Mapping Through Logic and Flavor
This is being written more in hope than expectation. Last week (Wednesday night, to be exact), my internet connection became suddenly unreliable. Because it happened late at night, I had the not unreasonable theory that this was because of network upgrades; not only does my ISP not notify customers of such outages in advance, but the usual time for conducting such work is late at night so as to minimize the impact on customers.
When the problem didn’t go away, I made the reasonable assumption that the network was having problems and would be working to resolve them; I had already established that the problems were upstream of my router and modem, and so seemed likely to be affecting more customers than just myself.
Besides, the connection would work some of the time, and I had real-world things that I had to do, that Thursday (and even more on the Friday).
Come Friday, it was even worse, now totally unreliable, connecting for only a second or two and then disconnecting. So I contacted my ISP’s technical support. They advised that since the problem had started, up until midnight Thursday, the continuously-connected internet had dropped out approximately 60 times, but from that time until I called at about 6:30 PM, there had been 90 connections (and the day was only 3/4 done).
After some basic troubleshooting that did not solve the problem, it was decided to monitor the connection for 48 hours as various parts of the system were checked, and any faults corrected. It was hoped that stability would be restored as this work proceeded.
About 2AM this morning, the problems seemed to go away as suddenly as they had started, but until I’ve had at least 48 hours of stable connection, I’m operating on the premise that the connection could collapse at any moment (especially if the problem is related to the wet weather that I’ve had recently).
That means that I’m treating the connection as one that could drop out at any moment, and no internet means no ability to post.
If you are reading all this as usual, then you know that the worst did not eventuate. If you are reading this somewhat later than usual, it might mean that this long report is a combination explanation and apology. Fingers crossed!
Because of the uncertainty, I’m deliberately writing a relatively short post this time around, with minimal research and online work involved.
An exploration of context
For the last game session of the Zenith-3 campaign, I needed to map a complex enemy base with minimal time and effort. Some backstory is necessary to establish context.
Here there be Martians
Long ago, Martians had discovered Time Travel and its flaws and limitations. Eventually, with their environment failing, they had entered a period of suspended animation, awaiting the rise of some society with sufficient resources to terraform their planet into something habitable once more, at which point they would emerge from hiding and establish either peaceable relations or kick the terraformers off their planet.
The martians had the technology, but lacked the natural resources to solve the problems they faced on their own. When humans reached the red planet, their probes discovered the ruins left by the martians, finding a vast plaque lauding the achievements of the martian society, both scientific and cultural; the latter was far harder to translate than the former, for obvious reasons. So it was that in 2012, humans – Americans – learned the basics of time travel.
The Zener Gate program
Translating the abstract theory into practical application took years, and lots of it was still not clearly understood when Trump became President and took direct control of the Agency. Even though they did not know how to do it safely, he instructed them to begin human testing; the temptation of being able to rewrite history to his liking was too much for him to ignore.
He also prioritized a human space mission to Mars to investigate the ruins and see what else they could (ahem) learn from. When that mission reached the red planet in the mid-2020s, late in Trump’s second term, they erected a dome so that archaeological research could be done in a more comfortable shirtsleeve environment. This inadvertently awoke the sleeping martians, who the astronauts thought long dead; first contact was thoroughly botched, and inter-temporal war resulted.
Anti-American Forces
The martians sent agents back in time, suitably disguised, after wiping out the Astronauts (the ‘American Infestation’), to bolster the fortunes of rival nationalistic forces to the Americans with whom they were now at war. They might have chosen the Russians, but they didn’t really have the economy to compete with the USA. They might have chosen the Japanese of WWII, or the Nazis, but both groups had shortages of natural resources that would have handicapped their value as proxies, and Hitler reminded them too much of Trump.
That left the Chinese as the most logical human nation for them to ally with, and so they presented the Chinese leadership with the offer of time travel. As soon as they were convinced that this was not a trick, the Chinese leadership accepted the offer, planning to suck all they could from the Martian knowledge bank and then abandon them. Having time travel in their back pockets also emboldened the leadership, who became a lot more belligerent in their dealings with their neighbors.
Facility Tau, P.R.C.
It is worth noting that the Chinese program had more advanced technology than the American one from the outset, because the Martians knew exactly what they were doing; but the Americans had a far better understanding of the theoretical principles that made time travel work, because they had learned the hard way, while the Martians provided as little theoretical explanation as possible.
The time traveling PCs found themselves in a step-wise refinement of history. An accidental nuclear was prevented; a civil war between Trump and Mike Pence after the 2024 elections was avoided; and, eventually, the disastrous first contact between the Martians and Americans was avoided. This led the martians to withdraw their support for the Chinese program, but the complexities of time travel meant that they could not eliminate the program entirely without trapping themselves in paradoxes.
Facility Tau thus became a “rogue” temporal Agency (from the American Zener Gate program’s perspective). But, even though they knew that it existed somewhere in the P.R.C., the PCs didn’t know where.
TimeForce
Most of the campaign revolved around various governments reacting to the conditions that resulted from various temporal interventions by one side or another. Everything from the Cuban Missile Crisis to Al Capone, from the Vietnam war to the German Hacker Collective, plus various futures that developed from these starting points.
Along the way, one of the PCs began assembling an Agency of his own to take over the Zener Gate program because he did not trust the Trumps to manage it responsibly. He never got around to giving it a name, so I’ve been referring to it, in my notes, as TimeForce. By recruiting the physicists and others who the agents Knew would eventually form the backbone of the Agency that employed them, they were able to eventually take control of the Agency.
They forestalled the Russians getting their hands on Time Travel by infiltrating Facility Tau, they prevented a disastrous takeover by Eric Trump of the Zener Gate program, and had various other adventures.
These eventually led to TimeForce getting an operative of their own into Facility Tau, an operative who became aware of an intervention by Facility Tau called Operation Paper Tiger, which required immediate action by the Zener Gate temporal agents (i.e. the PCs).
PC Knowledge of Facility Tau
Facility Tau was disguised as a combined factory and power plant (hydroelectric and nuclear) that had experienced setback after setback, explaining why it was years behind schedule and not actually contributing much to the Chinese power grid. As an “embarrassment” to the Chinese leadership, there was every reason for them to avoid any sort of public attention for the project, completing the veil of secrecy about the project without the need to reveal what secret was really being protected.
The Zener Gate mole was able to leave funds (Chinese currency) and various files and documents for the PCs in a Hong Kong safety deposit box, which is how they even knew that much. A lot of the information they received lacked the essential context to explain the significance that they held, but it was expected that this would fall into place as they investigated further.
So, the PCs needed to infiltrate Facility Tau (somehow) in order to get access to the information on Operation Paper Tiger – and then to decide what they were going to do about it.
The Problem
Which, of course, meant that I needed a map of Facility Tau. This is the sort of project that you can spend weeks or months on, and I didn’t really have that kind of prep time to devote to it. Furthermore, this was almost certain to be the facility’s one and only appearance in the game, so it didn’t warrant that kind of attention to detail.
So it was that, about two hours before game time, I sat down to create the map in question, having thought of a new approach to the problem the previous night.
That ‘new approach’ is the subject of today’s article.
A logical map of functions
I started by mapping out the essential functions that such an organization would have, starting with one of the logical points of access from the outside world – the loading docks.
Each step of the process defined one or more additional “departments” or offices within the organization; I was always looking at the questions of who needed to interact with the ‘compartment’ just created, and who would control / monitor the activities of that compartment.
This mapped the structure of the organization by logical function. In the process, vague ideas of how the organization would function fell into place and crystallized.
- The Loading Docks led me to the Stores and Inventory department, with a connection in between to Facility Security.
- The stores and Inventory department connected to the Admin and Accounting departments.
- Accounting led to the Payroll Office and to the Finance Department, who made sure that the Accounting had the money to pay the bills. And, of course, to Command, who authorized expenditures and made decisions for the facility. Of course, actual cash needed to be protected, so there was another link between Payroll and Security.
- Admin led to the cleaners, to the Reference Library, to Secretarial Services, and to the Medical / First Aid Department.
- Past another Security connection, the Library led to “Secure Archives”, which housed all the documents relating to the facility’s true mission. And so on.
The above illustration shows (a little more neatly than my hand-drawn original) the parts of the structure outlined in the text description above. As a bonus, it’s actually pretty close to 100% the size that I drew the original – the boxes and text are a little larger, because I already know where the connections are, and the original was 2B pencil on plain white art paper, and the layout is a little cleaner the second time around, as you would expect.
Here’s a complete list of the different departments (with additional notes as needed):
- Loading Docks
- Security
- Stores & Inventory
- Admin & Secretarial
- Cleaners
- Accounting
- Payroll
- Finance
- Medical Support
- Field Team Support – provides whatever the field teams need in reference information etc
- Reference Library Services – where Field Team Support get their information
- Secure Archives
- Communications – single point of contact between the teams in the field and Field< Team Support
- Timeline Integrity – monitors history for intervention by other time travelers, the internal equivalent to MI5 / Homeland Security
- Physics Research
- Technical Advisors (i.e. Martians)
- Data Storage
- Information Technology
- Cyber Security
- I.T. Infrastructure – buys and maintains computer hardware
- Jump Engineering
- Power Supply
- Media Control & Public Information – this department is all about feeding the cover story, the true function of the facility is ‘dark’
- Intelligence – more of a Liaison with the Chinese Intelligence Services than anything else
- Electrical Maintenance
- Property Maintenance
- Personnel
- Recruitment – a specialized function within the Personnel Department
- Training – for field operations
- Education – note that this is separate from the training needed for field operations
- Temporal Defense – the temporal equivalent of counter-intelligence, they advise on how the Tau Facility should respond to the findings of Timeline Integrity
- Doctrine Committee – sets the philosophic rules under which the facility operates, sets policies in other words
- Policy Analysis – translates doctrine into regulations and procedures
- High Command – the last word, oversees everything
- Intervention Authority – the heads of various departments, has the final authority to order missions
- Intervention Planning – proposes specific plans for possible interventions either to achieve changes in history deemed desirable by command or to undo / manipulate changes by others deemed undesirable by Temporal Defense
- Field Teams – actually do the work of changing history
A logical map of facilities
Here’s the “radical” part. I realized that if you had such an organization and were intending to construct bespoke facilities for them to use, the physical structure would be most efficient and effective if it matched, as closely as possible, the logical structure.
The place to put the people who keep inventory of parts, stationery, etc, is as close to the storerooms and the loading docks leading to those storerooms as you can manage, and so on.
All you need to do to map a facility is to describe the logical breakdown of functions that are carried out by that facility (ignoring those that take place off-site), and then interpret the results in terms of a physical layout.
It took me maybe 15 minutes to lay out the logical functions of Facility Tau, and I was ready for play.
A compromised facility
Of course, the structure you come up with will – or should – reflect the philosophy / ideology of the designers and owners. That’s shown in the Tau Facility layout by the Doctrine Committee who decide what is permitted and what is not, and by the separation of “Cyber Security” and “Security”.
It was only afterwards that I realized that it would be easy to incorporate any other sort of compromise one desired. For example, if you layout was designed for a different organization and adapted to service the current occupiers, this would be reflected in one or two connections that didn’t follow the most logical path; having to go through “Finance” to get to “Accounting”. Or maybe going through “Accounts Payable” to get to the “Personnel” department.
All you really need to do is to (1) decide how badly distorted the logical assignment of structure is by the circumstances, and (2) decide which connection or connections are sufficiently important to reflect that distortion.
You might decide that Accounting is too important a function to management to be distorted, putting them close to the Manager / CEO, but at the price of removing Quality Control from where it should be in order to report to the CEO promptly and conveniently – or maybe keeping Quality Control close to the CEO but separated from the manufacturing activities that they are supposed to be monitoring.
On rare occasions, you might need two such compromises to fully describe how handicapped an organization is by its physical layout, but most of the time, one will be enough.
Legacy Structures
It didn’t take much additional reflection to observe that by mapping functions according to the way things used be done, you could describe the way an organization was compromised by its own history.
Take insurance, for example – in ages past, underwriters needed to calculate the risks being assumed by a proposed insurance policy, each of which was a custom contract between the agency and the insured. As policies become standardized, you need more sales people and fewer ‘back room’ personnel, i.e. underwriters – but your physical layout and infrastructure still have to fit into the old office space. There are two choices: remodel the operations’ infrastructure (expensive and time-consuming) or make the salespeople go to the customers and use the headquarters as just a home base.
Field sales imply a commission payment basis. And lo and behold, if you look into the history of the industry, you will find that there was a period (bracketing the two World Wars by some margin) in which insurance agents did exactly that – and some operations still operate in the same fashion. Others took the plunge and remodeled, and now offer a more ‘retail’ environment in which over-the-counter insurance policies are offered by salespeople.
Wider application
If you were to translate a narrative into a logical structure – the story of PCs exploring a dungeon, for example – you can translate that logical structure into a physical map. No need to actually draw that map; just diagram the story, complete with alternative paths for the PCs to choose between.
A brief example may be in order:
1. The Goblins mistake the PCs for allies of the Spiders of level 2. They insist that the PCs prove their innocence in a trial of honor similar to a dunking platform used to test for witchcraft.
2. If the PCs refuse the test or escape from it, they will find themselves confronted by the Deer-minotaurs to the East, with Goblins in hot pursuit.
3. If they pass the test, the Goblins will command a feast at which they will tell the PCs of the enslaved Dwarves of the deeper passages.
4. The Spiders who have enslaved the Dwarves are actually Phase Spider variant Ilithids. They have lost some of their psychic abilities but gained the defensive abilities implied, and retain the manipulative cunning, cruelty, and intelligence of the Ilithids.
And so on.
Note that each of these major elements can be broken down in similar fashion to detail the function, society, and culture of those encountered. Specify everything that the “Deer-minotaurs” need to survive and where they get these resources, and you build their entire environment and behavior around them.
The same logical principle applies to everything from accountancy firms to space stations, from thief’s guilds to temples.
Map the logic, with any flaws and compromises, any legacies and ideological influences, and with just a couple of brief notes, you can translate the resulting diagram into a physical ‘reality,’ ready for consumption – in a fraction of the prep time.
Discover more from Campaign Mastery
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Comments Off on Mapping Through Logic and Flavor