It’s happened to all of us – we receive some paperwork that is important, do whatever we have to do with it, and then put it away for the next time we need it. And then, when the time comes, can’t remember exactly where it is – or it isn’t where we thought it was.

It’s not just true of paperwork, either – my personal history is replete of examples of putting something away ‘somewhere safe’ and needing to search for it when it once again became needed.

There are analogous situations in other contexts, too. An office worker files a document somewhere. Someone else, at a later time, needs to find it – that might be a temp, a manager, a replacement, or a thief.

In The Hero System

In writing the Adventurer’s Club adventure currently in progress, an in-game situation of this type has been anticipated, and so we turned our attention to the rules to see how the game mechanics handled the situation.

And quickly ran into a brick wall.

There was no ‘search’ skill.

We agreed that if the object of the search was out in the open, a simple perception roll would suffice, perhaps with a negative modifier for haste or obscurity – we’re used to such situations and can handle them without batting eyelids.

In time, we discovered “Concealment”, which is described in the game mechanics as representing “a character’s ability to hide things and find things others have hidden – important papers, weapons, jewels, artifacts, drugs, and so forth”.

But this implies a deliberate act of concealment – which is not the case in those examples proffered earlier. Nevertheless, it’s the closest thing that we could find anywhere in the game system.

There is also a list of Sight Perception Modifiers in the rulebook, and the following notes:

“Like Skill Rolls, PER Rolls are subject to modifiers. Some of these modifiers are the same as those for Skills, others are different or specific to PER rolls based on a given Sense.

Skill Modifiers

“As a general rule, GMs can apply the following types of Skill Modifiers to PER Rolls (see p45) for details:

• modifiers for Routine, Easy, Difficult, and so on;
• taking extra time; and
• excellent or poor conditions.

“Other such modifiers apply as the GM sees fit.

Range Modifier

“Attempts to perceive things at a distance are subject to the Range Modifier. See page 373.”

All these seem reasonably relevant to the question.

The broader question, in context:

This sort of question comes up in RPGs all the time, regardless of the game system that you are using – usually as a result of a PC doing something that the game mechanics didn’t anticipate.

It’s relatively rare for such problems to come up when you can take your time to consider a solution. As such, this is an unusual opportunity to examine House Rules and the processes of crafting them.

While this specific question might not be relevant to the game system your campaign employs, it’s a near-certainty that, sooner or later, some other gap in the rules will open up beneath your GMing feet – so this is a chance to think about the processes involved and set some basic rules to make life just a little bit easier when it happens.

Past Examinations Of The Subject

As you would expect of such a broad topic, this is hardly the first time that it’s come up here at Campaign Mastery. The following articles seem especially pertinent (excerpts from the Blogdex Metagame page, plus some extras tagged as relating to “House Rules”):

• Ask The GMs: Going Beyond The Rules – How do you extrapolate from existing rules to cover new situations?
• The House Always Wins: Examining the Concept of House Rules – I look at the basics of House Rules – and in particular why campaigns have them. Along the way I introduce readers to some of the many controversies relating to the subject that have raged amongst gamers for as long as I’ve been involved in the hobby. I have some fun with some of my players in the comments.
• Precision Vs Holistic Skill Interpretation – Skills can either be interpreted as strictly and explicitly defined within the mechanics, or can be viewed as incorporating anything related to the skill’s application that isn’t explicitly covered by a separate skill, which I refer to as the Holistic approach. The examples offered make a strong case for the latter.
• The Personal Computer analogy and some Truths about House Rules – I realized that constructing a campaign was analogous to constructing a Personal Computer, that the analogy revealed some valuable insights into the relationships between different bodies of rules, and that there were some especially notable points to be made in this context about House Rules and importing rules from other game systems.
• The Blind Enforcer: The Reflex Application Of Rules – The speed of events in the computer world mandate that rules be codified and violations detected, and acted upon, automatically. Yet, human behavior does not readily boil down to neat straight lines, and that opens the door to rules being enforced when they shouldn’t, or not being applied when they should. Human Error is an inherent part of the system. I use these thoughts to re-examine the question of how much dominion the GM should have over the rules and update a previous article, Blat! Zot! Pow! The Rules Of Genre In RPGs, which examined these issues from a genre-and-campaign perspective.
• House Rules – For Pulp (and other RPGs) – This article lists (and offers as a freebie download) the house rules that my co-GM and I have developed for our Pulp campaign, the first in a series of four on the subject. I then discuss the meanings and implications of some of the rules, and the broader principle from which they were derived (which apply to every campaign.
• “I Can Do That” – Everyman Skills For Pulp – After (briefly) explaining the skills system within Hero Games’ Champions Fifth Edition, I look at the everyman skills that we give the PCs (and NPCs) in our Pulp Campaign, provide some additional rules relating to their use, then expand on the concept of Everyman Skills to adapt the principle to other game systems, like D&D/Pathfinder.
• Phase 1: Inspiration from the ‘New Beginnings’ series – I list and analyze 23 sources of inspiration, and discuss what to do with the ideas that they generate. Along the way, House Rules Theory and Campaign Ideas get discussed.
• Phase 4: Development from the ‘New Beginning’ series – Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major ‘bones’ of the campaign skeleton.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the ‘New Beginnings’ series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• Phase 9: Completion from the ‘New Beginnings’ series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
• The Prohibition Disjunction: When Rules Go Bad looks at the integration of House Rules and Official Mechanics, amongst other aspects of Rules Failures.
• A Role To Play – this article is all about roleplaying and inhabiting a character. One section discusses how game mechanics can inhibit this and how that problem can be turned into a characterization asset with a little House Rules judo.
• Combining Abilities: Teamwork and Synergy between RPG Characters (updated) – most game systems try very hard to ignore the complicated question of multiple characters cooperating to solve a problem, even though they are the sort of problems that crop up in actual game-play all the time. I bite the bullet, posing 5 specific problems and multiple possible game mechanics solutions to uncover solutions that will work.
• A Wealth Of Stylistic Factors – giving each campaign its own style takes time and effort, and that’s what this article is all about. One of the contributing factors is House Rules, and in the relevant section, the article looks at that contribution and how to choose House Rules that will lend themselves to the style that you want to achieve.
• To Roll Or Not To Roll, pt 1 and To Roll Or Not To Roll, pt 2 – there are times when it can be more useful to the GM and his game to have a PC not roll for something. This two-part article (originally conceived as one big one) looks at the why, when, how, and the implications. If it looks familiar, it’s because it was only published a couple of months ago.

There are others, but they are more peripheral to the subject. In particular, some of the articles tagged “Philosophy” may be useful (there are only 150 of them – 151, counting this one.

A Reflection Of Expertise

First, I want to propose a way of handling the “searching an office” situation, so that I can exclude it from the more general question.

Proposed House Rule: If an object or document is filed or placed in a relevant location by someone who has a skill that is relevant to the placement of that object or document, a different character can use that same skill to locate the object or document. The skill of the original individual, divided by 5 and -2, is used as a modifier to the subsequent roll. This rule explicitly excludes anything deliberately hidden, including placement of sensitive documents into a safe.

If a secretary files a document in a filing cabinet, for example, their bureaucracy skill (or whatever the equivalent is in your game system) relates directly to the logic that defines the placement of that document. The better they are at their job, the more sensible and rational their filing system will be, and the more easily someone else will find it to locate the document using that same skill.

The same should also apply to someone with different lenses for a telescope (except that we’re talking about their Astronomy skill), and so on.

It’s up to the GM to decide whether or not a particular skill is relevant to the placement of the subject of the search.

I can’t help but remember passing exchanges from M*A*S*H about Radar’s filing system – I wish I could remember which episode so that I could quote from it more directly than simply name-dropping the series. It made perfect sense to Radar but no-one else could follow it. There was also a scene in which Frank Burns found out which cabinet contained Radar’s Bugle.

In such a case, bureaucracy would not help, in fact it would continually lead one astray. Radar clearly was not using that skill to place his files, he instead had a system of his own in which he had expertise.

If the character searching doesn’t have the right skill, this rule doesn’t apply, and this becomes a more general search.

Lost and (hopefully) Found

When something is not where we expect it to be, it’s a sure bet that the placement did not follow any replicable logic and did not utilize a skill to determine where such logic would place the item.

When this happens to me, there is a definite pattern to the resulting search.

• First, I search all the places that the item might reasonably have been put, in sequence of decreasing likelihood.
• Second, I search all the places that I put things the last time I remember having the item, even if unlikely.
• Third, I search all the places that I can think of that are plausible but unlikely.
• Fourth, I search all the places that contain similar items to the one that’s been misplaced.
• Fifth, I look at all the places where I routinely sit and do things.
• Sixth, I repeat search 1, but casting a wider net, and also searching nearby.
• Seventh, I start a systematic and thorough search by geographic area.

For example, let’s apply that sequence to searching for a set of keys:

1. I check the peg where I keep my keys, and the floor underneath. I check the draws and bags in the vicinity where the keys might have landed had they fallen. I check the bags that I use when shopping. I check the pockets of everything that I’ve worn in the last few days. I’ll also walk the ground between the bus stop and my front door – just in case.
2. The last time I went out shopping, what did I buy? Where did I put those purchases? Might I have put the keys down somewhere nearby – on top of the refrigerator, for example? Might I have dropped them without noticing when using them to unlock the gate or the front door?
3. If I bought groceries, I would have organized the shopping in the game room (because it has a large clear area that I can sit down at). Might the keys be on that table, or on the floor nearby I usually keep my mobile phone in the same pocket as the keys when I go out – where is the phone now? Are the keys nearby? Are the keys in the bathroom somewhere? etc.
4. I have a hook where I keep a spare set of keys. This takes most of the panic out of the loss (which is why I keep the spare set). Could I have put the original with the spares? Not likely, but I’ll check, anyway More to the point, there are a couple of places where I will hide other keys that I am looking after for someone else – could my keys have ended up there, somehow? There are places where I used to put my keys before I put up the hook – could muscle memory have put them there?
5. Next I will search my work area – especially looking behind the laptop, under the bag I use to gather rubbish, and so on, on the premise that I have simply put them down somewhere.
6. Back to search one – this time I’ll not only double check the pockets, I’ll double-check that I haven’t missed a pocket, and I’ll look to see if they could have been left in a pocket and then fallen out. I’ll look to see if they might have fallen out of one pocket and into another (it’s happened!) And I’ll look beneath the hook again, but this time I’ll get my eyes down to floor level, and so on.
7. If I haven’t found them by now, the odds are that they are lost – at least for now. I’ll start a systematic search, though, starting at the front door and proceeding through the unit – after taking a break to calm myself and get my breath back.

In other words, likely places, then plausible places, then possible places, then everywhere..

The process is the same if I’m looking for a document (my lease? a power bill?), a book, a grocery item, a screwdriver, a CD or DVD…

Translating the Search Concept

In order to translate this process into game mechanics, the first principle is to use the existing mechanics as much as possible – don’t reinvent the wheel. That means that searching for a lost or misplaced object or document has to be based on “Concealment”, which needs to be expanded to cover items that are placed with no intention of concealment.

That means that there is no concealment roll to hide the object in question; that should be replaced with a modifier, or with a series of them, and the only roll will be a ‘concealment’ roll to find the search object.

It’s worth remembering that we have excluded from these rules anything that has been deliberately concealed, or that is in plain sight.

I have compiled a list of 8 modifiers that reflect different attributes of a search object within the context of the environment being searched. There may be others, but these will do for now.

0. Scope

Before listing the modifiers and assigning values to them, though, it’s a good idea to establish some scope. I have the notion that every 2 by which the roll fails ticks off another of the search location levels – so if you succeed, then what you are looking for is in the first place you look according to the logical schema described earlier.

If you fail by 1 or 2, then it’s not in the first group of places, but it is in the second. If you fail by 3 or 4, then it’s not in location groups 1 or 2, but it is in three, and so on. With six categories, that means that a result of failure by 10 is perfectly acceptable, and it will actually require failure by 12 (or the GM having determined that what the PCs are looking for is not there) for the search object not to be found – eventually.

The lowest actual roll you can make on 3d6 is a 3. The default value of the concealment skill is 9+(STAT/5), and the average value of INT – the stat in question – is 10. So that means 11/-, maybe 12 or 13 or less. Call it 12 or less on average. Rolling a three gives a fail by 10, which works.

But the average roll on 3d6 is 10.5 – a failure by 1.5. We want that to fall in the middle of the ‘failure’ range, about -5.

With 8 modifiers, most of them should have an average value of -1. But some of them will have positive modifiers – so a better choice would be +1 and -2 (giving the same average).

1. Size

This is a completely subjective assessment by the GM – an unusually thick folder might be large in comparison to everything else in a filing system, or it might be small in comparison to a building of large files. A flash drive is likely to be small.

Large enough to be relatively obvious: +1
Typical: +0
Small: -2

2. Obviousness vs Difficulty

How much does the object stand out? One particular baseball in a box of them doesn’t stand out very well. One particular piece of paper will be obvious if you can identify it as the target with a glance, and not if you have to read each of large stack of papers to find the one that you want.

Folded into this are all questions of environmental difficulty. Searching for an object buried in silt and underwater to a depth that you can’t see except with a torch, is obviously difficult. Trying to read something written in red ink when the illumination is also red is difficult. Trying to search calmly and efficiently while people are shooting at you is difficult.

Object is easy to find: +1
Object is not hard to find: +0
Object is hard to find: -2

3. Distinctiveness & Contrast

Again, let’s say we’re talking about a folder. If it has red stripes around the edges, and is the only folder that has this feature. Okay, maybe that’s covered under “Obviousness”. So let’s go with something slightly more subtle: this is the only folder stamped “top secret”. Or maybe the document inside is the only one signed in purple ink. It doesn’t matter what the point of distinctiveness is, what matters is that the object can be identified, at a glance, as the object of the search.

It might be the only set of blueprints. It might be the only papers with a green cover sheet, like my lease. If a book, it might be distinctively sized, or have a distinctive cover.

Let’s say that I’m looking in my DVD collection for a particular James Bond movie. Several of the movies in that series have matching covers in terms of color and font – that lets me go to the group right away. It might take a stranger a little longer, but you only have to see Thunderball and Dr No and Goldfinger all in a set and you’ve narrowed the scope of the search drastically.

Object is distinctive: +1
Object blends in: -2
Otherwise: +0

4. Luck

I’ve written about Luck in the Hero System before. See, for example,

Chances Are: Lessons in Probability.

Assuming that he has rolled some luck points, a character can use them to his advantage in conducting a search.

One level: +1
Two levels: +3
Three levels: +5

5. Logic & System vs Haste

I don’t quite know what it says about me that I have a defined system for searching for something that I have misplaced. But having such a system is clearly beneficial than blindly searching in random locations.

If the character can articulate a sensible search strategy, that should be worth a bonus – but such a search may well take longer, because you are taking more care. So it’s more thorough, but that comes at a cost.

The more time pressure the searcher is under, the more that should impact their chances of finding what they are looking for. There have been times when I’ve been searching for something in haste, and picked up and set aside the object of my search because in my haste, I didn’t recognize it as what I was looking for.

This is one of those rare modifiers in which both a positive and a negative can apply.

Articulated system or logic to the search: +2

Panicked Search (1/16th normal time): -5
Searching Frantically (1/8 normal time): -4
Searching in great haste (1/4 normal time): -3
Searching in haste (1/2 normal time): -2
Taking extra time: +1
Taking a lot of extra time: +2
Leisurely / Casual search: +3

Update#1 28 Feb 2023

My co-GM for the Adventurer’s Club campaign, for which all this work was done, spotted something that I missed.

Quiet Search (Enemies down the hall): up one rank on the time applicable
Silent Search (Enemies in the next room or closer): up two ranks on the time applicable

6. Mess vs Order (environment)

If you’re searching an area that is nice and neat (and assuming that you don’t make a mess in the process), it can make it a lot easier to find something. If you’re searching through a mess, there is going to be a loss of time from moving irrelevant stuff aside, if nothing else.

Size of the object being searched also makes a big difference here, for obvious reasons.

Large object, tidy environment: +1
Small object, tidy environment: +1
Large Object, messy environment: +0
Small Object, messy environment: -2

7. Numbers

Many hands make light work. But some searches are so large as to require many hands.

The GM is entitled to set a minimum number of searchers required to complete the search in a reasonable time frame (4 hours, say – but that is also up to the GM and the circumstances). If the searchers can’t reach that minimum number, the ‘reasonable time frame’ blows out proportionately, but there is no additional penalty.

For every 50% over the base requirement or part thereof, there is a +1 modifier.

8. Panic / Emotional Upset

Finally, the state of mind of the searcher is clearly a relevant factor. If you’re calm and controlled, there can be a lack urgency about the search, but being able to assess what you find rationally soon more than makes up for that. On the other hand, if you are emotionally overwrought, crying your eyes out or shouting at the heavens, or in a blind panic or state of extreme fear, that represents a significant hurdle to hinder success.

If you’re vulnerable to emotional distress, this will only get worse as you proceed with the search without finding your target. If that is likely to be the case, or there are hints that the player is growing frustrated at the lack of success, use the overall average to determine the modifier.

Calm state throughout search: +1
Emotional Upset: -2

These eight parameters cover most of the contingencies that I could imagine encountering. One of the things that gives me confidence in that statement is that there were originally only 5 entries on my list, and the others came to me as I wrote and thought more deeply about the subject.

To use the search metaphor, I found the obvious things and then the inobvious ones!

A small sidebar

What’s interesting is that most of these will also apply to attempts to use a Search Engine – the only difference is that the search engine has presented you with a number of places to look for what you want, probably within a long list of things that you don’t. If you’re lucky, or if your Google-fu is strong, it might be high up in the results; or, if your search term is not as good as your think, it might be buried a long way down, or missing altogether.

Other Game Systems

It doesn’t really matter which game system you are playing – it either has rules for searching, or it needs rules for searching!

If you need such a subsystem, the above can be adapted in various ways without great difficulty. So use what I’ve written here as a template, and create a set of rules that integrate into your existing game mechanics.

If your game system already has a system mechanic for this purpose, it might be that the modifiers offered cover something that your system didn’t anticipate, or simply offer a perspective that you had not previously considered.

Above all, I want to emphasize that the context of the search is all-important – the physical context (environment), the degree of resemblance between target and non-target, and the emotional context.

In conclusion, I hope that readers have found something they were looking for from this article!

Sorry – I couldn’t resist…

Update#2 28 Feb 2023

I also converted the article into a two-page set of House Rules for the campaign that may be of use to others.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Today’s article can be viewed as a sequel to Spotlights In Focus: Plot Structure Impacts, which I wrote last November.

That article examined the impact that a plot structure could have on the content of an adventure, and vice-versa, inspired by the work then being done on an plotline for the Adventurer’s Club campaign that my co-GM and I had been working on.

More directly, though, it’s inspired by the technique employed in last Saturday’s successful reboot of the Warcry campaign. This reboot adventure had to accomplish a lot, some of it easy but a lot of it quite difficult:

1. Dust off and reintroduce the campaign, which hadn’t been played since 2012 (see Remembering Stephen Tunnicliff for the reason for the inactivity).
2. Introduce two new PCs and connect them with the protagonist PC
3. Write out two old PCs with a heroic sendoff
4. Apply a layer of fuzziness to all background material deriving from the backstories of those old PCs
5. Apply a second layer of fuzziness to many established building blocks of the game universe
6. Update that game universe to make it consistent with what had been uncovered in the Zenith-3 campaign
7. Expand on the game universe and it’s meta-dynamics
8. Ensure that all PCs, both old and new, were critical to the outcome
9. Challenge all PCs according to their abilities
10. Have the adventure be consistent with the established, fairly freewheeling, style of the campaign
11. Make it fun for all three players.

All that in a single afternoon’s play.

My solution was to have the protagonist experiencing multiple time tracks, one in which the universe was facing an existential threat, and one where that threat had been resolved, but with an unstable solution. Once the protagonist became aware of the threat and it’s scale and scope, his goal was to identify a more stable solution, establishing the time-line with the new PCs as the new “reality”, replacing the one which contained the old PCs – and have this enterprise suddenly seemed doomed to failure until those old PCs (once again) pulled a rabbit out of their (metaphoric) hats, achieving victory through their self-sacrifice.

Writing this adventure required a new structure, one not entirely dissimilar to that described in the earlier posts, but also required a new adventure format to make it practical. And, in the course of that writing, I discovered that the format used when writing an adventure could – in at least some cases – be just as profound in its effects on the adventure content as the structure.

Today’s article explores what I learned, extrapolates on the resulting techniques, and adds a quartet of applications that use this format as a tool.

The Basic Structure

I want to start this discussion with the simplest possible model and add refinements and complications from that starting point, rather than plunging headlong into the harder stuff.

The basic structure is this:

Two columns, and multiple rows. Each cell contains enough game prep material to advance the plotline or plotlines, and then comes to an end. Each column represents a single plot thread.

This enables the GM to balance the attention and spotlight focus between the two plotlines. Events in column 2 can be occurring simultaneous with those in column 1, or sequentially, or with an overlap, or even with a gap, though the latter should be rare and consist of hand-waving delays and travel between significant plot points..

This was the exact format that I used for the Warcry adventure, which was unusual in that the protagonist was experiencing both columns’ action sequentially, even though they were occurring in distinctly different places and circumstances.

Flow

In writing this adventure, I found myself compelled to pay far closer attention to the transitions and flow between the two plot sequences. I could rough-draft each plotline in full, but needed to tweak the resulting outlines significantly.

For example, in plot thread one, there was a substantial amount of exposition to get through – time in which the protagonist was the only PC with a player present. My first draft had this as a fairly monolithic block of prepared text, but it became instantly apparent that this would not fly; I needed to continually intercut away from that monolithic block of text to action focusing on the other PCs present, and that action had to be plot-significant, too.

I started with a relatively trivial encounter that was designed to let the new PCs show off some of what they could do. But, once enough of the exposition had been presented, that encounter was usurped by an illustration of what the exposition was describing. The threat went from something being discussed to front-and-center and in-your-face.

This not only made the action more dramatic, it lent weight and substance to the dry recitation of prepared dialogue.

Participants

Structuring the adventure in this way made a relatively trivial task – that of making sure that every participating character had something to be doing at any given point (even if that were simply waiting around or roleplaying) by subdividing the progress even more than would be the case in a normal act / chapter / scene structure.

While that was relatively trivial in this case, I could immediately see that in other campaigns, this could be a significant advantage. In the Zenith-3 campaign, for example, there are occasions when all four PCs and two central NPCs have plotlines of their own running, and these frequently intersect. On top of that, while it doesn’t happen frequently, there can be interactions with another 20 or 30 NPCs – some recurring, some occasional, and some transient. There’s little more inconvenient than discovering in the heat of play that an NPC was simply hand-waved out of existence in between significant contributions; it’s corrosive on a sense of realism. What they are doing might never actually be shown “on camera” within the adventure, but having some sort of checklist that shows them doing something means that you’re prepared if a PC goes looking for them, or simply asks what they have been up to.

Mismatched Participant Numbers

Of course, there is absolutely no need to have a column for each character. The basic model already divides the plot by plot thread, and intertwines those plot threads – not by participating PC. Naturally, you can have combinations and groups of PCs within a single plot thread – it doesn’t have to be single-character plots.

It doesn’t take a lot of rumination to see that the participation rosters don’t have to be fixed, either. One character can start of participating in plot thread one, then get distracted by plot thread two, while someone from plot thread two may or may not take their place in plot thread one.

The subdivision of events into relatively small slices means that all you really need to do is make sure that each significant character is name-checked in each row to make sure that the spotlight is being shared reasonably evenly.

Content

That is also dependent on the amount of content that you place in each cell. Based on both my experience with the Warcry adventure, with similar structures in the Zenith-3 campaign, and the recent adventure structuring in the Adventurer’s Club, I would aim for 2-4 cells per ‘page’. That usually translates to 1-3 paragraphs per cell.

It’s necessary to convert conversation into ‘paragraphs’ because you need to allow for replies by the PC(s). The assumption I make is that they will be roughly as long-winded as the NPCs with their canned dialogue – sometimes more, sometimes less, but that’s a good starting point. I can then tweak that estimate based on the loquaciousness of the player – PC combination and the situation.

Characters / Players who are outside their comfort zone, in particular, will either respond by padding their vocal contributions or by becoming more curt.

Be aware, too, of how quickly things will proceed if the player chooses to “roll-play” instead of “role-playing” – if the players are any good (mine are) this will usually indicate either unfamiliarity with the game mechanics or a subject / situation in which their PC has greater expertise than the player does.

For example, one PC in the Zenith-3 campaign has been taking painting lessons, starting with still-lifes and progressing to live models. I know more than enough on the topic to improv detailed dialogue and narrative regarding any given image or subject, but the player of the PC in question is not only relatively unfamiliar with it, he has no particular interest in the subject. As a result, he frequently resorts to roll-playing and relies on me to ‘translate’ the results into something that both sounds as competent as the character is, but that also makes sense to him as a player.

Another PC in that campaign has been getting into woodcarving, under the tutelage of a master craftsman. I know relatively little about the subject, but the player knows even less. But I’m good at pretending to knowledge that I don’t have (see The Expert In Everything), so with a bit of research and prep, I can make the player feel like he is successfully simulating the expertise that his character is acquiring.

Below is a screen capture of the Warcry adventure (shrunken sufficiently to show an entire page). Although black borders were used in the original, I’ve rendered these in red to make them more visible.



There are a number of points to highlight in this representation.

• First, row one has one large paragraph in column 1 and two medium paragraphs in column 2.
• Row two has an even larger paragraph in column 1 and a medium paragraph in column 2. This indicates that the initial focus of the adventure is plot thread 1, labeled Reality 1, which is appropriate because it starts from the point of what was prior to the rebooting.
• The third row has a single line plus a small paragraph in column one and a paragraph of similar size in column 2. The equality is significant.
• The fourth and final row on this page has a medium paragraph in column 1 and a paragraph of similar size plus a smaller one in column 2, reflecting a shift in focus as the significance of the new reality starts to become apparent.
• To avoid cells that span two pages, additional empty lines have been added to the bottom of column 2, row 4.

The narrative flow within the resulting page looks like this:



You deal fully with the contents of a cell and then move on to the cell alongside it. When you get to the end of the row, you return attention to the next cell of column 1. It therefore doesn’t matter how many columns you have, i.e. how many plot threads you are tying together.

It is also worth noting that overall, the spotlight is shared roughly equally between the two plot threads, as signified by the amount of text in each column.

Complications

As soon as you start wanting to check for balanced participation, and making sure that you don’t have the one character in two places at once, and that a given cell has been given its final narrative ‘polish’, and any number of other such considerations, you start complicating the structure.

Fortunately, it’s not all that hard to tweak the text formatting to take a lot of the sting out of these activities.

One technique to consider is highlighting any character names each time they appear – which makes it easy to scan a row and pick out anyone who’s missing, or who is appearing when they shouldn’t.

A refinement would be to use a different highlight color for significant NPCs (I consider any NPC who might participate in a conversation with a PC to be ‘significant’ in that scene, whether they do or not).

You could go even further and color-code enemies, allies, and neutrals differently, or to recognize some other significant affiliation. But it doesn’t take too much of this to create so much color that the text visually ‘drowns’ in it, and the benefits of such highlighting are lost.



It’s often useful to create a little space to one side of the columns, like the example above. You can then use a diagonal slash in red to check off one requirement, and a diagonal slash the other way to check off another. You can add a tick or a circle in black or blue to indicate that there is a relevant illustration / map / diagram NEEDED – or that one has been sourced and prepared.

Yes, you could use a separate column for each of these purposes, but that would then require headings so that you knew what each one represented, and the results quickly become counterproductive. A single cell which can be used in several different ways is not only easier to use in and of itself, but also forces a minimalist approach to the whole checklist question. While that can be constraining, it’s usually beneficial in the long run.

Switches & Segues

You don’t have to work very long on a structure of this kind to realize that how you switch from one plot thread – one narrative – to another is a whole new challenge. In general, these segues should become shorter – go into detail at first to establish the principle and who is where and doing what, and then assume that players will remember this the next time you turn your attention back to them.

But there is another kind of switch that’s worth highlighting: specific characters can migrate from one plot thread to another. Focusing attention on them makes them a natural vehicle for the segue that helps to keep them fresh, dynamic and interesting.

For example, contemplate the following:

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4
A	B	C	D
A+B		C	D
B	A		C+D
	D+A	A+C	B

 

If A, B, C, and D are four different PCs, this illustrates how plot threads can be left dangling while players are being distracted by developments in another plot thread. If you end up with the same total number of occupied cells in all columns, the focus is roughly equally distributed between the four. Notice, also, the bottom row of the example, which uses A as a bridge between plot threads 2 and 3. This generally means on the next row (or the one after at the latest), A should not appear at all, so as to ensure equitable distribution of the spotlight.

This shows just how complex a narrative structure you can weave using a table to contain and structure that narrative.

A Variant Structure

It’s also possible to encode a plot structure with one character per column. This enables an additional column to be used to encode a reference to a particular plotline or plot development (I’ve illustrated this sort of thing any number of times here at Campaign Mastery, see the plot thread that occupies the last 1/3 of The Echo Of Events To Come: foreshadowing in a campaign structure, for example.

This can encompass all the problems described below in the “Four Or More Threads” section if you have more than 3 PCs to track, so it’s a lot more complicated in many ways, but it can still be a useful planning tool.

Three Threads

That’s getting a little ahead of ourselves; if it weren’t for the possibility of there being only 2 or 3 feature characters to track, I would not have mentioned the variant structure until later in the article.

So let’s take a step back and look at the somewhat simpler structure that is a Three-plot-thread braiding:

The basic structure of the three-ply braid looks, somewhat predictably, like this:

– three central columns (one for each plot thread) and two small ones on either side of the page for tracking whatever it is that you feel the need to track.

Within this basic structure, you have all the options and tools previously described available to you, plus a few that I have yet to get to.

Why Use A Three-Thread Model?

Let’s say that you have one significant plot thread, and two smaller ones that between them are equal to the significant plot thread. That would be one valid reason for using a three-thread model.

Presumably, one of those then leads into the main plot, which brings all the PCs together on the one problem – which may constitute a fourth plot thread.

There are other possible reasons, but they are all variations on this theme. For example, I once ran an adventure sequence in which one PC was driving the action while the others were kept hopping dealing with the fallout of those actions.

If you have six PCs, you can group them into two trios or three pairs – so having the three plot-thread model up your sleeve gives you a lot of flexibility.

But the best answer – and it’s still a variation on the same theme – is that you can dedicate one of the threads to the Villain and his actions / reactions to events. These never get related to the players, they show up as events in the first two plot threads if and when the developments get noticed. What they do is ensure that the Villain and his plot is developing and evolving in response to the PCs and their activities. It’s a planning tool of significant benefit.

Empty Cells

Further refinements are possible by leaving some cells empty. This only works with more than two plot threads, but enables you to sequence those plot threads as desired – this was a key point in the design of “Lucifer Rising”, the plot discussed in the article on plot structure.

A Second Variant

Let’s start with me name-dropping the Kree-Skrull War from the Avengers comic. For those who were comic readers of the time, this was the most epic plotline that had ever appeared in comic form, eclipsing earlier examples from the Fantastic Four (for example, the Inhumans plotline) and DC’s annual team-ups between the Justice League and Justice Society.

The three-thread structure facilitates the planning and construction of such epic plotlines by treating the events befalling one faction as a plot thread. In plot thread one, the supreme command of faction one might initiate a military confrontation with faction two as a distraction from a more subtle plot. A subsequent entry in faction two’s narrative then describes the outcome of the confrontation, while an entry in faction three’s plot sequence (the PCs) makes them aware of the confrontation and hints at it’s true purpose. There would then be a further entry for faction one detailing the success or failure or progress of the true plot.

This technique works whether faction one are Drow and faction 2 elves, or orcs and humans, or whatever the participants are to be. If necessary, coalesce factions into alliances to reduce the number of plot ‘threads’ to three, or at most, four.

Four-or-more Threads

Which brings me to the four-or-more structure.

If you use landscape orientation and a relatively small font, you might conceivably be able to manage four primary columns, but experience tells me that this is going to be touch-and-go.

For perspective on that, here are three views of the front page of the Zenith-3 adventure, The Tangled Web – the first one shows the two-column orientation used for this traditionally-formatted adventure.

The second shows a mock-up of a four-column version: I should mention that I tried formatting (for real) this way and found that because a page was larger than would show on my screen at full-width, I was having to scroll up and down frequently.

Note that the text seems denser, but you actually fit slightly less on a page. Of course, the title graphic could be reduced in size to a single column – gaining almost half a page:

This means that I could not hold the front page up to show the players (helping to set the tone for the adventure) – in fact, the subtitle is all but invisible at this size. And, because we’ve increased the text content about 50%, the already annoying ‘scroll up and down’ problem will be 50% worse, too.

As a rule of thumb, then, four columns and content don’t mix very well, even in landscape mode.

Practical Limitations Of Structure

That requires a modification to the structure of the format. Instead of content going directly into the columns, it needs to be moved, and maybe even formatted in a two-column mode just like my 2-column version of A Tangled Web. This is then linked to the planning section (where information is kept in the four-column / four-thread format) by a simple sequential code.

Unfortunately, my example is going to require a little additional explanation because I made an assumption that I probably shouldn’t have: that the adventure started with an all-four-threads scene and then split into two threads, each of which then bifurcated into four – and that the first three cells are all on page one of the document and this is page two..

That’s why the first entry is numbered four in the example below; it’s probably a more realistic example but also more confusing – but I don’t have time to redo it.



In the top section, we have the scene number and space to write in the PCs who are part of the scene. There is also the usual space for ticks and crosses to signify that work is required / done.

This enables the top section to be used as a planning tool just as was the case with the earlier versions.

The index number then points to the content section. Note that with 11 rows of content, there would only be room for a line or two. Anything more and you have to move scenes 12-15 to the next page – and that can be extremely inconvenient.

Conclusion: it can be done – but it might be more trouble than it’s worth.

Coming Together

Let’s go back to our three-column model. How do you represent it when two plot threads converge into a single situation? This can be expected to happen when the PCs start coming together for the main plot of the adventure, after all, so it’s likely to happen regularly.

The example above demonstrates how to handle this – it’s a simple matter of selecting the cells that have come together and merging the cells. Most software will be able to handle this process. What’s more, if you do this before creating rows below the merge, some software preserves the new structure when additional rows are added (some software doesn’t, though!).

Splitting Apart

Similarly, having a plot thread bifurcate into two separate sets of activities or lines of investigation is achieved by merging the cells prior to the bifurcation:

Seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it?

Non-Plotting Applications

If this were nothing more than a way of arranging the text contents that make up your game prep, it would be a curiosity, something to file away for use on the occasional rare occasion, nothing more.

But there’s a lot more that can be done with this approach. I’ve already mentioned the two factions and a force of PCs caught in the middle (using the three column structure) – but there are so many useful things to do with the basic two-column mode that it will shine as a planning and background construction tool on a frequent basis.

I have four – well, three-and-a-half – such applications to throw into your toolkit.

1: A Tale Of Governments

Almost every government can be described as a contest between two factions – it doesn’t matter if there are democratic processes or if we’re talking alliances in a noble court or merchants / guilds vs authority.

That means that you can use the two-column model to construct a political history, working backwards, and mentioning only events that were politically significant.

Nor do the membership of any given faction have to remain consistent – you can have affiliations and alliances that shift and change in response to political intrigue, just as the Republican Party are both the modern day party and the party of Lincoln, and which freed the slaves, while the Democrats have gone from the party of business (slave-owners) interests to the more progressive of the two parties.

Even the form of government can have changed (and frequently will have done so). Before America was the USA, it was the British Colonies – and a monarchy. Every culture has its revolutions – bloodless at times, bloody more often.

2: Family Legacies

Unless your species has extremely unusual biology, your sentient species will normally have a maternal line and a paternal line. That means that the simple two-column model can be used to track backwards, one story / anecdote at a time, compiling an ancestry with family legends.

Each row can either represent an individual (in which case I suggest color coding for generations) or a generation.

Of course, with every step into the past, the chances of error or distortion increase – but this is better handled as a chance of accuracy or a degree of accuracy, because you can simply divide it by a fixed ratio.

I recommend multiplication by 0.8 for individuals and 0.6 for generations in isolation. But I would probably add 5% for individuals or generations that were personally known by the character compiling this family archive.

• Siblings: 100%. Maybe 95%.
• Parents: 65%. Aunts & Uncles, ditto – unless the person has never met them, yielding 60% accuracy..
• Grandparents: 60% of 65% = 39%. So more than half of what you think you know about them is wrong. If you’ve met them, +5% to get 44%.
• Great Grandparents: 60% of 39% is 23.4%. And this is the generation when meeting these ancestors starts to become problematic.
• Great-Great-Grandparents 60% of 23.4% is 14.04%. 17 facts in 20 are distorted at best.
• Great-Great-Great-Grandparents: 60% of 14.04 = 8.424%. There might be a single grain of truth in there somewhere.

….and so on. But this also works tracing forwards – Descendants of the siblings of your grandparents are as well-known as going back two more generations (because there’s a 2-generation gap) – so that’s 14.04%, possibly +5% if you once met your distant cousins.

Of course, you can play around with these numbers as you see fit; this is a starting point.

I have to admit that I like the generational model because it basically means that there’s one family myth or significant figure in each generation, yielding a manageable history – but that’s up to you, and some cultures will be more tightly-knit.



This collage contains an American Football (Simanek, CC0), Mohammed Shami warming up to bowl against England at Edgbaston, in 2018 (Aidan Sammons, CC BY 2.0), an excerpt from a night view of the Sydney Cricket Ground as it often appears during the Big Bash, half of the games of which are night-time (Mathew F, CC BY 2.0), a Mercedes AMG which was the car to beat in the 2023 Bathurst 12-hour race – but this example is from a couple of years ago (jason goulding from Muswellbrook, Australia, CC BY 2.0, and Australian batsman Steve Smith hooking a shot (www.davidmolloyphotography.com, CC BY 2.0), all via Wikimedia Commons. There was also a couple of bicycle races and some swimming, and basketball, and more. Summer in Australia is VERY sports-heavy!

3: Sporting Seasons

Today, according to the morning news, is the day of the Superbowl.

At the same time, there is a cricket test-match and one-day international series underway in India, as the Australian Team attempt to wrestle the subcontinent into sporting submission.

And we’ve just had something called the Big Bash, and the Bathurst 12-hour.

Before that, there was a (cricket) test series against South Africa – so there’s been a lot of sport happening lately.

That got me thinking about sporting seasons and how they could always be characterized, no matter what the sport, into a clash between two rivals; there may have been others at the start of the season, but by the end, it always comes down to two rivals.

That always reminds me of the scene in Major League in which Coach Brown says, “I figure it’s gonna take xx more wins to reach the playoffs” – I forget the exact number.

That entire movie is the story of one turbulent season in the life of the Cleveland Indians Major League Baseball team. Which means that – with the benefit of hindsight – an entire season leading up to the grand finale can be written as two simultaneous narratives, one focusing on each of the rivals.

Should it be desirable, you can even work toward a predetermined outcome by telling the story of one team’s season (with their rival-of-the-week being the other narrative thread). This enables you to compile the story one week (game time) at a time until the season reaches its climax.

That also reminds me of the M*A*S*H episode Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind, in which Frank wins big by listening to a late-night broadcast of the games and placing bets with the rest of the camp personnel before the games are rebroadcast at a more “Civilized” hour. There was also another episode in which Charles gambles on baseball, convinced that Klinger is an expert, but I couldn’t track down the name of that one ( looked until I ran out of time).

Trying to write this sort of narrative without some organizing structure is a good way to lose track of pertinent details and have the ‘story’ stall if momentum is ever lost.

4: Grand Final Clashes

Just as obviously, a narrative form of a clash between two rivals can be done on a smaller scale, play by play (or the equivalent). To achieve a credible result, there is a minimum standard of knowledge required regarding the sport, I think. The actual process should be fairly obvious by now.

Not A Perfect Solution

Having spent most of this article singing the praises of the table as a tool, it’s time to come crashing back to earth with a dash of reality. Tables are not a perfect solution, mostly because of the software that is used to create them.

Word Processing Software Limitations

These days, the most common tool is a Word Processor. I have Word, but it takes forever to load, so I try to avoid it, instead using LibreOffice for my more complex tasks. I used to use OpenOffice, but it’s high memory demands made it unsuitable for the laptop that is my front-line computer these days (it has barely enough RAM to get by).

All of these implement tables in slightly different ways, and all have their own quirks, which it is necessary to master. For example, for some reason, LibreOffice puts its Table icon-ribbon at the bottom of the screen, where I never remember to look for it; this forces me to scramble around, looking for the controls to do what I want to do, at least until I again rediscover the table ribbon.

Interface & Formatting Inconveniences

Another of the frequent headaches lies in the reversion of text formatting, in whole or in part, when you copy and paste into a new cell with some Word Processors. Others preserve most of the formatting (tabs seem to be a particularly difficult problem in this respect). Again, every implementation has its own idiosyncrasies that have to be mastered.

A Simple Web-page editor?

A simple alternative that may be of use is to use a web-page editor. I still keep a copy of Frontpage Express around from my Win-98 days because it makes it so much easier to lay out a complex table structure. I then sometimes import the saved html into LibreOffice for final tweaks, but know enough html that I do a lot of it directly in my plain-text editor.

There were some things that Netscape’s equivalent to Frontpage did better, but tables weren’t one of them (from memory). When I was first learning, I quite often bounced the one html document from one editor to the other and back.

These days, though, you need to know CSS to make this solution work. I know just enough to get myself into trouble in this department, I’m afraid. If you’re in the same boat, the Word Processors are probably a better bet.

There are things that you can do with a hacksaw that simply can’t be done with a hand saw. The tools that we use can have a significant impact on what we can do with the words that comprise our raw material. While they are not the arbiter or restrictor of plot structures, they can facilitate or hinder.

In particular, some plot structures are far more accessible through the magic of tables in a Word Processor or WYSIWYG HTML editor (WYSIWYG = “What You See Is What You Get”) – the links near the bottom of the page may be of use in choosing your tools for working with tables if you don’t have one already, or don’t like the one you have).

In fact, there are some things that are extremely difficult or annoying to attempt in any other way. And that makes the table-based approach something that every GM should know about.

I was reading something on Quora the other day that offered a fairly convincing argument that most people wouldn’t recognize real randomness if it bit them on the toe (in less colorful language).

Now, most GMs are not ‘most people’; we work with randomness all the time. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the majority would be just as vulnerable to the common misperception of randomness, and that understanding the difference between perception and reality could be a valuable tool.

Fake Randomness

When most people think of a random distribution of results, they actually think of an even distribution, or a scatter-plot. And, at first blush, that makes sense; each of the possible results of a d20 has an equal likelihood of occurring, and so (over many results) you would expect the number of times any given result comes up to equalize.

The problem is that most people seriously underestimate the number of results that you need in order for that to happen. For example, let’s take a string of five results: 4 – 7 – 8 – 10 – 16. Even probability means that this is just as likely to occur as another valid set of results: 10 – 10 – 10 – 10 – 10. Yet, if you were to show those strings to someone, they would have little hesitation in describing the first as random and the second as decidedly not random.

It’s a known fact that humans absolutely suck at seeing and recognizing randomness. In fact, our brains are hardwired to spot and recognize meaningful patterns taking as many shortcuts as possible in the process to speed it up. Being able to spot the tiger stalking you behind the greenery from a minimal number of glimpses holds an obvious survival benefit.

These shortcuts are what is responsible for the phenomenon of optical illusions. This is one of those subjects that I find absolutely fascinating, so I’ve dealt with it a number of times here at Campaign Mastery:

• Art-Spiration, for the Nov 2022 Blog Carnival;
• The Glow Around The Corner;
• The Power Of Blur, for the June 2021 Blog Carnival;
• A Sharp Lookout: How Much Can You Adventure?; and
• Blind Spots and False Illusions: How much can you really see?

Oh, and while I’m at it, I should probably also mention that this isn’t my first article on the subject of randomness:

• Into Each Chaos, A Little Order Must Fall;
• Pieces Of Ordinary Randomness;
• Randomness In RPGs;
• Principles of Randomness; and finally,
• The Sixes System, which has randomness and probability at the heart of the game mechanics.

So the survival strategies built into us by countless generations of kill-or-be-killed are directly at war with the ability to distinguish the absence of pattern, to such an extent that the mind will try and invent a pattern when none exists.

This reality is responsible for all sorts of things, from Optical Illusions to Eyewitness Contamination to Social interaction during Jury deliberations to Conspiracy Theories and, perhaps, to an even broader application to paranoia itself.

The Truth About Randomness

In reality, then, true randomness doesn’t look anything like an even distribution. So what does it look like, then? And what light can be shed on the number of rolls that you need before a reasonable level of uniformity of result (as perceived and defined by a layman) can be observed?

These are far more complicated questions than it might first appear, so they will take some time to answer.

Distribution Of Results

To provide a real-world analysis, I rolled and documented 448 d20s. The graph analyses the results.

Why 448? Well, it’s more than 400, and 400 divided by 20 is 20; my instincts were that having the average tally of any given result be so high would be enough to show just how uniform the occurrence of any given result would be.

At the top, you can see the actual distribution of results – 16 times, I got a 1, 13 times I got a 20, and so on. A whopping 36 times, I rolled a 16! Surely, that means that the rolls weren’t truly random? That’s one result with a little over half the expected tally, and another with almost double it!

Well, when you calculate the average result, you get 10.4 – which is a smidgen below the theoretical average of 10.5. So maybe we need to look a little more deeply into these results.

Some Analysis

There were 448 rolls, so even distribution would be 22.4 occurrences of each result. What has actually been observed ranges from the low of 13 to the high of 36. Those are differences of -9.4 and +13.6, or -42% to +60.714%. So what can be said is that 448 rolls yielded an average of 22.4±61% occurrences per result.

What’s more, it’s reasonable to expect that this margin of error would probably halve each time you doubled the number of rolls. So, at 996 rolls, we have a probable error margin of ±30.05%. Let’s round those to 1000 and ±30%, for convenience.

Double again, and we get 2000 rolls and ±15%. Again yields 4000 rolls and ±7.5%. and, once again to get 8000 rolls and ±3.75% – finally a margin of error that is smaller than the range of the results (5% vs 3.75%).

UPDATE

A comment to a repost of this article on another site has pointed out that the ‘reasonable to assume’ is actually incorrect. To halve the error margin actually requires four times as many tests, to reduce it to a quarter requires sixteen times, and so on.

Which means that to get a probable error margin of ±30% requires roughly 2000 rolls, to get that down to ±15% requires 8000 rolls, ±7.5% needs 32,000 rolls, and ±3.75% needs 128,000 rolls.

I don’t think this makes any material difference to the remainder of the article, but bear it in mind. Individual results are far more smeared all over the map, more chaotic, than I thought they were.

Huge thanks to Andrew for passing on the feedback. Much appreciated!

More Graphical Analysis

However, die rolls are notoriously non-linear in their probabilities, which I’m at pains to point out in my analysis of the mechanics of the Sixes System. The normal pattern when it comes to a standard distribution is a core of very flat probability, in which variations are commonly observed, surrounded by a region on the curve in which the number of results rises or falls at a steep angle, surrounded by a plateau of very low probability results.

My standby tool for evaluating such large numbers of die rolls is Anydice, but when I went there, I found that this many dice went beyond it’s accepted limits. Instead, I had to drop the number of dice to 112 – so it’s not going to be directly relevant. But the principles will still be the same.



Base curves plotted with Anydice, refer link above.

If you’re talking about 448 die rolls, the central pyramid is only going to be narrower. At the same time, there are so many results with virtually zero chance individually that one or two anomalous results would not be surprising.

But this is all misleading, because we’re talking about 448 individual rolls, not one roll that compounds 448 dice. It is this difference that explains, and causes, the erroneous interpretation of randomness; on any individual roll, the chance of any given result – from one to twenty – is 5%.

The chance of two of them is 5% of 5%, or 0.25%. The chance of three is 5% of 0.25%, or 0.0125%. The chance of 4 is 0.000625%.

448 individual rolls is 224 pairs of rolls, so applying these percentages, we get:

• 448 rolls at 5% = 22.4 ones, 22.4 20s, and so on.
• 224 rolls at 0.25% = 0.56 pairs of 1s, 0.56 pairs of 20s, and so on.
• 112 rolls at 0.0125% = 0.014 triplets of 1’s, 0.014 triples of 2’s, etc.
• 56 rolls at 0.000625% = 0.00035 strings of 4 ones, strings of four 20s, etc.

Hmm – I’m not sure this adds much to the conversation.

Maybe it’s the whole concept of aggregating die rolls that’s leading us astray. So let’s contemplate a way of thinking about the sequences of results, translating them into some sort of graphical display.

Sequential Results

Clearly, mapping each actual result onto a single space on a grid is going to be fairly useless. What’s needed is some way of consolidating individual results into shorter strings of results.

The method that I decided to use, after some thought, was to roll d20s and map them onto a single row of a horizontal grid until a result came up that matched a result that had already been rolled; since this would not fit on the existing row (that space was already occupied), it would force the shift to a new row. I further broke them up into four sets of results to make the graph more convenient.

With a set number of rows to fill, the decision was to keep rolling until a result came up that ‘fell off the bottom’, signaling the end of the run. That, of course, explains the reason for the odd number (448) rolls.


Length Of Result Sequences

I also thought it important to analyze the theoretical length of the resulting strings – I didn’t want them to be too short, or too long. Because it made the math easier, I did this theory as a chance out of 400.

• Length 1: 1 in chance in 20 = 20 / 400 (by definition).
• Length 2: 19 attempts at 1 chance in 20 of matching 2 results = 38 / 400; subtotal 58.
• Length 3: 18 attempts at 1 chance in 20 of matching 3 results = 54 / 400; subtotal 112.
• Length 4: 17 attempts at 1 chance in 20 of matching 4 results = 68 / 400; subtotal 180.
• Length 5: 16 attempts at 1 chance in 20 of matching 5 results = 80 / 400; subtotal 260.
• Length 6: 15 attempts at 1 chance in 20 of matching 6 results = 90 / 400; subtotal 350.
• Length 7: 14 attempts at 1 chance in 20 of matching 7 results = 98 / 400; subtotal 448.

So the average length of a string will be 6-7. Which means, out of 20, that about 2/3 of each row will be empty space. That seems like it will be enough.



True Randomness

This is the result, prettied up a bit, and right away you can see that true randomness is lumpy, coming in clumps. There are huge voids, like the one just below the right-hand top corner, and a smaller one just above the center. There are long strings of sequential results 2, 3, 4, and even 5 long. And there are a number of vertical bars that indicate the same number recurring time after time.

Below is an animated graphic showing a random walk with 25000 steps. It shows the same clumps and voids as my d20 results, and for exactly the same reason: randomness is not uniform in results, only in the likelihood of results (and sometimes not even then).. .

The misinterpretation has been responsible for a number of superstitions and fallacies that remain commonplace today.

The fallacy that a result is ‘due’, for example. If you are flipping a coin, the coin has no magic memory that makes a given result more or less likely – it doesn’t matter if you have just gotten 5 heads in a row, there is still a 50-50 chance of getting a head with your next coin-flip.

The fallacy that a past observed trend resulting from true randomness will persist, or be reversed, gives rise to the superstition that some numbers are more or less likely to result. To take an example from the die rolls that I have tracked in preparing this article, the number of results of “16” doesn’t mean that I’ll keep rolling a disproportionately high or a disproportionately low number of 16s in the near future.

In exactly the same way, the relative lack of twenties doesn’t mean that I will roll extra 20s to make up the shortfall anytime soon; it might happen, and will probably happen eventually, but it could be in 20 rolls or 2000.

No surprise – non-random digit distributions

The distinction between perceived randomness and true randomness might have surprised some. It might even have surprised me, but as soon as I saw it, my mind connected it to another phenomenon: non-random digit distribution.

If you invent a supposedly random series of multi-digit numbers, there will be a preponderance of threes and sevens in the digits. People tend to avoid even numbers, fives, nines, and zeros when inventing numbers because they perceive these as ‘less random’ than they should be.

This is one of the obvious consequences of the difference between true randomness and perceived randomness.

Note that you have to exclude leading digits in such analyses, because of Benford’s Law.

Benford’s Law

The leading numbers of any long series of numbers is going to be disproportionately low. This makes total sense when you think about it for a minute.

• In the numbers 1 to 20, eleven of the results will start with a 1, and two of them with a 2.
• In the numbers 1 to 200, one hundred and eleven results will start with a 1, and twelve with a 2.
• In the numbers 1900 to 2023, all but 24 of the numbers will start with a 1, and the rest will start with a 2. This is a completely not-random distribution.

Benford’s law, “also known as the Newcomb-Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation that in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading digit is likely to be small.” –Wikipedia

While it’s obvious why Benford’s Law applies to some data sets, in others it is simply an observed fact that resists simple explanations. To test for randomness of digit distribution, you therefore have to exclude the leading digits.

No surprise – chits

Random sequences are a different thing to a set of random numbers or random die rolls.

For example, consider what happens if you are drawing chits numbered from one to twenty without replacing them. The sequence of results will be random, but each draw is not an independent variable, because you cannot draw a result that has already been observed. Every result (assuming you continue until all the chits have been drawn) will occur, but the sequence will be random.

This actually sheds light on both true randomness and perceived randomness.

Public Domain Image supplied by Wikimedia Commons.

The Perceived Randomness Significance

When people think of what they perceive to be random distribution, the result is not unlike drawing chits from a bag for each coordinate on a chart. The accompanying illustration is a 200×200 grid containing 20,000 dark points (out of 40000) – so an even distribution of black and white. This is a plot of noise, basically, but it’s still what most people perceive as randomness.

If you keep adding dark pixels at random, sooner or later, all the white will be gone. Drawing chits from a bag instead of using a random number generator simply cuts out any intervening span by ensuring that you are selecting from the current population of white pixels only.

The True Randomness Significance

Below is another random walk pattern that was generated using pseudo-random numbers. At each step, the black could move into any of the nine cells surrounding it (which includes back the way it came, or staying where it was). After 2,000,000 steps through the 40,000×40,000 grid, the process was halted and the current state captured in the image which was then cropped.



Purpy Pupple, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

I chose this image because it clearly shows the clumps and voids of true randomness. Which is ironic, because it’s not actually true randomness being displayed – results are constrained to be right next to the current pixel. This is not the same constraint as occurs when drawing chits from a bag, but the effect is similar, in that each point of white is simply a coordinate that hasn’t been ‘explored’ yet. Once again, if you continue generating steps, and exclude those results that take the ‘point’ out of the 40,000 pixel square space, the entire space will eventually become filled with black.

What’s more important – randomness or the Perception of Randomness?

All this leads to the inevitable question, which one – perceived randomness or true randomness – should a GM aim to use in his games?

After careful consideration, I don’t think there is any one right answer to this question; depending on the circumstances, either could be correct.

Repeat Exclusions

If what you want to do is to generate a sequence of some kind, but no choice is to be repeated, the chit-draw approach is the best choice. For example, if the intent is to determine the sequence in which the PCs interact with the individuals listed as patrons in a bar, this is the better approach.

True Randomness

Only if you don’t intend to have all possible outcomes occur should you consider alternatives. If the intent is simply to flag a course of action or plot, or to present a limited number of the possible outcomes, a die roll is the better approach.

For example, if you are generating a list of ‘serial numbers’, rolling d10s for each digit (rolling multiple dice and reading them left to right) achieves the randomness that should be there – though it may be necessary to insert a leading digit generated with a smaller die or even a fixed set of leading digits.

…with overrides

The basic technique of rolling for digits (or whatever) will serve many but not all needs. For example, if you want to generate a simulated fraudulent sequence or list of sequences, you might roll a d6 as well as a d10 for each trailing digit – on a 1, you override whatever is showing on the d10 make the digit a 3, on a 2, you override the d10 to add a 7, on anything else you ignore the d6.

If the results look too obvious, you could replace the d6 with a d8 or even a d12.

Perceived Randomness

If, however, a list is to be presented to the players, it may be more useful to aim for Perceived Randomness and not true randomness. Perceived randomness, for example, will feel ‘fairer’ than the real thing (even though it probably isn’t).

It all comes down to the keyword, ‘Perceived’. If perceptions of the results are important, then willfully making choices to create the sense of randomness is too important to leave to the chance of true randomness – better to do something that will ‘feel’ right.

A good example is weather – if you were to create a random weather generator, then it would be very easy to set it up to be true random, but this would be quite unrealistic. Seasonal variations or modifiers should apply, obviously, and so should yesterday’s weather. But it would be better to create such a table or subsystem and then use it only as a guide so that you can ensure that the weather ‘feels’ random, even if it is not.

Randomness is a lot more complicated than most people realize, but an awareness of the differences between reality and perception can be a valuable asset, and manipulation of game or plot variables to create the desired impression can be a useful tool.

One Final Example: An Adventure

Let’s contemplate a mystery adventure that takes these thoughts into account. First, decide what the mystery is, and what the solution to the mystery is going to be. Next, list a series of clues that will lead the PCs to the point where they have everything they need to solve the case. Then, create a mini-adventure whose reward is one of these clues.

Some of the clues can nullify or reveal lies that are initially presented to the PCs – remember the axiom that every suspect / witness in a mystery should leave something important out or lie about something, and if the latter, they should have a strong motivation for the deceit.

Throw in a concluding mini-adventure in which the PCs deduce the identity and motive of the criminal and act on that knowledge, and you have a complete plotline. Oh, and the criminal should do their best to look both innocent and to steer suspicion on someone else, throwing out at least one red herring, as should anyone else with a prejudice or a penchant to indulge in conspiracy theories.

Here’s the thing: you could present these clue-reward mini-adventures in sequence, or in true randomness, but the better choice would be to harness the perception of randomness so that one clue can logically lead to the next.

Let’s work some numbers:

Confrontation & Resolution: 30-60 minutes.
Post-resolution / wrap-up: 15 minutes.
Mini-adventures:

Number of clues: 4.
Number of lies / distortions to be revealed as clues: 6.
Number of red herrings: 2
Number of clues to the nature of the red herrings: 2
Total number of mini-adventures: 14.
Average length of mini-adventures: 15 minutes each.

Subtotal of mini-adventures: 210 minutes = 3 hr 30 min.
Initial mystery: 30 minutes.
Preface / introduction / preliminaries: 20 minutes
Total time: 30-60 + 15 + 3 hrs 30 + 20 = 4 hrs 35 to 5 hrs 5 min.

All told, a quite reasonable adventure. If you were to increase the length of the mini-adventures (15 minutes average is a little on the short side) to 20 minutes (average), you would add an additional hour and ten minutes to the total. Which means that adding a further 10 minutes to each to bring the average up to 30 minutes each would take the estimated playing time for the adventure to 8 hrs 5 min to 8 hrs 35 min – a big day’s play, or two (more moderate) game sessions.
This is probably a better target length, simply because there’s quite a lot to happen in each!

Of course, knowing the average length allows you to design these ‘to order’ – setbacks, complications, character interactions, and so on.

You could run those 14 mini-adventures in a random sequence, or simply list the focal point and leave it up to the PCs which one to pursue next. But it would make more sense to map out two or three different sequences of arranging the mini-adventures that is a combination of logic and perceived randomness.

Randomness can be your friend, if you’re willing to work with it.
Why? Because the ‘clumping’ of true randomness can feel forced and not random at all.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but there are some creature types that automatically get tagged as the villains as soon as they appear. This is true in D&D, in Pathfinder, in a superhero game, a pulp / horror game – you name it. These are ‘the obvious villains’ and today’s article is all about what they have in common, how to take advantage of the phenomenon, and things that you can do to put a fresh coat of paint on a concept that’s just a little too obvious or old-hat.

Who are the obvious villains?

I think the place to start is with a non-exhaustive list of the creatures that populate the classification of ‘obvious villains’. I’ve listed eleven (including a couple of ring-ins), but I’m sure there are more – I haven’t listed Demons, Devils, or Dark Gods, for example, (too obvious!) but they absolutely belong in this category.

1. Vampires & Necromancers

We all survive by consuming the lives of other life-forms, be they animal or vegetable, but there is something so much more direct about the way Vampires consume the lives of their victims that it feels more evil. This automatically elevates them to “the villain’ whenever they appear in a plotline – even when they aren’t.

Robert Asprin, in “Myth-ing Persons”, the 5th in the “Another Fine Myth” series, played on this expectation in the person of Vilhelm, the “Dispatcher Of Nightmares”.

But, unless you are very careful and creative, their natures as a vampire can overwhelm all sense of individuality about them, leaving them all feeling very much alike.

Closely allied to the perceptions of Vampires are the way players look at the presence of a Necromancer in an adventure. Like Vampires, these use the lives of others to empower themselves, which is frequently seen as inherently evil..

2. Liches

Liches are – conceptually – Vampires who have done away with the need to feed at all, subsisting directly on evil energies, and gaining still greater powers in the process. These changes do not make the sense of ‘evil’ more remote; these are always manipulative and evil, so opposed to the natural cycle of life that they have abandoned all humanity to preserve their existences.

As soon as a Lich or DemiLich is even hinted at in a plot, they are automatically elevated to ‘the bad guy’ of the plotline. Usage of this creature type usually falls into two categories, however – an evil plan of some sort, and some clever twist on where and how they have hidden and protected the phylactery that preserves their existence, and the lack of variety can become a detraction if they are over-used.

3. Other Sentient Undead including Ghosts & Mummies

These are all studies in obsession – so consumed with a desire of some kind that not even death can bring it to an end. In contrast to Vampires and Liches, there is something at least a little romantic in that notion that weakens the horrific edge that these creatures carry.

Even in The Mummy (Brendan Fraser version), there is that little edge of sympathy for the doomed lover who will do anything to bring back the lost love of his life.

Similarly, a ghost who yearns for Justice for some past misdeed perpetrated upon them carries a level of sympathy and understanding with them.

But it isn’t enough for these ‘creatures’ (using the term loosely) to achieve their goals, no matter how honorable, commendable, understandable, or sympathetic they may be; they have to be the instruments by which these goals are achieved, and will let nothing stand in their way. Their humanity has been sacrificed to their obsession.

It’s not quite so automatic to consider such beings to be the obvious villains of a plotline; it’s necessary for them to have some intermediate goals that reveal their villainy and capacity to influence events. In The Mummy, it is the way the titular mummy sacrifices others in order to restore itself and achieve its ends.

This is a natural outgrowth of their obsession, but the GM/writer still has to engineer an opportunity to put it on display. Doing so immediately elevates these creatures to enemies of the living, and the villains of the plot.

Often, the initial villain is not the obsessed Undead creature, it is the high priest who brings about the Undead creature’s return / escape; but obsession in no way permit such creatures to accept a secondary role; the roles between the two are soon reversed, and the servant becomes the master. The smartest such agents of resurrection recognize this inevitability and that – having brought the Undead back into the world – they have (plot-wise) served their purpose; conceding authority to the creature they have ‘created’ tends to preserve their existences a little further.

But there is always something appropriate in a Summoner who is so obsessed with achieving his goals that they sacrifice their own lives to unleash the monster, as was the case in the Dr Who two-parter “The End Of Time“, because this plays so directly into the themes of obsession.

As soon as it is established that the ‘monster’ will do whatever it has to in order to satisfy its obsession, and cannot permit anyone to do so on its behalf even if that amounts to self-sabotage, they are immediately elevated to the role of master villain in the adventure.

4. ‘Dark’ Dragons

Evil Dragons are so rarely handled in such a way as to make them the objects of awe and fear that they should be that I almost didn’t include them in the list at all. For a palpable example of how they should be perceived, read the “A Coming Storm” and “Scorched Earth” chapters of “The Bag Wars Saga” from Kenzerco / KODT..

There are essentially two different approaches to the characterization of ‘Dark’ Dragons: either these are so overwhelmingly physically powerful that they are used to simply overpowering opposition (which makes them a menace but not a Villain), or they are very well aware that their perceived natures makes them an existential threat to lesser beings, and use intelligence and wisdom to supplement and apply their raw power is clever and subtle ways.

In fantasy fiction, the latter is generally the only model that is acceptable.

And that model of ‘Dark Dragon’ can very definitely be the Villain. As soon as it is established that you are using that model, or as soon as you get a reputation amongst your players for doing so, the first hint of Dark Dragon elevates them to the status of Presumed Villain.

I should take a moment to address the nomenclature. In D&D, ‘Chromatic’ dragons – those named for colors (Red, Black, White, Blue, Green) are ‘evil’ and those named for Metals (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Brass) are ‘Good’ (‘Neutral’ Dragons are frequently named for Gems). Other campaigns and Game systems operate with different classification systems, or even treat this schema as a vast oversimplification.

Hence, i have used the generic term ‘Dark’ to refer to hostile dragons off whatever hue or texture.

5. Mind Flayers / Psychic Vampires / Parasites

Some interpretations would add ‘Doppelgangers’ and/or ‘Fey’ to this sub-category, whose members all subsist on, digest, or otherwise consume the self-identity of the individual.

(Refer to Pieces Of Creation: The Hidden Truth Of Dopplegangers for an interpretation of Doppelgangers, complete with misspelling in the title, which supports this perception, and The glass is half-Something: two variations on Fey for the equivalent treatment of Fey).
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In many cases, they also add the knowledge and/or skills of their prey to their own. Even when this is not known to be the case, folklore usually suggests to players (regardless of canon) that this is at least possible.

To keep players’ paranoia active, many GMs have local populaces also buy into this conjecture. Regardless, they are manipulative, and capable of worming underneath the hardiest of physical defensive capabilities and attacking a ‘soft underbelly’ that most characters don’t even consider and couldn’t protect even if they did.

Smart, manipulative, deceptive – it should come as no surprise that these qualities put these creatures on the ‘suspected villain’ list immediately they are encountered.

6. Drow

Speaking of which, Drow (a.k.a. Dark Elves) are another favorite of whom players will naturally assume the worst. This is two-fold – first, they serve / worship Lolth, who is evil, manipulative, clever, subtle and never inclined to take a back seat to anyone; and second, the Drow themselves aspire to be like her in both their internal social relationships, their politics, and their relationship with other species (especially those of the surface world).

Every D&D campaign that I’ve ever run has featured a different ‘take’ on Drow, it’s one of my ‘fingerprints’. And they are always Villains of one sort or another – even in those game worlds where the Schism between Elves and Drow has yet to occur.

7. Orcs

In a lot of low-level campaigns, Orcs are the source of the early villains. They are quite ubiquitous. As campaigns age, it is common for Orcs to be revealed as cats-paws for more serious villains, degrading them in respect of making them obvious villains; but this ignores the societal and cultural propensities that allow them to be so easily manipulated. It’s relatively rare for campaigns to explore that aspect of the setting at all.

Part of the problem is that relatively few GMs actually put any thought into Orcish societies, treating them as generic primitives in a gang-like social structure. This was something that I set out to specifically explore in the Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire campaign; I deliberately set out to map out a society for Orcs that contained elements of which Orcs could be justifiable proud. There had to be positives as well as negatives.

I refer readers to Not Like My Tribe – Sophisticated Primitives, Part 1 and Part 2;

… to the four-part Distilled Cultural Essence series;

… to Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 (and to the Orcs & Elves series more generally),

… and to Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Orcish Mythology specifically..

8. Trolls

Strictly speaking, Trolls shouldn’t be here in this listing, because (once again) there is really no propensity to take them seriously except as Menaces in most campaigns. But the concept of Trolls has changed somewhat with the advent of modern communications (especially social media) and – somewhat generalized – the identification of “troublemakers” as Trolls has breathed new life into the concept.

Most GMs have not conflated the two definitions of Troll, but doing so immediately adds new life, richness, and depth to the traditional Troll.

I would argue that as soon as a demagogue shows up in a campaign, an ‘internet troll’ (with or without the internet existing as a platform), they get automatically tagged as a villain, and hence that they belong in this list; conflating ‘fantasy trolls’ with these agents provocateur spreads the joy (and the relevance).

Besides, doing so gives me the opportunity (a little later in the article) to share a fun encounter from the Zenith-3 campaign that literally left the players gob-smacked.

9. Goblin Hordes

How respectable are Goblins in your campaign? Many seem to treat them as ‘lesser Orcs’. In some of my campaigns, I introduced ‘Strategic Feats’ specifically for Goblin Hordes; these are feats that only work for characters in a group. In some cases, all members of the group have to have the feat, in some cases only one feat holder is necessary. Part of the inspiration was a discussion of overbearing rules, but I no longer remember where that discussion was located.

I’ve mentioned these feats before, and was sure that I had actually written them up, but a careful search of Campaign Mastery’s archives have failed to turn them up. An example might be +1 to archery-based attack rolls for each member of a group who had the feat – so a Goblin Horde with 200 members trained in this feat could add +200 to their attack rolls. This would translate to 10 automatic successes against any target attacked by the horde, each combat round according to the feat (as I remember it). But even a small unit of 5 goblins, all of whom get +5 on their ranged combat rolls from this feat, each combat round, suddenly make that unit a lot more terrifying. There were restrictions and limitations – the ‘horde’ had to outnumber the targets, for example, in terms of total character levels or Hit Dice.

This article is not about those feats, specifically, but the effects of those feats were sufficiently profound that Goblin Hordes were immediately elevated from Menace to Villains when they were encountered.

10. Sorcerers

I don’t know why, but it’s an observed phenomenon: people don’t trust Sorcerers, and by people, I mean ‘players’. At best, they are received with suspicion and paranoia. Mages can be good or bad, and get assessed on their personalities; but for some reason people seem to think the worst of Sorcerers from the word go.

11. Politicians

Finally, as soon as a politician who acts like a politician on the campaign trail turns up in a campaign, players are immediately suspicious of them. And the harder they work at ‘looking good’, the more untrustworthy they seem.

Taking Advantage Of Obvious Villains

The appearance of an obvious villain automatically makes players suspect attempts to distract them or manipulate them. There is an assumption of a master plan (whether there is one or not) and many events that don’t fit that master plan are easily dismissed as attempts to conceal or distract from that plan by the villain. How the villain achieved this is irrelevant.

In other words, as soon as an Obvious Villain is encountered, the presumptions about the role in the adventure of that Obvious Villain begin shaping the perceptions, assumptions, and thought processes of the players and their characters.

The thing is that, in most cases, there is no need to establish the villain’s credentials as a villain, or even the villain. That makes them much easier for GMs to work with, and that’s part of the reason why the groups listed earlier have the associated perceptions that they do – these tend to be the villains that new GMs reach for.

Using Obvious Villains as Misdirection and Smokescreens

As GMs become more experienced and sophisticated, they will usually stop being content to let the players’ assumptions do all the work, and will start trying to introduce less obvious villains or obfuscate the involvement of the obvious villain.

It isn’t long before they start looking for something more original and unusual to do with Obvious Villains.

Pretty much the first thing that they do is to use an Obvious Villain to occupy the spotlight and take the blame while the true Villain lurks in the shadows. The Obvious Villain is, essentially, a flunky who provides a public face to intimidate and obfuscate.

More subtle approaches are soon devised. Having the real villain make themselves appear to be an Obvious Villain so that their enemies target vulnerabilities that don’t actually exist – I once had a Halfling Illusionist create the deliberate impression that they were a Human Vampire, for example. Such misdirection not only bestows a level of threat that the true identity of the villain might not, but they work well as a defensive measure and can keep players guessing for quite some time. This derivative clearly smacks of The Wizard Of Oz.

A related trick is to have the Villain of a plot appear to be one type of Obvious Villain when, in reality, they are another – a Doppelganger posing as a Necromancer, for example.

The other thing that tends to happen fairly quickly is that the plots put in motion by villains, obvious or otherwise, tend to become more subtle and sophisticated, and part of that is the defensive measure of making themselves look like a traditional representative of their type while the villain has some secret abilities that enhance their prowess or capabilities.

And, of course, there is usually good value (if you can make it convincing) in having the Obvious Enemy turn out to be an ally (possible reluctant). In some cases, though, this has been done to death – Drizzt has ruined the concept of “Good Dark Elf” for many a campaign.

Repudiating Expectations

it’s a short step from these developments to devising ways to play against type. ‘A Vampire who is also a Paladin’ became the central concept of an order of Knights Templar early in the Adventurer’s Club (pulp) Campaign, for example.

These also tend to become more subtle and sophisticated with GMing experience. As an example, below is an encounter with a Troll from the Zenith-3 campaign:

117 Parkdale

Background

The PCs have split into two teams traveling through Texas and Arkansas (with a side-trip into Mississippi) in search of a base of operations. The “117” means that this is the 17th location to be scouted on Day 2 by Team 1.

Location

Information given to the players from a ‘Guidebook’ on the towns and locations of Arkansas (in reality, equal parts research and fictionalizing)

Twelve minutes after departing Hamburg, you approach Parkdale, a city of 412 people occupying 158 households in a 1.02 sqr mile area. The racial makeup of the city is 29% White 67% Black 2% Hispanic / Latino. Median income is half that of some communities in the state.

Perched at an elevation of 36 meters (118 feet above sea level), which is high ground relative to its surroundings, Parkdale (originally known as Poplar Bluff) is one of the oldest unincorporated communities in the county. A store was built at the present location in 1857, and several farmers were already working the land in the vicinity. The owner’s son worked as a clerk in his father’s store and later opened his own store. A Methodist church had also been built sometime in the 1850s, and it was joined by a Baptist church and a Masonic Lodge in 1857. The central point of the community was a steamboat landing. Key parts of the community were burned by Union soldiers during the Civil War, but after the war, the damaged operations were rebuilt and even expanded.

A railroad through the then Poplar Bluff was completed in the early 1890s. Because the railroad also served the larger city of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, railroad officials named the depot Parkdale. The name of the post office and of the city followed suit. In 1902, Parkdale was reincorporated as a second-class city. The Bank of Parkdale was established by 1905. Stores near the depot included a pharmacy, several mercantile establishments, and an auction house. A bridge was built across the bayou in 1908, costing $8,000 in Ashley County funds and an additional $1,500 in local funds. A telephone exchange was operating by 1912. The Baptist congregation, which had declined in size, was revitalized by a revival service in 1909.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Parkdale became notorious for violent crimes, including murders. Historian Y. W. Ethridge described Parkdale as a “boisterous community” due to the railroad, sawmills, and saloons. One citizen later said, “Parkdale was terrible. There were a bunch of outlaws. It was a shoot-up town. There was a rough and rowdy white element here. It was wild.” One of the most unusual crimes in Parkdale was the lynching of Ernest Williams, an African-American man, in June 1908, by a group of African-American women who had organized a league to enforce better moral conduct, and whose standards Williams had evidently fallen foul of. Consequently, they seized him one evening, dragged him to a telegraph pole on the outskirts of town, and hanged him. His body was not discovered by local authorities until the next morning, and no one was ever charged with the crime.

Parkdale is home to the Overflow National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1980 to protect one of the remaining bottom-land hardwood forests considered vital for maintaining mallard, wood duck, and other waterfowl populations. 17,000 acres including a seasonally-flooded wetland complex and a narrow strip of escarpment on the western boundary.

As late as 1939, Parkdale’s cotton gins led the county in cotton production. A fire in 1940 destroyed part of the city, but buildings were rebuilt, and the city continued to flourish beyond the middle of the twentieth century. Although several had struck in the vicinity over the years, one disaster that seemed to avoid the town were tornadoes, so there was some good news.

After 1970, when the cotton price collapsed, stores began to close, and many buildings were abandoned. Several more collapsed in the snows of early Ragnarok, including some which were still inhabited at the time. There are no longer any commercial operations situated in Parkdale other than the Post Office. The nearest restaurant, service station, and supermarket are all 5 miles to the South along Highway 165 in the town of Wilmot.

When the fimbulwinter snows topped two meters, a stranger came who seemed able to melt them with a touch. Without him, the locals feel they would not have survived. When the heat came, though, he vanished into the night. A statue in an empty lot in the center of town is dedicated to the helpful stranger.

Four properties in Parkdale are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the Baptist church built in 1910, the Methodist church built in 1926, the house of Dr. M. C. Hawkins built in 1912, and the house of Dr. Robert George Williams built in 1903.

Lawyer and judge Turner Butler was born in Parkdale when it was called Poplar Bluff. John Caldwell was a well-known banker and community leader in Parkdale whose art career took off late in life when he became widely known for his award-winning wood engravings and woodblock prints.

Encounter

Things immediately take a turn for the interesting when you approach the western edge of town, and the bridge over the Batholomew Bayou. The paved road continues straight ahead to the historic bridge, which seems to have caught fire at some point and is officially out of service. A rough gravel dogleg leads to a very rough new bridge with a very rough and unusually large stone hut situated at the side of the road. (25-117a, 25-117b).

“25-117a” & “25-117b” refer to illustrations. “25” is a sequential code used to put entries into playable sequence so that I can switch back and forth from team one to team two; the “117” is the team and location code again, and the “a” and “b” indicate the first two photos / illustrations for that location.

25-117a Wooden Bridge
Image Source: Wikipedia, “wooden bridge over tarang river” (actually located in Thailand), released into the public domain by the author; cropped with ‘windscreen tinting’ added.

 

25-117b The Hut
Image Source: Uncertain, but it matches a smaller image from Pinterest, described as an Irish Cottage with a thatched roof. The same hut from slightly different perspectives appears on several commercial clip art sites such as Alamy.com and dreamstime.com, and on a number of travel sites. Some of these identify the location as Ennis, or County Claire. I have vague memories of painting out a watermark in the lower right corner.

Encounter Content:

A stout tree has been trimmed of it’s branches and lies across the entrance to the bridge next to a sign which reads, “Pay Toll”. From the hut, a huge man-like figure, 10′ tall, emerges and stomps over to your car window. Greenish skin, a brown loincloth, long and greasy green hair short legs and arms that reach almost to the ground, sharp white teeth and long, savage claws complete the picture. (25-117c)

’25-117c’ is the D&D5e representation of a Troll. Not reproduced for copyright reasons even though the image appears on a number of RPG-related sites such as RPG Museum (hosted by Fandom.com), Critical Role Wiki (also hosted by Fandom.com), and Enworld. Click on any of these links to view the image, especially the last. I seem to remember cropping and tweaking the background.

Carefully, it reaches up and taps on the window [if the PC hasn’t already rolled it down]. “Toll. Eat Lunch and Speak News or green money in each basket” it says in a rough, crackled voice like that of Louis Armstrong on a bad day, as it waves it’s other arm at four baskets placed beside the road.

While you could pay the toll, it will cost you $27 based on the notes that you have at the moment – two ones, a five, and a twenty.

IF THE TEAM ATE BREAKFAST EARLY (they didn’t): Breakfast was a good five hours ago, and even though you aren’t due to stop for another half hour or so, the notion of an early lunch and providing the creature with news and some company for a few minutes is undoubtedly attractive. Besides, if the locals are used to his presence, perhaps even accept it as continuing the trend of the helpful stranger, they might accept some strange new arrivals like the team. So this could be quite a significant conversation to have.

IF THE TEAM ATE BREAKFAST LATER (they did): It’s about 3 hours since you had breakfast and you aren’t due to stop for lunch for almost an hour. But it might be better, and would certainly be cheaper, to accept the invitation and stop for an early meal and provide the creature with news and company for a short time. Besides, if the locals are used to his presence, perhaps even accept it as continuing the trend of the helpful stranger, they might accept some strange new arrivals like the team. So this could be quite a significant conversation to have.

If the team decide to stop for lunch, the huge figure will point at a spot beside the hut and say “Me Grobhan. My Kind you call Troll, I call Darenwu [Pronounced “Darnwoo”]. Put car.” Anyone who knows Mandarin will be able to translate Darenwu as “Big Shot” – assuming that his language actually is Mandarin, and this isn’t a coincidence!

“Mandarin” is based on, and related to, the Chinese language – but with 10,000 years of additional evolution.

When you have parked, he leads you into his hut and points at a round table of normal height, about 10′ in diameter. Your host could easily reach from one side of the table to the other while seated. He turns a knob on a large stove and runs his fingernails down a slab of stone of some kind, generating a shower of sparks, one of which ignites the gas. He then places a large copper-bottomed pot with a spout on one side, capable of holding a good twenty liters or more of water, onto the stove. The sound it makes clearly shows that it is reasonably full of some liquid. A shake from a packet tosses a handful of dried leaves into it, and the figure turns to a cupboard full of crockery both oversized and human-scale. “You will have tea,” he announces. “And deer-meat pie. And seed-cake.”

A deliberate inversion of the “Don’t feed a troll” meme / advice, which relates to the ‘internet’ troll variety.

You notice that the far end of the tree blocking the road projects through a hole in the wall. Every couple of minutes, the sound of an engine arriving at the toll bridge can be heard, and Grobhan bellows out the window, “Pay Toll. One green money in each basket. Or go away.” Most pay, a few turn around after eyeing the size of the tree-trunk. One yells back, “My wife is ill and I must buy medicine. I don’t have money to pay a toll.” Grobhan bellows back – “I smell your car, I know its name. Do good thing for stranger, help wife get well.” As he does when someone pays, he then uses the wall as the fulcrum of a lever and raises the tree by pushing against the protruding end. His strength might not be at Blackwing standard, but it’s not inconsiderable – at least 50 times human, and probably more.

When the foodstuffs are presented – sliced by one of his nails – they look strangely like fairly standard supermarket manufacture, right down to plastic wrapping – Grobhan sits down on a creaking wooden chair and begins to eat. “Eat, and Speak Of World and News,” he instructs you.

After about 20 minutes, the food is consumed, and Grobhan has eaten as much as the rest of you put together. You kept trying to steer the conversation toward him and the town, and each time he gave a succinct answer and then redirected the conversation back to news of the outside world, in the process showing that he was a lot smarter than his appearance or conversational English would suggest. At the end of the meal, you have learned that:

He came from a vast city (probably Mandarin’s Capital), where he worked as a stonemason and carpenter. He was welcomed here but treated with some suspicion until a roof started to collapse as he was walking by. Running into the building, he held the roof up while the family escaped. He then drew plans in the dirt showing how to repair the collapsed roof and reinforce it in the shortest possible time, taking advantage of his strength.

After that, he was considered one of the locals. They asked him to rebuild the bridge. He told them he could not afford to do so, he needed to find work for food. They agreed to let him charge a toll to use his repaired bridge. There are four baskets because one goes to the town, one goes to the family who buy him food from the market in Wilmot every week – they get to keep whatever’s left but have to pay anything more – one goes to improve and maintain the bridge, and one provides him with spending money for other things.

He built the cottage himself. The bridge took about a month to construct, but he had a temporary thing for humans to walk across in a day or two. It then took him another month to create the one-room cottage.

A quick round of introductions:

Blackwing was the superhero identity of one of the PCs when he was transformed into a gargoyle by the mystic armor that gave him super-strength, amongst other abilities including shape-changing.

Basalt is a new superhero ‘secret identity’ for the character formerly known as Blackwing. Using his shape-change, he transforms into a 10′ tall figure of Rock (permitting him to use his super-strength openly). The new (and completely fake) civilian identity that goes with ‘Basalt’ is Frank Hudson, a man-hunter.

Specter is a new superhero ‘secret identity’ for Runeweaver, the team’s mage, who uses magic and tech to appear to be a revolutionary-war-era ghost. When not in super-identity, his new and completely fake civilian identity is Isaiah Lucas, a ski instructor and competition Woodlogger.

Zantar is a new superhero identity for the Kzin Martial Artist member of the team, who usually operates under the nom-de-plum “Defender”. His new civilian identity is Brust, a Kzin tourist and inveterate explorer. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Earth and Kzin, there are plenty of ‘tourists’ running around – they seem to regard the political [situation] currently being experienced as a curiosity of human society to be ignored whenever it’s inconvenient. In this identity, he has foregone the clan markings (stripes) on his arms and (while undercover ) is wearing “typical Kzin tourist apparel”, not too inappropriate for the season, consisting of Sunglasses, baseball cap, singlet, shorts, flip-flops (called ‘thongs’ in Australia), and a large gold earring.

The PCs and Zantar are currently in their ‘civilian’ cover identities.

Mandarin is a former enemy of the team’s parent group who was permitted to conquer a neighboring alternate-history world in which that was adjudged to be the lesser of two evils. He used his magic to accelerate time in that dimension and established a multicultural Galactic Empire based around magic instead of technology, slowly becoming an ally to his former enemies. That space-time was destroyed in Ragnarok, but many of his subjects were saved by ‘seeding’ planets throughout the Milky Way with refugees. One of the more profound discoveries made by the PCs is that there were a LOT more of these refugees on Earth than they thought, mostly keeping themselves out of the public eye and dismissed as myths and legends. Some have begun to assimilate into the local culture, however.

Basalt notices, in the course of the meal, that the stones have actually been shaped more perfectly and exactly than would be possible with unmodified natural resources. Conclusion: there’s more to Grobhan than meets the eye. What’s more, you haven’t seen any stones of this type anywhere in the region – you couldn’t prove that Grobhan manufactured them himself, but it’s far from out of the question!

Specter, you notice that Grobhan is radiating a low level of magic – not enough for him to be a significant spellcaster, but enough that he could be a low-level mage or some sort of more expert but specialist mage. Which makes a certain amount of sense: in an Empire the scale of Mandarin’s, you would need to be something exceptional to be allowed to migrate to the capital. You suspect that this particular Darenwu is a trained stone-mage, and maybe a wood-mage as well, and that he may well have magical devices hidden away to enhance his arts.

Zantar is quite certain that Grobhan isn’t as thick as he looks, not by half. He is probably a trained Imperial Master Artisan, specializing in Wood and Stone-crafting, and trained to utilize magic the way human carpenters, masons, and builders might employ apprentices and subcontractors. He could just as easily have planted a medieval castle with a drawbridge as he did a simple tree-trunk, he thinks, but he went simple so that he would better fit in, locally.

IF THE PCs PAY THE TOLL (they did): They will barely get across the bridge before their car will have a blowout in it’s left rear tyre, possibly punctured on the bridge. Grobhan will emerge from his hut, walk across the bridge (which sways alarmingly) and assist by holding the car level like a jack while you change the tyre. As a result, the wheel is changed in about 10 minutes – but you will need to stop somewhere and get the spare repaired or replaced, which will take more time.

I seem to have been so confident that they would do so that I did not spell out what would happen if they refused. In retrospect, I can see that there were too many possible outcomes to have done so, anyway; it would have to be improvised and exactly what was said and done would have a material impact on the course of developments.

This was also a complete inversion of the mythic trope of the Troll “living under the bridge”. It was a completely unexpected encounter but one that made perfect sense to the players in hindsight.

Stating The Obvious

Using an Obvious Villain creates certain expectations in the minds of players, and these can then be manipulated by the GM to lend color, drama, and/or distinctiveness to a plotline.

Sabotage assumptions, or play into them. Throw surprises and plot twists into the plot. So long as you make sure that everything makes sense in the end, the end result is a game word that is richer and more complex than the overt simplicity created by the Obviousness of the Villain.

Even if you decide to play with a straight bat, with no significant twists in the plot, the expectations can blind-side you if you don’t take them into account.

For some reason, that reminds me of the Cybernetic Eco-terrorist Druid from the far future that I dropped into one of my fantasy campaigns at one point, complete with his robotic dogs… No-one expects a Druid to be the bad guy, never mind one of the most dangerous that had been encountered to date!

Dialogue: Essential Techniques

There are three basic approaches to writing dialogue.

1. Canned Dialogue

This involves writing the central dialogue in advance, making assumptions about the conversational cues that the players will provide.

There are obvious advantages to this approach; you can take as much time as you need to polish and nuance the words, building in layers of depth and meaning, incorporating technical accuracy where it is appropriate, and generally making it possible for the conversation to be more immersive.

The primary price is interactivity; what you prepare are really a series of monologues that will only deliver the full impact desired if your assumptions are correct. As soon as the players go off your pre-determined script, you have to scramble to rewrite on the fly or extemporize to steer the conversation back to the course you have engineered.

This immediately detracts from that sense of immersion.

Ultimately, canned dialogue can be easier on the GM in many respects, and that’s why it’s a common first resort.

2. Extemporized Dialogue

The most commonly considered alternative is the exact opposite and involves the GM making up the NPCs dialogue on the spot, something that is called extemporizing. This is a LOT harder than simply reading prepared dialogue, even when the course of the planned dialogue goes off the rails.

Quite often, technical accuracy and nuance and even characterization is sacrificed to the god of Interactivity, and it’s at least twice as likely that the plot will go off the rails in the course of the dialogue.

To extemporize properly, the GM has to keep several factors in mind at the same time, a juggling act that is never simple.

□ The Personality of the speaker;
□ How to manifest that personality in expressions and figures of speech;
□ Giving each character a distinctive ‘voice’ and being consistent in doing so;
□ Making the character’s communication clear and comprehensible;
□ The ambitions, motives, and desires of the speaker;
□ … and how those will influence what they say and how they will say it;
□ The relationship (if any) between the speaker and the PC;
□ … and how that will impact on the conversational content and delivery;
□ The technical information to be imparted (if any);
□ The big picture, i.e. how this conversation relates to the adventure as a whole;
□ The local picture, i.e. how this conversation connects to and propels forward the immediate plot;
□ How to manipulate the content of the conversation to achieve those purposes both local ad big-picture;
□ The pacing and desired drama of the dialogue.



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That’s a lot of balls to keep in the air at once. any GM who can manage it regularly and reliably is entitled to feel at the top of their game. More frequently, some form of compromise is needed – something has to be sacrificed.

The big picture is usually the first to go, followed by pacing considerations, then the interpersonal dynamics and finally either technical accuracy or compromised individuality.

And any GM who doesn’t think the players pick up on the cues and clues that these compromises produce, and use to assess the reliability of the information imparted, has rocks in their head. A better way to think of it is that you have only one thing that you can impart clearly – personality or technical accuracy – and players WILL judge which one they can rely based on your manner of presentation.

Even attempting this technique can be incredibly hard work and extremely stressful. Many GMs try it once and immediately retreat to canned dialogue.

3. The Hybrid Model

Quite often, GMs will not retreat all the way from full Extemporization, instead adopting some form of hybrid model. Prepared paragraphs containing just the technical information, for example, letting the GM read the important bits while giving them freedom of expression outside of the technical dialogue.

This will frequently result in having a half-dozen or more prepared responses to anticipated comments and questions, and that introduces a new problem: the GM has to be able to find, almost instantly, the correct response, and also has to make sure that any critical information gets imparted even if the players don’t steer the conversation in the right direction.

I’ve often found it useful to summarize the plot purposes of any conversation as GM reference at the start of any planned dialogue, especially if that dialogue is to be extemporized in part or whole.

It can also be useful to list pertinent personality and relationship details and how they might impact on the style or demonstrated attitude of the character prior to the conversation.

The danger here is that the GM needs time to read and digest these notes without interrupting his gameplay to any noticeable degree. That means that they have to be specific, very brief, and easy to use.

The mixed mode

My approach is to employ a different compromise each and every time – if there is minimal backstory, full extemporization with a couple of brief notes on plot and personality; if there is more complex history, a hybrid model; and if there is considerable technical detail or sufficient plot importance to justify it, something more fully approaching the ‘canned dialogue’ technique.

In particular, interactions with any NPC who is unlikely to ever appear in-game again tends to favor the extemporized approach; the more likely it is that the NPC will appear again, the more important consistency becomes, and that is built on notes that can be referenced on the occasion of future appearances.

In general, the more you can adopt the principle of only doing work once, the better off you will be in the long run..

This ‘mixed mode’ approach lets me decide which set of compromises is better suited to a specific conversation, and which set of strengths will be more important to that particular interaction between PCs and NPC.

This is not a different approach to the other three (which is why it is not numbered ‘4’); it’s picking and choosing between the techniques to suit the needs of the moment, as much as available prep time will allow.

Dialogue Considerations

Dialogue has to carry a lot of baggage in both fiction and RPGs. There are only two real sources of information about what is occurring in an adventure – what the character observes and what they are told in conversations. Characters have to digest the information they acquire from these sources, develop theories as to what is taking place, and try to devise ways of testing and verifying those theories. They may have to make decisions based on the assumption that the theories are correct, or may have the luxury of deferring those decisions until after the theories are verified.

Everything that a character (and their player) learns during play that is not directly observed should come from conversations. In real life, there are no omniscient voice-overs, and because they can undercut PC agency within a campaign, I discourage their use in RPGs.

That said, in real life you can have multiple conversations with multiple people and progress can be nine parts tedium to one part interesting. That won’t work in fiction, and it won’t wash at the game table, either. Some means of compression is therefore necessary to get the tedium down to an irreducible minimum, and then to make the communication more interesting.

One technique for doing so is the omniscient narrator. Another is to coalesce many conversations into one, and to composite many sources into a single character. This sort of thing goes on in films, TV shows, and even documentaries all the time.

This solves one problem, only by increasing the importance and workload of the dialogue that remains.

I have assembled a list of no less than nine critical tasks that dialogue must (ideally) achieve.

1. Natural Speech

It’s vital that what an NPC says sounds natural, as though the character would say it, and say it that way, if they really existed. The more you can achieve this, the more immersive and believable the game world will be.

2. Lecturing

The dominant aspect of lectures that every GM should take away from this article and take into account forevermore is that they are inherently boring. This is because they are almost completely non-interactive monologues, of necessity. Some GMs avoid lectures by always extemporizing, but I think that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

There are times when it is necessary that an NPC deliver a briefing or a lecture. Recognize the inevitability and actively work on developing techniques to combat the liability of boredom that comes with the territory.



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Subdivide and Conquer

There are three techniques to handling this problem that I particularly want to call to reader’s attention.

Illustrations and Presentations

Of course, lecturers have known of this problem for decades if not longer. For a long time, there wasn’t much that they could do about it – but then PowerPoint came along and livened things up. I stole that basic idea and used it to prepare a couple of ‘illustrated lectures’ in my Zenith-3 campaign – it was a while back, now, but it still seems fresh and clear to me as a result.

I detailed the first of these in a dedicated post at Campaign Mastery because I thought it might be useful / interesting to readers and GMs in its own right – The Meta-Physics Of Magic.

The second was less likely to be of universal interest and dealt with some of the nuances and complications of time travel within the campaign, presented at a point where that was about to become important to the PCs. This was embedded in part three of another series here at Campaign mastery, “A Long Road”. I’ve linked below to both the series as a whole and to the specific post concerned.

□ A Long Road – Zenith-3 Synopsis & Notes
□ A Long Road – Zenith-3 Notes for all Pt 3

As noted in the latter, both of these were sprinkled liberally with what were supposed to be snapshots excerpted from a dynamic display supposedly being generated interactively within the game as illusions by a skilled mage.

Key to the success was providing a copy of the illustrations to a player with another PC so that the illustrations could be seen at the same time as I was reading aloud the carefully-prepped canned dialogue. At the end of the adventure, I also provided the player with an excerpted copy of the ‘lecture’ to accompany the diagrams for their future reference.

The key to the success of this technique is making the illustrations compelling enough to hold attention. Plain text on a screen – frequently seen in PowerPoint presentations – won’t cut it. Not unless it tells a joke, and a good one, anyway.

The next time I need this technique, I intend to try and make the ‘lecture’ even more interactive by presenting the illustration and getting the PCs to interpret it before the lecturer expands on their understanding. When that will happen, I have no idea…



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Illustrated Documents provided in advance

The final technique is one that I have employed both in the Zenith=3 and Adventurer’s Club campaigns. It basically involves preparing documents and giving them to players in advance of their characters acquiring them, relying on them to read them and then not to use knowledge that their characters don’t have yet. My players are pretty good at the second, and (in some cases) not quite so good at the first, but still better than average.

The Adventurer’s Club examples came from the “Prison Of Jade” adventure, and were provided in-game as handouts, rather than in advance. This is not necessarily the best approach, especially to anything longer than, say, 4 pages or so. These were excerpted and incorporated into the text of Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade – the first starts with “The Mystic Properties Of Jade” and the second, “Kali and Kalika”. Both are without the illustrations that accompanied them when provided to the players, unfortunately, as explained in the ‘behind the curtain’ notes that are interspersed within the article.

Since the subject has come up, there are a couple of other posts here at Campaign Mastery that specifically address Handouts and the problems that can come with them that I should bring to the attention of readers.

□ Beyond the Game I: Handouts and Props

□ A Helping Handout

□ Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question

□ The latter parts of the ‘New Beginnings’ series also discuss handouts for campaign background and rules extensively.


The other major example that I can point to is the background for the current Zenith-3 campaign – much of which was presented here at Campaign Mastery in the 12-part ‘Imperial History Of Earth-Regency’ series – noting that when the original version was provided through my campaign newsletter, it was even more lavishly illustrated because I was not concerned with the image source. The Campaign Mastery version does contain corrections, expansions, revisions, and additional details than the original, however.

3. Interactivity

When a PC says something to an NPC, that NPC should be able to respond to what is said in a natural and normal way. The dialogue content is thus an interaction between the player and GM as much as between the characters that they then embody.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? At the heart of it lies a very straightforward proposition: How would this character respond to what they have just heard? – but in practice, it’s not that easy.

Achieving interaction requires Extemporization, i.e. inventing dialogue off the cuff, and that requires that long list of considerations that I discussed earlier. On top of that, there are those who will take the ‘plot function’ of dialogue too far and turn the discussion into railroad tracks on which the plot rolls along. This is, pretty much by definition, the exact opposite of genuine interactivity.



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4. Informative

Often, the primary purpose of dialogue is to impart information to the PC or PCs who are present. Such information has to be both clear and concise, and yet has to reflect the persona of the NPC delivering it – and those requirements are frequently incompatible if not completely contradictory.

5. Big-Picture

It’s never helpful to lose touch with the big picture. Some of my most creative work was the result of doing so and then having to rescue the adventure or even the whole campaign from my own creative instincts.

6. Motivation & Purpose

These don’t refer to your intentions and desires for the conversation, but to the NPC’s motivations and what purpose they want the conversation to achieve.

One of the most fun things that you can do is to have an NPC react to whatever the PC says as though it was the greatest reward they can imagine – or a declaration of a blood feud – even though what the PC said was neither.

     [NPC]: “Good afternoon, Sir Gently.”
     [PC]: “Chancellor Extrak. Enjoying the festivities?”
     [NPC]: “Quite a distinctive visual display. Quite skilled, I suppose. But I haven’t been able to pay them enough attention to really appreciate them. Busy, busy, busy.”
     [PC]: “I watched some of them from the balcony, earlier. An excellent vantage point, i thought.”
     [NPC]: So long as the weather stays fair. But I must be going, now.
      “Thank you for the… conversation.”

That last statement is critical – depending on how it is phrased and delivered, the interpretation of the conversation from the NPCs point of view is delivered. Smug and condescending, or casual and friendly, or with barely-controlled fury, or the icy manner of someone forced to be polite despite taking extreme offense. Only the “casual and friendly” response is in any way reasonable, given the content of the small talk.

Which means that if the tone indicates one of the other reactions, the PC (and player) should be left scratching their head and asking “what just happened?” – it is clear that the NPC got far more from the conversation than met the eye.

The GM’s fun can last all the way up to the point where they have to provide some sensible explanation for the reaction. If you didn’t have a strong reason at the time, though, that can be when the fun stops and the scrambling starts.



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7. Omissions, Errors, Blind Spots, Prejudices and Malice

Given that ‘errors’ are listed explicitly, the implication is that ‘omissions’ are deliberate acts on the part of the NPC. It’s my experience that most GMs don’t spend enough time thinking about these five items that should contaminate most conversations in some way.

□ What will the NPC deliberately avoid mentioning, and why?

□ What does the NPC misunderstand about the situation? What is the source of that misunderstanding? And what is the NPCs inaccurate understanding?

□ What is the NPC unable to see about the situation?

□ What prejudices on the part of the NPC will color his or her interpretation of events and actions – past, present, and future?

□ Does the NPC have some reason to deliberately lie to the PC?

All too often, unless they are known to be the villain or in service to the villain, the GM will ignore these questions; if an NPC is asked a question, or given some information (by a PC or another NPC), it will be honest, open, and reliable. That’s not the case in real life, so why should it be the case in an RPG?

There can be exceptions – in a Pulp campaign, morality is far more binary, more black-and-white, and that means that NPCs will not overtly lie and mislead (unless they are villains, of course, and usually not even then). Bur in general, the truth is that most NPCs are unreasonably honest.

8. Plot Impetus & Direction

There are two basic approaches to populating an adventure with NPCs. The first is to roleplay every encounter, because the players should not know which ones are important; the second is to only roleplay those conversations that are significant to the plot. Conversations that are not important get described in passing by omniscient narration or completely ignored.

[GM]: “You quickly arrange lodgings and a meal with the tavern-keeper, who shows you to your rooms, advising that a bell will sound when the evening meal is ready to be served in the common room.”

Actually playing through introductions, negotiations, etc, could easily take five or ten minutes. If the NPC is to be important to the plot in some way, is to provide some crucial information or something, by all means, take that time; but, if nor, a GM should at least consider not doing so, under the precepts of the second approach.

If I were playing the one campaign weekly or even fortnightly, I would tend to incline toward the first approach, because it gives the game world greater verisimilitude; if play is less frequent, or constrained in hours in some other respect, I incline towards hand-waving trivial encounters.

Note also that ‘imparting verisimilitude’ is an entirely reasonable plot function for an NPC or an encounter to have, one that on its own is sufficient to justify playing it out – if that sense of believability, of suspension of disbelief, needs some reinforcement at that point in the adventure.

The final factor that plays into this type of decision is the desired pacing of the adventure. If the big climax is approaching, hand-waving this sort of empty dialogue is far more desirable than is the case early in an adventure.

If, however, I wanted to deflate the pace of the adventure – to get a climax to coincide with the end of play for the day, for example, or because I wanted time to ratchet the tension up a notch or two higher, empty conversations like this one are a great way of doing so.

9. Characterization

The last critical ingredient is characterization of the NPC.

You can deliver some of it through descriptions of them and of their workplace (assuming that they have some measure of control over it) or home (same assumption).

You can even prepare the ground by having others express an opinion of the NPC in advance of the meeting.

But the real meat of the characterization comes from what they say and how they say it.

Focusing on the holes

This article was actually inspired by some TV advertising for British-made crime dramas on one of the television networks here in Australia, and by some additional thoughts that the advertising triggered.

In a nutshell:

• Everybody Lies
• Everybody makes untested and unverified assumptions without stating them directly
• Everybody has prejudices and opinions that leak into their observations and interpretations.

It is well known that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. First, if people are distracted, they can miss the blindingly obvious, something that I have described a number of times.

• In Blind Spots and False Illusions: How much can you really see?, in the section, “The focus of inattention”, for example.
• The Power Of Blur: Blog Carnival June ’21 gives the Basketball Gorilla Illusion it’s own dedicated subsection, towards the end of the article – look for “The Basketball Gorilla”. It also contains a link to a book by the creators of the experiment, if you’re interested.
• A Trick Of The Mind: Aides de Memoire also discusses the Basketball Gorilla, in the section “The Junk File”, along with several other sorts of information that the brain discards.

Second, humans are hardwired mentally to ‘fill in the blanks’, something that optical illusions are known to exploit. I discussed this in Blind Spots and False Illusions: How much can you really see? (again), in the section, “The Relevance Of Illusion”.

If you put a bunch of eyewitness together, an opinion expressed forcibly enough can actually overwrite witness memories, changing what someone was wearing or what they looked like. It’s called witness contamination. I describe it in The Other Side Of The Camera: Depth in RPGs, in the section “The Camera Of Implication: A witness statement” (it’s early in the post).

Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases, from theNOBA Project, explores the subject in more detail.

Finally, in the post The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch: Two Mystery Examples, in the section “6. Eyewitnesses & Confusion”, I discuss the unreliability of eyewitness testimony in a more general way, with links to a couple of specific articles on the subject.

I know I have recommend it to readers before, but I can’t not mention Wikipedia’s page on Eyewitness Testimony, which makes fascinating reading. They also have an even longer page on Eyewitness Memory which is worth reader’s time.

There is a personal anecdote that I should mention at this point. At one point, one of the duties required by my employer of the time was to assist in the counting of takings from another of the employer’s businesses, completion of deposit information, and walking the takings (all bundled into individual days’ takings) to the bank. On one occasion, it became clear that others had observed the routine; I got robbed at knife-point. Simply by refusing to let go of the plastic bag containing the bundles, and using them as a shield against the guy with the knife, I was able to save two days’ takings from the long weekend that had just passed.

Although the weapon clearly held some of my attention, and the struggle some more of it, I can still clearly remember the shirt that the offender was wearing – blue and white horizontal stripes about an inch-and-a-half wide. I had a clear memory of the faces of the perpetrator and his knife-wielding compatriot. As a result, I was taken to the police station to look at mug books – and that was where the investigation went off the rails, because they had not obtained a full description before this process commenced. About half and hour later, after looking at more than 500 mugshots, I could not have picked the criminals our of a lineup if my life depended on it; my memory had been contaminated. The bigger guy was about 6 inches taller than me, and grabbed the bag; the smaller one was about 5’8” and waved the knife around, but that’s all the description that I can give of them.

Anyway, the advertisement goes on to suggest that it takes a trained investigator to separate fact from fancy and truth from fiction.

But, what I really took away from this advert was the principle of leaving stuff out, and that was because it connected with another thought that was already at the back of my mind.

Many Turns Of Expression

When it comes to technical information, there may be only one clear way of expressing it. Should the topic of conversation be anything else, however, there may be dozens of choices if not more.

When it comes to literary writers, the usual advice is to keep it succinct – cut out any waffle, any unnecessary words, and get on with the story. But people don’t usually speak in bullet-points. So I started to wonder how valid that advice, that general principle, really was – at least when it came to RPGs.

That was what led me to the analysis of conversational content that comprises the bulk of this article, in an attempt to derive a truism that could be applied. To my surprise, my answer seems to me to apply to fiction, too – completely replacing the ‘usual advice’ listed above so far as I’m concerned:

The best way of phrasing any statement within a conversation, or characterizing a conversation in general terms, is Whatever best expresses the personality of the speaker and is compatible with all other indicated purposes of the conversation.

In other words,.if there are multiple possible ways of phrasing something that are of equal value in all other respects, you should choose the alternative that most clearly expresses the personality of the character speaking.

Of course, it’s rarely that simple. Different modes of expression can rarely be characterized as absolutes in any respect, only as effective or ineffective given the context. Beyond that, you’re into gray fuzziness.

One option may better impart technical information at the expense of characterization. Another may make the choice of action clearer to those hearing it than either – but that’s not necessarily a good thing. While the GM, through NPCs, can advise, the players should make the decisions for their characters. Expression of personality is one component of a complex evaluation with many criteria.

What the general statement makes clearer is that within each of these subgroups, the option that should float to the surface is the one that most clearly expresses the speaker’s personality.

A methodology

This in turn is suggestive of a method of approaching the whole question, one that works almost as well when extemporizing as it does when utilizing a canned dialogue or hybrid approach.

1. Select the most important function of the conversation other than expression of personality.
2. Draft a response that addresses that need.
3. Assess that draft response with respect to all the other functions and criteria except (again) expression of personality. If it’s adequate, proceed, otherwise, modify the draft to be at least acceptable in that metric, then proceed.
4. Rephrase the draft to embed as much expression of personality as possible without compromising the primary function chosen in step 1.

This brings three important considerations to the fore.

• It means that instead of having to keep the whole list of considerations in mind all the time, they can be treated as either background information for the GM or as a checklist of qualities that need to be rated as ‘satisfactory’, lightening the GM’s workload massively.
• It subordinates everything other than the one most important consideration to the expression of personality while mandating that any given expression must achieve a minimum standard of success in all other considerations.
• It’s not quite as fast as saying the first thing that comes into your head, but it’s not all that much slower – snap decisions make the selection of phrases quick and relatively easy.

Of course, having prep time dedicated to polish and nuance is always going to deliver a better result when precision is necessary. But, most of the time, you can simply list what the substance and purpose of the communication is going to be, and the personality of the speaker, and extemporize from that foundation.

A little context on the tail

It has been said that it’s easy to catch a bird – you just need to get close enough to sprinkle a little salt onto its tail.

Meaningful phrasing and rhetoric in an RPG are exactly the same – getting close enough is the tricky part, once you are in the vicinity of ‘good enough’, that’s all you need – move on.

It can actually get easier to create that meaningful phrasing and rhetoric, because statements do not have to be definitive; each creates a context for the next things to be said, and those ‘next things’ can refine and modify the interpretation of the first statement.

This means that ‘close enough’ is not a fixed standard – it can start fairly lax and be refined as you ‘get down to business’. The implication is that initial statements and social niceties can actually be used to set the stage for the meaningful dialogue. And, since these have virtually no semantic content within the conversation, you can dedicate them entirely to an initial expression of personality.

Flawless technical language can be bracketed by expressive non-technical foundations that provide context and shape to the whole communication.

You can offer the best of advice to a PC while ensuring that they are unlikely to take it simply by implying that this is what someone they don’t like or trust would want them to do.

Nuance and depth get created as ‘illusions’ – just as a couple of lines can become a railroad track, or an empty space can become a white triangle (see some of the linked articles listed earlier if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

Conversations don’t have to be hard. Good conversations are not much harder than Bad dialogue. The secret is to choose an approach that suits the needs of the conversation and its purpose within the game, then apply a methodology that takes most of the work and stress out of the task.

One final piece of advice

It’s almost impossible to overact when GMing an RPG (but don’t take that as a challenge). Chew the furniture, inhabit the role as though it were one that you were born to play – you will not only be more expressive, and more on-point, but you will have more fun, and make the game more fun for your players.

It can be hard to let yourself go when you have so much on your mind – that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the attempt.

This is not the article that I intended to post today (that’s still somewhere in the pipeline). Real-world events have overtaken my planning and this post is in response to those events.

Some of the language may be provocative or even incendiary; I make no apologies for that – this is a subject that has a lot of people very angry and unhappy, and this emotional landscape is reflected in the things that they are saying and writing.

The middle part of this article quotes, in full, a Quora answer by Edward Conway, which he has graciously permitted me to quote in full. It’s the most complete summary of events up to the date of its original publication that I have seen, anywhere, bringing together a lot of material and opinions that I had encountered in bits and pieces elsewhere.

After that quoted text, I’ll be back to offer my 20¢ worth on the subject.

First, though, a preamble to describe the state of mind in which I think these events should be interpreted.

Bad Decisions 1

On December 6, 2000, the music industry declared war on file sharing, especially targeting Napster, through the courts. Fair enough – I may disagree with their motivations, but have to concede their right to do so. But this led them to view the consumers who paid for their product as criminals until proven otherwise, because Napster was far from the only peer-to-peer file-sharing service, and the lawsuits were ineffective in achieving the stated goals as a result.

Legal academic Lawrence Lessig wrote, in his 2004 book Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, “When Napster told the district court that it had developed a technology to block the transfer of 99.4 percent of identified infringing material, the district court told counsel for Napster 99.4 percent was not good enough. Napster had to push the infringements ‘down to zero.'” Since Napster were unable to do so, the record companies through the RIAA targeted the (potential) users of these services, i.e. their own customers.

The Rootkit Scandal

In 2005, this led Sony BMG to incorporate copy protection on the CDs that they published, and if that was as far as they had gone, it might have been seen as a reasonable measure. But it wasn’t; they also incorporated a rootkit, software that actively probed and modified any computer through which an attempt to play the CD was made. Even worse, the rootkit undertook active measures to obfuscate what it was doing – it was a deliberate malware infection of those computer systems, and it opened points of vulnerability that other malware was able to target.

The resulting public outcry, government investigations, and class-action lawsuits led to a rescinding of the policy in 2007 and a recall of about 10% of he affected CDs. But it took relations between the recording industry and their customers to a new low, and caused many who had been neutral or even supportive of the industry’s active pursuit of copyright infringers to turn against the industry.

See Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal for more information.

RIAA Lawsuits vs Individuals

Studies in more recent times have attempted to quantify the scale of the losses to file-sharing, with estimates ranging from negligible to moderate. Nevertheless, the Association began taking legal action against individuals who they alleged were destroying the industry. Amongst those targeted by these lawsuits were college students, parents of file-sharing children, a deceased grandmother, an elderly computer novice, and (allegedly) a family with no computer at all (see RIAA efforts against file sharing.

Winning the battles, losing the war

The RIAA and broader recording industry as a whole won virtually every battle in their war on file sharing, but paid a terrible price in customer relations. The war was never fought to a conclusion; iTunes and legal downloads rendering the conflict largely moot. The recording industry was already imploding by this time, as shown by the number of gold, platinum, and diamond records that have been certified each year.

At first glance, such a list (sourced from here) seems to disprove the argument. But if you look more closely, you’ll find that the list includes both singles and albums. Sorting it by year of release and then release type separates the two. The date of certification is also important; in more recent times, digital downloads, streams and even youTube plays count, before 2016, it was sales alone. This change caused The Eagles Greatest Hits to jump from somewhere around the 26 million mark to 38 million (I’d be more specific, but I lost the link to the source, so I’m working from memory).

I especially want to call attention to Visualizing 40 years of Music Industry Sales by Nick Routley and the graph that heads the article. They grant the right to use the graphic so long as it isn’t resized, but I can’t fit it onto Campaign Mastery’s page size without doing so – the best I can do is link to it.

It shows, graphically, how music sales dipped catastrophically for years, dropping from a peak of 21.5 Billion US$ in the late 1990s to 6.9 Billion US$ in 2015, a 17-year decline. Part of this is no doubt due to increasing competition for retail dollars, part of it is due the loss of the marketing channels (and loss of relevance of those that remain) when MTV switched from music videos to reality TV, and part is due to the various sources of ill-will caused by the war on the consumer from 2000 to 2008.

As an exercise in shooting yourself in the foot, at least in terms of Public Relations, the 2000-2008 period was a bell-ringer.

Bad Decisions 2

There are a lot of parallels with a more recent series of catastrophic decisions – I am, of course, referring to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Musk offered three times what the platform was worth, tried to back out of the deal, but was forced by the courts to go through with the purchase. In order to pay the interest on the loans taken out to fund the purchase, he needed annual revenues of 2.2 Billion US$ – from a service whose best year was a profit of 1 Billion US$ and is usually significantly less.

In an attempt to boost profits, Musk sought to relax moderation in an attempt to lure back the more populist and egregious users who had been evicted from the platform under the previous ownership. He described this as supporting Free Speech (I’m trying to be as politically agnostic as I can here).

He also fired more than half of the employees who kept the service running, and imposed working conditions so draconian that any who weren’t fired would have immediately started looking for employment elsewhere. The really good people would have found it; ultimately more than 90% of the staff left. And the only reason the total is that low is because Musk was forced to hire back a number of critical staff. This wasn’t just cost-cutting, it was cutting off your nose to spite your face, and a direct consequence of not understanding how the business worked and what these people actually did for the company.

The loss of public confidence that these measures raised was only compounded by a hypocritical attitude towards Free Speech when Musk began banning members of the press and public who were critical of his management decisions. This led one of the largest advertisers on the platform to ask questions of him that were quite neutral in tone; Musk banned them, too.

Its reported that revenue has fallen by 21/22nds as a result. Advertisers are deserting in droves, according to some sources. Meanwhile, users are also defecting, some driven away by a lack of confidence in the platform, some by the absence of adequate moderation, some by the rush of extremists (mostly from the right wing of politics) returning to the site. Even more are retaining their accounts (so as not to lose touch with their friends and contacts) but are no longer active on the service. This only worsened when Musk attempted to make mentioning any other form of social media account a banning offense.

There are now so many ways in which the entire operation can now fall apart that there are long odds against it surviving the next year.

In terms of public relations, this is a long string of bad decisions, and it has run Twitter into the ground. Whether or not it can recover from this position remains to be seen.

And that brings me to the terms of the new Open Gaming License from Paizo/WOTC…

What are the ramifications of the leaked draft language of Wizards of the Coast’s upcoming new version of D&D’s Open Gaming License? How would the new license’s terms change D&D gaming and content creation? What existing content would be effected?

Answer by Edward Conway,
Reproduced with permission from the Author
Originally posted January 6, 2023, Updated January 9

Wizards just declared war on Pathfinder, Critical Role, Roll20, and every other entity outside of Wizards that creates or sells D&D content. And yes, that includes DMs and homebrew content.

In the year 2000, D&D makers Wizards of the Coast granted 3rd parties and individuals the right to create and sell content using parts of the D&D ruleset, without payment to Wizards, free from the threat of legal action as long as they abided by the terms of the OGL 1.0.

They are attempting to revoke that right, for all D&D content: past, present, and future.

(image creator Patrick Correia, details in footnote[1] )

The new OGL license states that it goes into effect Jan 13, 2023, and that the old licenses are no longer valid.

The original OGL allowed content creators to create content based off of a portion of the D&D rules of 3rd Edition and 5th Edition known as the SRD. As long as this content abided by the rules, content creators could make and sell their content without having to fear being sued by Wizards.

The resulting multi-million dollar content creation industry has led to greater popularity of D&D and has vastly increased the number of players and DMs. The primary reason that 3rd and 5th editions became so much more popular than other editions was the increased freedom of players and DMs to create new content for their games, and to do so without the threat of being sued.

That is ending.

The new OGL states that the old license is no longer authorized.

No where in the terms of the OGL is it stated that Wizards can de-authorize a license. The official statement by Wizards on its page explaining the terms specifically states that Wizards cannot remove the ability to use an existing license:

7. Can’t Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn’t like?

Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there’s no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway. [2]

Note that Wizards deleted this from its website shortly before releasing the new terms, to hide its tracks.

Then Vice President of Wizards Ryan Dancey, the man who created the original OGL, has stated clearly that Wizards and Hasbro does not have the power to de-authorize a license:

Yeah my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to de-authorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked. [3]

There is no grandfather clause in the new license text, on the contrary, the new OGL states that all creators who created and sold under the original license must now switch to the new license.

This directly contradicts the terms of the original license:

9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License. [4]

The meaning of this becomes clear when you examine how the license has changed:

1. OGL 1.0 covered 3rd edition content.
2. GSL (a different license) covered 4th edition content.
3. OGL 1.0a covered 5th edition content.

All of these licenses have been established as valid and authorized by Wizards. Wizards has not taken any action to de-authorize any license over the 22 years OGL has been in force, until this month. The contract language does not grant Wizards the power to de-authorize an existing license. The contract specifies the process Wizards must follow if there is a contract violation: notification, 30 days period to rectify the violation, followed by termination of only that license holder’s contract, not the license as a whole.

Wizards has failed to follow the terms of its own contract.

Under contract law, parties to the contract can only change the terms in ways spelled out in the contract. Wizards of the Coast, in its attempt to unilaterally de-authorize existing licenses, is potentially in breach of its contractual obligations under those licenses.

The action this month by Wizards goes against the terms of its contract, the statements it made about that contract to licensees, and the stated intent of the creator of that contract. If you take nothing else from this answer, understand this: Wizards of the Coast is attempting to change a binding contract it drafted, signed, and has supported for 22 years, without the permission of license holders and in possibly violation of the law.

Beyond that:

1. The new OGL states that Wizards of the Coast can modify the terms of the license at any time, for any reason, and the sole requirement is to give 30 days notice by posting the changes to their website.
2. The new OGL states that Wizards can revoke any creator or company’s permission to create, sell, and distribute content for any reason, and that the sole requirement is to give 30 days notice.
3. The new OGL states that if a company has their license revoked, they must, within 30 days, delete and destroy any and all material that uses D&D content. Yes, you read that right: this gives Wizards the power to order Critical Role to delete all videos, books, etc., if they choose. This gives Wizards the power to order Netflix to take down Stranger Things. This gives Wizards the power to order Paizo to destroy all Pathfinder books, and to remove all Pathfinder games from Steam[5].
4. The new OGL lays out the requirements to register with Wizards (along with how often you have to report your income to Wizards), and states that Wizards shall have a right to publish, sell, and distribute, any and all content created, without paying anything to the content creator. This license is stated to be perpetual, unlike the new OGL license to use D&D content. Yes, Wizards is copying one of the core mistakes of the Warcraft 3: Reforged[6] debacle by Blizzard: anything you create, they can sell without paying you a penny.
5. The new OGL lays out the royalties content creators must pay Wizards for the right to sell their content, based on platform, type of content, revenue, etc. It details the special deal Wizards negotiated with Kickstarter to reduce the royalties cut Wizards will demand from all Kickstarter funded D&D projects[7] . In the linked article, Kickstarter states that it did not receive any payments as part of this deal.
6. The new license forbids lawsuits and requires binding arbitration to settle any disputes.

Will there be lawsuits?

Hell Yes. I am not a lawyer, but based on the analysis and commentary of at least one lawyer who is also an avid gamer[8], the new OGL terms, if enforced successfully, would shutdown most tabletop roleplaying companies.

Edit: There have been some great additions posted in the comments section [of the original answer], including responses from Pathfinder publisher Paizo and the creator of the original OGL, and videos with further legal commentary. Big shout out to Maya Deva Kniese for the updates.

Royalties are not the issue: paying royalties is commonplace. The core issue is three-fold:

1. Wizards can shut down any company within 30 days, without any requirement for cause, and with limited to no right to appeal.
2. Wizards can order any company or creator to delete or destroy all copies of their products, again, with no requirement for cause or meaningful route to appeal.
3. Wizards can change the terms at any time, in any way, and the new terms will apply, with no right to sue to force Wizards to abide by the terms originally agreed to.

No company in the world would agree to such an unbalanced contract.

Doing business requires a degree of certainty and stability, and this license provides neither.

Netflix has sunk millions into Stranger Things. Critical Role has sunk tens of millions into its videos and products. Paizo, makers of Pathfinder, which surpassed 4th Edition D&D in popularity, makes approximately 12 million a year.

On January 13th, the perpetual and irrevocable license Wizards issued will end, jeopardizing 22 years of D&D content creation and sales.

There will be lawsuits.

While I am not a lawyer (I would welcome commentary and answers by those who are), even I know that attempting to unilaterally change the terms of a 22 year old agreement that a multi-million dollar industry depends on will result in lawsuits.

Beyond that, this breaks the social contract of Dungeons and Dragons.

For 22 years, we players, DMs, and content creators have been free to add to the hobby, creating new classes, races, spells, abilities, and settings.

This freedom built D&D, literally: the vast majority of content in the official rules started out as player and DM created homebrew. Paladins, Monks, Bards, Skill Proficiencies, Feats: all of these were created by players and DMs, shared within the community, and later incorporated into the official rules.

Dragonlance began as a homegame, and grew into a published series with 190 novels published[9] . All because of a homegame.

Critical Role has launch massive online streamed campaigns that have been adapted by Amazon Prime Video (thank you to Colin Byrne for correctly my Nat 1 Perception check) after a Kickstarter raised $4.3 million on the first day, raising $11.4 million during the whole campaign. This started as a homegame.

Stranger Things, at 4 seasons in, is still the most popular show on Netflix, and it is about a D&D homegame.

Under the new terms, none of this will be possible in the future, and everything that has been created can be destroyed by Wizards at anytime.

Wizards of the Coast, with the new license, is attempting to kill the D&D community’s ability to run homegames, to create and sell content for homegames, and to celebrate our homegames.

That breaks the foundational social contract of D&D: that players are DMs should be free to create, modify, and add to the game, and share what they add with the community.

This is a declaration of war against the D&D community, and it should be treated as such.

Footnotes

[1] File:Book burning.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
[2] Open Game License: Frequently Asked Questions
[3] Ryan Dancey — Hasbro Cannot De-authorize OGL
[4] Open Game License v1.0a
[5] D&D’s stricter licensing rules might impact some beloved RPGs
[6] “Warcraft 3: Reforged” Is A Disaster — Here’s Why Fans Are So Upset
[7] Dungeons & Dragons’ New License Tightens Its Grip on Competition
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPV7-NCmWBQ
[9] List of Dragonlance novels – Wikipedia

Further Developments & Opinions

The first lawsuit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10496c9/a_letter_sent_by_a_genuine_lawyer_to_wizards/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

John McKnight

John McKnight, in a comment to the original article, wrote,

I know several people who are already committing to not give Wizards any more money, for any products. Players ready to give up MtG [Magic The Gathering] , even. Because of this announcement.

He also provided a link containing “more information. Including copies of WotC’s earlier statements regarding potential OGL changes:” D&D: WotC’s OGL 1.1 Leaks Get More Confirmation, Creators React

Hahn Ackles

Also in a comment on the article, Hahn Ackles points out:

The worst part is that unlike the original OGL, the new license specifies that when it comes to digital content it can only be used for “static digital products”, such as PDFs.

Which sounds semi-reasonable until you realize that means interactive character sheets and character building apps, which are super f***ing popular, are no longer allowed.

(My censorship).

In a separate comment, he suggests that all the goodwill that WOTC had generated with their apology and open playtest leading up to 5e have just evaporated, a point with which I concur.

In fact, having lost and then regained that goodwill and now having lost it again, it will be ten times as difficult to regain it, in my opinion.

Greg Hunt

Greg wrote an extensive comment in response to the article, pointing out that this is a scorched-earth policy; there is no way back for Wizards. Once public trust in an institution is lost, it’s lost for a VERY long time.

That means that players, creators, and game companies that have supported D&D under the aegis of the original OGL will depart and will not come back.

William Tait MacDonald

William wrote about the legal requirements that have to be met for a contract to be binding, pointing out that the proposed license fails to meet those criteria.

In particular, agreement to the license has to be uncoerced. Applying new terms retroactively, which is what this license seeks to do, and using intimidation and threats toward anyone who does not agree to apply those terms retroactively, is overt and clear intimidation.

He also points out that this is an attempt to “re-copyright” material that the copyright owners (Wizards) renounced rights to and placed in the public domain under certain usage conditions spelled out in the original OGL – but copyright doesn’t work like that. Once you give up rights under copyright, you can’t take them back again.

More Resources

Edward himself offered a link to a Reddit thread that can be considered a hub for analysis and commentary on the subject.

The Paizo Response

On Friday, the day that the new license was to take effect, Paizo issued a press release announcing their own system-neutral open license:

PAIZO ANNOUNCES SYSTEM-NEUTRAL OPEN RPG LICENSE
Industry-leading Independent Publishers Seek Return to Open Gaming

[REDMOND, WA, January 12, 2023] – In response to rumors that an upcoming revision of the Open Gaming License (OGL) by Wizards of the Coast would “de-authorize” this keystone of the modern tabletop roleplaying industry, Paizo has begun work on a new open, perpetual, and irrevocable Open RPG Creative License (ORC).

Since 2000, the OGL has improved the community, incubated creativity, and grown the business of not only the licensees but the licensor. A stated goal of a perpetual and irrevocable OGL was to ensure the establishment and longevity of gaming networks and to drive sales to both. Recent reinterpretation notwithstanding, it succeeded. Many companies including Wizards of the Coast have benefited from that growth.

The Open RPG Creative License (ORC) will be built system agnostic for independent game publishers under the legal guidance of Azora Law, an intellectual property law firm that represents Paizo and several other game publishers. Multiple leading publishers have already signed on to the effort to create a new and truly open license that allows all games to provide their own unique open rules reference documents that open up their individual game systems to the world.

Complete details may be found on Paizo’s blog.

It’s not ready yet – but it’s coming. Even if Wizards were to rescind the new license, so much trust has already been lost that, when offered an alternative, people will jump ship.

My 20¢ Worth

This was a PR disaster from start to finish. There has been immediate fallout – which shows how thin the layer of accrued trustworthiness actually was.

This is not surprising; for every positive step they take, WotC shoot themselves in the foot and fall back a step. It’s happened before, with the GSL, as others have pointed out. And it happened when it became known that Wizards ignored play-testers’ feedback in the development of 4e.

The consequences are many-fold and even if the eventually-released form of the license is without the many, many nasties described, not all of them will be – can be – undone.

Immediate Impacts

I’ve broken my analysis of these consequences into to major categories – immediate (those that have already happened) and rumored/potential future consequences, assuming that Wizards stand firm.

Public Opinion

Ryan S Dance has a petition asking Hasbro and WotC to “make a clear statement that the #ogl v1.0a cannot be de-authorized or revoked” that has now accrued over 15 thousand signatures. This is indicative of the breadth of the public response to the proposed OGL, and backs up the opinions quoted above.

Subscriptions to D&DBeyond

A number of people claim to have canceled their subscriptions (but there are no hard figures available on how many have actually done so). Nevertheless, indications are that a significant percentage have ended their support.

What’s more, several of them have announced a decision to stop purchasing ANY WotC products immediately. A few have gone further and made it all Hasbro products. Again, I don’t know what percentage of their customer base this represents, but any loss of these die-hard supporters is bad news.

Unverified reports have started to emerge of WotC charging subscription renewals for those who have canceled their subscriptions. It’s possible that this is a simple error – anyone can make a mistake. It’s also possible that their systems are so overwhelmed by the number of cancellations of subscriptions that the part of their system that bills for renewals billed the credit cards of the subscribers before the cancellation could be processed – it would be poor systems design, but that’s still quite believable. But finally, it’s possible that someone has decided to charge subscribers who have canceled anyway, because many people don’t check their statements or might think, ‘well, I’ve already paid for it, so I might as well use it’.

Why does all this matter? Because there is evidence (of unproven provenance) that WotC are using D&DBeyond subscriptions as a way to measure public opinion in response to the OGL. What gives this credibility is that the message makes certain claims (for example that roll-out of the new OGL has been delayed because of the backlash) that have since been proven accurate.

Pathfinder

Were Paizo still selling Pathfinder 1.0, they might well have been vulnerable to the problems described in Edward’s post. However, it’s my understanding that one of the primary objectives of the rewrite that became Pathfinder 2.0 was to remove all SRD content – if true, then Pathfinder would have been immune to legal action by Wizards except through concatenation, a much harder debate to have.

Yet, this flies in the face of the reported ‘first lawsuit’ mentioned above, so perhaps Paizo themselves were not all that confident.

Successful past Kickstarter campaigns

Picture this: you’ve had a successful Kickstarter campaign, have written the text and sourced the art, and the whole thing is about to head off to the printers, who have a signed contract to provide you with the hardcopies to fulfill the orders of your backers, when the license under which your product is to be published is retroactively revoked.

Either you don’t have the money to rewrite the product, leading to the cancellation of the whole project and ill-will all round, or you do, but it means that you make no profit (or less profit) on what has been months of work. RPGs are generally published on a shoestring, and any unexpected major expense or delay can be fatal.

Either way, a loss of confidence on the part of your backers is likely to result, no matter how understanding they may be about the circumstances.

Lawsuit? Maybe. Certainly, you could establish a financial loss as a consequence of the change of license.

Current Kickstarter campaigns

That loss of confidence would also be felt by any fundraising campaigns currently underway. The threat alone could be enough to cause several projects to be canceled, possibly with the intent of rebooting them once the dust settled.

Retail Sales

If customers won’t buy a producer’s merchandise because of something that producer has done, the retail outlets will often simply return the unsold (and unsalable) product and demand a refund. There were rumors that this effect alone was going to cost WotC millions of dollars in the month of February.

Publishers of existing product

Fat Goblin Games bundled up their entire catalog of OGL material and offered them for sale at a ridiculous discount. They called it their ‘F*CK WotC Bundle’ (but were persuaded to rename it by DrivethruRPG. The implication of the language used in the announcement is that once the new license comes into effect, sales of these products will stop.

In the same announcement, they offered:

“A lot of you are looking for other, non-OGL games to check out because screw supporting corporations only interested in $$$. And I totally get that, so I talked to a bunch of my friends and associates and we put together this amazing bundle of games for you. These games are all core books or complete books, cover an assortment of genres, and vary in complexity and rules systems.

TRY THIS RPG [BUNDLE]

Nearly 30 games are made available for you to check out and at a great price. Give it a try, let me see what you think, and maybe you’ll have a new favorite publisher! Available for the next week, but act fast!

Maximilian Hart of d20 Digest mentioned the whole kerfuffle when announcing that his new adventure was now available through DrivethruRPG

But with the way the winds are blowing, I thought it best to release under 1.0 instead of 1.1 – and if that makes no sense, just search the Internet for “D&D OGL” and “mess” and “on fire” and you’ll catch the drift quickly enough!

(The adventure is “Pearly Prison Of The Crocodile Queen“, available through the link provided).

Dungeon Master’s Workshop issued a statement over Twitter about their future with D&D. In part, it reads:

“Dungeon Master’s Workshop will not sign the new Open Game License (OGL) 1.1. We categorically reject Wizards of the Coast’s ability to de-authorize OGL 1.0a, which has allowed for mutually productive partnerships for the last 20 years. Their attempts to pull the rug out from under the creators – who have supported the brand and grown D&D into the world’s greater roleplaying game – are wrong, in bad faith, and almost certainly illegal.

We also categorically reject their demands that we pay royalties to use what we have already been allowed to use royalty-free in perpetuity, or to hand over our rights to control our intellectual property and allow WotC to use and sell what we create without permission, compensation, or even credit. These are demands that no creator could accept, and WotC is wrong to make them.”

They also state, “Several major 3PPs (third-party publishers) have already announced their intentions to create an entirely new system, including Kobold Press and MCDM”. Other creators have joined with DMW to create a “non-OGL and non-WotC version of an SRD that can be used commercially, royalty-free, forever.”

Publishers of future product

Also last Friday, Beyond The Horizon Games sent out a newsletter which announced their decision not to accept the terms of the new license. They have two products for 5e already in development which they intend to complete under the terms of the old OGL, in other words relying on Wizards intent to apply the new license retroactively as a legal overreach that will not stand.

Beyond those two products, they will be looking to support other game systems – they have yet to decide which ones.

Rumored / Potential Future Impacts

It may be getting ahead of myself in the story, but these impacts are unlikely to now proceed, for reasons described at the end of the article. In essence, Wizards have capitulated in all the areas that mattered to gamers. If they had stuck to their guns, however, these are the impacts that I foresaw.

Lawsuits

If there’s one message to take away from Edward’s post and the comments that it engendered, it’s that there would have been lawsuits. But very few companies are big enough to take on Wizards directly, let alone Hasbro; for that reason,, I suspect that most lawsuits would quickly coalesce.

Class-Action Lawsuits

….into one or two much bigger class action lawsuits. Preparations for at least one were rumored to be underway as of Friday. Quite often, the first one becomes a lodestone for all the smaller legal actions, and also teases out of the woods other parties who were not initially willing to risk legal action against so big an opponent..

Restraint Of Trade

Although it might look like any third-party publisher who had produced, or was intending to produce, 5e-compatable product could make a prima facae case against Wizards on the grounds of restraint of trade, several lawyers have publicly discussed this and concluded that for technical reasons (mainly that Wizards would not be preventing them from publishing something), such an action would be unlikely to succeed.

However, you can never be 100% sure of what a court of law will do, and the claim could have been used as a foundation to establish other grounds for legal remedy. So the notion would not have been completely set aside.

Retail Quagmire

No retailer likes stocking products from producers who are on the nose. At least some of them are likely to have boycotted Wizards products. The biggest retailer that this might have applied to is Amazon. The result would have been disastrous on Wizard’s bottom line, putting it into a financial position similar to that of TSR at the time of its’ collapse and acquisition.

New Product

Third-party producers have already started pulling away from D&D as a result, as described earlier. If Wizards had maintained a hard-line approach to the new OGL, this would have accelerated. This has an impact on the long-term viability of the product, inevitably, and this in turn would have turned some people off running the game. Something else would have been newer and shinier.

Nothing Has Happened – Yet

The new license came into effect on January 13th, or at least, it was supposed to. As suggested earlier, it has been delayed (this was going to be a much larger section of the article, but then this happened):

The Last Word (maybe)

After a week or so of all of the above hitting the fan (and the internet), came an official statement from WotC on the status of the OGL.

It spells out what they claim their motives and intent were with the update – and those sound entirely reasonable.

It alleges that the ‘leaked’ OGL was actually a draft that was deliberately intended to open public discussion on the subject. If true, it has to be the most inept such roll-out in the history of mass communications.

But it also admits that the language used in the agreement was a total and unmitigated disaster, implying and capable of being interpreted in all the nasty, nasty ways described in Edward’s Quora post. The claim is made that these interpretations were complete surprises to WotC – if true, either they failed to consult their lawyers (improbable) or they should fire those lawyers.

There’s a problem, though. Quoting a date effective of Jan 13 for a ‘proposed’ policy change that was being offered ‘for review and discussion’? Nope, that simply doesn’t wash. So at least part of the official statement is an attempt to rewrite history, to save face.

It’s also a bit rich to expect to announce something on the same date as it is to take effect and still expect debate and discussion on any rational basis to result. To me it seems far more likely that they really did intend to try and sneak one past the gaming community and got caught – badly. But that’s just my opinion.

The rest of the announcement is essentially a mea culpa, walking back, one item after another, all the things that people have raised such vehement objection to, and begging for the chance to ‘make this right’.

You can read it for yourself at this link.

Unfortunately, the clumsiness with which this has all taken place (if innocently meant, as WotC claim) has burned bridges. All that goodwill has gone ‘poof’. This is an unqualified PR disaster.

Many are holding their breath and waiting to see what terms the actual final document actually contains, but many business decisions have already been made on the assumption that the leaked document was going to be implemented as written, and those have a momentum of their own – some will be irrevocable. The official response is too little, too late.

The time to make such a public announcement – even if it was less complete and comprehensive – was the day after WotC realized that it had leaked, not more than a week after the fact.

They failed to get ahead of the story, and so the story has gone beyond their ability to control the consequences. And that’s true regardless of what WotC’s actual intent was.

No matter how you slice it, this has been a PR disaster for WotC, and one of the moist significant events of the past 22 years for the Tabletop RPG industry.

Have Wizards done enough to stop the hemorrhaging Time will tell, but I suspect that they have simply slowed it, and it will only stop when a ‘clean’ OGL is publicly released. And maybe not even then. Trust is sometimes a precious and rare commodity, and Wizards have very little of it on tap to draw upon.

Welcome to 2023: A status update

So here we are in 2023! Funny, but it feels a lot like 2022 to me. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year and are all revved up for the year to come.

My holiday period was great, meeting new relatives and catching up with others that I haven’t seen in too long. The only dampener was an unwanted groin strain which has made mobility difficult from midway between the two festive occasions. But I am recovering from that, doing a little better each day, so I don’t expect it to hold me back for very long.

It was great to actually take a break from CM for a couple of weeks – I don’t take many days off from writing this blog, as long-time readers know, and that gets wearing after a while, no matter how much you enjoy doing something.

Today’s subject is intended to be a gentle reintroduction to the routine, normally something that I would not consider big enough to justify a standalone article. Nevertheless, I hope it’s thought-provoking and beneficial.

The Eyes Of A Player

Something that occasionally bugs me is a player focusing more on their laptop or phone or an unrelated sourcebook than on the game. I have one player who regularly uses his laptop in-game, but I don’t have a problem with that, because that’s where he keeps his character. It’s even been something that I can take advantage of, from time to time – showing his character a different vision (via a USB) than that displayed to the other PCs, for example.

I have another player who is also a GM, and who sometimes has to do last-minute game prep at the same time as playing in my games. While I’m not happy with that situation when it happens, I understand and try to make allowances. But there are other times when he’s clearly not paying attention and distracted by his device or whatever he’s doing, and I have to pause the game and wait for him to lift his head, and that’s when the behavior grates just a bit. Sooner or later, on a bad day, that might lead to a snapped temper, but so far it hasn’t come to that.

I was musing on my recollections of this behavior over the Christmas break, for no particular reason, and a number of thoughts seemed pertinent to other GMs.

A question of relevance?

First, the obvious point to make in this player’s defense is that the focus of attention was on other PCs at the time, at least most of the time. His character wasn’t directly involved, so he felt safe to focus his attention elsewhere.

But that’s not necessarily the case; I think very carefully about narrative structure when designing my adventures, and if I think it important that a player not know about what’s happening to another PC, I will take somebody aside for a brief period of private GMing. If I don’t do that, it means that I expect the not-involved PCs to learn of what’s happening eventually and trust the players not to use knowledge their character’s don’t have in the meantime.

This means that a story can unfold in a far more natural progression, focusing on what matters rather than being interrupted by recapitulations that are often inaccurate or incomplete. It means that I can play one narrative thread off of another to amplify and add nuance and depth to both. One day, perhaps, a distracted player will miss the key narrative points and not understand what is going on in the adventure, and all this will come to a head – but so far, it hasn’t happened, mostly because when I am embodying the plot and addressing it to the players, I make sure they each make that connection.

So it matters when a player isn’t paying attention, even if their character isn’t directly involved – at least sometimes. And the primary tool that I use when that’s the case is the eyes of the player.

Look at their eyes

What is the player looking at? Do they have a problem making eye contact (indicative of a guilty conscience, even when the person has only been a ‘little bit naughty’)? I don’t expect them to look at me when they are rolling dice, or consulting their character sheets; but when I’m talking to them, that’s a different story.

If they aren’t engaging at such times, it can only mean that the plot isn’t engaging enough for them or that they are distracted by something more vital – like their own game prep. The latter I understand and tolerate, as I explained earlier; and sometimes, the former is something that I can anticipate and even tolerate because that particular player (and/or his character) isn’t the intended focus of the adventure.

For example, another of my players isn’t a fan of universe-bending high-concept cosmic adventures. But others in my group do enjoy them, myself included – so I try to balance both competing perspectives, and even occasionally use that player to bridge the gap between high-concept and practical application in the “real world” of the PCs.

The eyes of the players at your table are sending you all sorts of messages as you play. Try to reserve a skerrick of your attention to pick up on them. You may not be able to change course within the current adventure; you may be willing to tolerate certain forms of behavior, even if they irritate; but in the long run, it will pay you to be aware of the subliminal messages that your players may not say out loud. Especially if such communications are telling you something that you’re not expecting.

The Eyes Of The GM

Such communications can, of course, be a two-way street, but the GM has a much harder job communicating in this way. First, you often have to direct your eyes to reference material or adventure notes or whatever, and that has to take priority. The few times I’ve tried to do things without looking at what I was doing have all been disasters.

Second, you have to split your attention between several different players. You may need to keep your attention on a battlemap much of the time, as well.

Third, you already have several layers of communications to manage. There’s the in-game plot narrative, there’s the activity and personality of any NPCs and anything that they have to say (I’ll have more on that in a future article, maybe next week), and there are the interactions with the game mechanics to manage. Adding a fifth layer to this melange can be beyond the capacities of some; no shame should accrue from that limitation, it’s just a reality that those GMs have to accommodate and work around.

The fifth channel

Some, however, have at least a partial ability to handle that fifth channel, using their eyes and eye movements to convey subliminal impressions to the players, even if only for the occasional overt statement (and it should be noted that these messages are rarely as obvious as the GM thinks they are).

For example, rapid eye movement from side to side when an NPC is speaking can be suggestive of fear, paranoia, or deceptiveness. Forcing yourself to stare without blinking can hint at obsession, or other intense feelings. Usually the combination of what the NPC is actually saying and the context will make it clear which of these interpretations is correct.

Using contradiction

If your dialogue communicates the same thing effectively, then this becomes reinforcement that elevates your performance as a GM; but if your dialogue is saying one thing, you can also use this technique (sparingly) to communicate an entirely different subtext or context.

The key is to try to think of how a great actor would convey everything without explanation to the audience, then try to ‘be’ that actor for long enough to do likewise.

‘Casting’ NPCs

One trick that I have found helpful is to try ‘casting’ the ‘movie’ with different actors in the specific roles. Applied consistently over multiple game sessions, these can help you distinguish one NPC from another in the eyes of the players, without them even being aware of what you are doing.

Is Tom Cruise the perfect actor to cast as Nathaniel West? Is Vincent Price the very embodiment of the impression you want Inspector Raschuas to convey? Do you want Laura Whiste to be more like Sarah Michelle Geller or Halley Berry?

Sometimes, a performance by such an actor can be so iconic that it stands apart from the remainder of their body of work, leading you to prefer to associate that role with the NPC rather than the character in question. “Doctor Phibes” is quite different from Vincent Price’s performance as the hero in “The Bat”.

Casting a broader net

Don’t neglect the possibility of casting people beyond actors if that’s appropriate – I’ve used everything from animated characters to newsreaders to sportsmen as ‘subjects’, with variable success – but enough success to establish that the failures were shortcomings of applied technique and not flaws in the concept itself.

I try to make these associations in advance, as part of my adventure writing / game prep, because sometimes it can be hard to capture the right flavor within the dialogue. Saying that you want an NPC to recall Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive is one thing; actually channeling the ‘outhouse, hen-house, dog house’ speech can be quite another.

Once I have made the ‘casting direction’, therefore, I review and revise the dialogue to assist me in conveying that personality.

Deceptive Measures

A couple of tricks that you can occasionally use to up the ante in this regard are channeling a player and channeling yourself.

Channeling a player

Channeling a player is the equivalent of mirroring a person’s actions, sitting the way they do, and so on. This conveys a sense of trust at a subliminal level, but it’s also fairly overt – and doesn’t have immediate effect (you can tell you have achieved such a ‘bond’ when you do something – reach for a die or a pen – and the person you are targeting mirrors your action. You started off by mirroring them, then usurp control over the link between you). Using speech patterns alone is more subtle.

But it also permits more complex characterization. If an NPC is interacting with the PC controlled by Player 1, and I ‘mimic’ the way that I think Player 2 would ‘play’ that NPC if it were their character, any established relationship between the in-game characters of Players 1 and 2 will ‘color’ player 2’s perception of the NPC usually without them even noticing it.

Channeling yourself

By the same token, consciously attempting to mimic the way you would play a character conveys a sense of falsity, of a character attempting to pretend to be something he’s not. This can be really difficult to achieve convincingly in any other way, so it’s worth adding to your repertoire.

Compounding these impressions with a minor mannerism can convey volumes. Deliberately winking quickly with one eye, for example, carries an Anthony Zerbe ‘crazy’ impression. Wringing your hands whenever a particular NPC is speaking suggests timidity and fear, no matter how confident their dialogue might be. Mixed signals of this type are always suggestive of duplicity. (Note that a GM screen can get in the way – one of the reasons I rarely use one).

You don’t have to be a great actor (it helps if you are, I guess – but I’m not one, so ‘guess’ all I can do). But if you pay attention to performances you see on your TV / movie screens, even those you come across accidentally or in passing, you’ll be astonished at how much it will help you to GM.

The Eyes Have It

Ultimately, GMing is as much about communications as it is anything else. The more aware of communications and communication techniques, the better a GM you will be. Hopefully, some of these techniques will enhance your abilities, or at least give you awareness of some that you didn’t have previously.

The allied subjects of Kinesthetics (‘body language’), Acting, and Speech-writing are far too complex to summarize in any single article, and I’m not an expert in any of them. But they are all worthy of your study as a GM. And a lot of it can be done simply by paying attention to the sounds and images that waft across your television screen – enough to get you started, at least!

If this subject has intrigued you, you might also find this article to be of value: The Heirarchy Of Deceipt: How and when to lie to your players.

Concluding Campaign Mastery’s contribution to the December Blog Carnival hosted by Rising Phoenix Games is on the subject of “No Dice“.

In Part 1, I looked at why we roll dice for various things in RPGs and what these die rolls are attempting to simulate in game-world terms.

In a nutshell, the dice represent all the random factors that can contribute to or determine success or failure under normal conditions.

GMs usually apply a modifier, either to the roll or to the target (depending on the game system) to bias the influence of these random factors so as to incorporate abnormal or unusual conditions.

Why Not Roll?

First, let’s establish that there are occasions when you don’t want to demand a die roll.

1. The PCs enter a room. They have only to walk across to the far side and open the door; there are no obstacles and the door is not locked. The floor is softly carpeted and provides plenty of grip with no risk of tripping. Do you really want the PCs to roll?
2. A PC is looking through a filing cabinet in search of a specific file. The files are clearly labeled, he filing cabinet is not locked. The PC speaks the language used in the labels, knows how to read,has plenty of light, and there’s nothing wrong with his eyesight. Do you really want to make the player roll?

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3. A character with the equivalent of a Master’s Degree in Mathematics needs to add 2 and 2. Do you really want the player to roll to get the answer, “4”?

These are trivial demonstrations of ability. Demanding a die roll in such situations incurs all the negatives that come with a die roll – disruption of the narrative flow, delays in progressing the game – for absolutely no benefit, and raises the question of how you can plausibly interpret the outcome if the player contrives to fail the roll.

There are other occasions and reasons for not requiring a die roll, but these examples are enough to establish the general principle that demanding a die roll for everything is not necessary.

What It Means Not To Roll

In a nutshell, it means that you are satisfied that none of the random factors concerned will be enough to override a specific outcome. Success or failure are inevitable, no matter what the PC says or does. The third example offered above is particularly significant, because it establishes that what may be difficult, or require a die roll, from one character can be so obvious and simple that a more skilled character should have no chance of failure. So it’s not a general question, it’s a specific one relating to a specific character in specific circumstances.

Automatic Skill Checks

If a character has a certain level of expertise, it can generally be assumed that they have a certain level of fundamental understanding of the subject, and some questions are just so obvious that no roll should be needed.

This implies that the mere fact of having a particular skill can be enough – give the player any obvious information that they need to make future decisions and simply move on.

Beyond this obvious application of the theory of dicelessness, there is a gray area that GMs should be cognizant of. As stated earlier, there is an inherent cost to interrupting play while a player makes a die roll, as the mechanics drag them out of their state of being immersed in play. The pace of the game slows, the emotional intensity fades, and the game world is made to feel more artificial and less real. Almost always, these effects are neutral or negative in nature, and so to be avoided unless necessary.

On top of all that, there is a positive impact on the perceived reality of using the mere presence of a skill of sufficient ranks as a decision point within the logical structure of an adventure – essentially providing a concrete manifestation of the characters being a part of the game world.

And, finally, taking the randomness out of a skill check can simplify the plot structure, making the whole adventure simpler and easier to prep.

Automatic Stat Checks

The same logic applies to stats above a certain value. Consider a heavy weight that has to be lifted – you can either demand that players roll a stat roll and total the amount by which they succeed, which is a lot of palaver for a simple situation, or you could assume that people know how to use their strength to lift and simply mandate that they need a total strength between them. The latter choice has the advantage of permitting the simple use of ratios to calculate the effects of a lever, should the PCs decide to employ that approach to the problem.

There are similar situations with respect to virtually every stat, although some of them are a bit more tenuous in justification. A PCs charisma is 20 and the NPC with whom he is bargaining has only 8? While you could employ opposed rolls if the negotiation is serious, but if it’s routine, assume average rolls in advance, precalculate the outcome, and simply announce the results; don’t let the game get bogged down in minutia.

Automatic Detections

Whenever players make perception checks (a.k.a. ‘Spot’ checks in some game systems), they describe them as ‘spot the painfully obvious’ checks, and there’s a lot of truth in that description, or at least there used to be. These days, I try to make something that’s ‘painfully obvious’ evident to the players without a roll – though I will sometimes use a die roll to determine how long it will be before the character observes the ‘painfully obvious’ fact if that’s relevant.

Most of the time, though, I will only make the player roll if there is some subtle nuance that might not get noticed.

If there’s a sound in the forest but no-one makes their perception check, is the sound really there at all?

A blind spot in most game systems revolves around an implementation of non-visual senses that ranges from the incomplete to the inadequate.

So your rules have both ‘Listen’ and ‘spot’ mechanics? That’s great, now tell me how you determine how adequately a character can find a gas leak, or a bottle that has been tainted with something creating the odor of rotten eggs? Tell me how good the character is at determining that the recipe contains a typo in the amount of Turmeric to be added? But a lot of game systems don’t even go that far.

Using automatic detections can solve a lot of these problems, especially if you rule that such a detection only becomes automatic after a certain amount of time and if the character is actively trying to locate the source of whatever they are perceiving.

Auto-Saves

If a character is able to take cover, throwing themselves flat, should they still have to make a Reflex Save in D&D? Some GMs will say yes, because it’s all about how well they execute that maneuver. Others may say no, because so much of the randomness has been taken out of the question.

But the significance goes deeper; a ‘no’ answer means that clever tactics can result in an automatic success, while a ‘yes’ answer says that tactics are secondary to how well you roll. Those are powerful statements to make within a game; one enhances player agency, while the other promotes blind luck to a superior position over such agency. The choice is between encouraging players to invest more deeply in the campaign or telling them that paying attention and making good decisions doesn’t matter, discouraging player participation.

FORT saves

Consider, then, the FORT save, sometimes a Health check or even a Disease Resistance roll – the mechanics are essentially the same, even if the names and details change. Here, once again, there is a profound implication to the simple choice – if you permit a saving throw when a character has a very high stat basis for that saving throw, it says that immunity is a matter of luck more than of resistance, and sufficient exposure eventually results in failure. No roll, perhaps accompanied by a temporary negative modifier to some tasks and activities, bypasses the resulting myriad of rolls; you are either healthy enough to cope with the disease, or you are not.

An alternative is to choose the no-save option but permit saves after a period of rest to throw off the illness, or reduce the negative impact. This combines the best of both choices, o it deserves serious consideration. With serious illnesses, perhaps the choice is between the disease getting worse or getting better – escalation or recovery.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to PCs and disease. The first is that these are PCs, heroes all – they should not be subject to mundane illnesses, only to magical or super-diseases. The second is that these are people first, and it is more heroic to overcome adversity, so they should still be subject to mundane diseases but these should handicap, not incapacitate.

Personally, I can never consider the question without remembering an early issue of spider-man in which he had to save the day whilst suffering from a serious flu, or maybe it was a head cold, and that it made the challenges of being a super-hero even more difficult. That memory puts me squarely into the second group.

Factoring into these questions is the simplicity of cure spells in some game systems, and the potential in the future for people to be immunized against illnesses like the common cold, or right now, for the flu. The latter argues that the GM should feel more free to inflict illness on the PCs because it is so easily overcome; the second is more about how ill victims become, as everyone should know after all the pandemic education we have received over the last few years.

WILL saves

These are some of the most poorly defined saves or checks in most game systems. I’ve seen them used for concentration checks, for determination, for focus (i.e. setting aside distractions), for innate resistance to external influences or against mental control specifically. Although these are undoubtedly similar, they are emphatically not the same.

Autosaves in this department essentially create a threshold for the character; below the threshold, there is so little risk of effect that you might as well not roll, avoiding the negative consequences of interrupting game flow; exceed it, and you are in danger. Dealing with those dangers in narrative form gives the GM more control over then, but at the expense of players feeling like the GM is manipulating a character that doesn’t belong to them. And that can be exceptionally problematic.

A hybrid approach seems to offer the benefits of both with the liabilities of neither – a threshold, which – if exceeded – gives way to a traditional saving throw.

But there’s another side of the coin to consider.

Back when I was just a player in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, my character was Paulo Lumierre, a master hypnotist. Because I had designed the character carefully, under most conditions in which the character had a moment to prepare, he had 24d6 of mind control to utilize. The way this power works in the Hero system is that you roll the indicated number of dice and compare the total to the Will score of the opposition; if the result is greater than or equal to the Will, you have some effect, if double it, you have more, triple equals more again, and four times gives maximum effect.

So, 24 dice at an average of 3.5 each gives an average result of 84. Most normal people had a will of 10, most villains and PCs had 20 or less. An exceptionally strong-willed target might go as high as 25 Will. On an average result, then, I would get maximum result almost every time, and even against the ultra-strong-willed, an average roll would get me three levels of success. Since the character was designed to be as effective as he was supposed to get with just one or two levels of success, there was virtually no need to roll at all.

To get less than those two levels, I would need to roll a total of 50 or less, even against the most strong-willed of opponents; this works out to being so close to 100% chance that Anydice can’t measure the gap; 53 or more is a 99.99% likelihood of occurring. For less strong-willed characters, the chances of success were even closer to 100%.

This level of success was not an accident – at 23 dice, the shift from virtually 100% to 99.99% takes place at a total of 51; the extra dice simply gave me a little extra cushion (to achieve this level of success on an average roll, 50 / 3.5 = just 14.28 dice, but I was also factoring in the possibility that some targets might have defenses against mind control / hypnotism that would have to be overcome).

Why bother rolling? All I had to do was roleplay and stay in character.

So thresholds can and perhaps should run both ways. Beyond a certain threshold of effectiveness, there is essentially no chance of failure, and requiring a roll is all downside and no advantage. In such cases, I think it important for at least a couple of rolls to be made just to establish the reality in the mind of the players – whether it’s a PC or an NPC who is being so dominant – but then, go to a threshold and automatic success or failure when that is warranted.

Automatic Attacks

Just as Skill checks made the basic situation with Stat checks obvious, which in turn clarified automatic Saves, so Autosaves shed light on Automatic Attacks.

By all means, if there is any measure of doubt about the success or failure of an attack, die rolls should be used; but when no such doubt exists, why bother?

There is the need for a special caveat to that general principle when it comes to game mechanics like those of D&D / Pathfinder. When a critical success is needed to hit, or a critical failure to miss, my normal practice is to say that simply hitting the target is all the ‘extra’ that you are reasonably entitled to – but what if you are so far removed from potential success that this is your ONLY chance of success? And what of the situation in between?

My approach is:

• If you need a 2/- to hit (or a 19+), roll as usual.
• If you need a 1/- to hit (or a 20+), ‘critical’ effects are off the table, but roll as usual otherwise.
• If you need 0/- to hit, or 21+, (but will still hit on a critical), ‘critical’ effects are not only ruled out, but a successful hit will do minimum damage – once. After that, automatic miss.
• If you need 1 worse than that (minus 1 or less or 22 or more), even that single success is excluded, and automatic misses are the rule.
• A similar regime (with maximum normal damage instead of minimum) applies to attacks at the other end of the spectrum.

This prevents improbable rolls from wasting playing time, while still permitting ‘hail mary’ passes. Since a fundamental principle at my table is ‘sauce for the goose is good for the gander’ – in other words, a rule that applies to PCs also applies to NPCs and vice-versa – my players tend to tolerate (if not accept) this approach because it is equally fair and binding to both sides. YMMV.

Fixed Damage

The variability of damage is much broader than that of attack rolls in most game systems, even if it doesn’t appear to be the case. It doesn’t matter whether or not your chance of hitting are 3 or less or 17 or less or 14 or more, excluding the effects in some game systems of critical hits, the damage done remains variable to exactly the same degree.

There are three basic models when it comes to fixed damage: the minor, the catastrophic, and the average.

In the minor model, the actual damage inflicted is trivial, little more than a metaphoric scratch, and when coupled with an automatic hit, signifies overwhelming numbers that are fairly helpless to be anything more than an annoyance. This is therefore an excellent means of simulating large numbers of weak opponents, especially within an ‘aggregate time’ combat concept (refer to part 1 if you don’t know what that means).

In the catastrophic damage model, the damage inflicted is close to the maximum possible for the attack form, and reflects a superior enemy who is unable to focus on one target exclusively. This interpretation holds true with both the aggregate time and instant time approaches.

The average damage model is the hardest to justify, in many ways; it falls in between and implies that there is something mechanically repetitious and precise about the nature of the attack that eliminates most of the variability. I have found it effective in situations in which the combat is being faked but made to ‘look good’ in order to persuade a third party, but those situations don’t come along very often.

But, when there’s going to be recurring damage round after round due to the environment, instead of rolling separately for each character each round, it can make a lot more sense from a practicality and playability standpoint to assume that the variability will cancel out and simply apply an average damage result right from the start. This is convenience and playability overcoming strict simulation considerations. So the average damage model has its virtues, too.

Fixed damage is probably most useful when it comes to damage inflicted by mechanical devices and other physical realities, because these naturally take out most of the variables, anyway. The other situation in which I would seriously consider fixed damage is for describing damage caused directly by the environment, because there’s not much that the character can do to avoid or vary that short of some sort of complete protection.

Constant Effects

These are a lot more common, or should be, than people expect. Any effect that is created by a device (magical or technological) is arguably more appropriately simulated with a constant effect value – so much so that variability really needs to be explicitly justified.

Again, devices and contrivances reduce the number of variables significantly, and that logically should impact on the variability.

There’s no blanket justification for removing dice from game-play (save, perhaps, replacing them with some other variable-generating mechanism like cards or coins). But there are a whole heap of specific circumstances that can justify taking specific rolls ‘diceless’.

Life In The Twilight

It’s possible to adopt a half-way house in between these two extremes, i.e. rolls with less variability than is usual. This is often even more realistic than not rolling at all, but it’s generally more effort than it’s worth, so I have chosen not to explore it in this article..

There will be no posts over the holiday season. So it only remains to wish everyone all the best for the holiday season. I’ll see you all early in the New Year!

— Mike

Background Image by Petra from Pixabay, Text created using CoolText.com, compositing and photo-editing by Mike.

The December Blog Carnival by Rising Phoenix Games is on the subject of “No Dice“. This is the beginning of Campaign Mastery’s contribution to the subject.

There are times when it can be useful to the GM and his simulation of reality not to require a roll for something. This article is going to explore the conditions under which that seems worth considering, and what the resulting game mechanics mean in terms of that reality.

The Basic Approach

Just to be explicitly clear on what this article is going to propose, I thought it would be useful to set a baseline describing the usual process and what the rolling of dice normally represents in terms of underlying internal game physics.

While I can’t state that these interpretations will be correct for all game systems that use die rolls, I’m going to keep this at a level such that it will apply to the vast majority of game systems. To achieve that, I’m going to make sure that the interpretations provided are valid for the Hero System and GURPS, for D&D and Pathfinder, and for both my Doctor Who campaign (which uses The Sixes System and my now-completed Zener Gate campaign (which uses its own bespoke rules system. .

These systems are so different in their mechanics that the results should apply broadly to almost every RPG out there, with the occasional exception.

In particular, for each stage of the conceptual framework, I’m going to look at seven specific circumstances:

• Skill Checks
• Stat Checks
• Perception / Sensory Checks
• Saving Throws
• Attack Rolls
• Damage Rolls
• Rolls for effect

You’ll note that I’m explicitly including Saving Throws even though not every game system uses them; when a game system doesn’t, it usually substitutes some sort of stat check for the save mechanics, but the interpretations and implications can be quite different.

It might grow complicated at times, because some of these interact. For example, rolled attacks but not rolled damage, or vice-versa. I’m going to try to avoid this as much as possible, but there will be some of these fringe questions along the way.

Rolling Skill Checks

There are two basic kinds of skill check – knowledge checks and ability checks. Knowledge checks can include how to do something with a practical skill.

• Does the character know the answer to the question being posed? Can he solve the problem, or at least get a step closer to a solution? Can he devise a theory, and a way to test that theory? Can he spot the flaws in a plan or in someone else’s theory?
• Does the character recognize this architectural style? Can he determine which columns are load-bearing and which could be hollow?
• Can the character successfully attempt to do something, like repair a net, or patch a boat hull? How long does he think it will take to forge that sword?
• How much will it cost? What does the character consider a fair price for his services? If an NPC is to do the work, does the character think the price is reasonable?
• How good is the character at working with the tools available – and can he improvise his way around the lack of such tools if he has to?

These are all skill checks. The basic concept embedded in most RPGs is that there are all sorts of variable factors and an element of random chance in most of these tasks, and simulating those factors is the job of the die roll in such a check.

Rolling Stat Checks

Stat checks are very similar, but they deal with the more elemental raw abilities. In many game systems, if you don’t have an appropriate skill to fall back on, you can default to the raw stat check, the innate capacity to work in the field – sometimes with a penalty to you chances of success.

But there are also occasions when no skill is as relevant as those innate capacities. Holding your breath, for example, or running over broken ground, or holding onto something slippery.

If you assume that the stat value provides and defines the unskilled capability of performing such an action, then the die roll takes into account all the variable factors, just as it does for skill checks.

The other function of stat rolls in most game systems are opposed rolls. A tug-of-war is a typical example, in which each participant attempts to apply their strength more successfully than the other. But the same concept applies to attempts to persuade someone – assuming you don’t have a skill that applies, and to all sorts of other interactions, like bartering.

The rolls don’t have to be like against like, either. One stat might represent that character’s natural ability to sneak, while the opposing stat would be that character’s ability to perceive hidden objects.

Again, the stat represents the innate potential of the character, the die roll integrates that potential with the circumstances and variable factors to determine how well the character is able to apply that potential.

Attention and Awareness

‘Make a perception roll” – or it might be a Spot Roll, or a Listen check, or any number of alternatives. But they are all sensory checks, when you get to the bottom line. I could spend an entire column on this subject, but that would take us way off the point.

So here is the very-abbreviated version. When something happens, there is usually a visual change in the environment, or an audible change, or an odor, or – sometimes – a particular taste in the mouth. But for that change to impact on the character’s awareness, they first have to notice the change and then to correctly interpret it, and then recognize the significance. And none of that is as easy as it sounds.

Confirmation Bias, Ideation & Fixation, Malleable Memory, Illusions, Deceptions, and at least half-a-dozen other phenomena are all able to get in the way. Spend too much time looking into, for example, the reliability of witnesses, and you’ll find yourself starting to wonder if any of us ever really see anything clearly.

One truism is that the more attention we pay to something, the better we remember it, and the more details about that something we will typically notice. This usually comes at the expense of awareness of anything outside the scope of that something, and in extreme cases, complete obliviousness to even attention-getting phenomena like alarms and sirens and what other people are saying to us. That’s called fixation, and it’s one of the items on that list above.

Another factor is the state of mind of the witness, which can rewrite perceptions or cause them to be wildly misinterpreted.

In terms of the game mechanics that usually apply, not only do we have to be paying attention to the right thing in the world around us, our awareness has to navigate that whole litany of perceptual errors to bring it to our attention. All of which gets collected into a big conceptual pot called a die roll.

If you fail a perception check, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there was something to see and your didn’t notice it, in fact that’s going to be the case no more than 25-50% of the time. The rest of the time, one of those perceptual or cognitive traps intercepts the awareness and misinterprets it.

So you can interpret a perception check as a means of overcoming these deficiencies, and that would be as valid as any other interpretation..

Rolling Saving Throws

     “A whistling sound fills the air as a spark leaps from the spell-caster’s outstretched hand, flies up to a few dozen yards in height, and begins to fall toward you.”
     “I throw myself to the ground and search for any sort of cover I can find!”

That’s the usual interpretation of a Reflex save. Some GMs may omit all of the above and simply have the player make a Reflex save to throw themselves flat on sheer instinct, as – in fact – a reflex action.

The other kinds of saving throws that are common also derive from D&D: Fortitude saves to resist various things that could distract or incapacitate a character, and Will saves to resist various things that could influence or control their minds.

But, even though this iconic trio stem directly from D&D, most game systems have some sort of equivalents. Sometimes, these are run as stat checks like any other; that is especially common in game systems that don’t have the artificial construct of ‘character levels’. In fact, it’s fair to say that the only reason these checks are semi-divorced from stat scores is to permit the character level input to be the dominant factor.

Is it enough? Is it done in time? Do random factors – like what you had for breakfast – work in your favor? All such considerations are encompassed by the die roll component of a Saving Throw.

What about Modifiers?

If the random die roll is supposed to take all the ‘wild variables’ into account, what, then, is the role of Modifiers to these rolls? Before I move on to attack rolls, I thought it worth taking a moment to discuss modifiers and what they should be considered to represent in the game reality created by the rules system.

Most saving throws and stat checks can be assumed to incorporate those random variables into the die roll, assuming typical circumstances and an even positive-negative influence.

When either of these is not the case, modifiers should be used to reflect that. Effectively, they bias the die roll to take into account unusual circumstances, abnormal difficulties, and other forms of strangeness.

I use bonuses to reflect things like distractions, confusing environments, deceptions and ruses, distance, minuteness of pertinent details, the adequacy or inadequacy of the tools available (if such are necessary), and so on.

I also use them to compare the difficulty of the challenge / question relative to a character of similar skill to that of the character – because a character with a reasonably good skill level should be able to answer basic questions at least 9 times out of 10. Similarly, some problems are going to be harder for anyone but an expert to solve.

The latter is less relevant to game systems like D&D in which a certain natural result on the die always succeeds. because this overrides the consequences of the bias. In the Zenith-3 game system, there are no automatic successes, but there are critical results; “00” is read as “oh-oh” (checks are on d%), and means that something has gone wrong, any failure will be worsened and any success minimized or nullified outright. In fact, it usually signals a reverse of some sort. “01”, in comparison, is read as “Oh, Wow” and means that successes are enhanced, failures are diminished, and so on.

The Plotting Value of Bias Metagaming

Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? This simply means deciding what you want the chance of success to be in a given situation, determining what bias is necessary to translate the character’s normal roll into that probability of success, and then ‘delivering’ the circumstances needed to justify or create that bias.

Or to put it another way, you determine how difficult progress should be for the PC(s) in question and introduce plot elements to achieve that metagame outcome.

When you do this, you always need a ‘Plan B’ for the players to follow, even if they don’t know what it is; where there is one solution, there are probably several. Such metagame roadblocks exist to steer the adventure in the direction of more fun; there should be no malice involved.

The goal is for everyone to have fun. But that doesn’t mean letting the players always have their own way; it does mean rewarding them with success when that’s justified.

The Gods Are Watching

One more sidebar before returning to the main text. This is also metagaming, but in a positive way. Sometimes, especially in temples and the like, the Gods are watching, and may choose to help or hinder; instead of a random die roll to determine this, and then translating that result into a bias on the actual check, I assume the Gods have been watching and judging the characters as they approached this point.

If the Gods would have a good impression, that translates into a positive bias that the character can’t explain; if not, a negative one. And I do take into account how well the character was being roleplayed. Do that well enough, and even an enemy might develop a grudging respect for you – enough to stay their hand when they would be normally inclined to bias things towards trouble for you.

Attack Rolls

Attack Mechanics tend to work in one of two ways: the instant and aggregate time.

D&D and related systems are ‘aggregate time’ mechanics. Each ‘attack’ combines several thrusts, parries, swings, bobs, weaves, and dodges, all probing for an opening in the defenses of the target while keeping yourself clear of enemy attacks. But GMs rarely describe combat that way, and even less frequently, think about it that way.

Superhero games, in particular, tend to be have ‘instant time’ mechanic, in which each move and countermove is determined individually. That’s a reflection of the expected impact on the combat setting; even a single missed attack can have major repercussions.

Other game systems can use either of these interpretations, often without ever spelling out the assumptions that underpin their simulation of ‘in-genre reality’.

The difference is important, because the meaning of the die roll component of an attempted attack is different in both cases.

In ‘aggregate time’, it’s the conflict between maneuvering your opponent into a misstep while presenting minimal opportunities yourself, compounded with your capacity to exploit such mistakes. The die roll is a direct reflection of your success at doing this.

In ‘instant time’, such maneuvering is no longer treated as a collective series of events, and is therefore under the direct control of whoever is running the character. There is no luring of an opponent into a mistake; instead, it’s all about how effective an attack is at penetrating or bypassing the target’s resistance to that attack. In some ways, this can make the combat more interactive and hence more exciting; in others, it can slow it down enormously. There are vastly more variables and parameters that get aggregated into an ‘attack roll’, things that the ‘aggregate time’ perspective simply glosses over. If more of these random factors align in your favor, you are successful; if not, you are not. So that’s what the die roll component represents in such systems.

Many of these systems (especially the hero games system) use 3d6 for attack rolls. Any system that uses multiple dice for such rolls is mapping probabilities to a familiar pattern, the bell curve. The reality of such curves is that they can be viewed as being all about the deviation from the mean – a singularly appropriate perspective, under the circumstances.

Damage Rolls

Most game systems have a separate roll for damage, meaning that the attack roll does not represent the quality of success of the strike, only that it has been successful. The damage roll therefore represents the effectiveness of the attack.

In some game systems, this is the net effect; in others, this is a preliminary value that is then reduced by other game mechanics. The difference is a logical consequence of the differences in attack roll interpretation, i.e. ‘aggregate time’ vs ‘instant time’.

In ‘aggregate time’, the attack roll incorporates a host of modifiers to determine the overall consequences of multiple attempted attacks. This logically includes all the target’s defenses; hence there is no need to account for these in the damage roll, so the damage rolled is a net value.

One of the frequent complaints heard in the early days of AD&D was that this was unrealistic, and reduced the value of defenses more than should be the case, especially since attacks improved with rising character levels but defenses did not, and I have to concede the validity of the last point, at least. Character defenses were, as a result, one of the most common house rules offered – most of them missing at least one key point.

Rather than modifying the amount of damage done by having defenses increase with character levels, these game systems increase the capacity to absorb damage with character levels. In effect, the results make the damage done, as a percentage of the total to be endured by the character, smaller with increasing character levels. The significance of this was often not appreciated in the debates mentioned above, which formed a second nexus of debate because character classes did not increase in capacity equally.

It’s not the place of this article to try to resolve these debates, or even assess whether or not they remain relevant. My scope here is simply to provide understanding of what the variable element, i.e. die rolls, are simulating in such game systems.

When the game system uses ‘instant attack’ resolution, the same compromises are neither possible nor all that desirable, and that permits more realistic damage handling systems – including defenses that modify the amount of damage done.

Rolls for Effect

The final category covers rolls for effect. These are usually from spells or paranormal powers. In ‘instant time’ game systems, they tend to be relatively fixed in value, only increasing as a result of specific decisions in ongoing character development.

In ‘aggregate time’ systems, they tend to increase with character levels, with some exceptions for character class levels that are deemed to follow a different character track. That’s the difference between ‘Caster Level’ and ‘Character Level’ in such systems.

This lay at the center of a third nexus of debates amongst AD&D GMs and players, largely because they didn’t appreciate what the increase in character hit points was supposed to simulate. The reason relevant spells increase in effectiveness with caster level is not to make them more powerful, it is to maintain an approximate parity with rising hit point levels in targets with increasing character levels.

Because this context was not understood, the increase in the number of dice rolled for effects was not understood, either, and that led to a number of half-baked house rules at the time. The only consolation is that there were fewer of these house rules that made it into the game magazines, acquiring some level of semi-official plausibility in the process.

The biggest problem with most of these house rules was that they weren’t comprehensive and holistic; they focused on one specific element of the system without considering the big picture or how the elements of the game mechanics were supposed to integrate, and as a result, they tended to miss the mark.

Be that as it may – most effect determinations involve some sort of die roll, usually on multiple dice.

And when you are talking about multiple dice, you are talking about bell probability curves – the more dice, the more results will tend to cluster around the average result. For another article some time back, I produced the diagram below to illustrate this point.



Just to be complete about illustrating the ‘shape’ of effect rolls, below is a set of images from the series describing the sixes system that addresses the impact of rising numbers of d6:



The middle set of graphs shows the same thing as the stacking of d6 graphed above this trio but in less detail.

So, what does all this variability represent?

I have to admit this is the hardest thing to get your head around. Superficially, it looks like the only reason is to insert unpredictability into the system.

To really understand, you have to make a deep dive into the actual consequences of increasing effect dice in a numeric sense. There are consequences of note:

1. Minimum possible results increase by one per die added to the roll.
2. Maximum possible results increase by the die size per die added to the roll.
3. The probability range clusters more tightly around the average result.

The last one is the hardest for people to understand in a quantitative sense; it’s relatively easy to get a handle on the concept, but much harder to get a ‘feel’ for how significant it is.

To try and deliver an appreciation for the impact of the clustering, I’ve considered a number of different die rolls below, using Anydice, which was also employed for the graphs above.

I’m setting the technical details of the graph into this sidebar as they won’t matter much to most people.

Starting with the result or results of greatest probability, I totaled the probabilities, spreading out to either side. This enabled me to determine the range of results that equated to a given likelihood, and the results were then compiled into the table that follows the curve.



That’s useful in an illustrative way, but not helpful beyond that. The analysis is more revealing.
 

% of results	Number Of Dice
	2d6	3d6	4d6	5d6	6d6	12d6	18d6	24d6	30d6	40d6
3%										140
4%									105
5%							63	84
7%						42
9%					21
10%				14					104-106	139-141
15%	7						62-64	83-85		138-142
25%		10-11			20-22		61-65	82-86		137-143
30%			13-15			40-44		81-87	102-108	136-144
35%							60-66		101-109
40%	6-8	9-12		16-19	19-23	39-45		80-88		135-145
45%							59-67		100-110	134-146
50%			12-16					79-89	99-111	133-147
55%				15-20	18-24	38-46	58-68	78-90	98-112	132-148
60%							57-69	77-91		131-149
65%						37-47			97-113	130-150
66.67%	5-9	8-13	11-17
70%				14-21	17-25	36-48	56-70	76-92	96-114	129-151
75%							55-71	75-93	95-115	128-152
80%	4-10	7-14	10-18	13-22	16-26	35-49	54-72	74-94	93-117	127-153
85%					15-27	34-50	53-73	72-96	92-118	125-155
90%	3-11	6-15	9-19	12-23	14-28	33-51	51-75	71-97	90-120	122-158
95%			8-20	10-25	13-29	31-53	49-77	68-100	87-123	117-163
97.5%										100-180
98%							47-79		84-126
98.5%				9-26	12-30	28-56	46-80		83-127
99%					11-31	27-57	45-81	63-105	82-128
100%	2-12	3-18	4-24	5-30	6-36	12-72	18-108	24-144	30-180	40-240

 

The color bands divide the table up into 1/3 of the results, 2/3 of the results, and more than 90% of the results. And, at the last minute, I threw in a row for 100%, just to be pedantic.

The table shows that on 3d6, two-thirds of your results will typically be from 8 to 13. On 12d6, 70% of your rolls will result in results between from a low of 36 to a high of 48. And, on 24d6, 90% of your rolls will have a result from 71 to 97.

If you look again at the graph, you’ll note that a lot of results have virtually zero change of occurring. Never quite zero, if they are within the theoretical range – you can still roll a 34 on 30d6 – but it’s exceptionally unlikely.

This shows the real impact of the narrowing of the bell probability curve relative to a lower-dice curve. One third of results on 40d6 will fall within a span of 11 numbers – 135 to 145. More than two thirds will fall within a range of 23 numbers – from 129 to 151. 95% of the time, 40d6 will yield a result somewhere between 116 and 164, a span of just 46 results – and a far cry from the full 40-240 range.

I doubt that many game designers performed such calculations, at least in the early days – there was too much spit and baling wire in the rules-creation process back then, too much seat-of-the-pants and ‘that looks about right”.

But the ultimate goal remained – raising the minimum and maximum effect and making a ‘reasonable’ result more likely, relative to the rising hit points of enemies as they went up in terms of the challenge that they posed..

Still a long way to go in this article, but I’m right out of time, so I’m going to have to split it into at least two, and possibly three, parts. Come back next week to get the next installment!

So November has come and gone, and with it, Campaign Mastery’s bonus hosting of the Blog Carnival. Those who got inspired by the topic did a stellar job with some very interesting contributions, which I’ll summarize later in this wrap-up post.

Sadly, there weren’t really enough participants for that to fill this article. Possibly, misunderstanding the closure of the RPGBA, though that announcement seems clear enough to me – see Scot’s announcement – or perhaps potential participants were disheartened by the announcement.

Whatever the cause, what’s done is done and now history.

But, since it leaves this round-up short of content, I’ve decided to re-task a subject that has been sitting around for a while because it also was not substantial enough, and use the blending to create one last entry into the November carnival.

Context

So let’s start by being clear what I’m talking about when I refer to Context, since it’s something that I’ve been banging on about in these posts for absolute ages.

Context is content that implies, infers, or imparts additional meaning or interpretation to another element of content when the latter is considered in light of the Contextual content.

Clear? Or Clear as mud?

Text-to-text context

Sightings of shadowy figures haunting the old cemetery obviously mean something in isolation.

When the PCs discover a body drained of blood some time after hearing of those sightings, that information can also be taken at face value. Or the players can calculate 2 plus 2 equals 4, and put the two facts together, evaluating the reports of the sightings in the context of the later discovery.

2 + 2 = 4, or – in this case – equals Vampires in the Graveyard (or someone who wants the public to think that).

This is an example of one piece of text providing context for a second, conveying additional meaning that is not explicitly stated in either one of the individual pieces of text. It’s a narrative technique that GMs use to create adventures all the time, even if they didn’t recognize it at the time.

Context for Visuals

When using an image, it’s quite common to need to supplement the visual with a description of the significance.

That’s quite normal. Some GMs, when illustrating some element of the experienced ‘reality’ of a campaign, supplement that description or even replace it entirely (if the content’s meaning is sufficiently obvious) with some text that places the image, or some part of the image into a new context that adds meaning to the illustration.

The primary image chosen to illustrate this article, for example, was chosen because it contained two specific elements: distant mountains and sunrise or sunset. Those are not normally interchangeable, because they happen at different compass points, but for the purposes of this example, either would work. There’s a thumbnail version above, just to remind you.

Next, some text.

“The next morning’s dawn promises another day of fair weather and steady progress. In the distance, for the first time, you can see the mountains that stand between you and your destination.”

This text doesn’t give any additional meaning to the image, and the image doesn’t give any further meaning to the text; so neither of them are providing context for the others, this is simple narration accompanied by an illustration.

That’s great for imparting a sense of the environment, but doesn’t hold much importance beyond that. But, if I then add:

“This time tomorrow, you expect to be standing in their foothills,”

then there is an immediate context placed on the image – a sense of scale. If, instead of that addition, I had said

“This time next week, you expect to be standing in their foothills,”

that scale changes quite dramatically. It is clearly adding information that places what you can “see” into context, binding distance and time, and implying how large these mountains truly are.

If they are a day away, they are quite small and not likely to pose a significant challenge to cross. If they are a week away, they are that much more significant (and then some). Views of distant mountains during Tour-de-Fance coverage tells me that three days distance would equate such a view with the Alps or Pyrenees; double that must put the mountains on a scale closer to the Himalayas.

NSW Inland Exploration

Beware of the false equivalence, though you can use it to trap your PCs. Smaller mountains don’t necessarily equate to ‘easier to cross’, a fact that is drummed into residents of my state of New South Wales. When the colony of Sydney was first settled, the focus was on developing the Sydney region. As the colony grew, the presence of the Great Dividing Range (and specifically the local part of that Range, the Blue Mountains) began to impose constraints on growth.

Several expeditions were mounted to try and find a way through the mountains, because arable land was believed to lie beyond, but all failed. They all attempted to follow the rivers and watercourses and valleys, believing that the terrain would be more conducive to passage, but all attempts dead-ended at stone cliff-faces.

This forced the colony to expand along the coast, and to this day, the bulk of the Australian population can be found within about 50km of the coast.

More than 98% of the Australian Population are found in the yellow zones.
Original Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, released under CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, where it is available in much higher resolution; color tweak (sea) by Mike.

Click this link to view licensing information and gain access to a glorious 3200×1780 version of the image. The lighter-colored areas are freshly-exposed rock, subject to erosion.

It was only when three explorers – Wentworth, Blaxland, and Lawson – attempted the more difficult passage from peak to peak along the ridges that a passage through the mountains was found. Using the same strategy, a few other paths were later found, such as the Bell line of road.

You can get some idea of the terrain in question in this image of the Three Sisters mountain formation at Katoomba, originally presented as part of The Diversity Of Seasons Pt 1: Winter, shown to the right.

Context from Visuals

Visual media can also be used to illustrate or lend context to narration, comveying information visually so that you don’t have to waste words doing so. After all, it can take several minutes to convey what a player can garner in just a few seconds examination of an image.

It can sometimes be hard to tell whether it’s the image providing context for the words or vice-versa. Both are at their most powerful when there is a synergy between the two.

But sometimes, you have to answer the question “what am I looking at,” and the relationship is clear – the words are there to explain the visual and give it meaning, i.e. to place it into context.

This is the meaning of the term when it is applied to seeking inspiration from an image. Without context to give it direction, you are simply free-associating with the image.

The Other Side‘s Contribution

Timothy S Brannon offered up The Witch Babylon: Daughter of Eros, Mother of Harlots, inspired by a full-page panel from a Born-Again Christian comic (art by Al Hartley) that featured the Whore Of Babylon. So he re-envisaged her as a Witch and a leader of a cult/faction called the Daughters Of Eros. There’s a lot more meat on his creation so delve further through the link provided if this is something that would be useful in your campaign. Some conversion may be required, of course.

Beyond The Horizon‘s Contributions

Kim Frandsen offered up a multipart creation of a “Lost World” inhabited by Dinosaurs who have been (essentially) conquered / enslaved / semi-domesticated by a city of Duegar.

The first couple of times that I read it, I conflated the “Dragon Philosophers” with the Dinosaur survivors, as though the Dragons had saved their lives but regressed socially into a massive dark age following the meteor strike that wiped out their brethren still on the surface. Kim’s story was that the Dragons saved some Dinosaurs who survived underground and evolved to fit their new environment but were largely unchanged from their original forms through lack of competition.

This is a union of a pulp staple (The Lost World / Hollow Earth) with a D&D setting that holds plenty of story potential. This review has barely scratched the surface.

Part 1 of the two-part article details the early thoughts and the search for an appropriate image. It also has links to a Starfinder monster created in the same fashion, inspired by artwork.

The second part of the two-part article executes the creative process based on the chosen image.

Between them, the two provide a comprehensive overview of the process employed, so there is lots of useful material there.

Campaign Mastery: The Anchor Post

Campaign Mastery’s anchor post not only contained a dozen or so inspirational images for readers to use, but a bunch of ideas of what could be done with them, plus a few bonus hints on the side.
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But to round out this post, and to illustrate the importance of context, I’m going to go further, and derive a bunch of different interpretations for some of the images from the anchor post.

Galatea Of The Spheres by Salvador Dali

I’m going to interpret this image in four different ways, each of which lends it a different context, and hence a different meaning: NPCs, Physical Reality, Metaphor, and Social Reality. In some cases, the results will be literal, in others, they will be abstract or symbolic.

NPCs

The image could be symbolic or representative of how a character suffering from a Multiple Personality Disorder sees the world. It is fragmented, with some aspects open to any to appreciate, while others trigger a change in persona, the better to deal with a stressful situation.

MPD can be thought of as a small crowd of people. Most of the time, they are content to let one or two take the lead, and simply watch from the shadows; but each will have some specific circumstance in which they will elbow their way to the front and take control.

Each will have its own relationship with the other personas – they may be jealous, angry, spiteful, resentful, supportive, protective, or anything else you can imaging. Some personalities will be aware that the others are mere aspects of the core person, others will not realize that they are not the exclusive owners of the body, and may concoct elaborate fantasies or delusions to explain why things happen that they can’t remember.

It is only by uniting these fragmented perspectives that a full appreciation of the total personality can be achieved. If you were to ask one of the personalities who was aware of the others hosted by the shared body, they might well represent it in this way.

That makes this a useful tool for the GM attempting to portray such an individual, a way of getting them into the correct frame of mind for the role.

Physical Reality

What if this were literally true, what might a character be observing? Two possibilities, both related, come to mind: either an Explosion of parallel worlds, or the collision of alternate timelines, either viewed from some sort of privileged super-position. Cosmic!

It’s also possible, if a little less literal, to depict migrating or traveling from one world to an alternate reality – a panoply of worlds opening before the character, and the selection of the destination.

Metaphor

If I were to take this image as a metaphor, it would be of confusion, of a character at a crossroads with multiple directions to choose from. I’m talking a decision of the irrevocable, life-altering kind. If the character was a PC, this is the sort of decision that I might devote multiple adventures to; if an NPC, it would all be over and done with in one or two adventures.

When the PCs had to choose a 12th deity in the original Fumanor campaign, it was a decision of this magnitude. It’s indicative of the depth of the preparations they had experienced leading up to that decision that their ultimate selection was the individual that they had originally ruled out of consideration, no discussion necessary!

This image would serve as a metaphoric summary of that entire adventure, and even to large parts of the campaign. Contemplating it would have served as a valuable reminder of what I was intending to achieve, from a plot perspective, something that helped get my into the right headspace to work on the campaign.

Social Reality

Finally, this image could also be a metaphor for the social reality of a large organization. While that organization would present one unified face to the public, the reality is that it consists of a collection of individuals with different strengths, weaknesses, and personalities.

These would not represent the full gamut of possibilities; the recruitment process and performance reviews would function as a means of selection, winnowing out those most significantly at odds with that unified face. But there would still be significant levels of diversity.

I try very hard to make those NPCs representing an entire organization in one of my adventures individuals who fit – to a greater or lesser extent – the overall generic representative mold. I actively look for ‘acceptable’ ways for them to express their individuality – or, if they are the type that would push the limits, perhaps even an ‘unacceptable’ way.

I never want any character to be ‘just’ what he or she appears to be. They should all have at least a little more substance than that!

Old Man In An Armchair (possibly a portrait of Jan Amos Comenius 1665), by Rembrandt

For this image, I have five different contexts in which to interpret it: Literal Reality, Psychological Reality, Medical Reality, Intellect or Wisdom, and Wealth or Authority.

Literal Reality

Quite simply, this is what a particular character actually looks like. This is by far the most obvious interpretation. Anything else that is known about the character thereby becomes context for the interpretation of the image, while the image itself is context for anything the character says or does.

Psychological Reality

Things become more interesting if this is not the physical reality of the character, but how they see themselves. The contrast with the reality therefore defines what the context of this image is.

In the Lord Of The Rings, Saruman (and his spy, Wormtongue) take the relatively young and vital King Rohan and instill this sort of decrepit self-image in him, as revealed in The Two Towers.

But that helpless interpretation is not the only one. What if the character is physically or mentally disabled (or both), but views himself as being an ordinary person suffering from the effects of premature aging?

They are as capable (in their own minds) as anyone of comparable self-perceived age. That means that any personality that is valid for a figure of the depicted age would be appropriate to the character – from ‘crotchety old man’ to ‘overactive retiree’ and all points in between.

This is a profile that I would never have occurred to me without this stimulus, despite the known truism that the elderly often get on well with children because the two are closely matched in abilities.

Medical Reality

When my back was really bad, several years back, my doctor of the time described me as having the mobility, and associated impacts on my health, of a 101-year old. I could barely walk half a city-block without needing to rest; could not spend more than about 5 minutes in a bus, or about half an hour in a suburban train. Being in the back seat of a car was not much better than the latter, but I did better in the front seat, where I could stretch out a little more.

Should I exceed these limits, I spent weeks or months in pain with even more greatly reduced capacity – walking in a slow shuffle, for example.

By very carefully learning what I could and could not do, and building my lifestyle around those limitations, my health gradually improved, and my tolerance for these activities slowly increased. I can now walk two or even three city blocks without ill-effect, for example. It’s as though I were banking capacity for when I needed it.

I still can’t exceed whatever my current limits are without doing semi-permanent damage; but those limits continue to rise ever-so-slowly. The degree of excess is also a factor in how long it takes me to recover, and in what my limitations will be after such recovery.

I can never look at an image such as this one without being reminded of this medical realty. It took me a long time to learn these limits, because I still felt as capable as ever until going too far. Then, it was like flipping a switch; I went from capable to incapacitated at a stroke.

Intellect or Wisdom

If I were looking to represent a character of intellect or wisdom, this image would be perfectly suitable, simply because we often associate those achievements with age.

Wealth or Authority

You get completely different implied personalities for characters of Wealth or Authority if you choose an image like this than if you choose one of a younger individual. This is largely a matter of stereotyping, but there are times when that’s acceptable; as I have said before, there are usually good reasons for a stereotype being perceived as valid.

A useful tip, however, is to view all members of a stereotype as part of an organization – refer to what I’ve written about “Social Reality” and the Dali image.

The Scream, Edvard Munch

I’m starting to run short of time, so I will only offer three different contexts in which this image can be used for inspiration: External Reality, Altered Perceptions, and Paranoia.

External Reality

if this image is a literal reality, or representative of same, it implies that the featured character depicted has some reason to scream in fear or pain, or thinks they do.

This is a circumstance in which reactions and behavior will dominate or even over-rule personality to at least some extent. There are only a few reactions to acute distress of this type – the rational, the curl-into-a-ball, and the headless chicken, with the first one in the distinct minority.

Altered Perceptions

In general, however, i think this image is more useful to the GM as representative of an altered perception of reality. Such altered perspectives are commonly associated with Undead in D&D, and “Fear” spells are difficult to convey; there is always the question of whether or not such Fear is total (and better described as a “Panic” spell), or if it merely impacts on decision-making processes. Again, there are only the handful of expressions of such intensity.

But this also always reminds me of descriptions of some comatose patients, so psychologically damaged by an experience that they run from the world mentally since they can’t do so physically.

As a representation of an induced state of mind, this speaks directly to the way the GM wants the affected character to be played. It’s then up to the player and GM collectively to determine how this mindset will be reflected in the character’s behavior.

Finally, as a depiction of how a character might be feeling on the inside, this would be a useful stimulus for characters being subjected to extreme forms of blackmail, so fixated on their fear of exposure (or whatever) that all other considerations become wispy and ephemeral.

Paranoia

Finally, we have the question of unreasonable fear. Everything I’ve offered up so far for The Scream takes the perspective that the fear is reasonable (even if induced or externally amplified by circumstance). What if it’s not? Look at the two smaller figures who may or may not be pursuing the main character.

If the fear is in response to them, you have to wonder what they have done to inspire it – they certainly don’t look to be doing anything particularly menacing!

Two possibilities suggest themselves – either their faces are so horrifying, so terrifying, that their mere presence is sufficient to put the witness into such a state, or the witness is imbuing them with such menace. And that’s paranoia – and far more likely than the alternative.

As the clinician’s guiding aphorism states, “When you hear hooves, think Horses, Not Zebras”. Mundane explanations are always more probable than exotic ones – an expression of Occam’s Razor.

Of course, sometimes “Zebra” is the right answer. But that should never be assumed until their is some evidence that contradicts “Horse” being the right answer.

Matching context to image

Create the examples offered earlier in this article was done by starting with the image and free associating – not for interpretations, but for categories of interpretation.

It’s actually far more common to do things that other way around – to have a context in mind and simply scan collections of images looking for one that sparks an idea. You can then either accept that idea or continue searching.

Try not to overthink the initial phase of the process. Get yourself into the right frame of mind and then employ your instincts. Once you have the right image is the right time to analyze it intellectually, with the advantage of knowing that your subconscious has selected it as an appropriate ‘answer’ to the question posed.

So, that’s a wrap to the November 2022 Blog Carnival, which has now moved on to Rising Phoenix Games and the topic of No Dice – I Hope host Rodney gets some interesting responses! I have an idea for one, myself, but that will have to until another day…

This article had the working title of “The Penumbra of Personality Traits”, but when it came to actually write it, I decided that readers might find the meaning a little opaque (and yes, that’s a pun, as some will immediately recognize).

A penumbra is also a solid metaphor (another pun) for the personality construction technique that I am going to share with readers today, building on last week’s post about character relationships.

Another relevant metaphor as the article unfolds that I would ask readers to keep in mind is that of a spiderweb.

Foundations

This construction technique is built around the Zenith-3 variation on the standard Hero System rules, but that’s just a starting point. While those rules (both base and variant) determine character construction points, those are not relevant to this technique.

In fact, that’s the only reason this can be encapsulated in a single article; if it included the actual rules, it would not only be far too lengthy to be practical as a single article, it would fall foul of the copyright restrictions that Hero Games have mandated for home-brew rules. The latter consideration would require it to be split up into 15 or 16 smaller posts, and I suspect that there isn’t enough interest to sustain such a series – not in a general GMing blog, anyway.

Instead, this post describes the technique that I use to assign such disadvantages, limitations, and definitions to a character, completely ignoring the specific game system interpretations of those into game mechanics.

That makes this a universal system, or fairly close to it, something of as much value to sci-fi and fantasy GMs as it is to Superheroic Genre and Pulp GMs. In fact, it should also be of some use to those creating characters for fiction, as well.

Construction Elements

Before I can tell you how I select the personality construction elements that I use in constructing characters, I really need to define them. There are no less than thirty categories (not all of them recognized in game mechanics) of them.

As usual, it might be best to first present these in list format to serve as something of a table of contents for the rest of this section.

1. Motivations
2. Desires
3. Ambitions
4. Dislikes
5. Hobbies
6. Interests
7. Fascinations
8. Obsessions
9. Mysteries
10. Curiosities
11. Mistakes
12. Inhibitions
13. Habits
14. Targets
15. Enemies
16. Recurring Cast
17. Beliefs & Superstitions
18. Memberships
19. Identities – Public, Secret
20. Needs & Dependencies
21. Susceptibilities
22. Vulnerabilities
23. Fortune
24. Enraged
25. Berserk
26. Distinctive Features
27. Physical Limitations
28. Social Limitations
29. Other Traits
30. Curios & Treasured Possessions

My, but that’s a long list!

Some of these will be recognized to anyone familiar with the Hero System, some of them are grouped in the relevant game mechanics into entries in a broader category, but the more explicit listing is of greater value in personality construction, so…

Also in the relevant game mechanics is an overall rule – if a limitation doesn’t limit a character, it’s not to be listed – that this process explicitly ignores.

1. Motivations

Why does the character do whatever it is that they do? What is the motivation that drives them? What motivations drove them in the past?

2. Desires

What does the character desire? These need not be material objects; they can be an abstract category of object, or something more general again, or even something metaphysical – “World Peace” is a valid desire. However, to qualify for this category, it has to be something that the character does not expect to personally achieve or attain.

3. Ambitions

That’s because those are explicitly served by their own category, as you can see. Ambitions don’t have to be something that the character expects to achieve, but they are something the character is deliberately going to do something about trying to achieve. So if your character is a regular ecology protester, ‘ecological awareness’ or ‘ecological issues’ would be a perfectly valid choice.

4. Dislikes

This category is seemingly obvious, but this is the converse of Ambitions – these are things that the character dislikes enough to actually do something about. ‘Dislikes Pollution’ and ‘Dislikes Corporate Greed’ would both be valid choices for our Eco-warrior, for example.

5. Hobbies

Similarly, a hobby is something that the character is interested in that requires them to actually do something. It could be a craft like woodcarving, or it could be an activity like mountain climbing or hiking or wilderness camping or deep-sea fishing.

6. Interests

Things that the character is interested in learning about, but not participating in, go into this category. But some things that might be expected to fall into this group should more accurately be placed in the next.

7. Fascinations

There may be some subjects or types of event that absolutely transfix the character that he cannot turn aside from until complete save by an act of will. These are fascinations. I think most people have one or two, though many never discover what they are (or fail to recognize them when they do experience them).

8. Obsessions

One step more extreme again are obsessions. These are experiences that the character feels compelled to join into or take part in, or ambitions that the character will make drastic sacrifices to achieve.

9. Mysteries

There are three types of mysteries – but any mysteries that the character is merely curious about, without making any attempt to solve on their own, are merely an interest. That leaves the remaining two types – those that the character has an intellectual interest in solving, and those that hold some personal significance. The difference lies in the lengths that the character is typically willing to go to in search of a solution. In order to distinguish between these, the first are listed as ‘curiosities’ and the more definitive term is reserved for those puzzles that hold deep personal significance.

For some characters, this can include religious experiences, or para-physical ones. Near-death experiences and brain tumors can also be transformative. So this category can be a little broader than it might at first appear.

Because characters in RPGs are prone to the dramatic, it’s fair to say that they have more than their fair share of Mysteries; most ordinary people will have one or two at most, and often none at all. I frequently use this as a distinguishing point between ‘feature characters’ and ‘wallpaper characters’. The latter are also sometimes referred to as ‘stock characters’, ‘background characters’, or ‘extras’; they generally do not have significant speaking roles in an adventure or work of fiction.

In some cases, they are a compilation that is representative of many diverse individuals, grouped into a melange for convenience and focus while minimizing the attention that needs to be given them in character development.

10. Curiosities

The term used to refer to those mysteries that the character has a purely intellectual interest in seeing resolved, but which they do not feel compelled to solve because of personal impact. Sometimes, these subjects of which the character is curious can wax or wane; in ages past, I have been curious about the true identity of Jack The Ripper, for example, but that itch seems to have left me, at least for now. Usually, it takes only one tantalizing hint or revelation to reawaken the interest, however.

11. Mistakes

There are three types of mistake – those that the character doesn’t acknowledge as a mistake, those that the character accepts having made and has moved on from, and those that the character still deeply regrets. The latter are arguably the most significant now, because the memory will continue to drive future behavior, but the others deal with the road that the character has taken to get to this point, and that is usually also significant within the character’s history.

A potential fourth category would be choices that the character thinks were mistakes, but which actually were not – but that’s getting a little subtle, and most characters will have nothing of the sort in their makeup.

12. Inhibitions

There are two subtypes of inhibition – things the character doesn’t want to do (including phobias and paranoias) and lines that the character will only crossed if forced. Sometimes I consider separating the two, but every time I do so, I realize that anything from the first category can easily erupt into the second; it’s merely a matter of sensitivity.

13. Habits

Most people have habits, and they can be the very devil to break. More often than not, they need to be sublimated into some other form that is less corrosive to the spirit or the health of the individual. That’s the big secret to AA, in my opinion – confession and probity replacing the consumption of alcohol, and enabling the individual to withstand their desires for such consumption.

But the fact is that those who have a habit of sufficient intensity as to potentially pose problems for them (of whatever variety) do not think the same way as people who do not.

This is something that I’ve been aware of for a very long time; there are those who live for the sense of release of inhibitions that comes from alcohol, who feel ten feet tall and made of iron when they drink. They can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to feel that way. (I heard a very similar statement in the dialogue of Leo McGarry on The West Wing when he was attempting to explain his addiction to someone who didn’t share it).

Others drink, not to forget, but to become numb to some source of personal pain. This never really works very well, but eventually you become so inebriated that you don’t care any more; I guess that’s a form of pseudo-numbness.

But, in my case (aside from a couple of particular binges at one specific point in time), I could never stand the loss of self-control that comes with even mild inebriation. While I could (and did) drink socially, I almost always drew the line just short of that limit. And, on the few occasions when I did cross that line, I hated the way I would tell my body to do something and it would do something else.

Did that make me immune to addiction? Absolutely not; just to that particular addiction. But this isn’t about me; they are offered here in support and explanation of the statement offered, that addicts think differently.

14. Targets

There are often people and organizations that the character wants to take down or rehabilitate (by force if necessary). Sometimes the identity of the target is not known to the character, only what they have done; this implies an ongoing investigation aimed at obtaining that identification, but sometimes it can also produce actions aimed at a wider front that will include the target even without knowing explicitly who they are.

15. Enemies

Not necessarily the same groups or individuals, these are people/agencies who are actively seeking to do harm of some sort to the character. That harm could be a restraint of liberty, the capture/collection of some object in the character’s possession, or a public embarrassment of some kind. Again, not at all enemies will know who their target is, as an individual; they may oppose all members of a particular group or who participate in specific activities that they oppose.

16. Recurring Cast

Who does the character know and see regularly? Whose troubles is the character regularly drawn into? Who is likely to get drawn into the character’s troubles?

This can frequently be a far wider collection of individuals than it first seems. For me, the first step is always to identify a social circle or general category of supporting cast, then to identify discrete individuals from within each group; I retain the general group as well, representing everyone who has not been singled out.

For example: I went to school (schoolmates, teachers). I grew up in a particular small town (family, locals). I spent one memorable year in a boarding school (different group of schoolmates, a couple of teachers). I went to university (classmates), joined the Science Fiction Society (friends), joined the ‘wargaming’ group (actually playing TTRPGs) (friends). I lived at a particular place overlooking Bondi Beach (neighbors, landlord, local shopkeepers). I worked at a number of different jobs (fellow employees, bosses, associates), and so on. That’s 15 social circles (some overlapping) – and that’s with just one employer and one residential location in the picture; I’ve had many over the last 42 years. In fact, this only carries me through 1982!

In total, there have been 9 employers of note, and 12 – no, 13 – residences, over the years (not counting the ones already listed). With three social circles for each of those, that’s another 66 social circles, bringing my total to 81!

I’m fully prepared to accept that my experiences are more diverse than most people my age; and hence this is a more extreme example than is normal. That’s not especially relevant. From each of those groups, there will be a few standouts who I still remember (no idea if they would remember me!) – anywhere from 1 or 2 to a dozen or so, weighted toward the lower end. Median would probably be around 4. So those 81 social circles are represented by 324 individuals – which are not the totality of those in the social circles, but are just the individuals that I could name and of whom I have strong memories. But one (family) has to be separated out from that – mine is unusually large and relatively closely-knit, with more than 100 specific individuals with whom I have some sort of personal relationship because they are family. So that’s more than 400 memorable individuals.

Any of those could be the vector for an adventure to reach me, were I a character in an RPG. Or a social complication, or social event.

Now, this is not going to be true of most characters (it’s too much work!). They might have four or five social circles, with 2-3 individuals drawn from each, and a catch-all (“other people [character x] has known”) for everyone else. Most of those individuals will be nothing more than a name until they rise to prominence in a particular plotline, though there may be a few exceptions to that. And that’s for a feature character; less significant characters will have even less definition.

17. Beliefs & Superstitions

Beliefs and superstitions can be minor influences on character behavior or can be defining behavioral factors. Like curiosities, they can wax and wane, and come and go. Some people seem to shed their superstitions as they age, others seem to collect additional ones.

18. Memberships

What organizations is the character a past member of? What organizations is he or she a current member of?

19. Identities – Public, Secret

By what names is the character known (public identities)? What names has he or she used to conceal her true identity?

20. Needs & Dependencies

These are comparatively unusual, since addictions have already been dealt with. These are something that the character actually needs to maintain health, either physical, social, or mental. For example, I make no secret of the fact that I am diabetic; in fact, I have no less than 12 medications that I have to consume regularly (blood sugar, cholesterol, fast heartbeat, arthritis, and some vitamin deficiencies). if I were to stop taking these, not only would medical complications arise relatively quickly, but these would eventually prove crippling or even fatal.

These are something whose absence causes damage of some sort, either short-term or persistent and cumulative.

21. Susceptibilities

A susceptibility is something that has greater effect on the character than is normal. These are relatively uncommon, but all the more noteworthy for that. Special note should be made of any that the character doesn’t know he or she is susceptible to.

For example, as a writer, I am susceptible to accusations of plagiarism. Even the unfounded accusation is corrosive to my credibility and hence to my ability to earn money from my writing. While most people would suffer some social or professional harm from such an accusation, I would experience disproportionate harm from one. Some occupations are susceptible to allegations of child abuse, others to corruption.

22. Vulnerabilities

Vulnerabilities are more extreme again, but also more common. These are things that are generally harmless or even beneficial but that cause harm to the character. Such harm can be anything from discomfort to death. Kryptonite is a vulnerability for Superman. Penicillin is a vulnerability to me, I’m allergic to it. Some people are allergic to peanuts, or seafood, or pollen. Such harm can require ingestion, or contact, or even its mere presence may be enough.

23. Fortune

At first glance, a character can either have good luck or bad luck, and this is thus an entirely singular category – you either have one, or you don’t. That overlooks the real power of this liability, in terms of characterization.

First, you can specify that the character has bad luck or good luck in a specific situation – ‘bad luck while dating,’ ‘good luck when selling door-to-door’, ‘bad luck with men’ [or women, depending on character gender and orientation], ‘good luck when climbing’, ‘bad luck when engaging in outdoors activities’, ‘bad luck around [a particular person]’ – the list is endless. There is also a third option that is often overlooked, “karmic balance”.

Second, you can specify the form that this bad luck takes when it manifests – clumsiness, stammering, klutz, accident-prone, attacked by nature, tongue-tied, experiences reverses, or whatever.

Third, you can confine the manifestation of the luck, if that’s appropriate.

Put all those together, and you can end up with:

• Bad Luck: ‘Comedy of errors when dating’. Or ‘Accident-prone when camping outdoors’. Or ‘Stammers when talking to Claire [character’s girlfriend] about his feelings’;
• Good Luck: ‘Lucky at Poker’, ‘Always wins a minor prize in lotteries (but never the big prize)’, ‘Good luck at sports when Charlie [character’s friend] is on the opposing team’;
• Mixed: ‘Karmic Balance when Christmas shopping’, ‘Karmic balance when looking for parking spots’, ‘Karmic balance with traffic’.

Even so, for most characters, you won’t want too many of these, or they lose their impact, unless they specifically designed to integrate into a greater whole. For example:

• ‘Good Luck (always in the right place) in sports except when playing a Boston team’, plus
• ‘Makes clumsy mistakes when winning against a Boston team or player’.

This describes a character who is a naturally-gifted sportsman, but for some reason (probably psychological), he becomes a klutz when his team is winning but only when playing teams from a particular location. It doesn’t matter what the sport is – it could be baseball, basketball, football, whatever.

One of my favorite combinations is “Good luck when losing, bad luck when winning”.

24. Enraged

Some things tick us off enough that we have to make willpower rolls not to attack them or otherwise act when we encounter them. You can think about these as more intense but more intermittent forms of obsession. For me, it’s nagging that sets me off (I don’t know why), and sometimes — when I’m GMing, not being listened to or being interrupted. With the latter events, there is usually a singular explosion of temper and then I regain equilibrium; with the latter, it’s more persistent, and more prone to be re-triggered after an event. If pushed, it can even make me turn violent, something I’m not particularly proud of (bring up something once, and there’s no problem; bring it up again and again and you’re in for it).

I have known people who became outraged at perceived miscarriages of justice – some of them regained equilibrium after venting for a while, some needed to write a letter (or email) to the newspaper, and some immediately began organizing marches and protests.

A Narcissist will ‘do something dramatic for attention when he feels ignored or sidelined, even if that is not in his best interest.’

25. Berserk

Most of us don’t have these, thank goodness. They are triggers that cause us to lash out, indiscriminately.

But there are a couple of more common variations.

• Some people who are enraged can become indiscriminate when someone attempts to deflect them or intercede on behalf of the target of their anger, even attacking friends and allies.
• Some people have a chip on their shoulder that causes them to explode when triggered.

As with Fortunes, you can also specify the form in which this manifests; most people tend to think of it as ‘physically attack’, but it could be ‘Screams uncontrollably”, or ‘Emotionally embittered by’, or even ‘Becomes cruel and heartless’.

So there’s a lot more scope in this category than first meets the eye.

26. Distinctive Features

This includes scars and tattoos, and inhuman beauty, and even perfect symmetry of features. It includes missing limbs and missing digits. It can include extras of something, too – “Six fingers” for example, or “prehensile tail” (if that’s unusual). I’ve even known a couple of people whose eyes seemed to change color under certain circumstances – I’m not sure how that worked, physiologically, but I’ve seen it first-hand at close range.

Scars are especially significant, because they always stem from a particular incident and that in turn connects them with some other part of their personal makeup. For example, since the mid-80s, I’ve had extensive scarring on my right wrist and chin – I got mugged on a train, and physically thrown off it as it was pulling into a station, sliding 60m along the platform and narrowly missing steel girders acting as support columns. The scars elsewhere from this incident (which took off almost 1/4 of my skin) have faded, but those seem to persist. This caused me to have a ‘berserk when being mugged’ that, on a later occasion, caused me to break a solid oak walking stick on the hand of a would-be mugger (and breaking several bones in his hand, causing him to drop the knife that he was wielding in the process).

But the responses / reactions / connections don’t have to be so dramatic. I have a scar over one eye from an outdoors rock festival in the later 80s – I got up during one act’s set to use the facilities because I wasn’t a particular fan of the band, and one of their fans took a drunken swing at me, driving my eyeglasses back into the eye socket. That connects to my love of music, which is what led me to be in attendance (and hence in a position to be attacked), but there has been no other psychological impact from the event that I can detect. Okay. maybe this reinforced slightly my already-strong resistance to drunkenness – but even that I’m not sure of.

27. Physical Limitations

Missing eyes, missing limbs, missing digits, deafness in one ear – there are a number of possibilities here, but most of them won’t apply to most characters. Some of them will also be distinctive features, some of them may not – an eye-patch is obvious, a glass eye far less so.

But there are some less obvious ones that should be pointed out – things like “vertigo at heights or without solid footing”. Some allergies also belong in this category, even though they may be listed elsewhere in addition – “Hay Fever” is an obvious one. There was a time when I had to be especially wary of infected cuts and the like, because I’m allergic to Penicillin, and that was the treatment of first resort to such (thankfully, Penicillin-resistant diseases caused the adoption of other medications with which I have no problems, so this problem has become progressively less significant over the years – but I still have to bear in mind the fact that sensitivity to one medication can imply sensitivity to other, related, compounds).

28. Social Limitations

As a child, i was very introverted, which conferred a number of social limitations, for example a fear of public speaking – even though I was fairly good at it when forced into it. It was, in fact, RPGs that ‘brought me out of my shell’ – during the ‘Moral Panic’ of the 1980s, I was even able to appear on a radio program to defend the hobby, and I had a letter of protest over the one-sided report on the subject by 60 minutes quoted on-air. I once spent a month as a door-to-door salesman selling vacuum cleaners, and was described by my boss in the job as ‘a master of the soft sell’. Unfortunately, this was a job that principally paid by commission, and reached the point where I could not afford to continue, just as that boss thought I had grown skilled enough to achieve success in the role, so I had to give it away. But the gap from introvert with a fear of public speaking to door-to-door salesman shows just how far I had come!

29. Other Traits

I think that I’ve covered just about everything, but there’s always room for something I haven’t contemplated. So this category exists as an ‘anything else you can think of’ catch-all.

30. Curios & Treasured Possessions

But there’s one final category. Objects listed in this category can be specific (Babe-Ruth signed baseball bat) or general (collection of basketball memorabilia), or even metaphysical (memories of Paris). They can serve two noteworthy functions – first, the fact that the character values them tells you something about the character; and second, they can be used as a physical manifestation of some personality attribute that is otherwise obscure or inobvious, making them a key to ‘unlocking’ the personality by an observer.

For example, if the PCs are to have a meeting with the representative of a company – it could be anything from an insurance company to a manufacturer of some sort – and he has a bookshelf full of books about Conservative politics, including biographies of US Presidents from the Republican Party, that immediately ‘unlocks’ a part of the personality of the individual, creating context and implications and expectations. That one character trait becomes the focal point of so many others that half the work of detailing the personality can be assumed, saving the GM generating the character (or the writer describing the character) masses of time and effort, especially if none of these factors actually plays any active role in the ensuing meeting.

This can be so useful that I will invest a disproportionate amount of time contemplating the individual’s impact on their surroundings.

You can also convey an entirely different personality at a stroke – if I were to add to the description of the bookshelf, “but there is no evidence of any of the books ever having been opened,” you get an entirely different interpretation than if I had described them as “dog-eared and clearly frequently studied”.

Even then, there are still multiple opposing possibilities – the books might be well-read because the character is an active supporter of that side of politics, or because their job requires them to be persuasive to people who are aligned in that direction, politically. One phrase from the NPCs lips when they notice the PC noticing the bookshelf is enough to convey that shift – for example,

“Know your enemy,” she says with a smile.

This also implies that the NPC is adept enough at reading people to have discerned that the PC or PCs are antagonistic toward that branch of politics.

Don’t neglect the value that Curios and Treasured Possessions can have in communicating and defining a personality!

Okay, now that we have the construction elements defined, I can get to the real meat of this article – how to use them. Note that in order to use this technique, you have to have a clear understanding of what these categories contain, without the need to look them up. Until you have that, it’s a good idea to skim through them each time you sit down for an NPC generation session. Eventually, if you do this often enough, you will reach the point where you can use the initial list as sufficient mnemonic to bring them to mind, and can skip over the entire indented section of this article.

Step One: Root Cause

Always start with the one item from anywhere on the list that you consider the most definitive of the character. This is the “Root Cause” (you’ll see why in a moment).

Example

When this article was conceived, it came with the concept of an example that was actually instrumental in structuring it. That example is an NPC with the Root Cause, “Vigilante”.

Step Two: Consequences

A lot of players and GMs using the Hero System stop to calculate the points value of each Disadvantage as it is determined. I want to take this opportunity to actively advocate against this practice, as it results in a stop-start process that restricts the imagination.

The methodology that I am recommending in this article is to accelerate the process of coming up with relevant entries as much as possible, then cleaning up with the game mechanics later. This results in a more free-flowing process in which the imagination of the character’s creator is given free reign.

This step of the process consists of working your way through the list of categories and listing as many ideas in each that are conceptual consequences of the “root cause” (hence the term). “Consequences” lists every type of impact on the character of the root cause that the creator can identify.

Because the “root” in question is conceptual in nature, these “Consequences” can actually be the causes of, or justifications for, the Root Cause.

Example

Okay, so let’s work through the list of construction elements:

• Motivation: Lover of Justice
• Motivation: Righter Of Wrongs
• Desire: End injustice
• Desire: End inequality
• Desire: Expose Corruption
• Ambition: Identify and Expose the Jambala Killer
• Ambition: Expose Judge Prentice Shaw as corrupt
• Ambition: Investigate possible corruption in the Dallas District Attorney’s department
• Ambition: Investigate possible corruption in the Dallas Police Department
• Dislikes: Injustice
• Dislikes: Corruption
• Dislikes: Wrongful Convictions
• Dislikes: Mysteries
• Hobbies: none (yet)
• Interest: Legal Processes
• Interest: Legal Ethics
• Interest: Legal Theory and Practical Application
• Interest: Political History
• Interest: Daughter’s Welfare (restricted by court order from a more active role)
• Fascination: Stories of Karmic Revenge
• Fascination: Stories of Sherlock Holmes
• Fascination: Stories of American Pulp Heroes
• Fascination: Unsolved Crimes
• Fascination: Forensic Medicine
• Obsession: Exoneration
• Obsession: Ex-wife
• Obsession: Serial Killers
• Mystery: The Jambala Killer
• Curiosity: Jack the Ripper
• Mistake: Chose ineffectual counsel (Jambala Killer Trial)
• Mistake: Chose ineffectual counsel (Divorce)
• Mistake: Stalking Daughter (refer Interest, above)
• Inhibition; Illegal activities
• Inhibition; Daughter’s personal life
• Habit: Gambling (mild)
• Habit: Alcohol (mild)
• Target: The Jambala Killer
• Target: Judge Prentice Shaw
• Target: The Millford Manufacturing Company
• Enemy: Ex-Wife
• Enemy: Detective Zachery Benson
• Enemy: District Attorney Miles Galruth
• Enemy: Wilson Dent (convicted murderer)
• Recurring Cast: Mrs Shalhoub (landlady)
• Recurring Cast: Jake Prescott (friend / mechanic)
• Beliefs & Superstitions: Instruments of Karma
• Membership: Ex-cop
• Membership: Mystery Writers of America
• Public Identity: Nathan Johns, ex-cop
• Public Identity: Nathan Johns, ex-con
• Secret Identity: Karmon Tracy, mystery author
• Secret Identity: The Pivot (masked vigilante)
• Needs & Dependencies: none
• Susceptibilities: none
• Vulnerabilities: none
• Fortune: Bad luck (distractions arise) when investigating the Jambala Killer
• Fortune: Good luck (discover vital leads) when investigating other crimes
• Fortune: Bad luck (always loses) when gambling on horses and football
• Fortune: Good luck (wins more than he loses) when gambling on baseball
• Fortune: Bad luck (serious life complications) when intoxicated
• Enraged: Blatant injustice
• Enraged: Overt Corruption
• Berserk: If/When Daughter Threatened
• Distinctive Features: One blue eye, one gray
• Distinctive Features: Scar above left eye (barely noticeable)
• Distinctive Features: Tattoo (broken chain) on left wrist
• Physical Limitations: none
• Social Limitations: ex-convict
• Social Limitations: ex-cop
• Social Limitations: restraining order (ex-wife and daughter)
• Other Traits: none
• Curios & Treasured Possessions: Service Revolver

There were a number of decisions made on the fly in the above listing. I had a general outline of the character concept – a cop wrongfully imprisoned as a murderer, leading to his wife divorcing him and cutting his daughter out of his life – but that was all. My original thought was that he would be a private eye, but the mystery writer angle came to me as I was making out the list.

A couple of notes:

• The character (Nathan Johns) writes his fiction under a pseudonym, a legacy of the fact that his first novel was written while he was incarcerated.
• He clearly blames the Judge, Prentice Shaw, for his conviction, aided and abetted by the incompetence of his chosen attorney, but he is unsure of who else may have been involved.
• He served an unknown number of years of his sentence before proving his innocence, but the lead detective, Zachery Benson, is unconvinced.
• The District Attorney is opposed to Vigilantes on general principle and not to “The Pivot” specifically.
• Instruments of Karma: a blending of the concept of Karma and the principle of ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’, he believes that certain individuals are motivated and empowered to bring Karmic Balance to the world around them. This also relates to his chosen vigilante non-du-plum, “The Pivot” – he sees himself as the linchpin around which the scales of justice pivot. This concept also led to the “bad luck when intoxicated” entry – an expression of his personal Karma biting him on the ass when he neglects his “mission”.
• I’ve deliberately made this a slightly-flawed human being, one who means well but who has been hardened by his experiences. Although it is not listed as a mistake, it’s entirely possible that his chosen approach (vigilante) is the wrong road to take. Or maybe it’s the perfect response to his situation.

I trust you can now see the relevance of the spiderweb metaphor mentioned earlier. Each of these personality traits were derived from the basic concept of a vigilante good-guy, an almost-antihero who walks the fine line between justice and retribution for his own wrongful imprisonment.

Step Three: Penumbras

For each of the above items, do a really fast skim through the list looking for tertiary connections, and anything that leaps out as having been overlooked. This works on the principle that Step two has greatly refined the character as you proceeded, and so the character was better defined at the end of it than when you started. That opens the door for things to have been overlooked.

In particular (and this is where Penumbras come into the picture), this is where consequences of consequences and other questions around the fringes come into play. For example, he might have a superstition about the number 3 being unlucky – so he never bets on horses with that number, or on the third race.

Rather than continuing the example process at this point (time is becoming a factor), though, I’ll leave it at this point.

Step Four: Ripple Effects

Once you have filled in any blanks and any afterthoughts, it’s time to look at a more directed range of consequences. First, put together a narrative summary of the character background, similar to the one provided in the example after Step Two. Use that to put together a simple timeline of his personal history.

Now go through it, looking for anywhere that you can insert a plot hook or define a consequence that hasn’t already been enumerated.

The example character was in prison. And an ex-cop. That will have earned him enemies, and will have mandated his being present when some typical events went down. His reactions and actions in response may well have earned him still more enemies. And if there’s some sort of question about the honesty or brutality of the guards – there are likely to be some of both – that also needs to be spelled out.

The other thing to look for are consequences that impact events ‘down-time’ from the event. How does being an ex-cop impact his mystery writing? How does his being and ex-convict? Does his ex-wife share the view that he’s guilty, or does she have some other reason for her attitude toward the character, getting a restraining order to separate him from his Daughter’s life?

In general, this is looking through everything created thus far looking for the remaining gaps in the character concept, and filling them in.

Step Five: Prior Causes

Prior Causes looks further back than the earliest event listed, and asks where each of the items already listed came from. This character became a cop? Why? Who was his Instructor? Who were his partners? Where and in what part of his life did he meet his wife? When were they married?

Each such question does at least one of two things: Adds another influence over the events and traits already listed that now needs to be taken into account, and adds a further prior cause that should have its own set of consequences and ripple effects.

Consider the diagram to the right::

Each step back in time creates the conditions that lead to the decisions that produce the root cause, either directly or indirectly, and also have their own consequences.

With each step back, these generally become more insignificant. You might characterize them as adulthood, education, and childhood/family, respectively, for example.

Clearly, adulthood creates the conditions that lead to the root cause, the point at which the character’s life took an unexpected turn. In the case of our example, we’ve already backtracked to the point of our character being a cop, and married – so the next step back needs to explain how those two things came about, and the consequences and flow-on effects of events back then. Perhaps we could maintain our theme with a corrupt partner?

So that gets us back to the point where the character joins the police force. The layer behind that deals with his education and other career options, the teachers and home-town individuals that led to this particular choice being considered. Was it his first choice, his second, or somewhere a long way down the list? Did he, for example, always want to be a writer – but was dissuaded because they don’t earn much money?

Before that, we have family and childhood friends. These generally violate the “gets weaker’ rule, or can do so – unless there’s some estrangement.

If the character had a more complex history – perhaps there was a period of military service in between his becoming a cop and his leaving school – then you may end up with more than four layers, or you may decide that one is rendered so insignificant by this that it can be merged with another.

How the back-steps are broken up is up to you; just make sure there’s an obvious logic to it, and all will work out..

Inversions & Convolutions

There are two conceptual patterns that always lead to richer characters, and that I want to single out; you won’t always want to use them, but that’s always better as an educated and deliberate choice.

Inversions are represented by the example that I’ve been using – a cop who became a con, and who has now become the closest thing that he can to a cop once again. Religious characters who have gone through a crisis of faith, or who experienced some sort of religious revelation that transformed them, would be another example. In general, Characters who go from being one thing to being the opposite – wealthy to poor (or poor to wealthy) or whatever.

Some inversions are more difficult to arrange than others – going from educated to ignorant, for example (though there have been recent examples that suggest that it’s possible).

Convolutions are the other one. This is where a character’s life seems always to have been leading them to whatever they are, right now – but they have discovered along the way that their original vision of their position or role in society was oversimplified, even naive. As their world-view has become more complex, so has their perception of their role – not necessarily in ways that are too their liking. Frequently, they find that people they worshiped have feet of clay.

So common is disappointment as a them in Convolution Stories that I sometimes think that a character who experiences the opposite, discovering idealism, might be fun – but I’ve never come up with a credible character concept for achieving that. Not yet, anyway.

So, that’s the process. I think the example probably does more to sell it than any accolades I can offer about it at this point, so I’ll leave things as they stand, and wish readers success in adding to their repertoires!

That brings this article to a close, but before I go, I have some other news to impart.

Seven years ago or thereabouts, I was inspired by the Kickstarter campaign for an RPG rules system named Fortune’s Wheel to write an article on Prophecy in RPGs: The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies. Unfortunately, that Kickstarter didn’t reach its target, and the author, Peter Hollinghurst, had to drop out of developing it for a while with personal problems.

With those problems now resolved (in part by migrating from England to Canada), he’s back with a new offering, the Edinburgh Horrors, an adventure which uses the Fortunes Wheel system (tarot-card based instead of dice-based) as its foundation.

The adventure is set up so that players can control / influence some of the NPCs their characters encounter to achieve different outcomes, and a methodology for the players to create their own side stories using the card system if they want to enrich the gaming experience provided by the adventure

Interestingly, the plan is to use DriveThroughRPG’s print-on-demand service to deal with those who might want to purchase hard copies.

I don’t have time to get into a full review, so instead I’ll just share the link to the Kickstarter and let you do your own investigations: The Edinburgh Horrors – Long Dead Ink.

As I write, it’s closing in on meeting its goals, so – with 22 days remaining in the fundraising campaign as I write this – I have every expectation that it will achieve its quite modest targets, and even move on to stretch goals.

It certainly sounds interesting enough:

Click on the graphic to visit the Kickstarter page for The Edinburgh Horrors

…and the game mechanics might make it useful for GMs of other genres, (as might the ‘Haunted Edinburgh’ game supplement), so do yourself a favor and check it out!

Click the thumbnail to buy the complete Season One DVD set from Amazon (I will get a small commission).

I steal inspiration and technique from anywhere that I can find it, but I’m always careful to credit my sources (especially when the application is a bit left-of-field). In the past that has given me articles such as Growing The Perfect Family Tree (Part 1, Part 2), The Ashes: Understanding Brit and Aussie Characters, and Lessons From The West Wing V: Bilateral Political Incorrectness for RPGs, amongst many others.

Miraculous: Tales Of Ladybug & Cat Noir is an animated superhero TV series aimed at teens but with enough cleverness of plot and richness of canon that it’s quite watchable for adults, too. I find it quite reminiscent of early issues of Spider-man in some respects.

In particular, the approach take to relationships between characters is noteworthy for GMs.

An Introduction to the Premise & Canon of M:ToLaCN*

* the full title is quite a mouthful, and abbreviating it doesn’t help much, so from here on, I’ll simply call it Ladybug & Cat Noir, okay?

The title characters of Ladybug & Cat Noir are superheros who get their powers from pieces of jewelry called a “Miraculous”. Cat Noir’s is a ring, while Ladybug’s is a pair of earrings. These jewels become empowered through a magical being called a Kwami – they each have one.

The enemy who they continually battle is initially named Hawkmoth. He also has a Miraculous with a Kwami who is forced to obey his instructions because he wears the Miraculous. Hawkmoth’s power is to transform people experiencing strong negative emotions into super-villains by means of moths infused with dark energy of some sort; this process is called “Akumatizing” them.

In season 2, Hawkmoth is joined by “Mayura,” who uses a damaged Miraculous – that of the peacock – to create ‘sentimonsters’, strange life-forms that have to obey whoever their creator assigns them to, and which function as assistants, enhancers, and/or protectors of the villains created by Hawkmoth. Because the Miraculous is damaged, it slowly damages the user. In season four, Hawkmoth repairs the damaged Miraculous and gains both sets of powers, renaming himself Shadowmoth.

Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth stays in the shadows, creating super-villains and monsters to bedevil Paris, demanding that his creations capture the Miraculous of Ladybug and Cat Noir. Ladybug’s is the power of creation, while Cat Noir’s is the power of destruction; if one person ever holds both, they can be used to reshape reality, but at a cost equal to the change made.

To prevent this, Ladybug and Cat Noir can never know each other’s secret identities, so that if one is captured, they cannot be forced to put the other in danger.

There are other Miraculous and other Kwamis; from time to time, starting in Season 2, Ladybug uses them to create allies. At the end of Season 3, Ladybug becomes the new Guardian of the Miracle Box, which contains the Miraculous and is the extra-dimensional residence of the Kwamis.

The Core

The relationships of the central characters are the pivot around which everything revolves.

• Cat Noir falls in love with Ladybug.
• Ladybug considers Cat Noir a slightly-annoying friend and ally, nothing more.
• Cat Noir’s true identity is Adrien Agreste, a teenaged fashion model.
• Ladybug’s true identity is Marionette Dupain-Cheng (pronounced ‘du Penchain’), who falls in love with Adrien, not knowing that he is Cat Noir. She is in the process of becoming a fashion/art designer of note.
• Adrien considers Marionette a friend, nothing more.

This love quadrangle is at the heart of the series, and fuels plenty of teen angst – which is the element that reminds me so much of those early issues of Spider-man.

Surrounding this core is a second layer of characters:

• Tikki and Plagg are the Kwamis of Ladybug and Cat Noir, respectively. These are characters that can only interact with the holders of the Miraculous when they are not transformed into their superhero identities.
• Unknown to both Marionette and Adrien, Hawkmoth’s true identity is Adrien’s father, Gabriel Agreste. Nor does Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth know who Ladybug and Cat Noir really are.
• Emilie (Agreste) is Gabriel’s wife. She is comatose or dead, preserved in some sort of life-support container, and so never interacts with the other characters. It is not stated outright, but the clear implication of Season II is that she died from using the damaged Peacock Miraculous. Gabriel wants the Miraculouses of Creation and Destruction to rewrite history and return her to life, not knowing or caring that this means that someone else will have to die to achieve this (and possibly someone of equal significance to Gabriel, i.e. Adrien. As such, her ‘absence’ is an ever-present shadow cast over the Series.
• Gabriel’s assistant is Nathalie Sancoeur (I don’t remember her surname ever being used in the show, however), who uses the damaged peacock Miraculous to become Mayura, and becomes bedridden as the damage takes hold. Gabriel seems to genuinely care for Nathalie, and she practically worships him in an obvious case of unrequited love.
• “The Gorilla” (a nickname bestowed on him by Adrien’s friends) is Adrien’s bodyguard. He rarely speaks beyond grunts and gestures, but is a regular presence in the series and seems to genuinely care for his protectee, even to the point of going against the wishes of his employer (Gabriel) to give Adrien some respite from Gabriel’s domineering emotional abuse.
• Marionette’s father and mother are Tom Duplain and Sabine Cheng, respectively. Tom is the best Patisserie in Paris, assisted by Sabine. The two are emotional supports for Marionette and the gateway to Marionette’s other relatives, but their role in the series is relatively limited.

Surrounding these are a group of school-friends of both Adrien and Marionette. These are frequently involved in one of three ways: Akumatized into villains, lent a Miraculous to enable them to serve as superhero assistants to Ladybug and Cat Noir, or simply participating in the daily life of the two principle characters. Significantly, each has a defined relationship with the other classmates, and these evolve over time.

Some of these characters are more significant than others – in fact, some of them are more significant than Marionette’s parents, for all that those parents are more frequent participants than any one member of the social circle save, perhaps, Alya.

Members of this circle include:

• Alya Cesaire – Marionette’s best friend and (eventually) Ladybug’s chief assistant and confidante, who joins the cast in episode 1 of season 1.
• Non Lahiffe – Adrien’s best friend and (eventually) Alya’s boyfriend and superheroic partner.
• Chloe Bourgeois – “selfish, overzealous, and spoiled” according to Wikipedia, but that understates all three elements. Sometimes a hero (despite these character flaws), sometimes a villain, and frequently a catalyst, causing the negative emotions in her classmates that permit them to be akumatized.
• Lila Rossi – deliberately created to be spiteful and unlovable, she is evil where Chloe is simply malicious and selfish. A superlative liar who delights in manipulating others.
• Kagami Tsurugi – A Japanese girl who joins Adrien’s fencing class and becomes friends with Marionette. Sheltered by an overprotective and dominating mother, she briefly sets her sights on Adrien romantically, but the relationship fails.
• Luka Couffaine – brother of another of the classmates and a musician like his parents, Luka loves Marionette but is content to simply be her friend if it enables her to pursue her own happiness.
• Kim Ature, Max Kante, Mylene Haprele, Ivan Bruel, Sabrina Raincomprix, Julia Couffaine, Rose Lavillant, Aurore Beureal, Nathaniel Kurtzberg, Mac Anciel and Zoe Lee – other classmates of Marionette and Adrien.

And, outside this ring are other relatives of some of these characters and other recurring characters, such as Mayor Bourgeois, staff at the school attended by Marionette and Adrien, and so on.

If you were to map these relationships topographically, it would appear as a cluster of characters surrounding the principle roles, some linked with one of them and some with the other, with a set of further clusters, some linked with one of the two and some linked with both. And each of the members of a cluster is often at the center of a small cluster of their own.

Introductions

Characters are generally introduced one at a time, though they may be present in a number of episodes before we learn who they are. Quite often, when a character is introduced, he or she becomes the akumatized victim of Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth for that episode, but this is not always the case.

The structure of the character relationships is such that normal interactions between characters permits their surrounding cluster to be introduced organically. Usually, we are talking about the parents or siblings of one of the inner cluster of classmates or relatives. Sometimes, these characters make only a single appearance, on other occasions they may recur a number of times, or simply be present in the background when those more centrally-connected to Marionette / Adrien are interacted with.

Featured Relationship

Only one relationship is generally featured in a given episode, though others may be present in the background. This keeps the complexities of this vast supporting cast from overwhelming the viewer.

Relationship Evolution

No character is featured without their relationship with someone in the cast evolving or advancing in some way. Quite often, the other partner in this relationship is one of the title characters, but this is not always the case, as when Alya and Nino become boyfriend/girlfriend despite initially disliking each other.

If the relationship with the principle character does not directly advance/evolve, there are almost always ripple effects to these relationship developments that do impact on one of the principle characters.

In addition, those ripple effects can also affect the relationship between the principle characters. For example, Cat Noir can sometimes exhibit mild jealousy when Ladybug calls upon another of her allies to solve the problem of the episode, but he is also aware of this and tries to overcome it, usually successfully. He often attempts to charm other heroines when they appear, but this is mostly an act, and an attempt to create jealousy on the part of Ladybug; he desists when it is obviously not succeeding..

In RPGs – the minimalist approach

Obviously, it is desirable in most campaigns to have a similarly rich and interactive supporting cast of NPCs. This is often more easily said than done, however.

As a result, most GMs tend to establish relationships with those supporting cast and then leave them static and unchanging unless the change is clearly mandated by the NPCs presence within the events of the adventure.

For most campaigns, this approach is at least adequate, and it is relatively easy to manage. All you need is a list of the NPCs which describes who they are and any noteworthy relationships they may have; if this is a text document on a computer, it becomes searchable and can be updated as necessary.

Hardcopy versions may be more accessible, and easier to read or skim, but lose these benefits.

This is the approach generally used in the Adventurer’s Club campaign because the campaign and it’s major NPCs were created by my Co-GM.

The Hero System approach

In the hero system, characters get to list Dependent NPCs, Enemies and so on, and get character points for these. The problem is that this doesn’t just fix those relationships in place, it freezes them solid, and any changes can require wholesale changes to the PC and to any NPC connected to the one being changed.

What’s more, unless the NPC happens to fit one of those predetermined categories, there is no system for tracking them. For almost as long as I have been GMing Champions (since 1982, in fact), I’ve been trying to formulate a broader approach.

In RPGs – failed evolving approaches

Those attempts have been less than resounding successes, I’m the first to admit. The problem is that the various methods attempted have been too paperwork-intensive, and this has led to them being neglected, letting them slowly become out-of-date, and eventually leading to them being ignored or abandoned.

The most successful of these approaches (in the Zenith-3 campaign) was a contact list in which NPCs were assigned a positive or negative value which was added or subtracted from the XP award for an adventure when the NPC played a significant role. The more helpful the NPC was, the more it reduced the points payout earned in the course of the adventure.

In and of itself, this was not a bad concept; it meant that PCs did their best to solve problems on their own, only calling for assistance when it was really necessary. This kept the spotlight where it belonged, on the PCs. My previous attempt had failed to achieve this, which is one reason it was replaced.

But the resulting mechanics became onerous – the calculation of point values, the assessment of how helpful characters could expect to be, and so on – and this led to the relationships being even more rigidly fixed, and the sub-system being ignored more often than it was referenced.

I tried simplifying it by having a master list of relationships with the team instead of requiring each individual to list every NPC encountered, but this wasn’t enough.

The Ideal Solution

I’ve long realized that the best solution would be to design and implement a simple relational database for each campaign. The structure of this database would have a hierarchy something like this:

• Everything is indexed by character number.
  • Information about the character.
  • For each character, there is a secondary record for all other characters in the database, and a link to their database entry that extracts their name..
    • Each secondary record has a tertiary record that contains a record of each time they have appeared in an adventure and what their relationship is to the primary character after that appearance.

For example, we might have:

• 01
  • Dr Murko
  • Somewhat-deranged scientist, his experiments have a tendency to blow up in his face
  • To understand the source and parameters of Zed-Zero Energy
  • Won’t willingly break the law to achieve goals but often does so through thoughtlessness
  • 02 Lady Sage
    • Appearance 1
    • Creator of experimental subject on the run
  • 03 Blaster
    • Appearance 1
    • Creator of experimental subject, released to hunt Lady Sage
• 02
  • Lady Sage
  • Experimental subject of Dr Murko who has escaped
  • Wants to avoid recapture
  • Can’t resist helping / protecting others
  • 01 Dr Murko
    • Appearance 1
    • Obsessed scientist whose experiments pose a threat to himself and others
  • 03 Blaster
    • Appearance 1
    • Creation of Dr Murko sent to hunt down Lady Sage but who let her escape, recognizing her as kindred

…. and so on.

This example is a small database of just three entries – two NPCs and a PC. The first character, Dr Murko, is an NPC; he was testing Zed-Zero energy, giving his test subject (Lady Sage) paranormal abilities, which she used to escape. He then created a second subject, Blaster, to hunt her down and recapture her before his (illegal?) experiments were revealed. Blaster found and confronted Lady Sage but recognized that they were alike, and let her escape; but returned to Dr Murko in hopes that Murko would undo what he had done to him.

Clearly, there is a complicated relationship between Blaster and Lady Sage that is likely to evolve with every appearance of the character.

If I were running this as a campaign, the second adventure would have nothing to do with Dr Murko or Blaster, it would introduce some new characters to Lady Sage’s new life, giving her a place to live/hide and establishing her personality beyond a mere drive for survival and liberty.

Why this is impractical

There are three reasons why I consider this solution theoretically ideal, to be impractical.

1. Most Relational Database software is complicated and/or expensive.
2. The number of records would grow geometrically with each new character.
3. After a little while, maintaining the database would be a full-time job.

Consider the situation with 3 PCs and 20 NPCs, who have appeared an average of three times each in a campaign, eliminating all redundant records (no ‘self’ secondary record, for example) and all relationships over which the GM has no control (those between PCs):

23 primary records, three of which have 20 secondary records and 20 of which have 19 secondary records, each of which has an average of 3 tertiary records: 23 + 4 × (3×20 + 20×19) = 23 + 4 × (60 + 380) = 23 + 4 × (440) = 23 + 1760 = 1783 records.

Adding another NPC:= 1783 + 1 + 3 + 20 + 1 = 1808 records after just a single appearance.

The main driver of record count is (NPCs) × (NPCs -1). 2 NPCs = 2 records per appearance. 3 NPCs = 6 records per appearance. 20 NPCs = 380 records per appearance. 31 NPCs = 930 records per appearance…

Not practical.

Simplification

The easiest and most obvious method of simplifying this structure is to restrict the documentation to recording relationships between PCs and NPCs, ignoring relationships between NPCs, except possibly for notes regarding specific relationships of significance.

The next step of simplification would be to take the tertiary records away completely, and simply include a growing list of appearances and relationships in the secondary records. This actually complicates the internal structure of the database, because the records can no longer be fixed-length, but that’s a headache for the designer of the software, not you, and is generally a solved issue.

The total number of records thereby becomes # PCs × # NPCs.

This would also reduce the functionality of the resulting database, but it would be a lot more practical.

Practical Implementation

In fact, it’s so practical that it could easily be implemented as a single text file – no database required at all.

Create a section in your document for the group, and then a section for each PC. Each NPC gets a line to describe the relationship – all you need is the name.

You then have two choices: either over-typing the existing line when the relationship evolves, or inserting a new line for the new entry.

The first keeps the document instantly relevant, and makes it easier to find the current information that you need for the NPCs next appearance, the latter preserves a history that can be vital in identifying trends in the relationships. Both have their advantages and limitations, so this is very much a personal choice for the GM – which set of shortcomings is he willing to live with?

Evolving A Relationship

Each game session, one NPC should be selected as the feature relationship. The GM decides how he would like the relationship to progress – it could go forward, backward, or sideways – and then inserts into the planned gameplay of the day events that will prompt that change in the relationship.

Complications arise in multi-PC groups where you have to be careful not to develop one PCs relationships more frequently than others – this is akin to a spotlight-sharing problem, so it should be amenable to similar solutions.

Depending on how many PCs you have, you might be able to advance one relationship per PC, for example. Note that introducing a new NPC with a particular relationship to a specific PC counts! If you have too many PCs, this might consume too much game time on a ‘per game session’ schedule, but a ‘per adventure’ schedule would remain practical for much larger groups.

Above maybe half-a-dozen PCs, even this might begin to feel forced, or might consume so much game time that you don’t get to the main adventure for a whole game session; neither is desirable. It then becomes necessary to subdivide the group for this purpose and alternate between divisions, or introduce a rotating schedule of some kind.

Either will work, and with groups of this size, this is likely to be the very least of your problems!

Evolutionary Anatomy

So what does evolution of a relationship look like?

In general, it can be divided into:

1. Event
2. Engagement
3. Reaction
4. Action
5. Response
6. Checkpoint

1. Event

Something happens that involves or invokes the relationship between the characters. This could be a social occasion, a professional engagement, or even a chance encounter. It may or may not involve a third party. The first of the characters that it happens to (PC or NPC) is considered the primary participant.

2. Engagement

The primary participant decides how they will respond to the event. This may or may not directly involve the other participant in the relationship (the secondary participant).

3. Reaction

The secondary participant learns of the engagement (if they did not know already), and reacts to the combination of event and engagement. The primary participant may or may not know of the reaction.

4. Action

One or both participants undertake an action in response to the event, as directed by the engagement and/or reaction..

5. Response

The primary participant responds to the actions or reaction of the secondary participant, while the secondary participant responds to the actions or engagement of the primary participant. This completes the narrative elements of the development.

6. Checkpoint

Any lingering consequences on the relationship, and how it will impact on the characters in the future, need to be documented before the GM’s work is done, however.

So, let’s look at an example:

Sally decides to act to further her claim to superiority over Louanne by inviting Peter but not Louanne to her birthday party. (the event)

Peter, being clueless about such things, accepts, and even mentions the invitation to Louanne. (the engagement)

Louanne, who considers Peter a friend, suspects that Sally is simply using him to get at her (a correct assessment). She is angry at Sally as a result. (the reaction)

Louanne decides to take action, telling Peter what she suspects Sally is doing. (Action)

Peter decides to attend the party anyway, but is forewarned by Louanne, who he trusts more than he does Sally. At the party, Sally all but ignores Peter but spends a lot of time running Louanne down in his hearing. Peter tells her off and leaves the party very publicly, humiliating Sally. (The Response)

Peter misinterprets Louanne’s involvement, deciding that maybe she cares more for him than she has admitted and than he has hitherto suspected. Sally will remain angry at both Peter (and Louanne, who she correctly blames) until she finds an opportunity for revenge. (The Checkpoint)

There are three relationships affected by this development, and all three of them change somewhat as a result.

• Sally is more openly hostile toward Louanne and will treat Peter as an enemy for the first time.
• Peter will have to decide how to respond to Louanne’s ‘advances’, creating awkwardness between them, and will be cold toward Sally until she apologizes.
• Louanne is blissfully ignorant of the changed relationship with Peter, and may well make things worse by feeding into his misinterpretation. She will be even more wary of Sally in future.

Where might this go in the future? The obvious development would be for Peter to ask Louanne out, or try to force Sally to apologize to Louanne, or both. But a more subtle, and interesting, development might be for some unrelated event to impact all three of their lives. Some tangible manifestation of the rivalry between Sally and Louanne, perhaps, or something that forces them to work together.

Conclusion

The same process can be used to evolve any relationship. In a D&D campaign, a hidden antagonist might approach one of the retainers of the PCs and blackmail them into spying for him, or baiting a trap for the PCs, or otherwise betraying the PCs.

Any relationship, any event, it works.

Not only does this stimulate the GM into creating subplots that have meaning for the PCs, and hence engagement for the Players, but – little by little – it makes the campaign world a richer place for the PCs to adventure within. Evolving relationships is easy – once you’re aware of the need to do so, and a way to make it happen that’s practical.

And for that, you can thank Ladybug & Cat Noir.

Miraculous!