A ‘Game Physics’ can shape plots, be revealed and extended by plots, but its greatest impact is usually more subtle and cumulative, and only experienced at a Campaign Level, where it can serve as a binding influence that ties disparate plots into a unified whole.

Game Systems in service of plot

This section was originally going to be part of the previous article in this series, because it bridges the gap between plot and campaign; when this was going to be a three-part article, it was intended to transition from one sub-topic to the other. At the last minute, I decided that the accompanying side-note, while inextricably linked with the content of the section, tipped the balance more towards the campaign-level perspective, and moved it from that article to this. In the process, this article grew in length while the previous one became shorter. Oh, well…

If the Game Physics can override the game mechanics, producing House Rules, then there are two implications that need to be observed. The first is that the Game System is defined as being mechanics in service of the plot, elevating campaign and plot over whatever the rules say is possible. Story and Internal Consistency become the driving forces of the Campaign. This produces the hierarchy spelt out in a number of articles here at Campaign Mastery, for example in Blat! Zot! Pow! The Rules Of Genre In RPGs.

The Game Physics becomes the primary underpinning of the Campaign as a result, a function that is performed by the Rules in most beginning GM’s campaigns. This expands the plot capabilities available to the GM. Instead of being restricted to the game world described by the official sources, and having his plots restricted to the interactions of characters and circumstances permitted by those official sources, the GM is free to expand his horizons in any direction he sees fit. Of course, if he does not take advantage of this possibility, he will not realize most of the benefits of having a game physics in the first place; one can still be justified in terms of providing guidelines for situations not explicitly detailed in the rules, but the campaign is a mere shadow of what it could be.

The natural evolution of a GM is to create a campaign using the official rules, generate a game physics for his own use as explanation for what those rules describe and to provide the guidelines mentioned a moment ago, and eventually either face a confrontation between that game physics and the official rules, or find the temptation of a plot idea made possible by the game physics irresistible. Either way, the GM will undergo a profound reassessment of his game style and campaign, and the inevitable result is that the need for consistency and fairness will win out over a peculiarity of the “official rules”. How long it takes for the GM to reach this point will vary – I’ve known GMs who never seem to get there, and I’ve known GMs who got there after a single game session. The campaigns run by the former seem lifeless and stilted, workmanlike and tame, in comparison to the exuberance that comes from being liberated from the confinement of the official rules. This is the inevitable process that slowly evolves GMs into Game Designers.

Inevitably, the second implication that I mentioned will manifest: Adventures that break the mechanics. If the Game System is subordinate to the campaign, it follows that the campaign can change Game System whenever it is convenient or preferable to do so.

The Ultimate Round-Robin Shared Campaign: A Side-note

This idea came to me about a year ago, but until now I’ve never found the right context in which to bring it up. Picture a campaign in which each participant has a character (including the GM). At the conclusion to an adventure, the position of GM rotates to the next in the group. There are only six rules to this transition:

1. The outgoing GM must provide a way for the PCs to transition to the world of the new GM;
2. The only game system that the new GM cannot use for his adventure is the one that the outgoing GM just employed;
3. Characters must remain as consistent in capabilities as possible during this transition;
4. There must be an overall plotline to the campaign and each GM’s adventure must advance that overall plotline;
5. There must be a shared “game physics” to which all GMs have access and which any can extend when they are in the GM’s chair;
6. And, finally, each adventure should have a set limit to the number of game sessions it can run. Four or five is probably a good number, and keeps the rotation going. Three is perhaps a little constrictive, though it clearly defines each adventure as having a Beginning, Middle, and End.

After each GM has been run a set number of adventures each, each GM crafts an adventure that resolves the overall plotline, ending the campaign; these are put into a hat in some symbolic manner and one is drawn at random. If a GM doesn’t come up with a satisfactory way of resolving the overall plot (by his own standards), he can opt out of this final draw. Whoever “wins” the honor of wrapping up the campaign gets the notes and ideas of the others as additional resources and inspiration, and is free to incorporate them into his own “final solution”. This effectively permits the GMs to collaborate on the campaign conclusion while still preserving their ignorance of what is to unfold.

Obviously, the first adventure must set the overarching plotline in motion and justify the “game/genre-hopping” that will follow, setting the tone for the overall campaign.

I can’t see why this wouldn’t work, and it should be an awful lot of fun… D&D to Steampunk to Pulp to Cthulhu to Time Travel to Superhero to whatever, the possibilities are endless! Half the fun would be the “fish out of water” effect as PCs from a different reality come to terms with the new “game world” in which they are playing!

The Primacy Of Campaign

There is an implicit implication in the working definitions of a Game Physics and the inherent applications to which one can be put (as described in part one of this series) that needs to be fully understood. That is: “anything permitted within Game Physics is permitted, and Game Mechanics are simply imperfect reflections of Game Physics.”

This principle enables the Game Physics to override Game Mechanics, as was discussed at the time. It also facilitates a hierarchy of content, as detailed in Part 2, which elevates Plot needs over game mechanics, a cornerstone of the discussion in part three. The conclusion reached was that if the plot required a violation of the game mechanics, the Game Physics should be employed to create house rules that enable the plot to function. The game mechanics bend to plot needs, and not vice-versa.

But there’s more to be said on the topic. Not all house rules are created equal, and some create more headaches than they are worth; and furthermore, a consistency of mechanics is also a desirable trait in a campaign. After all, if you can change the rules every week, it becomes impossible to make an intelligent choice of action. So there are valid counterarguments to the proposition, and the decisions are not as cut-and-dried as they might have seemed at the time. How, then, is the GM to decide?

There are two different considerations that enable the question to be reframed on a case-by-case basis, and when the immediate situation doesn’t provide a decisive conclusion, these considerations can usually be used to reach a decision. The first is practicality of mechanics, and the second – and arguably more important – is campaign consistency.

Practicality Of Mechanics

“How do you tell a good House Rule from a Bad?” That was the question that I posed in The Application Of Time and Motion to RPG Game Mechanics early last year. The basic principle that the article demonstrated is quite simple: the more frequently a game mechanic needs to be accessed in the course of play, the more sensitive that game mechanic is to any form of complication or delay.

If there are 3 combats in a game session, each of an average of 5 combat rounds, each involving 5 PCs and an average of 5 NPCs, each of whom take 30 seconds longer to complete their combat action as a result of a House Rule, the total lost playing time is a “mere” 75 minutes. And that completely ignores the fact that after a while, with combat slowed that much, side chatter will further delay play, as boredom and frustration take hold.

As Johnn found in one of his articles back when he was writing for Campaign Mastery, My Group’s Time Thief Revealed, the GM is more susceptible to these additional delays than anyone else at the table, simply because he has more on his plate already. A single rule that adds a mere 5 seconds to the time a player requires to act in combat may add four, five, six, or even ten times as much to the time the GM needs to perform the equivalent action for an NPC.

Let’s run that calculation again, taking this into account: 3 combats, 5 rounds per combat, 5 PCs, +5 seconds each; plus 3 combats, 5 rounds per combat, average of 5 NPCs, +25 seconds each: 6.25 minutes for players, 31.25 minutes for the GM. The Total is still more than 37 minutes lost out of each game session.

There are three ways of considering these facts in the context of Game Physics.

• The first is to consider such losses to be offset by the amount of time saved for the GM by using the Game Physics to resolve unanswered questions within the game. If these two factors are anywhere close to equal, or if the Game time lost is less than that gained, then the Game Physics, as manifested within the new House Rule, are effectively conferring all the advantages of the Game Physics at no cost to the game – a win-win that is obviously acceptable.
• The second is to determine that even if the balance between the two is tilted in the wrong direction, the game rule will only apply in limited and unusual circumstances, and as such won’t impact the game play to the same extent on most occasions – making it at least tolerable. Furthermore, the problem can perhaps be overcome by employing a more abstract form of combat for the occasion.
• And the third is to determine that on this occasion, under these circumstances, the House Rule is too great a price to pay. Unless some shortcut can be found to simplify some other aspect of the combat as a counterbalance, the plot cannot be permitted to override the normal mechanics.

The net effect of these considerations is to frame the question in terms of the long-term impact on the campaign, transcending the plot-level considerations.

Campaign Consistency

The second consideration is campaign consistency. It has to be determined which is more valuable to the campaign: Consistency of rules, or consistency of game physics.

Both are important, and if the vast majority of House Rules and variant mechanics can be established at the very beginning of the campaign, it is possible to both have your cake and eat it, too. The problems only really arise when discussion turns to extending the house rules to accommodate some plot need that is not already catered for within the rules.

Consider the following logic:

• It is “more harmful” to a campaign to use only established rules than it is to customize the rules to support the campaign.
• It is more harmful to a campaign to continually chop and change rules than to consistently use a single body of rules.
• Therefore, it is more harmful to institute temporary rules changes than it is to create and apply new House Rules that will are intended to apply henceforth.
• It is more harmful to a campaign to have impractical house rules than to have practical house rules.
• Therefore, it can be argued that the GM should reach his decision on the basis of which will do the least harm: A temporary house rule that is impractical, or not having a house rule that covers the circumstance at all and accepting that the simulation of the “reality” of the particular combination of genre and broader plot that constitutes this specific campaign is always going to be imperfect – and some plots simply will not work as a result of that imperfection, when addressing the imperfection does more harm than good.
• The game physics describes the “world” in which play takes place, while the game mechanics are an imperfect representation in specific cases of that description.
• Therefore, consistency of game physics is more important than consistency of game mechanics.

So, if a house rule passes the practicality test, and it can be considered to apply going forward within the campaign, then it is worth implementing it so that the game mechanics more accurately represent the game physics.

If one fails the practicality test, it can be still implemented as a temporary enhancement of the “simulation”, but should not be something that routinely affects play. It may therefore be necessary to cloak the plot in “unusual circumstances” to restrict the impact of the house rule.

The game physics doesn’t change from adventure to adventure. It may be extended, or refined, exceptions to general principles may be revealed in what was previously considered a universal rule. These exceptions may manifest as temporary house rules when practicality of play does not permit a more general solution.

Mechanics Vs Plot: The Game Physics tiebreaker

The result of these deliberations is that when the Game Mechanics, as modified by the existing House Rules, are inadequate for the correct operation of the plot, the choice of which should yield to the other should be made on the basis of consistency with the game physics. It is more useful to the campaign to spend time getting the Game Physics right than it is generating specific House Rules for the campaign.

Most GMs don’t distinguish between the two; they consider the creation and implementation of a House Rule to be a de-facto manifestation of the Game Physics. Whenever you hear of House Rules causing a problem for a GM, the reality is that one of two things has occurred: the GM has made that assumption and failed to address the bigger picture, or the House Rule in question has failed the practicality test. By separating the two, and describing the purpose of any given House Rule before such a rule is written, both these problems can be avoided, and a given House Rule (or existing official mechanic) can be replaced or updated as necessary to avoid or remove a problem.

Game Physics: Big Answers To Big Questions

That’s all well and good. It means that Campaign needs override everything else that you might consider – whether that is the game physics or the rules or even an individual plot, and that the campaign’s needs are best served by a consistent body of game physics principles. This is the principle that I was implying in one of my very first articles here at Campaign Mastery, A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs.

If you can describe, in abstract terms, what “Magic” is and how (in principle) it works within the bounds of a particular campaign, then you are better equipped as a GM to make decisions and game rulings because they will reflect that description. In order to decide on how the Afterlife works, i.e. what happens to a person within the game when they die, you have to decide exactly what a soul is, and the combination of those two answers informs decisions on everything from Resurrection Spells to Necromancy to the nature of the Gods and the nature of Undead, which in turn impacts on Clerical Turning.

All this adds up to the game physics – regardless of game system – being a central and essential element in defining a particular campaign, in specifying what twists and turns on the genre of choice are going to make this campaign unique and interesting. To a large extent, in fact, the game physics can ignore lesser questions, and take it as read that traditional physics will hold sway except where specific contradicted either directly by the Game Physics or by the implied game physics represented by the rules. This makes what can be a difficult creative job practical.

After all, very few of us have a string of doctorates in everything. We rely on reference books, acquired trivia, television, and the internet for our understanding of a whole brace of subjects. For an article I wrote (but can no longer find), I once listed the subjects that a good GM has to know and understand. It was about 20 lines long, listing 5 or 6 items (possibly more) on each line. In The Expert In Everything? I created a much shorter version of that list, which read “Biology, genetics, politics, history, music, art, sociology, real estate, banking, economics, computer science, software design, desktop publishing, cooking, geography, geology, thermodynamics, engineering, metallurgy, movies & media, publishing, journalism, mathematics” – and which even a quick glance now shows to be inadequate. At the very least I should add “agriculture, sailing, navigation, statistics, physics, statics, architecture, literature, chemistry, alchemy, manufacturing, industrial relations, race relations, diplomacy, negotiation, military theory, tactics & strategy, language and cognition, and medicine” to the list. And the history of every field listed. But this is the sort of list that simply grows, the more time you spend looking at it.

When Game Physics Breaks Down

The fact of the matter is that none of us are “Experts at everything” – and our effectiveness as a GM and as a creator often hinges on how well we can fake it. But no fake can ever be as good as the real thing. We’re sure to make mistakes in creating a game physics. We’re certain to overlook implications and applications. There are always going to be ideas that we didn’t think of.

Furthermore, it’s dead certain that at least one of your players will have greater expertise than you do in something on the list, and that none of your players think exactly the same way that you do. That means that they will inevitably push your game physics in unexpected areas, and explore your game physics from the perspective of their (real) expertise – finding the flaws that have resulted in your “faking it”.

I know at least one former GM (he no longer games) who refused to generate game physics for his campaigns because of his fears of inadequacy in this respect. But this doesn’t have to be the end of the world, if you plan for this inevitability in advance.

Closed Universe Game Physics vs. Open-ended Game Physics

There are two major philosophic approaches that can be adopted with respect to a game physics: it can either be considered a Closed Universe, or Open-ended.

Closed Universe Game Physics

In the closed universe approach, the game physics is static and unchanging. Whatever is defined at the start of the game is the last word on how things work, and anything that disagrees with that are interpretational errors on the part of either the GM or players. This effectively means that the more accurate topic-specific knowledge of a player can only apply where and how it fits with that game physics. The game world is different to the real world, and their expertise is “real world”; at best, they can simply highlight areas in which the two differ that you had not appreciated because you lacked the expertise to do so.

There are serious benefits to this approach. It’s much less work, and the GM is less likely to tie themselves in knots. Everyone starts off with the same knowledge base – though the GM has almost certainly spent more time thinking about the physics and its ramifications than the players have. The game physics itself is spelt out in black and white, iron-clad universal laws that everyone has to live or die with.

If you are the type of GM who is uncomfortable generating a game physics, or you are just starting out, or if you are seriously time-limited, this is probably the approach that you should consider. What’s more, the shorter the intended campaign, the less opportunity the players will have to push beyond the bounds of the known, and the more the reality will tend to default to this state of affairs regardless of what decision you make.

In particular, this approach tends to find favor with GMs who subscribe to the “GM is the last word, always right even when he is wrong” school, and those who dislike “cosmic”-level adventures and high fantasy.

Open-ended Game Physics

The alternative is to have the game physics represent the state of the art knowledge of the GM, and permit to expand and develop as shortcomings and inadequacies turn up. This approach means that what you describe to the players is the equivalent of classical physics; push it hard enough, and it may break.

The GM can be called upon at little or no notice to extend and improve that understanding of the universe. Early in a campaign, that won’t happen very frequently (in most cases) because the PCs simply don’t have the resources or understanding to push the game physics that hard. When they initially reach the sort of expertise level where they are working with the game physics to find solutions to their problems, there may be a flurry of demands on the GM to enhance the game physics, but as the most obvious holes are found and plugged, these will taper off.

This approach openly admits – without drawing a lot of attention to the fact – that the GM is not, in fact, an expert in everything, but is a human being of limited faculties and time. The Game Physics is defined as “the best that he can do at the time”.

This has the huge advantage in that the game physics is responsive to the players and PCs – it will grow in the areas they are interested in, and to encompass the tactics that they employ. And if one side or the other has a brilliant idea, it can be incorporated – provided that it doesn’t conflict with the past in a way that cannot be explained, retroactively. The Game Physics can perpetually get better, in other words.

If you are the kind of GM who can admit “I don’t know – yet”, or “I need time to think”; if you have a reasonable level of GMing expertise under your belt – two or three years of weekly play is usually more than enough; if you consider time spent on the game physics to be an investment in better understanding your campaign; if you enjoy high fantasy and playing with ideas, then this is the approach that is more likely to suit. It tends to go hand-in-glove with a more humble or “modern” attitude as a GM, and is particularly appropriate for those who plan long campaigns and enjoy “cosmic”-level adventures.

The longer the campaign runs, the more benefit that will derive from this approach – the greater the yield on your time-investment, in other words.

The Open Topology model

A variant on the Open-Universe approach is the “Open Topology” model, often a great compromise between the two. The GM spells out the key ideas within the game physics – the ones that will have an immediate impact on the campaign – and simply ignores the rest until it comes up in the course of play. He makes his decisions on the basis of what is most fun in the short-term and best for the campaign in the long run, and retroactively justifies these decisions with game physics each time a decision conflicts with the basic game mechanics.

The approach gets its name from (a) the fact that it is fundamentally an “open universe” model of game physics, and (b) the GM doesn’t know the ultimate shape of the game physics at any point.

I’ve employed it in the past, and while it is an adequate solution that minimizes the prep time spent on the Game Physics, it suffers from a few colossal drawbacks.

• First, expanding the game physics becomes progressively harder work, because everything that has already happened within the campaign, every decision and every precedent, have to be accommodated in the revised-and-expanded game physics. Forget one, and you can get yourself caught in an incredible tangle.
• Second, players can view it as “making up the rules as you go” – any whiff of suspicion of GM bias or anti-GM paranoia can explode, doing lasting harm not only to the campaign but to the relationships between the participants. I know one player who refuses to play under one specific GM because this happened – and to be fair, the GM bias in that case seems fairly clear-cut: the player told the GM what he wanted his character to be able to do, the GM agreed and spelt out a difficult and lengthy process that would enable the PC to achieve this, and – at the end of the process – the GM refused to let the PC have the ability in question, going so far as to change the rules to prevent it.
• And third, you deprive yourself of the advantage to your decision-making that the game physics can provide. Consistency is sacrificed at the altar of “not enough prep time” (to put the most kindly face on it) or “sheer laziness” (to describe it in less forgiving terms).

Telling Less Than You Know

One solution that is usually a win-win is to tell less than you know. Give the players a cut-down version of the game physics – enough to capture the uniqueness of the campaign, and that adequately describes everything that the PCs would know about “how the world works” from their pre-game experience of living there. However, the GM has a far fuller and more robust Game Physics waiting in the wings for the players to discover as it makes a difference to their lives and the events that surround them. Sometimes, this results in things happening that the players cannot explain – but if they dig into those occurrences, and experiment, and consult experts, they will discover that there is an explanation. “This happens, but no-one knows why” in the game briefing material is a perfectly-acceptable answer. Giving three or four possible explanations – none of which are entirely correct – is an even better answer, because it more closely mimics the real world evolution of understanding of phenomena.

Coupling this approach with the Open Topology model of Game Physics often yields the best of all possible worlds, because it gives the GM the tools and benefits of the game physics while forestalling and potentially excluding entirely the need to expand it subsequently; and it provides another source of great adventures, ones built around someone taking advantage of the things that the players (and their characters) don’t know.

Fixing The Problem

Problems with the game physics tend to boil down to one of only a few things, when analyzed. Either there is an implication or application of the game physics that the GM hasn’t thought of that upsets the balance of power between PCs and NPCs, enabling the PCs to do things that the GM doesn’t want them to be able to accomplish for the long-term health of the campaign; or there is a part of the game physics that is inadequately defined, leaving the GM without the benefit of his guideline exactly when he needs it most; or there is a contradiction in the game physics that hasn’t been noticed previously; or the game physics won’t permit the GM to have an NPC do what his plot wants him to be able to do.

In other words, the game physics is incorrect, inadequate, erroneous, or bites the hand of its creator.

I’m not going to pretend that these aren’t potentially serious problems – they can be. But none of them need to be fatal.

New Implications of Pseudo-science

The first solution is to look at the rest of the Game Physics. Is there something you’re overlooking that can solve the problem? Fresh eyes can sometimes see possibilities that have been previously overlooked.

The Fuzziness Factor

In particular, are there any assumptions made by the existing game physics, especially the part with the problem, that might not be correct, or might be correct only part of the time? Can you solve the problem by refining the game physics you already have, in other words, by applying a fuzziness to it?

For example:

• Problem: The game physics of multi-spacial timelines implies that you can jump from your current timeline into another, devote as much time to study or research as necessary to find a solution, then return to just after the moment you left in your current timeline.
  • Discussion: So long as none of the players tries this, and you haven’t been so short-sighted as to forget the principle that “Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” – i.e. that anything an NPC can do, the PCs should also be able to do (at least in theory), you don’t have to worry about it. But when someone thinks of it – and they will – you need to address the problem. (This is an actual example from my Zenith-3 campaign). Nor was it being seriously proposed at the time – the players I have know that my game universe “actively conspires” to punish those who try to cheat the system. Nevertheless, I took the position that one of the PCs was asking “why not do this” and looking for an in-game answer purely out of player-curiosity.
• Solution: There is an uncertainty factor that prevents such close targeting of the arrival point (partial solution); and there is a temporal shock when re-entering a timeline that is proportional to the differential between personal time experienced and the duration of events experienced in the timeline you are re-entering. Recent memories are particularly susceptible to damage as a result of this temporal shock, but physical trauma can result. What’s more, the uncertainty factor can increase the temporal shock exponentially.
  • Discussion: Fortunately, the inter-dimensional transits had always been portrayed as taking a measurable “perceived time” that was roughly 1:1 to the interval of duration in question. This was the first time that anyone had considered deliberately choosing to target their arrival time to disregard that perceived personal time experienced. I had done this because I wanted various threats and interactions between the characters to occur “en route”, but it could also serve to explain why this phenomenon had never been noticed by the PCs before, and the few exceptions that came close were all of very short duration – i.e. producing negligible temporal shock effects.
  • So, the assumption was that you could travel between dimensions and arrive unharmed unless you had encountered some hostile force en route, and that assumption could be rendered fuzzy – it’s accurate enough if you don’t try and rort the system, but as soon as you do, the universe smacks you around the ears.
  • NB: the question of why this had not been noticed previously was a critical requirement of the solution, because dimensional travel itself was already well-established within the campaign.
  • Further Discussion: The “uncertainty factor” had also been in place for quite a while – the more accurately you determined arrival point in space, the less accurately you could determine your arrival point in time, and vice-versa. Various enhancements to the technology used for dimension travel enabled a more precise “fix” on both, but some uncertainty remained.
  • Implementation: How best to make the players aware of this “enhancement” to the ground rules? Answer: by modifying an existing subplot to place demands on the PCs that would force them to experience Temporal Shock from trying to cram too many hours into a day. Temporal Shock played havoc with the PCs, and established that being the “brick” gave no resistance, and – indirectly – answered the question, “why can’t you do this?”
• Still more discussion: Before I set out to find a reason not to do it, I first considered whether or not it was tolerable to permit it – was the partial solution imposed by the uncertainty factor enough of a control? I had momentary visions of a plotline in which some greedy dimension-traveler was selling “extra time” to students at a university, time that some of them were using for more nefarious purposes. It would have been a good plot, but ultimately I decided that the risks posed to game balance by granting the PCs and NPCs this capability were too great.

Pseudoscience Interactions Of Theory

Sometimes, solutions can be found from elsewhere in the game physics.

I’ve written in the past about the problem of “Elvish resurrection” that emerged when the Fumanor Campaign transited from 2nd edition to 3rd. The solution came not from anything related to Elves, but to the concepts of the afterlife itself, and the definitions of positive and negative energy, and to the fact that mummies were defined as positive-energy undead, unlike the others. Essentially, the process was impossible until it was successfully completed, and the first such success was the result of accidentally exploiting a “loophole” in the game physics. The implication was that just such a loophole had been exploited by other races in the past to enable them to be resurrected.

These thoughts and ideas then entwined with questions relating to the roles of the positive and negative planes in creating the Material Plane in the first place, which led to the “Cavern Realms of Zhin-Tarn” series of adventures in a sequel campaign; further reflection showed that the resulting plane would be unstable and would ultimately become unraveled unless action was taken by someone to correct the problem.

This led to a subsequent adventure at the conclusion of the “Caverns” series of adventures in which the Gods and Chaos Powers both attempted to stabilize the new material plane in a way that advanced their own respective agendas, with the PCs as their instruments.

A consequence of this was that an NPC became that “all powerful expert in everything” (the problem from the Zenith-3 campaign discussed in the previous section) as a result of having close to a century of twiddling his thumbs – but that will actually work to my benefit, making plausible that character’s ultimate retirement from the campaign in a way that suited the overall plotline and was only marginally believable without it. In a nutshell, that character has a destiny, and knows it, and has certain abilities to use in order to make that destiny possible. Pursuing that still-unrevealed destiny led to the circumstances in which he joined the party, which put him in a position to greatly enhance his abilities, thereby justifying (from the point of view of his destiny) his involvement with the party.

Four times, the game physics evolved – and each time, the campaign was strengthened and made richer, more complex, as a result.

Evolving understanding of the Game Universe to fill plot needs

And that’s also an example of the ultimate game physics development process within an Open Universe: Take advantage of the game physics to explain what your plots need to have happen, to lend verisimilitude to your creations, to make the game easier to administer, and enhance its uniqueness. If there is a plot need to be satisfied, first ensure that it’s acceptable for the PCs to also have (at least theoretical) access to the capability in question, and then expand the game physics as necessary. Treat problems as opportunities.

Rewards for Solutions

But, if you ever get really, really stuck, consider posing the problem to your players, offering some reward as a solution – or making it the PCs problem, and listening very hard to the players as they wrestle to discover a solution.

The players, both past and present, have had more input into my game physics in the Zenith-3 campaign than I think they realize. Even when they engage in a fruitless line of speculation while searching for an answer to the problem set before them by the current adventure, I’m paying close attention – first, so that I can work out where their plan goes off the rails, and how, and secondly, because I can sometimes apply their reasoning to another aspect of the game physics, solving potential problems before they manifest, and keeping the game physics one step ahead of the best understanding of the players.

Few campaigns have the longevity of the Zenith-3 campaign and its forebears; it is now approaching its 34th anniversary. There are adults out there whose parents weren’t born when the campaign started (Adults at 18 years, born when parents were 16 years old, = parents born 34 years ago)! One of the reasons for the survival of the campaign for this long has been the Game Physics, the fundamentals of which remain unchanged from their initial creation all those years ago.

Game Physics matter

I opened this series with the statement, “Game Physics’ is a term that not enough GMs take the time to think about in depth.” This exploration has uncovered the reasoning behind that statement. The way the game world works is something that GMs need to take seriously, and enhance to suit their games as necessary – because those games will in turn be enhanced many-fold as a result.

That wraps up this series on Game Physics. I hope that my readers have gotten something worthwhile from it. Next week, if all goes according to plan, a three-part series on Cinematic Combat!