!

One Final Thought

While it doesn’t show off the system to the same extent, it’s also possible to only utilize thee mechanics when you want that extra Oomph for an encounter. This game mechanism automatically incorporates a visual representation of the state of combat, and that can’t help but ramp up the drama level a little. My biggest concern would be that players would not have had enough practice to sue the system to its’ best.

Addendum

Here are the stats that I allocated to the various combatants in the example, just for reference. Most of the numbers / character configurations were plucked out of thin air and may not be true representations of the game rules.

Alphonse

Cleric Lvl 11
HP 72
Magical Attack +2
Dex Mod +3
STR Mod +3
Char Level +5
Magic Def Bonus +4
Class Bonus +1
Chainmail +4 (V: piercing)
Mace (crushing) +2
Normal Damage d6+5
Critical Damage (2 x d6) + 10

Evans

Fighter Lvl 14
HP 133
Magical Attack +2
Dex Mod +4
STR Mod +5
Char Level +7
Magic Def Bonus +4
Class Bonus +3
Half Plate +4 (V; Slashing)
Sword (slashing) +2
Normal Damage d8 + 7
Critical Damage (3 x d8) +21

Eckhart

Fighter Lvl 12
HP 102
Magical Attack +2
Dex Mod +5
STR Mod +3
Char Level +6
Magic Def Bonus +3
Class Bonus +2
Ring Mail+3 (v Piercing)
Axe (slashing) +2
Normal Damage d6 + 5
Critical Damage (2 x d6) +10

Alan

Fighter Lvl 15
HP 158
Magical Attack +4
Dex Mod +4
STR Mod +4
Char Level +7
Magic Def Bonus +3
Class Bonus +4
Full Plate +2 + Shield +1(+1) (V Piercing)
Sword (slashing) +3
Normal Damage d8+7
Critical Damage (3 x d8) +21

Esther

Monster HD 10
HP 75
Magical Attack +2
Dex Mod +2
STR Mod +3
HD +5
Magic Def Bonus +2
Class Bonus +0
Armor Equivalent = Ring +2 (V Piecing)
Normal Damage (2 x claws) = 2d6+10
Critical Damage (2 x 2d6)+20 + Bite 2d4 + 10

Emberry

Monster HD 10
HP 85
Magical Attack +2
Dex Mod +3
STR Mod +2
HD +5
Magic Def Bonus +2
Class Bonus +0
Armor Equivalent = Banded +2 (v Crushing)
Normal Damage (2 x claws) = 2d6+10
Critical Damage (2 x 2×6)+20 + Bite 2d4 +10

Artichoke

Thief Lvl 8
HP 44
Magical Attack +1
Dex Mod +5
STR Mod +1
Char Level +4
Magic Def Bonus +2
Class Bonus +0
Soft Leather+1 + Shield +1(+1) (V Crushing)
Sword (slashing) +1
Normal Damage d6+2+d6 sneak
Critical Damage (2x d6) +4 + 2d6 (sneak)

Alice

Ranger Lvl 10
HP 83
Magical Attack +3
Dex Mod +4
STR Mod +4
Char Level +5
Magic Def Bonus +3
Class Bonus +2
Chain +2 + Shield +1(+1) (V Piercing)
Sword (slashing) +3
Normal Damage d10+7
Critical Damage (2x d10)+21

Able

Wizard Lvl 11
HP 39
Magical Attack +2
Dex Mod +4
STR Mod +0
Char Level +3
Magic Def Bonus +3
Class Bonus +0
Soft Leather +3 (V crushing)
Dagger (slashing) +2
Normal Damage = d4+2
Critical Damage = (2 x d4)+4

Today’s article is sci-fi in orientation but fantasy GMs should stick around, there’s stuff for you too before I’m done. In a similar way, this is all about “world” design, but the techniques can be applied elsewhere, for example, adventure creation. So Buckle Up, we’re about to take a wild ride together.

Theory / Concept -> Alternatives -> Implications & Applications

I’ve mentioned in passing, in multiple posts, the notion that designing a campaign should involve central concepts that make the campaign unique, with various game elements being customized to accord with that theory.

The races and character classes in D&D being one example. I find that some are more easily altered than others, though. Elves and Orcs are more amenable to change than, say, Halflings. Changes to the (usually unstated) underlying question of how magic works directly affect Wizards and Sorcerers and sometimes Clerics. Different answers to the question “What are the Gods” directly impact Clerics and often Paladins. And so on.

I’ve also talked about considering alternatives and looking for ways that such conceptual elements can interact in interesting ways when choosing between them can produce uniqueness that is greater than the sum of its parts, and the pyramid of design (most recently, for example, in AI Miseducation and Rehabilitation).

In discussing the Rings Of Time campaign, I make the point that notes on concepts that weren’t chosen should never be thrown away, as you never know when they will come in handy. Or maybe I’m the only person who ever gets asked to create a new campaign at the drop of a hat?

In a nutshell, circumstances arose in which I was asked to throw a campaign together at zero notice, and was able to do so using concepts that were discarded when developing my Fumanor campaigns.

So the design work done to investigate and select campaign concepts is never wasted in the long run even if that particular alternative to a “Big Design Question” (see my early post at Campaign Mastery, A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs) doesn’t get used in the specific campaign for which the options were considered.

You have to do at least some of the design work to choose between the alternatives, and the work done on rejected concepts is not only good practice, but can be regarded as an investment in future campaigns. I may not have a D&D campaign that’s running right now, but I’m perpetually coming up with a stockpile of campaign concepts to put toward the next one, if and when they are needed.

(Wow, for a sci-fi oriented post, there’s been a lot of stuff about Fantasy so far! Bear with me, almost there).

The Asimov Inspiration

One of the books that I’m currently reading is a collection of non-fiction articles by the late Isaac Asimov, in which one article discusses the units of energy and work and force and so on. At one point, he casually uses Gravity as an example of a Force with which we’re all familiar, and that happened to connect with a thought about artificial gravity (often used in sci-fi settings) and anti-gravity (ditto), specifically giving rise to a number of alternative concepts of how those might work in a sci-fi setting.

I didn’t want to throw away the ideas, even half-formed and half-baked as they were, for the reasons described earlier. But instead of simply filing them away in my campaign notes somewhere, I decided that they would make the foundations of a great article illustrating the processes involved, so I’m sharing them here for anyone to use.

Gravitic Engineering

The skills system in my superhero RPG rules is the most comprehensive that I’ve ever seen, anywhere. One of the skills is “Gravitic Engineering”, and it covers the application of “Gravitics” (short for “Gravitic Physics”) which – in turn – is all about the Science of Gravity. You with me so far?

“Gravitic Engineering” takes “Gravitic Physics” and applies it to create ‘mechanisms’ (generic term) for the creation and manipulation of Artificial Gravity and Anti-Gravity, which are described as two mutually-incompatible technologies that have to work in harmony to create the sort of dog-fights in space that you see in Star Wars, which are what I wanted to embed in the superhero rules.

Simply put, the two applications are so fundamentally opposed that the interaction between both is a specialist field within super-science / future science engineering.

And, along the way, they help explain superheroic Flight, leading to more of those dog-fights being inherently part of the game universe – a nice bonus!

A Warning to those who take their Science seriously

I’m not a physicist. My state of knowledge is more or less at the level of the “rubber sheet” theory of gravity; I know that this has been superseded, and was never anything more than a metaphor to describe how physicists thought Gravity and the Theory Of Relativity worked in the first place.

None of the content is intended to be serious or even hard science in any realistic sense. I’m not aiming for that; what I want is credible-sounding technobabble that is internally consistent, nothing more.

At best, you might describe it as pseudo-science, if I were to take it seriously – which I don’t. So any responses of “gravity doesn’t work like that, and here’s a more up-to-date understanding of the physics” are missing the point, okay?

What Is Gravity?

I’ve never pretended that the Campaign Physics embedded within the game system held all the answers. Originally written in the mid-1980s, though, it stood up for twenty-odd years before research and theoretical physics discovered something that wasn’t compatible with it (and I forget what that something was). It was written to describe the “state of the art” of science available to super-scientists within the game world in a supplement to the campaign background.

In fact, it was written to be one step beyond the super-science available in-game at the time, but the campaign’s super-scientists quickly caught up over the next 10 years or so of game-play. It’s been extended multiple times along different vectors in the course of many adventures as a result.

One of the ideas that I had, and immediately fell in love with, was the notion that there were two mutually-incompatible theories of gravity, and each of them led to practical engineering outcomes that proved that theory to be correct. According to the other theory, the engineering shouldn’t work – but in both cases, it does.

No-one has any idea of how to square the circle and unify the two theories.

Artificial Gravity

Artificial Gravity represents a divorce between Mass and the Gravitic Attraction that mass creates, enabling that attraction to become much stronger than the mass normally possesses. It permits people to walk around normally within a microgravitic environment such as a starship or space station.

Gravity is normally a pretty weak force, in fact it’s the weakest of them. It takes the mass of the whole of planet earth to create a 1G environment at the earth’s surface. Since E=mc^2, it takes a huge amount of energy, correctly applied, to substitute for Gravity. Apply that much energy incorrectly and most things simply cease to exist for all practical purposes.

The solution to being able to turn gravity on and off with a switch is to use a smaller amount of energy to act as a lever or catalyst, creating a disproportionate effect for the amount of energy pumped into the system – there’s no other practical answer.

Explaining Artificial Gravity (let alone manufacturing some engineering solution to actually use it) requires explaining exactly how this works, and where the energy that is ‘triggered’ comes from, and why it doesn’t blow the object experiencing or creating the artificial gravity to smithereens.

Anti-Gravity

Anti-Gravity means turning off or turning down the natural gravitic attraction between two objects. Which sounds simple enough on the face of it, but the doing is a great deal more complicated. If you have anti-gravity of some sort, then you can fly, lift heavy objects as though they were much lighter, and so on. In particular, they let you accelerate at ridiculous (and normally lethal) rates, achieving much higher speeds in a short period of time than would otherwise be possible.

Quite often, the existence of an Anti-gravity is implied in a game setting without ever being explicitly stated and without the ramifications and other applications being properly explored. For example, in Traveller, the time it takes to move around within a solar system is ridiculously short – less than a handful of days is usually enough to get from the outer solar system (Neptune / Uranus / Saturn) to the Inner (Mars / Earth / Venus / Mercury).

(It can be argued that the Jump Drives that enable Interstellar FTL in that game system impart enough velocity to make such travel times possible – but that then requires you to be able to slow down from such speeds in that sort of time-frame or less without reducing the crew to strawberry jam on the bulkheads – it’s exactly the same problem all over again, just in a different direction).

Things begin to grow even more complicated when you consider properties such as Inertia and Momentum. Consider: you use artificial gravity to pick up something weighing a lot, and then throw it at something else. Does it hit the target with the impact that it’s true mass says it should, or with the impact that goes with it’s apparent mass? I would argue the latter. But then, what if at some point before it gets to its target, the anti-gravity gets switched off? Does it fall to the ground short of the target? (arguably, yes). And if it hits the target anyway, what is the impact like? (I would argue that it’s velocity instantly slows, proportionate to the change in apparent mass, because conserving momentum in this way is a lot simpler to understand than having momentum appear out of nowhere).

So there are a lot of interactions with classical physics that need to get explained.

On top of that:

Anti-Gravitic Polarization

The key to using both at the same time is to have the anti-gravity only apply to gravity being experienced in a specific direction (that of or opposing the ship’s thrust). Without that, you can have artificial gravity but can’t use it at the same time as you’re using anti-grav; the two are mutually incompatible.

Which requires some explanation of how this is possible. And of what happens at the fringes when the two rub shoulders.

The Rubber Sheet, distended by Mass

Before we can tackle those complicated questions, we need some sort of working understanding of what gravity is, beyond “it’s what makes things fall down”.

The classical post-einsteinian description is that the universe is like a multidimensional rubber mat along the surface of which, things move. The mass of objects causes the mat to deform, or maybe the existence of the objects causes the mat to deform, creating the mass (the difference between the two descriptions might become important, deeper down the rabbit hole).

Objects in motion are effectively pulled toward valleys and pushed away from peaks, just like a ball rolling over uneven ground.

As descriptive analogies go, this isn’t bad – most people can picture a ball rolling over uneven ground and get a feel for what Gravity does, even if they don’t understand how or why.

Achieving Arti-G and Anti-G – the simplified models

Artificial Gravity can be thought of as amplifying an existing gravitic attraction – in a specific direction. Yep, there’s polarization again.

Here’s a cross-section of a basic corridor:



It’s a simple square. If we assume that there’s an object in the ‘middle’ of that corridor, like this:



…then it can be seen that each of the four walls will have roughly the same attractive power on the object (and vice-versa).



If we attach a body to that object that extends toward one of the four walls, then proximity causes that wall to have a slightly greater attractive effect – but it doesn’t matter which of the walls we’re talking about.



Eventually, if acted upon by nothing else, things will come to rest against whichever of the four walls happens to be closest to the object’s center of gravity.

With artificial gravity, everything changes. One direction becomes down, and massively, dominantly, overwhelmingly so. We might be talking 1/500th of a G up and to either side, and 1G ‘down’ – a 500-to-1 ratio. So our rubber sheet gets far more deeply deformed in that one direction.

There are three parts of the reality that can be altered to achieve this: either the properties of the sheet itself (I know, I’ll come to that shortly); the properties of the object being affected; or the properties of the interaction.

A little thought will show that the same three options apply to anti-gravity as well.

Mass and the deformation of space-time

Oversimplifying, Mass Creates Gravity, right?

Actually…

sorta…

ummm, no.

The 64 million dollar question is does mass cause the deformation of space-time — or does some other attribute of an object cause the deformation, and we then interpret the consequences of that deformation as ‘Mass” and “Gravity” (the first being a measure of the degree of deformation, and the second being the strength of the interaction between two deformations and the impact on the motion of objects)?

No-one knows. Occam’s razor means the first is the popularly-accepted view just because it’s simpler, but when you try to dig into the mechanisms by which these phenomena operate, that simplicity vanishes.

So let’s go right back to the basics. What is 1G? We all know that, right?

1G

That’s the force of gravity that we experience at the surface of the earth, 9.8 meters per second per second, expressed as the acceleration created by the Force, right?

Umm, not so fast.

If the earth was made of completely uniform materials, and wasn’t lumpy, then yes.

Neither of those things are true. The gravity at the top of a mountain is ever-so-slightly less than at sea level, which is ever-so-slightly less than at the bottom of a hole – the deeper the hole, the greater (in relative terms) the difference. Heck, even ‘sea level’ poses a problem – with waves and tides, the sea is anything but level!

What’s more, the earth isn’t quite a perfect sphere – it bulges outward at the equator just a little and is squashed just a little along the axis of rotation.

An on top of that, some natural materials are more dense than others. If there’s a large lump of high-density material, it will create a slightly greater gravitic force. The closer to the surface / point of measurement, the more pronounced this effect. And the materials of which mountains are made are some of the highest-density types of rock.

These two facts are fighting each other, everywhere on Earth. 9.8 m/s^2 is an overall average, good enough for most uses – but there are times when it’s an oversimplification.



This Image is a frame extracted from an animation created by NASA and therefore in the public domain according to the terms of the NASA copyright policy page. Wikipedia Commons then provides a long list of caveats and warnings, refer to the image link above before re-using it..

Combine them, and exaggerate to make the consequences visible, and the effect is rather profound, as shown to the right. This view is of the North American side of the planet, the lump you can see in the lower left is Australia, from whence I write. Hawaii looks like a volcano (upper middle left)!



Image taken from Lunar Gravity Model 2011, which was licensed by the author(s), Geodesy2000, under the terms of the the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. I have reorganized the images into a vertical orientation and re-sized them. Follow the image link provided to access the unaltered image, which is available in much higher resolutions than that shown here. I am unsure of the meaning of the caption but have left it unchanged.

Lunar Mascons

Things get even more extreme on the Moon, first because it’s so much smaller, and second because there is greater variation of density. In fact, the moon is “the most gravitationally ‘lumpy’ major body [currently] known in the Solar System” according to Wikipedia.

The mascons (mass concentrations) have been known to play havoc with lunar orbits, which “alter the local gravity above and around them sufficiently that low and uncorrected lunar orbits of satellites around the Moon are unstable on a timescale of months or years. The small perturbations in the orbits accumulate and eventually distort the orbit enough for the satellite to impact the surface” (same source).

The moon in fact has only four orbital “channels” which may be employed with any expectation of orbital stability. Outside of these channels, the largest mascons “can cause a plumb bob to hang about a third of a degree off vertical, pointing toward the mascon, and increase the force of gravity by one-half percent” (same source).

Implications

So no, we can’t even be certain of what “1G” means. The 9.8 m/s^2 value (which I think – from memory – translates into 32 ft/s^2) is nothing more than a convenient approximation.

What can be said is that using the net Mass of an object only gives such an approximation; what really should be used is the global sum of density multiplied by volume, and that’s an important clue to how Gravity works.

What determines the density of a substance?

The chemical structure of the substance causes it to have a particular molecular shape. That shape is the result of the configuration of electrons into electron shells of the constituent elements, which in turn are a consequence of the number of electrons the element has.

The number of electrons, in turn, has to match the number of protons in the atomic nucleus. This combination is such a definitively fundamental value that changing it transforms one element into another, completely changing its chemical profile.

There are two types of arrangements – ones in which an electron is donated by one atom to another to create a covalent bond between them; this creates relatively loose molecular structures, which in turn have lower densities than the alternative.

The other arrangement ‘shares’ electrons with neighboring atoms in search of a stable configuration, which requires the atoms to pack together in a more compact molecular structure. Crystalline structures like graphite, diamond, metallic substances, and the like, all depend on this type of structure and cause them to have significantly higher densities (and higher melting and boiling points, amongst other characteristics).

So it’s the number of protons that is important?

Kinda, sorta. The nucleus of an atom of a particular substance has a number of protons that is definitive of that element, but these all have the same electrical charge, which is trying to make the nucleus fly apart. Countering that is another force, but it’s not strong enough to do it without adding neutrons to the mix. These effectively ‘buffer’ the protons from each other. Adding or subtracting a neutron or two creates a different isotope of the element, each of which has a different level of stability; if there are too many or too few neutrons, the nucleus doesn’t hold together strongly enough, and it becomes prone to shedding parts of itself, process known as radioactive decay (that’s all a slight oversimplification, but it’s close enough for us to work on).

So what’s the difference between a proton and neutron?

A proton consists of two up quarks and one down quark. These have electrostatic charges of +2/3e and -1/3e each, respectively. Calculate 2/3 + 2/3 – 1/3 and you end up with 3/3. But the quarks themselves contribute less than 1% to the mass of the nucleus; the rest exists in the form of quantum chronodynamics binding energy, which includes the kinetic energy of the quarks and the energy of the gluon fields that bind the quarks together.

A neutron consists of one up quark and two down quarks, with electrostatic charges as given previously. 2/3 – 1/3 – 1/3 = 0 electrical charge. Again, most of the mass of the neutron comes from the energy being used to hold it together. So, if gravity is lurking anywhere, it’s in this binding energy and intrinsic to the atomic structures of the molecules of the substance.

To look any deeper, we really need to go back a step and think about the traits that are common to forces, and what a force really is.

Forces Of Nature

There are five principle forces of nature – Electrostatic, Magnetic, Weak Nuclear, Strong Nuclear, Gravity. There are other things like friction and centripetal motion that are also labeled as forces but that are not actually considered the same thing as these five; these days, they are labeled “Fictitious Forces” or “pseudo forces”; they arise from the interaction of frames of reference where one is accelerating relative to the other.

The fundamental definition of a ‘real Force’ is “an influence that can cause an object to change it’s velocity, ie create an acceleration. Velocity can be thought of as “speed in a specific direction”, so causing it to change direction counts, even if the speed of travel remains the same..

• Electrostatic Force is caused by interactions in the static electric charges of two bodies. If the right electrostatic materials are connected by a conductor, a current or dynamic electrical energy flows along that conductor.
• Magnetic Force is caused by magnetic fields interacting. If you move a conductor through a magnetic field, it induces a current to flow through the conductor. This was discovered at more or less the same time as it was found that a chemically-generated electric current creates a magnetic field.
• The Strong Nuclear Force holds atomic nuclei together. As it became clearer that the components of the nucleus were either neutrally-charged or had the same charge, and therefore repelled each other, it became obvious that some force had to be resisting and overcoming this repulsion. This is also the force that has to be overcome during nuclear fission and fusion.
• Weak Nuclear Force is what holds particles together. It causes radioactivity.
• Gravity is the attraction of one mass to another. It’s the oldest of the forces and superficially – in practical terms – the best understood. It’s also the least understood when you dig into the fundamentals of why it works.

Combination Theory

First, Electrical and Magnetic forces were combined into one force, Electromagnetism, by the work of James Clerk Maxwell, in 1864.

The concept that what had been considered two separate forces was actually just two different modes of expression of the more fundamental Electromagnetic Force, struck the world of classical physics like a lightning bolt; it became one of the most cherished goals of modern physics to complete the task of unifying everything into one unified field theory that explained, well everything.

The next force to succumb was the Weak Nuclear Force, which was combined with the Electromagnetic to create the Electroweak force.

Finally, quantum theory brought the Strong Force into the fold – kinda, sorta. You don’t have to read very far into the subject to discover that it’s really complicated down in the nitty-gritty details. For example, within a certain distance, the Strong Force attracts particles, but beyond that distance, it repels – so it keeps nuclei discrete from each other.

The presence and behavior of the strong force depends on multiple factors including the spins of protons and neutrons amongst others. These days, the fundamental forces are described as “Interactions”, each of which has one or more particles that interacts with the particles that experience the forces. It is often said that the “interactive particles” carry the forces.

The electromagnetic force is ‘carried’ by the photon, which “creates electric and magnetic fields, which are responsible for the attraction between orbital electrons and atomic nuclei which holds atoms together, as well as chemical bonding and electromagnetic waves, including visible light, and forms the basis for electrical technology.” — Wikipedia, Fundamental interaction.

The weak interaction is “carried by particles called W and Z bosons, and also acts on the nucleus of atoms, mediating radioactive decay.”

The strong interaction is “carried by a particle called the gluon and is responsible for quarks binding together to form hadrons, such as protons and neutrons. As a residual effect, it creates the nuclear force that binds the latter particles to form atomic nuclei.

There is also a fifth force described by quantum theory – or more properly, has been proposed to explain certain anomalies and breakdowns of the current theory. This is theoretically possible but unproven, and the characteristics of this fifth force are inconsistent; this is one of the cutting edge areas of research in physics. The anomalies are enough to show that current theory is incomplete; “fifth forces” are speculative attempts to plug the gap.

Gravity is the outlier. Currently attributed to the curvature of spacetime, described by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, i.e. the ‘rubber sheet’ that we have been discussing.

Physicists detest outliers. Another of those cutting edge problems is to make Gravity a force like the others. Amongst other things, that requires a particle to carry the force – one that has never been observed in nature, called the Graviton.

Gravitons

Scientists have been looking for the fabled Graviton, and determining what its characteristics would have to be, since the 1930s. So far, it’s proven a stubborn nut to crack. As of right now, its existence is purely hypothetical.

But, if it exists, it defines that interaction between two objects that causes the effect we observe as Gravity.

The Wikipedia page linked to, above, is both fascinating and frustrating. You can skim over the technical terminology to get an overall sense of the concept, but can’t escape the sense that you’re missing something. Maybe that’s because the theory has been unproven for so long, and it’s not you that’s “missing something” as a reader, but the scientists concerned – and you, as a reader, are simply reacting to their sense of a gap in the theory.

“The Graviton plays a role in general relativity, in defining the spacetime in which events take place. In some descriptions energy modifies the “shape” of spacetime itself, and gravity is a result of this shape, an idea which at first glance may appear hard to match with the idea of a force acting between particles.” — From that page.

“Unambiguous detection of individual Gravitons, though not prohibited by any fundamental law, is impossible with any physically reasonable detector. The reason is the extremely low cross section for the interaction of Graviton with matter. For example, a detector with the mass of Jupiter and 100% efficiency, placed in close orbit around a neutron star, would only be expected to observe one Graviton every 10 years, even under the most favorable conditions. It would be impossible to discriminate these events from the background of neutrinos, since the dimensions of the required neutrino shield would ensure collapse into a black hole.” — same source.

Part of the problem might be in those derived traits – what if they are oversimplifications, causing us to look for Gravitons that don’t exist and wouldn’t be in the places we were looking, anyway? Whether or not this is completely or partially true, our ‘hypothetical answers’ have to explain our inability to detect them so far.

Which brings me back to the theories of gravity that I mentioned earlier in this article. These are not being proposed as real-world solutions to the problems, or as any sort of universal truth, I must again emphasize – they are, at best pseudoscience and technobabble, just reasonably well-defined examples.

Theory Of Gravity #1: Micro-wavicle Quantum Bindings

The first theory extends from the Quantum Theory described earlier. If mass derives from the interactions of the strong and weak forces, then the particles that give rise to those interactions must also yield a secondary interaction in the form of Gravitons. In particular, interactions between the Gluon that binds quantum particles together.

So Gluons experiencing the strong and weak forces create Gravity, according to this theory.

The smallest known

To start this element of the discussion, I want to draw attention to something that I came across on Quora mere minutes after reading pretty much the same thing in the Asimov book that inspired this article: Why is the Planck length the smallest measurement unit, and why [isn’t] there anything lower?

Go ahead, read it now, I’ll wait – it’s short, barely more than a screen-full.

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All done? Okay, so the proposal is this: There’s a binding sub-particle within the Gluon that is smaller than the Planck Length (i.e. impossible to observe). It has various energy states / structures similar to electron shells. When the gluon interacts with the strong and weak forces, a Graviton is emitted. These are present in huge numbers, are wavicles like photons, but very rarely interact with matter in any detectable way except en masse. They will yield to statistical modeling, however. In a nutshell, we can’t see them, but we can see the impact that they have in aggregate.

When a Graviton intersects an atomic nucleus, it’s never alone. The swarm of Graviton from this particular source interact with the Weak and Strong forces to attract the Gluons, and the particles that they hold together, in the direction from which the Gravitons came, i.e. it’s an attraction. No repulsive force is possible, because that would require the source atoms to have negative mass. The heavier the source at the macroscopic level, the more Graviton are emitted, and the more Graviton are captured. The resulting gravitational attraction is exactly what we observe at the macroscopic level.

The Graviton are absorbed by the target, forcing the sub-gluons into a more energetic state, which they spontaneously shed in the form of their own Graviton. Mass therefore creates space-time.

Engineering based on Theory #1

Pump energy into a material substance – and some are more receptive to this than others – in exactly the right way, and you artificially force the sub-gluons into a higher energy state, which leads them to both transmit and absorb more Graviton than their actual mass warrants. The result is an increased and artificial gravity that pulls objects toward the mass being “gravitationalized” (to coin a term). The gravity field is effectively polarized because it always acts in the direction of the gravitationalized mass.

The results: gravity can be increased in any desired direction through the artifice of embedding materials prone to this behavior into the surface or subsurface of the “floor”.

Engineering Structure

If this was deployed in a single strip, things would get messy, because everything would be attracted to that specific line. Unless standing right on the line, you would feel like you were leaning toward the strip, and could even overbalance and fall even though perpendicular to the broader surface. Instead, multiple strips would be laid in close proximity, running the length of the corridor or room. These don’t even have to be straight lines, they can bend to follow the curvature of a facility.

Energy

The more energy you pump in, the higher the artificial gravity. Obviously, there is some kind of limit, beyond which the Gluons can’t pump out Gravitons fast enough, and individual atoms start breaking down into their constituent particles – best to avoid that!

Beyond that, we have to consider the sheer scale of energy needs, and the practicalities of generating and shunting that much energy from source to destination, and any peculiarities of configuration involved.

Early models are likely to be highly inefficient and demand as much energy as can be delivered, probably for not a lot of result in terms of G-forces.

Both the efficiency of the artificial gravity generation and the capability of energy systems are likely to improve side-by-side for a while. Then energy systems will max out, and all improvements will come from better efficiency in converting that energy into gravity. Some of that efficiency would undoubtedly be turned toward reducing the energy demands for achieving the same result, so the energy demands would slowly reduce to the merely insane.

How much energy are we talking about? Well, 1G = 1 Earth Mass in energy, and that’s at 100% efficiency. But an earth mass would provide that gravity for something approaching eternity – we don’t need that. So we can divide by billions of years, and then 365.25, and then 24, and then 3600, to get the energy demands per second. And that will be in an uncomfortable small unit, ergs, which we then have to translate into something more useful, like Megawatts or Gigawatts.

Mass of the earth = 6 ×10^24 kg = 6 ×10^27 g.
Speed Of Light = 3 × 10^8 m/s = 3 × 10^10 cm/s
E=mc^2, so 6 ×10^27 × 3 × 10^10 × 3 × 10^10 = 6 × 9 × 10^(27+10+10) = 5.4 × 10^48.
Lifespan of the Earth = about 9 billion years or 10^10.
E/s = 10^38 ergs / year = 2.738 × 10^36 ergs / day = 1.14 × 10^35 ergs / hr
        = 3.17 × 10^31 ergs / second = 3.17×10^24 joules / second = 3.17×10^18 MJ / sec
        = 880556260000000000 kW h = 880,556,260,000 GWh.
Call it 881 Billion Gigawatts.

The largest power plant in the world today is the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Plant, delivering 7.965 GW. One hundred and eleven of those will do the job. Plus spares to allow some to be down for maintenance. This is comparable performance to what a Fusion power-plant of similar size could theoretically produce – except that the scaling of efficiency is not linear, it’s by volume. So, in theory, you could make 150 plants of 8 GW, or 1500 plants of 0.8 GW that take up 1/1000th the physical size. Let’s be cautious and call it 1% of the physical size. That means that if they were arranged and configured properly, our 1500 reactors are only 1.5 times the size of the Fission Power Plant we’re using as a standard.

Somewhere along the line there would be a sweet spot where efficiency of design is optimized; we don’t care about that. The important thing is that this sounds a heck of a lot more practical than that 881 Billion Gigawatts did.

Advancing Tech

In fact, from the time of first invention, all this represents a practical difference between tech levels – the amount of energy they can safely employ, and the resulting artificial gravity.

Some materials are likely to be prone to Graviton emission, others to Graviton reception – natural variations between atomic and chemical structures are enough to ensure this. It’s also possible that there would be variations between isotopes. That’s a LOT of combinations to try. It’s also possible that compound strips of material would be more effective than any single absorbing elements can be. On top of that, I can imagine the development of some sort of “wave guides” that use quantum effects to increase the polarization.

So there are plenty of options for future refinements in terms of describing the technology in “practical” terms, with just a little technobabble thrown in to hold it all together..

Theory Of Gravity #2: Fragmentation Of 3-Dimensional Space In 6 dimensions

This theory of gravity starts from the exact opposite theoretical foundation to the previous one, by asking, “Assuming that the deformed space-time sheet is real, where is it, why can’t we perceive it, what’s it made of, and what are its properties?”

A Separate 3-dimensional Space

The simplest answer to the third question is that it’s in a separate dimensional space that is in some way co-existent with the one that we can perceive by virtue of living within it.

One theoretical way of achieving FTL is to break the local piece of our space-time off from the main frame of reference and then accelerate that ‘local’ frame of reference in the direction we want to go, while the ship happily sits, cruising at sub-light velocities, within the local frame of reference.

This breakaway is not easy to achieve. It’s entirely possible that something like Jump Gates are needed, or perhaps there are ways for ships with sufficient internal power to create a ‘bubble’ of space-time independent of the general reference frame.

The conjoined three-dimensional space is sometimes named “subspace” even though this is a misnomer; it’s our space-time that’s a subspace within the greater existence, under this theory. Nor does it have to be the only one; this model supports branching time-lines and parallel worlds.

The maths involved is greatly simplified by assuming one temporal flow common to both, but this isn’t necessarily the case, either. The universe, after all, has no need to dumb itself down for our convenience in describing it! The physics in my superhero campaign, as has been explained in multiple other posts, assigns each ‘dimension’ its own temporal vector within a 3-dimensional temporal space; we perceive travel along that vector as the passage of time. Events within each space-time of sufficient magnitude can twist, accelerate, or decelerate travel along that vector relative to another one, giving rise to a number of transitional phenomena when traveling from one space-time to another.

I won’t go into that any further in this post; if you want to check out some of the game-world consequences, see Time Travel In RPGs, a 3-part series,

and

A Long Road: Zenith-3 Notes For All, another 3-part series (especially part 3 of the series). Be warned – Part 2 is 35,000 words and part 3 is 53,565 words!)

A Foam-like Graviton Gel with our 3-dimensional space on top

So, what’s the sheet made of? Well, actually, according to this theory, it’s just the surface of a foam-like Gel made of Gravitons. Everything above the surface is our natural space-time (or other such), which we perceive as “reality”, full of planets and stars and galaxies, matter and energy.



In addition to showing the Graviton ‘foam’, this version of the image illustrates two separate space-times – one distant and large enough for an entire galaxy and another holding a single planetary mass. To achieve this, I have added a modified version of Kised_truncated_icosahedron_spherical.png by Tomruen via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, a foam image by Mdiproducts LLC, released into the public domain, and a view of NGC-4414 which is in the Public Domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. [It is possible that by combining this with the other elements, I may have violated the terms under which the image has been made available, so be cautious about re-using the resulting image – but it’s a small enough element that I don’t think anyone will object].

Let’s update the “gravity well” diagram from earlier in the post (shown to the right):

 
Wow, that’s quite a startling difference, which is why I wanted to share an approximation of what I was seeing in my mind’s eye; now we’re all ‘on the same page’ in terms of visualization.

The Mass Crater of Earth

Exactly as visualized, a gravity well is a depression in the surface of the Graviton ‘gel’ caused by the mass of the object, which sinks into the foamy ‘substance’.

But Graviton don’t compress very well; at some point, the upward resistance equals the downward mass potential. The greater the surface area presented, the more opportunity the resistance has to act, so the depth of the gravity well is therefore proportional to the mass of the object divided by the surface area.

Foams are delicate. Objects with mass disrupt the foam, spraying Gravitons out into the space surrounding the mass by the billion. These Gravitons diffuse through the volume of space, carrying less collective attractive force as they spread out, so gravity gets weaker with distance.



Lunar Gravitational Attraction

These Gravitons do nothing until they intersect another mass. They then displace the Gravitons that the second mass – the moon, say – would otherwise be spraying. This forces the displaced Gravitons to fire out not at random, but in a line directly away from the originating mass (Earth), which propels the second mass toward the first, creating the gravitational attraction that we experience and observe

At the same time, of course, Graviton from the lunar mass are impacting on the Earth, so it attracts us as much as we attract it.

The Graviton Cycle

Clearly, the outflow of Graviton caused by Graviton reception must always equal the inflow. Some Graviton will not reach a target mass before the attraction they create becomes immeasurably small; they fall back into the general foam, pushing aside those that are already there and increasing the internal pressure within the Graviton gel. The only way of relieving that pressure is to spray more Graviton out, and that only happens where there is a mass shattering the foam, so there is a never-ending cycle of fresh Graviton being forced into the disruptive influence of the mass, and hence a never-ending flow of Graviton from the mass. No state other than equilibrium within the system is possible.

It’s as though each mass were a ‘hole’ in the foam sheet through which a spray of Graviton erupts, and the mass perches atop this spray like a ping-pong ball floating atop the outlet of a garden hose from underneath it.

The total number of Graviton is therefore the exact number required to account for the total mass of the universe and everything within it.

Black Holes, White Holes

But that’s not enough to create the foam and its internal currents; there needs to be more. The addition comes from Black Holes.

There has long been speculation about what happens to the objects swallowed by these celestial monsters. The information of structure and state can be considered a form of energy, and energy is the same thing as mass – but the mass of the black hole doesn’t grow by the amount of the mass PLUS these additions, just by the amount of the actual mass of the object. There has long been speculation that the excess is emitted from White Holes, but no such object has every been observed.

That’s because the white holes are in the ‘overspace’, not in our observable universe. And, since only Gravitons can exist without a space-time surrounding them, created by a mass, and the black hole keeps the actual mass, the ‘extra’ is converted into raw energy of some unidentified sort which then ‘condenses’ into the only acceptable form – more Graviton, ready to be vomited forth by the black hole.

Cosmic Regeneration

Even in universal heat-death, objects will still get consumed by Black Holes, and the Graviton Cycle will continue. Except that everything in the observable universe is structurally locked and static, so there is ultimately no relief for the buildup of Graviton.

Eventually, there is too much Graviton Pressure, and every mass in the universe gets pushed out of the foam by it, lightest masses first. Gravity ceases to exist, and all the potential energy that used to be there instantly gets liberated, explosively. The last to go are the black holes themselves, so powerfully explosive by this point in time that the space-time itself can’t withstand the force; it gets torn asunder.

The resulting shockwave hurls the debris of the lesser explosions outwards, reducing the energy density as these intersect other space-times, until eventually new particles condense. As soon as one with mass is produced, a new space-time begins to form in a ring within the shockwave expanding both inwards and outwards, eventually enveloping the former black holes.

The sudden appearance of mass causes the space-time to contract as all these masses attract each other – the center of the ring is the center of gravity. So a series of implosions and explosions occurs until stability is achieved, and a new Universe emerges from the ashes of the old.

In other words, the Graviton gel and it’s flow prevents the second law of thermodynamics from creating perpetual heat death in the form of ‘holes’ in the closed system, eventually triggering a new big bang.

Contrast with Theory #1

It has to be pointed out that this theory of gravity is totally incompatible with Theory #1; in that case, the entire concept of a space-time ‘sheet’ was discarded, and in this theory, it’s indispensable.

Can they both be true?

It’s theoretically possible, if there are two completely distinct systems of creating gravitic attraction. Just because theory #1 doesn’t need a space-time to distort, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, of the nature described in theory #2. But the interactions between the two theories create phenomena that have never been observed, at least potentially; explaining their absence complicates everything, when the hope of physicists was that explaining Gravity in terms of quantum mechanics would simplify their understanding of reality. It’s like climbing an impossibly tall mountain until finally you reach the summit – and discover a neighboring peak that’s even steeper and more impassable.

Engineering based on Theory #2

If a sentient species ever finds a way to interact (directly or indirectly) with the foam, they can effectively control the release of Gravitons, and hence induce or reduce Gravity.

It’s easy to show that if there is Graviton Motion, and Graviton resistance to compression, they have to be banging into each other continually, attempting to move but unable to do so. Influencing that motion is the simplest means of interacting with the Graviton foam.

The key to doing so stems from known facts about Black Holes: they can become electrically charged, and if there is any sort of internal motion of that charge, they will emit an electromagnetic field. What’s more, if the internal ‘structure’ of a black hole consists entirely of Gravitons from the hole’s gravity well, which they do under Theory #2, it means that Gravitons can both carry a charge and emit an electromagnet field under the right conditions.

Humans are pretty adept at manipulating charged particles in vacuum tubes and other electromagnetic interactions.

There are two interaction modes possible: increasing the ‘motion’ of the Graviton Quiver and reducing it by drawing energy from the Quiver.

The first adds ‘heat’ to the system and produces enhanced gravitational attraction – artificial gravity, in other words – and the second generates power and creates anti-gravity as a byproduct, and both are fully controllable electronically.

Artificial Gravity

The big problem with generating artificial gravity this way is the heat. Thousands, if not millions, of degrees. Something beyond simple fusion, we’re talking Nova or Supernova conditions. This is so far beyond what’s technically feasible that the reality is that this simply doesn’t work.

Anti-Gravity

This, on the other hand, works perfectly. And the potential as an energy supply is incredible.

In 2022, humans used 25,530 terawatt-hours of energy, ie 2.553×10^16 Watt-hours.

1000 gigawatts = 1 terawatt. Let’s assume that we’re talking about a billion times this much to allow for future growth – and the total has been growing every year.

So 10^9×10^12×2.553×10^4 Watt hours = 2.553×10^(9+12+4) = 2.553×10^25 Watt-hours per year.

2.553 x 10^25 Wh/yr = 7 x 10^22 Wh/day = 2.917 x 10^21 Wh/hr = 8.18 x 10^17 Wh/sec = 8.18 x 10^8 GWh/sec. = 227222 GWsec/sec.

227,222 GW/sec = 2.27222×10^21 ergs/sec.

Divide by C^2 to get M: 2.27222×10^21 / 9×10^20 = 2.525 g.

That’s roughly the weight of one US penny. To power human civilization at 2022 levels for 1 BILLION years. Or to power a future society, using a Billion times as much energy, for a year.

Two concepts of Gravitic Engineering

So, there you have it. Two completely different concepts of gravity, one that is great for artificial gravity and one for anti-gravity. And you get a theoretical hyperdrive / Jump Drive / FTL Drive as a side-benefit. These are not the only options, there are undoubtedly more out there.

Practicalities

The Anti-gravity is fairly easy. It actually generates a massive amount of power – which has to be stored or dissipated, and that’s the hardest part of the engineering.

But it’s not so easy when it come to artificial gravity, as noted earlier. The energy requirements are prodigious – so it’s a good thing that a zero-G power plant generates so much. Way beyond fusion.

I would suggest levels of 0.25G, 0.5G, 0.75G, 1G, 1.5G, 2G, 3G, 5G, and 10G.

3G is enough to render most people not in some sort of power armor helpless. It immobilizes, break bones, but probably doesn’t kill. 10G is enough that even test pilots and the like will struggle to stay conscious, and permanent damage will result to anyone not wearing a pressure suit. Death is certainly not impossible. You’re trying to breath with a family car sitting on your chest. Broken bones are the least of your troubles.

2G is a shock weapon at best, more useful for keeping things pinned down. That safe doesn’t weight 600 lb, it weighs in at 1200 or so, and is that much harder to remove as a result.

1.5 G is the same, but even less so.

1 G and below are for crew comfort and efficiency.

But you could easily max artificial gravity out at 1.5G or even less and put subsequent improvements into greater efficiency of power generation / transmission.

Choosing for other purposes

Which theory you go with depends on the tech that you want to be available in-game. Some GMs will be happy just to have a reasonable hyperdrive, others want a shirtsleeve environment on board starships. Star Wars arguably uses both, and – while it’s never stated – so does Star Trek. I’ve found both to be necessary for superhero campaigns.

If you choose one, that leaves the other one to be exploited in some other campaign, immediately affecting the look-and-feel of the campaign.

What you do with these conflicting visions is up to you.

There’s magic in them-there bones

I haven’t forgotten Fantasy GMs. Lots of creatures are capable of Magical Flight in fantasy gaming (or are incapable of flying without magical assistance, which amounts to the same thing).

The second theory explains how this is possible – these creatures have the ability to reduce their own mass to the point where some otherwise impossible biology is sufficient to create flight. If you permit selective polarization of gravity, it becomes easy to accelerate in a particular direction and then glide.

Decide how you want the ability to work and it will give you masses of detail to employ for look-and-feel. You never have to tell the players how magical flight works – not until they hitch a ride on one, anyway, and even then, just describe the sensations that they experience. Once you know why it works, the narrative prose becomes a lot easier to craft, either improv or in writing.

Final Observation

It’s easy to add nuance of technology if you want it. Deciding that a certain rare type of crystal is a necessary component, for example. These are conceptual starting points; what you do with them is up to you.

It seems natural to me to follow an article about campaign structures with one about adventure structures. So that’s what I’m going to do. Furthermore, since the campaign structures addressed were specifically about Sandboxed campaigns, so will be this Adventure Structures post – though it can easily have relevance beyond those limits, that’s just a lucky coincidence.

Fundamental Sandbox Structure

When most people think of sandboxed adventures, they mean that the adventure is completely self-contained, incorporating everything that it needs – every NPC, every monster, every situation. Which of those situations the PCs then encounter is up to the players – that’s player agency.

Trigger events

Some of those situations (they are normally encounters but need not be so) are ‘triggers’ that advance the main plotline of the adventure, the concept at the core of the story. The first of these is usually the plot hook; beyond that it will vary.

Well-written modules / adventures are not static; the background will remain in a state of status quo until one of these ‘triggers’ is activated, and then everything will evolve as a result (usually) of PC and NPC actions.

The simplest way of doing this is to have one set of encounter parameters for each possible encounter before the trigger is activated and another set for after. But that’s a lot of work and potential redundancy, so most adventure writers simply spell out what’s changed and let the GM improv (perhaps with some guidance) the new encounter content.

Note that I’m using ‘encounter’ to specifically and predominantly mean ‘roleplaying encounter’ and not ‘combat encounter’.

Cumulative Triggers = Plot

Trigger follows trigger until the situation is right for the PCs to resolve the adventure. Until that point is reached, they usually lack some key piece of information that prevents such a resolution. The final trigger, then, makes it possible or even inevitable that the final piece of information can be obtained by the PCs. That might be a where, it might be a who, it might be a how or a when.

We can symbolize that adventure structure as a solid bar, like this:

Plot Breakdown

Or we could go so far as to subdivide it into the different phases of the adventure, separated by trigger events. There can be several different triggers that lead to a phase transition. I normally think of adventure phases as ‘chapters’ because I find it helpful to think of them in that context, but that’s not necessary.

That would look like this:

So, our plot consists of triggers that lead to chapters that eventually contain a new trigger until we get to the concluding chapter of the adventure – after which, new adventure begins.

Side-plots

Almost inevitably in any given adventure, some PCs will get a greater share of the spotlight because of some synergy between the character construction and the content of the adventure. If it’s an adventure about Undead, clerics (and perhaps paladins) will dominate. If it’s an adventure about a military situation, fighters and their variations will probably dominate. If it’s a mystery, puzzle, or about magic… well, you get the point.

To create greater equity at the game table, GMs share the spotlight around as much as they can, but there are limits because of that synergy. To make up the deficit, a lot of GMs will throw in what computer-based RPGs call a ‘side-quest’ and what we more literary types call a ‘sub-plot’ that features one of the otherwise somewhat-disenfranchised PC types.

These are at their best when they give the PC(s) in question a connection to the main plot, a motivation for assisting in the solution. They are at their next best when they connect the campaign as a whole to the character, even if they don’t link directly to this adventure.

Obviously, we don’t want any of these once the final trigger has been activated, when it would pose a distraction to the adventure conclusion. So they have to take place in earlier Chapters.

I can modify the structure diagram to display a couple of such subplots:

This example has one subplot occur prior to the plot hook, connecting the character who is featured with the main plot at the point of the plot hook; and a second subplot to take place later in the adventure in two parts, neither of which having anything whatsoever to do with the main plot. These relationships to the main plot are indicated by the yellow arrows.

Before The Plot Hook

It’s normal for there to be play of some sort before the plot hook sits down and introduces itself. This stems from anything the PCs said (at the end of the last adventure) that they wanted / needed to do before going on their next adventure, plus anything that they add at the start of the adventure of a similar nature. The GM will also frequently throw in something related to the main adventure in order to set the stage – establishing / reminding the players of a key part of the background, etc.

Notice that in the first two diagrams, there was just enough space for the PCs to specify what they are doing when the plot hook arrives, but this version allows considerably more scope for the PCs to simply be ‘living their lives’ (within the sandbox) until the adventure presents itself.

What the pre-hook section shows is that all the PCs are doing whatever the heck they want as play begins, and most of that will be unimportant in terms of the main plot – but there is one specific exception to that, in which events are intended to do nothing but ensure that a PC who would otherwise be unaffected has some skin in the game when the hook arrives.

This not only ensures that PC a greater share of the spotlight than they would otherwise receive, it makes them more receptive to the plot hook – a form of metagaming that is perfectly fine in my book, because it doesn’t dictate what a PC should think, do, or choose, it simply gives him or her some (possibly indirect) personal connection to the subject of the main plot – and, perhaps, an extra slice of the relevant background information.

Existing Elements

It should be clear that, by definition, these subplots have to derive from interaction between the featured PC and the existing game sandbox. This fact becomes of critical importance as we move to the next refinement of the structure.

Growing The Sandbox

What if either the main plot or one of these subplots needs to go beyond the established sandbox? In the campaign structures article, I made a point of discussing the concept of ‘nested sandboxes’ – each one of which consists of the prior sandbox plus some campaign element that hasn’t been mentioned / developed so far, and anything in between.

Not a problem – that’s the other thing that the pre-hook is for, establishing any background or additional material that the PCs need to know before the main adventure can begin.

We can quite happily add a few such items to our structure, as shown symbolically below.

This shows four such additional pieces of development – two that feed directly into the main plot, and one each that feeds into the two subplots (the aqua arrows).

The Unwanted Metagaming Connection

Unfortunately, there’s an immediate problem with doing things this way. The very fact that the GM is making a point of adding these pieces of information tells the players that they are important to the adventure when their players would not know this.

Really good players will be able to set that knowledge aside when occupying the persona of their respective PCs; less accomplished players may struggle to do so. Both groups will be completely aware of the fact as players, though, and that can influence decision-making and tactical planning.

The best way to solve this problem is to remove these chunks of pre-adventure and slot them into an earlier adventure as subplots – little pockets of play that have absolutely no purpose but to foreshadow and background things that will be important, eventually.

The Artistry Concern

Doing so is an art, there’s no question. It’s too easy to be heavy-handed, attaching greater immediacy of importance than you wanted, or too light-handed, letting the background element vanish into such obscurity that it might as well not have been there in the first place.

The goal is to hit a sweet spot right in the middle of these two extremes – making it not important enough or immediate enough to follow up on right now (when the PCs have more important fish to fry), but significant or interesting enough that it will be remembered when the right “button” gets pushed.

Long-range planning

If you’re the type that plans a long way ahead, like me, then you probably aren’t running a sandboxed campaign in the first place. There is a perception, after all, that sandboxes are inherently static and unchanging except perhaps in response to the PCs and their actions. In such cases, you can drop background information months or years in advance of its becoming important, and indeed some adventures in my Zenith-3 campaign exist for no other reason than to establish relevant background.

The sandboxed alternative

If you’re running a sandboxed campaign, then your prep is intentionally more focused on the immediate, short, and medium term, and less on the really long-term that’s required to employ this technique. Which means that an alternate strategy is called for.

There are several to choose from, some more effective than others.

One of the most common is simply to make something up out of whole cloth that accomplishes the immediate subplot sequence of events and then lurks in the background waiting to be used as a building block. I’ve certainly employed that approach in the past – and the problems with integrating them into a coherent overall plotline are what led me to my current approach. Throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks can be fun, creative, even innovative – but it can also be a black rabbit-hole that sucks your entire campaign into it’s gaping maw.

Limit the spread, Focus on the target, Distract with something else

This 1-2-3 approach is what I would propose as a more useful alternative.

1. Limit the spread: If you think of the target PC as a vector for conveying the information to the party when the time is right, it helps define the level of emphasis required, almost subconsciously. As a planning tool, this helps reject subplots that place too much or too little attention on the subject matter.
2. Focus on the target: Make sure that you establish some relevance between the information and the PC ‘vector’ at the time the information is given to the PC, while downplaying its relevance to any other PC. This is best done simply by being casual when imparting the information; there any number of techniques to achieve this. One of the best is to take advantage of the player propensity to ignore handouts (see: A Helping Handout for uses that mitigate that propensity) when they are busy actually playing – “I didn’t want it to get in the way, so I wrote it down for you to read at your leisure” can hide a multitude of sins. The real secret is not to rely exclusively on any one technique – mix and match and vary your approach as much as you can.
3. Distract with something else: At the same time, you don’t want the other players paying attention to what you’re doing because it can be easily spotted by the casual observer who isn’t busy playing. So that means distracting the other players with their own situation, whatever it may be – and the best way of ensuring engagement with that distraction is to make it about something that the player already wants to do.

Migratory Backstory

But all that is still often not going to be enough to distract from information that isn’t directly relevant to an immediate subplot. And it’s not a good idea to slug players with too much background at once, anyway – that’s a recipe for important details to be overlooked and then reconstructed through the Plastic Memory with some romanticized imaginary content filling the gaps.

If you have a general idea of what adventures are going to be happening next – even if you’re only planning one adventure ahead of the PCs – then you can migrate the backstory into little mini-encounters in the previous adventure.

That removes three of the four items from the front of this adventure. The final remaining one may or may not also get migrated – the immediacy of its relevance to the subplot offers quite a bit of distraction in its’ own right, possibly enough.

But it also means that we have to find space in the current adventure for whatever additional backstory will become relevant in the next adventure, or maybe the one after that.

If I modify the symbolic structure to this new technique, it now looks like this:

Three of the four preliminary pieces of backstory have been moved to be at the center of a minor encounter in a prior adventure – so at the time that this adventure starts, they are established canon and part of the contemporary sandbox. The fourth connects to the pre-hook subplot, and through it, to this adventure.

At the same time, in the second, third, and fourth chapters (counting the preliminaries as ‘chapter 1’) new mini-plots have been inserted to provide necessary background for the next adventure or maybe the one after that. Readers may also notice that the GM has done something clever – the second subplot, the one that has no connection to or bearing upon this plot? It now carries the third piece of “future-relevant” background. So now it has a purpose beyond just sharing the spotlight around, and the GM is getting two things done for the price of one.

There has to be a twist

Even with those additional layers of sophistication, this is far too linear a plot for most GMs. Let’s insert a plot twist, and maybe an alternative outcome path, just for good measure.

Plot Twists

I’m sure everyone knows what a plot twist is, but in the interests of being comprehensive, and catering to the absolute beginners out there, I’ll define it anyway: A plot twist is a plot development that is completely unexpected and completely changes perceptions of what is going on. The villain is suddenly revealed to be a Hero? An ally is suddenly revealed to be the true villain? Yeah, you get the idea.

If you need help with your plot twists, especially if they seem too predictable, help is at hand. A two part article from here at Campaign Mastery dating back to Dec 2014 breaks down no less than 11 kinds of plot twist (one of them with 6 sub-variations). So consult Pretzel Thinking – 11 types of Plot Twist for RPGs, Part 1, and Let’s Twist Again – Eleven types of Plot Twist for RPGs pt 2 to add variety to your plot twists.

Alternative Outcome Paths

When there is more than one way that an adventure can end (disregarding the obvious one of a Total PC Kill), that’s an alternate outcome path. Note that the differences need to be fairly significant to qualify.

Alternative Outcome Paths usually imply an adventure somewhere down the track to “set things aright”, either by overthrowing the big bad who claimed power in this alternate history, or even traveling back in time to undo a mistake, or something similar.

Unless that sort of retroactive historical change is what the campaign is all about (for example, my Zener Gate campaign), you don’t want the circumstances that permit this act of correction to be too easily achieved. They are simply too dangerous to the campaign. Similarly, if the plan is for the PCs to overthrow the evil overlord they let into power, this shouldn’t be an easy task – gathering resources, gathering intelligence, making a plan, executing that plan (and throwing in a plot twist of some sort, to boot) – it may not be full-on epic quest necessarily, but it’s going to be a major part of the campaign (hopefully one that the players will talk about for years afterwards!)

Showing these structures

Adding a plot twist is just a 90-degree bend in the plot block followed by another in the opposite direction. Adding an alternative adventure outcome is just the same but in the opposite direction, and it’s usually sealed off from the expected outcome. I’ve added one of each to the structure below.

Final Touches

There’s one final part of the plot structure that needs to be added in – An Aftermath. This can be nothing more than the PCs listing things they want to do before their next adventure, or it can be realizing that the campaign world has just had a major shakeup and they were in the front row for the fireworks – it depends on the outcome of the adventure and what it implies for the next adventure.

Adding an Aftermath to each of the adventure resolutions looks like this:

Plot Dynamics In A Sandbox

I want to wrap this article up by pointing out how dynamic the plotline has become. Instead of a linear plot, we have a structure in which the plot itself changes in response to player choices. There is no set order for their completion, that’s also up to the players. They may not even have to complete them all – just enough to give them the tools to advance the plot. There are subplots to engage PCs and give them a fairer share of the spotlight, both of which serve multiple purposes at a campaign level. There are other mini-subplots that do nothing but set up future adventures and (perhaps) evolve part of the background. There’s a significant plot twist, and at least two outcomes are acceptable from a campaign standpoint – and player agency will determine which of those trees bears fruit, and when. Those outcomes can be anything from catastrophic reordering of the game world to “what’s for supper?”.

The whole thing remains thoroughly sandboxed, but that does not mean that it can’t be dynamic, evolving, and riveting. Player agency is sustained throughout.

Let’s briefly contemplate workflow and prep time. Without this structure, you would still have background material to prep; NPCs to prep; encounters to create (or at least outline); and a plot twist. You would also need to consider the possible consequences of the PCs failing to achieve whatever the goal of the adventure is (i.e. alternate endings). The structural changes remove some of this prep and replace it with the equivalent for use in a future adventure. In fact, the only prep time addition is having some vague idea of what the next adventure or two are going to be about.

That’s not a lot of additional prep investment for such rich rewards.

That’s why I have described these as “Stealth” Dynamics – you aren’t doing anything much different, but the dynamics ‘sneak in’ anyway. The sandboxing is still there, the workload is no different, there is no reduction in player agency, and the campaign is as open to improv as it ever was – but the outcomes are as different as night and day.

But Wait, There’s More!

The other thing to take away from this article is the power of iteration of even a simple process; at each stage of the development, a simple complication was introduced and massaged around until it was satisfactory, and that process was repeated until there were no more complications to add. The structure evolved right in front of you.

Adopt the same approach to designing your adventures, and you make them rich with detail for very little effort. Adopt it to the design of your NPCs and you make them believably complex without harming the core character that you needed for the plotline. Use it for the creation of magic items and house rules. Start your maps simple, then just embellish one thing at a time until the result is a place worth adventuring in. And, finally, use it for developing your campaign background – start with a simple concept, then add in one complication at a time, exploring the consequences and tweaking until satisfied – then move on to the next item.

It’s hard to overstate just how powerful a tool it is, and how simple it is to utilize.

Today, I get to focus on one of my favorite subjects, campaign structure! There are lots of choices out there, but today I’m going to focus on one that I don’t use all that often, the improv sandbox.

This article was prompted by something I saw on the screenwriter’s blog that I linked to an article or two back, The Story Guy Newsletter by Scott McConnell (Click Here to read his posts online and subscribe if you find them worth your time).

The subject this time was how to untangle a story that has become too convoluted. That’s not usually a problem in an RPG because we don’t have to tie up every plot thread in the one adventure; we can leave something dangling to be picked up in a later adventure.

It’s at the campaign level that things can become messier over time, especially if you do a lot of improv in a sandboxed campaign – something I was reminded of by a Reddit thread.

The two thoughts connected, and I quickly devised the organization methodology that I’m going to focus on in this article, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized that it’s utility went beyond just organizing your way out of a plot quagmire; if you employed it from the get-go, it would prevent you ever getting into that sort of tangle in the first place.

Long-time readers will recognize the system as a simplified version of the structure that I use most frequently (see, for example, Back To Basics: Campaign Structures), though that involves a lot more pre-planning.

1 The Sandbox

The concept of the RPG Sandbox is simply a restriction on the scope of the campaign to a small subset of the entire game world; content beyond the sandbox may be hinted at, but the campaign overall is self-contained within the scope of the sandbox.

The chief benefit of sandboxed campaigns is limiting the scope of required prep. Other than rare and isolated exceptions, no campaign adventures take place outside the sandbox, so no development of them is necessary.

1.1 Improv in The Sandbox

A significant number of GMs who sandbox their campaigns also like to improv the adventure content as much as possible, responding directly to player agency – at most, they do some prep detailing the locations and events that the players indicated they were heading into in the previous day’s play.

The GM may not have a choice. The shorter the interval between game sessions, the stronger is this inclination, simply because there is greater restriction on the amount of prep time available. Playing on two or more consecutive days – what I used to call an “RPG Marathon” – is the most extreme example. Playing once a week is more typical. Playing once a fortnight allows greater scope for prep; playing once a month or less frequently allows a lot of scope for prep.

It’s more normal for the prep requirements to dictate how often you can play, but this isn’t always possible.

At one point, I was living many hundreds of miles from my gaming group. As readers can imagine, this was quite a handicap to regular play. Once every 3 months or so, I was able to save enough money to travel to the group. But every week, I would prep enough game material for a full day’s play, so that I had 12 game sessions’ worth when I reached the city.

My players, kept informed of when I would next be available, would use RDOs and a day or two of annual leave to add to the playing schedule. I also made maximum possible use of Public Holidays. With luck, 5-6 days of game play would be possible, with 2-3 game sessions per day (3-4 hrs in length); only a short break was taken between one adventure and the next.

In effect, we were still playing to a weekly schedule; it was simply compacted in time to a couple of days every three months. To make this practicable, there were often several simultaneous plot threads, so that each could be the spotlight for an adventure or two without too much cross-connection between them. Even so, of necessity, the later adventures in a marathon were a lot more loosely defined than the early ones.

This is an example of game play dictating the time available for prep, with attendant consequences. Amongst other techniques, later adventures would be contained within ‘temporary sandboxes’, deliberately confining their scope to a sufficient extent that prep could be completed in 30-60 minutes, which I often did while everyone (including me) ate. But even so, there was a lot more improv later in the marathon than later.

It wasn’t the ideal situation, but it worked.

1.2 Plots entangling

You can only sustain improv over multiple game sessions before your loose plot threads start to become entangled. This is often a consequence of forgetting the significance of past improv’d events – you may have had a clear idea of where things were going at the time, but that clear idea has vanished like dew on a summer’s morning.

No problem, you just improv a new significance to the past events, creating the day’s adventure, advancing that plot thread more-or-less randomly, and perhaps connecting it to some other plot thread that it was never intended to intersect. That’s enough to get you through that day’s play, but by the time you’ve thrown in a plot twist or two along the way, plots are beginning to grow entangled, and often hampered by mutual contradictions if you look too closely.

So you improv an explanation for the contradictions, adding a new layer of confusion to the whole ball of wax, and cementing the plot tangles into place. Two relatively straightforward plotlines can become so convoluted and complicated that they bring the entire campaign to its knees.

Remember, too, that the GM has the advantage of having had a clear idea of where things were going, at least at one point; if the resulting morass is too complicated for him to figure out, what hope do the players, bereft of that advantage, have?

So that’s the worst-case outcome that we are trying to prevent if not evade completely.

2 The Plot Map

The solution that I have devised uses three tools. The first of these, I have named “The Plot Map”. It’s a simple page of square-grid graph paper – preferably 1/4-inch or 5mm separation of squares. Especially large or detailed campaigns may need multiple pages.

2.1 The Vertical Axis

Along the left-hand side, using as little space as possible but aiming for maximum clarity, list every important NPC and organization within the campaign that the PCs have interacted with (provided they still exist). Some larger organizations may be listed as a generic entry or as individual branches, that’s up to you to decide once you understand how the whole package works.

Where possible, it’s best to list these in sequential order of appearance within the campaign, or as close to it as you can get.

The list should include any NPC that has only appeared once, if the GM thinks there’s a reasonable likelihood that they might turn up again in a future adventure. In particular, anyone who has resources that the PCs can draw on, or who is an active enemy of the PCs (or vice-versa) should be listed. NPCs who don’t meet those criteria aren’t generally as important.

2.2 The Horizontal Axis

Vertical divisions along the horizontal axis are adventures. A dot gets placed on the map each time that NPC appears in an adventure, and an index number (I’ll get to those shortly) gets written next to each dot.

2.3 Connecting The Dots

The dots are then connected by a horizontal line.

Where there has been a revelation of a relationship between two entities, or a new relationship established in the course of an adventure, a colored curved line may be used to connect the two – that’s up to the GM. For example, there may be one line for the Chancellor Of The Exchequer and another for a Snake-worshiping Cult; if the PCs have just discovered that the Chancellor is a member of the cult, it’s reasonable to connect the two. The same is true if the Chancellor was (instead) persuaded by the PCs in a previous adventure that the Snake-Cult was a significant threat to the Kingdom, or if he simply became opposed to them for some reason.

If you choose to forego the vertical connections, you can fit the entire campaign prior to the last adventure on the first vertical division after the names; if not, you may need more just to keep the connections clear.

Depending on the neatness of your handwriting, you may be able to space adventures one division apart, but it would be more normal to need two.

Other possible refinements include color-coding for the role played by the NPC / Group in the adventure, but this can rapidly become complicated if the PCs had one perception of that role and the NPC another. I generally wouldn’t do so, myself – it’s one complication too many.

You’ll get a clearer idea of the structure from an illustration later, when I discuss how it is used.

3 The Plot Concordance

The second element of the solution is a full-page-width table in a spreadsheet or word processor. I don’t know of any decent one that isn’t a plain-text editor only that can’t handle a table being placed on a page.

In the past, I’ve used Word, StarOffice, and currently use LibreOffice for this purpose. There are others – I don’t know for a fact that they support this function, but it’s such a ubiquitous part of word processing that I would expect this to be near-universal.

3.1 The Horizontal Axis

Across the top, you list first the whole group, then each of the PCs, and thirdly any significant pairings of PCs, one to a column.

Trusting that the meaning of the first two of these is clear, let’s talk about what I mean by a “significant pairing”. If two PCs have a mutual enemy, or some other relationship that means they would share the spotlight in some adventures related to the connection, that’s a ‘significant pairing’. There might even be three-way connections, depending on the campaign and the characters.

For example, in one campaign, three of the PCs decided to form a conspiracy aimed at overthrowing a local Bishop who was blatantly corrupt and despicable. They deliberately left the 4th PC – a cleric of the same faith as their target – out of the conspiracy.

3.2 The Vertical Axis

Subsequent cells in the row will contain plot-thread titles, plot index numbers, and an empty cell for spacing, respectively.

While that’s the minimum structure, I’d actually go further. I wouldn’t let any cell grow more than two lines line before shifting to a new cell, so that the spacing remains fairly tight.

I’d also start a new cell when another plot thread ‘links up’ with this one. So the number of cells with content would vary from one ‘plot heading’ to the next.

Again, you’ll get a clearer idea of what I’m talking about when you see an example being used later in the article.

4 The Master Plot Index

That’s twice that I’ve referred to “index numbers”, so readers may be wondering where those numbers come from. The answer is the Master Plot Index, which is a series of simple text lists.

4.1 Plot Developments

The first line of any such text list is the name given to that plot thread – this should match the one listed in the Plot Concordance. Each entry in the resulting list consists of two items:

1. An index number (starts at 1 and ends at whatever);

2. a minimalist summary of a plot development, which lists any significantly-affected / involved PCs and NPCs. Ideally, you would get this down to a single line of text, more commonly, you’ll need two or even three. It’s most important to list unresolved plot developments, but the more comprehensive you can be, the better.

4.2 Plot Endpoints

Beneath these summaries, there’s a separate entry that is distinguished from the others somehow. This contains the intended resolution of the plotline, again in severely-minimalist form.

I would probably use a plain-text editor for this, because not all word processors permit multiple documents to be open and viewable at once, and some of those that do can take a significant amount of time to switch from one page to another. I use Kate for the purpose because it does let me view multiple documents at once (useful for some purposes) and is a lot faster than recent versions of Wordpad, which used to be my go-to. But even Kate can be more word-processor than you need for this purpose.

What you end up with is an ongoing list of the significant campaign events, grouped by plot thread, and a map of which plots advance in each adventure, connected to each other by the concordance and the index numbers.

5 An Existing Campaign

Things are a lot simpler if you start using these tools from the very beginning of a campaign, but the original intent was to use them to wrestle some control over an entangled existing campaign, and that will take more work. So that’s the place to start. There are three primary processes to apply, most with multiple simple steps. I’ll try to make it as easy as possible.

5.1 Populate the Master Plot Index

5.1.1 Unsorted

The first “Plot Thread” that gets listed is called “Unsorted”. Leave blank space for entries below it.

5.1.2 Plot Thread Titles

Think about the plotlines that you have underway. Give each one an appropriate name. Leave black space for entries under each. try to keep them as sequential as possible, so the first adventure, then the second, and so on. Note that an individual adventure may touch on multiple plot threads, especially early in the campaign when you’re setting ‘campaign pieces’ in place.

5.1.3 Populate ‘Unsorted’

List every plot development or key fact that you need to know to run the campaign in bullet-point form as described earlier, up to the beginning of the most recent game session. Be as exhaustive as possible. Don’t worry about numbering them yet. Continue until you can’t think of any more. Don’t be concerned if you know you’re forgetting some.

5.1.4 Migrate ‘Unsorted” into Plot Threads

Starting with the top item, cut it from the “unsorted’ list and paste it under the appropriate plot thread heading. Repeat until either they are all done, or one of 5.1.5 or 5.1.6 needs to happen for progress to continue.

5.1.5 Generating Additional Plot Threads

This won’t always be necessary, but it often is, especially if there are plot threads that have been carried through to a conclusion. If you need to, simply insert a new heading at the appropriate spot.

5.1.6 Adding additional ‘Unsorted’ items

Don’t be surprised to find your recall being stimulated as your organize things. Add new items as they come to mind.

5.1.7 When ‘Unsorted’ is empty, rationalize the plots

Time to get creative. In your own mind – no need to put anything in writing if you don’t want to – make sense of each of the plotline as an isolated story outline – beginning, middle, and end. What doesn’t make sense, and how do you have to change things so that this problem is resolved?

Try hard not to make plotlines too similar. If two plotlines are essentially the same, look for a way to (eventually) link the two so that they eventually become one plot thread. This creates a future event, Merges with [plot thread title], and a matching entry under the heading [plot thread title].

List any events/revelations that have not yet happened/come to light below the existing items in each plotline. You will need some way to distinguish these from the ones from the past. This can be as simple as putting a % or > sign in front of the text. Or maybe putting the (eventual) list entry numbers in brackets.

Note down any plot twists that you want to use in the plotline – again, avoid using the same plot twist in multiple entries. It’s better to forego a plot twist than to program the same one for multiple plotlines – unless you can come up with a single plot twist event that will affect multiple plotlines, of course!

If you want to continue with the ad-hoc approach, it’s best to be as general as possible.

5.1.8 Enter Plot Resolutions

Now that you have decided how each plotline is to end, at least in theory, add this information in the space reserved for resolving the plot. This outcome is not locked in stone; you can change anything or everything as plots proceed to keep them interesting to the players. This is a general guideline of what you (perhaps subconsciously) intended all along.

5.1.9 Number the list entries

The last step is to start at the top of the first plot thread and number each of the entries. Don’t restart the numbers when you cross down to a new plot thread.

One possible refinement is to number anything from the initial campaign background / briefing as it was given to the players “0”. This helps distinguish implied promises deriving from the initial briefing so that you can make sure the campaign (eventually) ticks all those boxes. Anything with a non-zero number is therefore something that happened or came out in play.


You may not have realized it, but you’ve just unentangled your plotlines! The rest of the process dos two things: helps to keep your plots untangled in the future, and turns the work into an awesome planning tool that will actually enhance your improv plotlines.

5.2 Populate the Plot Concordance

The Plot Concordance is mostly just a reorganization of the information in the Master Plot Index. As such, this is a relatively simple process.

5.2.1 Allocate and Enter Plot Threads

Starting with the first plotline on your list, determine which PC(s) have the most direct interest in this plotline, the most engagement (it might be the whole group).
Find the matching names in the column headings, and list the heading there. Append the PCs names to the name given the plotline in the Master Index.
Repeat for all plot groups.

5.2.2 Muse over Empty columns

Do you have any empty columns?

An empty ‘all-hands’ or ‘whole-group’ column (however you’ve labeled it) means that the group of PCs will lack cohesion and may drift apart as the campaign proceeds. That’s obviously not good, but it’s better than having a half-baked idea in this particular space. So don’t do anything about it now, just note it down mentally as something to fix when opportunity and ideas strike.

An empty ‘single PC’ column means that character, and their player, are not getting their fair share of the spotlight. This problem is arguably both more immediate and more important than an empty whole-group column. Again, not something to fix right now, but something to intend doing something about ASAP.

An empty ‘PC group’ means that the PCs in question have something in common that no adventure has yet drawn attention to. This is not a critical problem, provided that every individual is getting their fair share of the spotlight. It’s entries in these columns that are more important than the lack of them, because they add to the cumulative spotlight-share that each character is getting.

Don’t be surprised to discover that one particular PC is all over your Plot Concordance like a rash – it often happens that one particular character becomes the linchpin or focal point of a campaign, simply because they are more engaged with gameplay than others. So long as they are reliable attendees, this is not necessarily a problem. Instability in their attendance record signposts a potential campaign problem that you need to think about, though.

5.2.3 Extract Past Plot Element Numbers and post them

Because we already have a sequential list breaking down the plot, consisting of numbered items, we don’t need another one – the list of item numbers is enough. Put them on a single line, separated by commas and spaces, until there are so many that they stop fitting, then continue on another line.

5.2.4 Extract Future Plot Element Numbers and post them

We may have untangled the plotlines in your head and on paper, but it won’t happen in the game until those necessary plot developments that you wrote down actually take place or get discovered (depending on their nature). Since they also have numbers, and some sort of a flag to indicate that they are future events in the plotline, it’s easy to list them (with the flag) on the next line. When they actually happen in-game, all you need do is remove them from one list and append them to the other.

And that’s all there is to it.

5.3 Populate the Plot Map

It’s likely that there will be more empty holes in your Plot Map than anywhere else. That’s because an NPC can be a featured character in more than one plotline at the same time, simply by virtue of having some sort of relationship with the PCs.

That’s fine – just do the best you can.

5.3.1 Initial Dots

This is actually blindingly easy in terms of the initial population – because every NPC / Organization on your list has presumably already shown up in the campaign at some point, they all get a dot in the first column or columns if you needed more than one.

5.3.2 Numbering The Map

This, on the other hand, could be incredibly messy if someone has shown up a lot. You only have a limited amount of space to use – enough for one, or at most, two index numbers.

There are two ways to solve this – one that’s easier, one that’s more useful in the long run. My preference and recommendation is to choose the second, but that’s up to you.

The easier one is to list the first number in each plotline listed in the Concordance. This makes it easier to locate the matching concordance entry, which then gives you everything you need to get plotline information from the index.

The more useful one is to list the most recent in-play number. This makes it a little harder to find the matching concordance number, but because the numbering starts more or less sequentially within each plotline, and will become more strongly and accurately so over time, the lower the number, the longer it has been since the NPC / Organization last appeared in the campaign.

So make your choice and annotate the logical map accordingly.

5.4 Bonus Technique: Annotate a Geopolitical Map

If you have a hardcopy of your game map – the type of map that shows terrain, landmarks, population centers, and so on – you can annotate the locations where events occurred with the corresponding event number. This is useful because every time the PCs choose to go to or through a specific location, you can identify events that occurred there in the past, and use that information to help you come up with new events within a given plotline.

Equally, if you decide to add a development in a given plotline, the map shows you where those developments should logically take place. Either way, the information helps you define and fill out the improvised plot development, while keeping the geography of events consistent.

6 Ongoing Campaign Tracking

As the campaign continues to unfold from this starting point, after each game session, you have to update the three tools with the latest plot developments. This might be taking an item from the future developments list or it might be independent of those. It doesn’t have to be pre-planned, it may have been entirely spontaneous on your part, or a decision by the players that resulted in the event. Either way, the process is the same:

1. Add the event to the plotline in the Master Index;
2. Number it;
3. Add the number to the plotline in the Concordance;
4. Add a tracking point to each NPC who had a significant role in the day’s play on the Map
5. Add the number to that tracking point and draw a line connecting the character’s appearance tracking point to their previous entry.

That’s as painless a record-keeping process as I could make it.

Readers may have noticed that I earlier specified that the most recent game session should be left out of the initial compilation. That’s so that you can get a head start with the Campaign Tracking by making the most recent session the first one indexed, as the start of an ongoing process.

This is an example of the map once this first round of information is entered. I find that, having done one, the process becomes pretty self-explanatory as soon as you look at the document. Because I had to shrink it to fit the column space at Campaign Mastery, I’ve included a closeup of the first few entries.

Notice that this person is even more organized than most, distinguishing between NPCs and Villains in their character list. They’ve also had a go at indicating relationships with the vertical bars, but after three of them, they’ve given up on that.

This is the matching Concordance. I’ve simply invented some characters and plotlines out of whole cloth for illustrative purposes, I have no idea what any of them are!…

And this is the Master index that matches. Because I don’t know the content of the supposed “plotlines”, I’ve just greeked some random text to illustrate the results of the process.

7 Ongoing Inspiration, directed plotting

I promised earlier that the results would not only help keep your plotlines untangled, they would make improv plotlines better / easier. This section is all about how you use these three tools in that way.

7.1 The Plot Map

We start with the plot map. Here’s a simulated example of one that’s been in use for a while. In fact, it’s the earlier map with 5 additional game sessions added.

The day before play is the time to start putting ideas together in your head for what might happen the next day, if you haven’t done so already. You don’t have to make any decisions yet, this is simply trawling for ideas to have on standby.

Let me start by drawing your attention to the string of hollow circles and lightly filled circles on the right hand side. The hollow circles identify characters who have yet to feature since the map was started. The filled ones show characters that haven’t featured for a while. None of which means that you have to use them in your next game session; this is just a reminder of their existence and a prompt to spark your imagination.

7.2 The Master Plot Index

Next, look at the Master Plot Index and remind yourself of both the resolution that each plotline is supposed to be progressing towards, and any clarification events that have been listed to occur (eventually).

Again, you don’t have to use any of this in your next session; it’s helpful just having them in mind when you engage your creativity.

7.3 The Plot Concordance

The concordance supplies a third source of information. Look at the last number in each panel; the highest one shows the plotline that was most recently progressed, the next the second most recent, and so on. Look for the lowest of those numbers – in the example, that’s a “7” and it’s part of the plotline named “Nagatele” (which presumably is everything the GM in question needs to know). This tells you what plotline you want to consider prioritizing – but skip it until you have a reasonably good idea.

The whole point of these tools is to spark and focus your creativity into the spaces that have been unchanged for the longest period. Even if the only practical impact is that you try to think of ideas that plug one or more of these holes before you go looking for other plot ideas, that in itself is a massive increase in campaign cohesion.

7.4 Wandering Twists

So the dice are indicating a wandering monster or other random encounter. A quick glance at the three tools can suggest a way to advance one of the plots (or just have it be relevant to the encounter) – suddenly, that random encounter has Significance. The tool to use for the purpose is the Concordance, because it lets you see a high-level view of the whole campaign.

And if no ideas come to you, you can always run it as a typical random encounter. The only difference is that you have given yourself the opportunity to make the encounter more important.

8 Structured Unstructure

These tools are not about restricting or preventing you from your chosen plotting method of improv deriving from what the players decide to focus on in the current game session. You can pre-plan or improvise exactly as much as you always do. That’s what makes this methodology different to the other plot structures and schemas that have been offered on Campaign Mastery in the past.

9 Afterwords

I had a couple of thoughts that I didn’t find a way to incorporate into the main text of the article. It’s possible that these aren’t anything new to you, but the only way to find that out is to throw them out into the public and see what happens – so I have tacked on this final segment of the article specifically to house them.

9.1 Playing In The Sandbox

Players are sometimes like children, they love to push beyond any boundaries that have been imposed. The sandbox itself is just such a boundary. The desire to find out what lies beyond the marked lines on the map is a fairly universal drive, so this is not all that surprising.

It can be extremely convenient to emplace something on the fringes of your sandbox to turn the curious back. This could be a natural barrier, or a hostile race-in-residence, or any number of other options; the nature doesn’t matter, it’s subordinated to the game purpose of the inclusion.

The best time to emplace these ‘cushions’ is when you’re first setting up your sandbox, but the only time when it’s too late is when the players are already exploring the sandbox fringes – and sometimes, it’s not even too late then; you can use the ‘Nested Sandboxes’ idea, below, to emplace the barrier just beyond the sandbox.

Of course, the usual mechanism for ‘enforcing’ the Sandbox is simply never setting anything interesting, in terms of adventure, beyond the barrier. Sandboxes are at their most artful when they are completely invisible to those subject to them.

9.2 Sandbox Nesting

Another way of thinking about a sandbox is for the boundaries to be reminiscent of a snake’s skin – every now and then, the old one gets shed, enabling the new one to grow beyond the limits to which the old one constrained the wearer.

In other words, the campaign isn’t just set in one sandbox, it is contained within a series of them, each nested within the next, with the transition from one to another completely under the GM’s control.

I used this technique in the original Fumanor campaign and its sequels, expanding the PCs horizons east, south, east, east again, south, north, and then – in three stages – west. There was never anything overt keeping the players inside those sandboxes; it was just a matter of there being nothing of immediate interest outside the current sandbox.

Ultimately, Sandboxes are about focus. So long as the settings for adventures are kept within the Sandbox and there’s nothing accessible beyond, they work. Plot elements can originate from beyond the edge, signaling that there is more beyond, but their impact is always felt within the confines that the GM has set, a restriction designed to give him as much time as necessary to develop what lies beyond in playable depth. It’s like writing on the edges of the map, “Here there be Dragons”!