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The Sixes System Pt 4: Doing Things 2

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Mike, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, PCs, Rules & Mechanics, The End Of The Rainbow, Writing & Authoring & The Games Industry, Dr Who: Lovecraft's Legacies, Metagaming & Metagame Theory, Original Game Systems on Apr.07, 2020

This entry is part 5 of 9 in the series The Sixes System

Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay

0. Fundamentals (repeated for all posts:)

— The Sixes System has been used in my Dr Who campaign since September 2014, and has just come to a successful conclusion.

— Characters are constructed using a point-buy methodology with NPCs generatable using die rolls for speed.

— Success or Failure on tasks is determined by adding dice to a pool based on ability and circumstances which are then rolled against a target number determined by the GM.

6. Setting Targets

It wasn’t until I started laying out the tables that will be found a little later in this article that I realized just how much this section was the heart of the entire game system. Everything to date feeds into this section, one way or another. All of section 5 (‘Doing Things, Part 1’) can be viewed as an interface between the rest of the game system and this section, which underpins everything. Accordingly, this is the material that it is most important for the GM to master.

The good news for GMs is that even if you never use the Sixes System for one of your games, mastering the content in this section will still be beneficial, because at the end of it, you will understand dice and die rolls more clearly than you did before. Unless you’re some kind of expert already, of course!

Setting a target would be really tricky without a simple process to follow that takes all the complexity and submerges it someplace where it won’t bother anyone. I’ll explain why, and discuss the difficulties involved, a little later. For now, let’s detail that process. There are six simple steps:

Difficulty Factor
Eligible Dice
Target Average
Base Target
Number Of Sixes
Amended Target

Alien Image by 024-657-834 from Pixabay

6.1 Difficulty Factor

Circumstances are generally either for or against the character doing what he has described; it’s very rare for all the factors involved to cancel out, leaving a base roll.

If the circumstances make life easier for the character, they are described by a negative Difficulty Factor; if they make life more difficult, they are described by a positive Difficulty Factor.

Difficulty Factors are either “0” (i.e. nothing noteworthy), “1” (slight), “2” (significantly beneficial/adverse), or “3” (extremely beneficial/adverse).

In the most extreme of circumstances, the GM might contemplate a “4” but this is NOT recommended.

If the character is especially skilled or competent, these numbers (except 0, of course) may be increased by 1 or even 2.

6.2 Eligible Dice

Adding 1/2 the value of Stat that the character is using to the value of the Purpose with which he is using the Stat and subtracting the Difficulty Factor gives the number of Eligible Dice.

Note that this is not the full count of the die pool available to the character when the action is attempted, a fact that will become significant later in the process.

6.3 Target Average

The third step is to select an appropriate target average, based on the difficulty of the task under typical circumstances (remember that the specific circumstances involved in this specific attempt have already been taken into account).

The average for any d6 is 3.5, or 7/2, so that’s the base line. It takes an astonishingly small deviation from that average to significantly alter the likelihood of success. There is perpetually a knife-edge between “too easy” and “too hard”, a fact that has greatly influenced the system design. Quite literally, a range of ±1 normally covers the full gamut from 95% chance of success to 95% chance of failure – or more.

There are tables later in the rules to assist you in selecting an appropriate Target Average. But there’s a simpler way, and it’s this that I use when playing the system.

1. Average 3

Three is the average recommended for easy tasks, so if that description matches the difficulty of the task, then that’s it, you’re done.

2. The ED Range

Subtracting 1/2 the ED from the product of 3 and ED gives a Target Average of 2.5. Adding 1/2 the ED from the product of 3 gives a Target Average of 3.5.
Adding the ED from the product of 3 gives a Target Average of 4.
Adding 1.5 times the ED from the product of 3 gives a Target Average of 4.5.

Those two numbers – ED and 3 – and a determination of the relative ease of the task – is all that you need to know in order to set the Base Target.

3. The Difficulty Modifier

So, decide the relative ease, and rate it on a scale of 0 to 2×ED. Then subtract 1/2 of ED. This is called the Difficulty Modifier (not to be confused with the Difficulty Factor already determined).

6.5 Base Target

Multiply the ED by 3.
Add the Difficulty Modifier.
That’s your Base Target.

Image by Steve Bidmead from Pixabay

6.4 Number Of Sixes

The next question, is how many Sixes are you going to require in the roll? This isn’t quite as simple as it sounds, because the law of averages states that 1/6th of the ED will come up sixes, and that needs to be taken into account.

The most accurate answer is to take the Difficulty Factor and add ED/6. But that’s too complicated to do in your head.

The next most accurate answer is to take the Difficulty Factor and add 1 for every 6 dice after the first three – so +1 (cumulative) at ED 3, 9, 15, 21, and 27. (You’re unlikely to ever see an ED higher than that). But that’s too much work when you’re bust with other things, too.

So, the simplest solution is to further compromise with practicality: Difficulty Factor +1 for every 6 ED. And that’s good enough.

6.6 Amended Target

Multiply the number of 6’s that you determined in the previous step by 6, and add the Base Target. The result is the Amended Target that you announce to the player.

An example:

1) Stat: 10. Purpose: 4.
2) Difficulty Factor -1 (fairly beneficial circumstances).
3) ED = 10/2+4-(-1) = 5+4+1=10.
4) Difficulty Modifier range: 0-20.
5) Difficult task, so a Difficulty Modifier of 17-ED/2 = 17-5 = 12.
6) Base Target = 3 × ED + 12 = 30 + 12 = 42.
7) Number of Sixes = -1 (Difficulty Factor) +1 (for ED 10) = 0.
8) Amended Target = 0 + 42 = 42.

Same example, more adverse conditions:

1) Stat: 10. Purpose: 4.
2) Difficulty Factor +2 (challenging circumstances).
3) ED = 10/2+4-2 = 5+4-2 = 7.
4) Difficulty Modifier range: 0-14.
5) Difficult task, so a Difficulty Modifier of 10-ED/2 = 10-3.5 = 6.5 – round up to 7.
6) Base Target = 3 × ED + 7 = 24 + 7 = 31.
7) Number of Sixes = +2 (Difficulty Factor) +1 (for ED 7) = 3.
8) Amended Target = 3 × 6 + 31 = 18 + 31 = 49.

Example 3: Same Character, Different Stat & Purpose, Very Difficult task, even more adverse conditions:

1) Stat: 12. Purpose: 3.
2) Difficulty Factor +3 (very adverse circumstances).
3) ED = 12/2+3-3 = 6+3-3 = 6.
4) Difficulty Modifier range: 0-12.
5) Very Difficult task, so a Difficulty Modifier of 11-ED/2 = 11-3 = 8.
6) Base Target = 3 × ED + 8 = 18 + 8 = 26.
7) Number of Sixes = +3 (Difficulty Factor) +1 (for ED 6) = 4.
8) Amended Target = 4 × 6 + 26 = 24 + 26 = 50.

Analysis: What’s Actually Happening Here?

Step 1 notes the characteristic and purpose, and the number of dice resulting from them.
Step 2 determines the base number of sixes required for a success.
Steps 3-6 work out what average is required on the rest of the dice, given the difficulty of the task:
- Step 3 works out how many dice are left after the sixes are excluded.
- Step 4 works out how big a variation the difficulty can cause in the subtotal.
- Step 5 determines a number within that range to reflect the difficulty of the task.
- Step 6 bypasses working out the average by skipping straight to (effectively) calculating # of dice multiplied by that average. This is something that would have to be done anyway, so this simply cuts out a number of intermediate calculations.
Step 7 adjusts the number of sixes for the size of the die pool.
Step 8 adjusts the target number to include the value of the required sixes.

6.6 The Scale Of Activity: The Impact of Skill and Equipment

Note that the Character gets more dice in his pool to use to reach the target from Skills and Equipment. So there is room for the GM to err a little on the high side when it comes to setting targets.

The tables given in the System Introduction show just how potent adding just one or two dice can be. Potentially, the character can be adding ten to the die pool as it stands for the above calculation – but 2, 3, or 4 are far more common values.

Even that’s significant. How significant? Two dice is an average of +7 to the total rolled. Three dice is an average of +10.5 to the total rolled. Four dice gives an average +14 to the total!

Equally important, these add significantly to the number of opportunities to roll a 6 – and sixes are worth their weight in gold in this game system.

To demonstrate this, let’s assume that the character from the third example above has a Skill of 2 and Equipment worth +1, for a total dice pool of 6+3+2+1=12 dice. Without the extras, he is faced with rolling 50 or better on 9d6 – an average of Five and Five-Ninths!, an almost impossible target. Which is only fair enough given the difficulty of the task and the adverse circumstances. Now, put those three extra dice back in – the required average drops to 50/12, or four and one-sixth. What was an almost impossible roll is now merely very difficult – the chances have improved from 0.01% to 10.36%, a more than 1000-fold increase!

Every extra die is like gold – if the character can get two additional dice from related skills, his chances rise still further, to 46.91%. Throw in a convincing line of argument about partial successes and a second chance, and you would almost start to feel confident about getting there in the end – which is what justifies trying to do something so difficult even under these adverse conditions. Even throwing in an extra 6 requirement because the character is extremely competent would only raise the target to maybe 52, maybe 53 – which, with 14 dice is 34.92% and 29.37%, respectively. Call it one chance in three. Given the subsystems that can bolster attempts to achieve success, you’d take those odds – if you had to.

Reference Tables: Target Numbers

What follows are six tables, the last of which is presented in three parts. Between them, they tell you everything you need to know to set a target – only simple addition required. But they also reveal patterns that will be both compelling and fascinating to anyone with a mathematical bent. Each will be followed by some notes and the occasional side observation. It’s important to remember that none of these values has been selected at random; they are all an outgrowth of basic probability theory and the fundamental concept of six-sided dice. Which means that those patterns are also not coincidental, but are part of the usually-hidden structure of the universe – and would be shared by any universe in which d6 could exist.

# dice	TABLE 1 – TARGET BY ROLL AVERAGE
	-1	-3/4	-1/2	-1/4	+0	+1/4	-1/2	+3/4	+1
	2.5	2.75	3	3.25	3.5	3.75	4	4.25	4.5
6	15	17	18	20	21	23	24	26	27
7	18	20	21	23	25	27	28	30	32
8	20	22	24	26	28	30	32	34	36
9	23	25	27	30	32	34	36	39	41
10	25	28	30	33	35	38	40	43	45
11	28	31	33	36	39	42	44	47	50
12	30	33	36	39	42	45	48	51	54
13	33	36	39	43	46	49	52	56	59
14	35	39	42	46	49	53	56	60	63
15	38	42	45	49	53	57	60	64	68
16	40	44	48	52	56	60	64	68	72
17	43	47	51	56	60	64	68	73	77
18	45	50	54	59	63	68	72	77	81
19	48	53	57	62	67	72	76	81	86
20	50	55	60	65	70	75	80	85	90
21	53	58	63	69	74	79	84	90	95
22	55	61	66	72	77	83	88	94	99
23	58	64	69	75	81	87	92	98	104
24	60	66	72	78	84	90	96	102	108
25	63	69	75	82	88	94	100	107	113

The first table lets you take a certain number of dice and a selected average result, and gives you the relevant target. The averages selected range from one less than the normal average result on a d6 to one more, i.e. from 2.5 to 4.5, in 0.25 intervals. These are the smallest intervals at which each table entry for a given number of dice is unique; smaller divisions and rounding would mean that the same target would appear under multiple columns. Since the system mechanics relies, in part, on the concept of a higher average translating to a higher target, that is an unacceptable outcome.

If the die pool (excluding required sixes) is 14 dice, for example, an average roll (ave=3.5) gives a target of 49; a target average of 3 gives a target of 42, of 4 gives 56. Just pick the average that you want and find the entry that matches the die pool to get the target.

I find that this is also useful for analyzing the impact of requiring a certain number of sixes in combination with a given target. Take the average of 3 and the target of 42. One six in addition would result in a total of 48, which on the 15-dice line (14+1) is just short of a 3.25 average; since this is below the normal average on a rolled d6 of 3.5, it’s still a fairly easy roll. Two sixes gives a total of 54 and on the 16-dice line, that’s mid-way between 3.25 and 3.5 – still fairly easy. Three sixes is a total of 60, and the 17-dice line, which is exactly on the 3.5 average target – so there is basically a 50-50 chance of success.

You can also track the impact of additional dice from skills and equipment to get some idea of the effect, but that is better handled as part of the next table.

A number of observations are possible concerning the data in this table. The first is that tiny differences in the average translate into significant differences in target numbers. The second is that there are obvious patterns down the columns, because each entry is the addition of another ‘average’ amount. The columns for 3 and 4 averages show this most clearly.

It’s the progressions at an inclination that are most interesting, even though there are less of these. For example, start with the 10-dice and 4.5 average, a target of 45. Now track the targets shifting one column left and down each time, to get the pattern 45, 47, 48, 49, 49, 49, 48, 47, 45. Fascinating.

You may also note the color coding. The darker-colored values at the extremes are not recommended; they tend to be too easy or too hard. The effective range of usable averages (under normal circumstances) is the inner set of values.

# dice	TABLE 2 – % PROBABILITY OF TARGET RESULT
	-1	-3/4	-1/2	-1/4	+0	+1/4	-1/2	+3/4	+1
	2.5	2.75	3	3.25	3.5	3.75	4	4.25	4.5
6	93.92	85.54	79.42	63.69	54.64	36.31	27.94	14.46	9.65
7	93.88	86.28	80.83	66.78	50	33.22	25.72	13.72	6.12
8	96.11	90.93	82.11	69.46	54.05	38.02	23.77	12.98	6.07
9	96.08	91.29	83.28	64.96	50	35.04	22.04	8.71	3.92
10	97.48	91.66	84.35	67.6	53.63	32.4	20.5	8.34	3.9
11	97.46	92.03	85.33	69.96	50	30.04	19.10	7.97	2.54
12	98.34	94.57	86.24	72.08	53.33	33.81	17.83	7.6	2.54
13	98.33	94.77	87.07	68.52	50	31.48	16.67	5.23	1.67
14	98.9	94.98	87.85	70.63	53.09	29.37	15.61	5.02	1.67
15	98.89	95.19	88.57	72.56	50	27.44	14.64	4.81	1.11
16	99.27	96.66	89.24	74.33	52.89	30.57	13.74	4.61	1.11
17	99.26	96.79	89.86	71.35	50	28.65	12.91	3.21	0.74
18	99.51	96.91	90.44	73.13	52.73	26.87	12.13	3.09	0.74
19	99.51	97.03	90.98	74.77	50	25.23	11.42	2.97	0.49
20	99.67	97.92	91.49	76.3	52.59	27.91	10.75	2.85	0.49
21	99.67	97.99	91.97	73.73	50	26.27	10.13	2.01	0.33
22	99.78	98.07	92.41	75.26	52.47	24.74	9.55	1.93	0.33
23	99.78	98.14	92.83	76.69	50	23.31	9.01	1.86	0.22
24	99.85	98.69	93.22	78.03	52.37	25.66	8.5	1.79	0.22
25	99.85	98.73	93.59	75.78	50	24.22	8.03	1.27	0.15

Table 2 contains the same data as table one – but translates the target into a percentage chance of success.

Take the target from the example used in describing the previous table – an average of 3 and 14d6. The resulting target works out to an 87.85% chance of success, as you can see by finding the intersection of these two values.

We then looked at adding one mandatory six – equivalent to an average of just under 3.25 on the 15d6 line. That’s a chance just a little better than 72.56%, according to this table.

Two sixes was exactly midway between 3.25 and 3.5 on the 16d6 line – so somewhere in between 52.89% and 74.33%. It’s hard to be more precise because these are non-linear curves. But it’s a fair bet to be 63%-plus-or-minus something.

Three sixes was exactly 3.5 on 17d6 (a target of 60) – and, not surprisingly, that gives a 50% chance of success.

What happens if the actual dice pool gets 4 additional dice from skills and equipment? Well, we need to use table 1, and find the equivalent average on 17+4=21 dice. Sixty, on the 21d6 line, is midway between an average of 2.75 and 3. Looking those up on table two gives a probability of 91.97-to-97.99% – so that’s about 95%, give-or-take, or the equivalent of 1-19 (or 2-20) on a d20.

You can’t really come to grips with what this table is telling you until you relate it back to table one, which provides the context. But you don’t have to track very many of the rows across to realize that a small linear change in target yields a huge difference in the probability of success, and the more dice in the target pool, the sharper that difference. Look at the 23-dice row for example – +1/4 over the basic average of 3.5 more than halves the chance of success. In other words, the more dice in the pool, the more important small changes in the target become – an outcome some people find counter-intuitive.

This also means that the more dice in a pool, the less significant any given number of sixes becomes. You can also observe this trend by considering the averages described in the example above.

# dice	TABLE 3 – TARGET BY AVERAGE ROLL
	-2/3	-1/3	-1/6	+0	+1/6	-1/3	+2/3
	2.8333	3.1667	3.3333	3.5	3.6667	3.8333	4.1667
6	17	19	20	21	22	23	25
7	20	23	24	25	26	27	30
8	23	26	27	28	30	31	34
9	26	29	30	32	33	35	38
10	29	32	34	35	37	39	42
11	32	35	37	39	41	43	46
12	34	38	40	42	44	46	50
13	37	42	44	46	48	50	55
14	40	45	47	49	52	54	59
15	43	48	50	53	55	58	63
16	46	51	54	56	59	62	67
17	49	54	57	60	63	66	71
18	51	57	60	63	66	69	75
19	54	61	64	67	70	73	80
20	57	64	67	70	74	77	84
21	60	67	70	74	77	81	88
22	63	70	74	77	81	85	92
23	66	73	77	81	85	89	96
24	68	76	80	84	88	92	100
25	71	80	84	88	92	96	105

Table 3 is exactly the same as table 1 – but it uses a tighter and non-linear grouping of results: ±1/6, ±1/3, and ±2/3.

And yet, despite this non-linearity, the targets look surprisingly linear. Take the 9d6 row (and ignore the extreme results) – 29-30-32-33-35. Or the 21d6 row: 67-70-74-77-81. Just another peculiarity of mathematics.

# dice	TABLE 4 – % PROBABILITY OF TARGET RESULT
	-2/3	-1/3	-1/6	+0	+1/6	-1/3	+2/3
	2.8333	3.1667	3.3333	3.5	3.6667	3.8333	4.1667
6	85.54	72.06	63.69	54.64	45.36	36.31	20.58
7	86.28	66.78	58.58	50	41.42	33.22	13.72
8	87.02	69.46	61.98	54.05	38.02	30.54	12.98
9	87.72	71.81	64.96	50	42.39	28.19	12.28
10	88.4	73.89	60.79	53.63	39.21	26.11	11.6
11	89.03	75.76	63.63	50	36.37	24.24	10.97
12	92.4	77.44	66.19	53.33	40.11	27.92	10.36
13	92.76	74	62.6	50	37.4	26	7.24
14	93.1	75.75	65.08	53.09	34.92	24.25	6.9
15	93.44	77.34	67.35	50	38.23	22.66	6.56
16	93.76	78.8	64.16	52.89	35.84	21.2	6.24
17	94.07	80.14	66.37	50	33.63	19.86	5.93
18	95.79	77.46	68.42	52.73	31.58	22.54	4.21
19	95.98	78.85	65.55	50	34.45	21.15	4.02
20	96.16	80.14	67.55	52.59	32.45	19.86	3.84
21	96.31	81.33	69.42	50	30.58	18.67	3.66
22	96.51	82.43	66.79	52.47	37.82	17.57	3.49
23	96.67	83.46	68.64	50	31.36	16.54	3.33
24	97.6	81.4	70.37	52.37	29.63	18.6	2.4
25	97.7	82.46	67.94	50	32.06	17.54	2.3

Just as table three is the same as table one (but with different divisions), so the above is the same as table two – but with divisions as per table three.

These are harder values to calculate in your head – but that doesn’t matter, because I’ve done all the calculation for you. That’s the whole point of these tables.

But I should probably remind everyone at this point that I don’t personally use these, because there’s such a simple way of doing it all directly. At most, these will be used for confirmation, or to give me a clearer idea of the range of targets within which I should be operating.

# dice	TABLE 5 – TARGETS BY % CHANCE, WITH ANALYSIS
# dice	95	88	75	60	50	40	25	12	5	Spread	Narrow Spread	Platau	Platau Group	#dice
6	14	16	18	20	21	22	24	26	28	14	6	2	2-3	6
7	17	19	21	23	25	26	28	30	32	15	7	3	2-3	7
8	20	22	25	27	28	29	31	34	36	16	6	2	2-3	8
9	23	25	28	30	32	33	35	38	40	17	7	3	2-3	9
10	26	29	31	34	35	36	39	41	44	18	8	2	2-3	10
11	29	32	35	37	39	40	42	45	48	19	7	3	2-3	11
12	32	35	38	40	42	44	46	49	52	20	8	4	3.-4	12
13	35	38	41	44	46	47	50	53	56	21	9	3	3-4	13
14	38	41	45	47	49	51	53	57	60	22	8	4	3-4	14
15	42	45	48	51	53	54	57	60	63	21	9	3	3-4	15
16	45	48	51	54	56	58	61	64	67	22	10	4	3-4	16
17	48	51	55	58	60	61	64	68	71	23	9	3	3-4	17
18	51	54	58	61	63	65	68	72	75	24	10	4	3-4	18
19	54	58	61	65	67	68	72	75	79	25	11	3	3-4	19
20	57	61	65	68	70	72	75	79	83	26	10	4	3-4	20
21	61	64	68	72	74	75	79	83	86	25	11	3	3-4	21
22	64	68	72	75	78	81	83	86	90	26	10	4	4-5	22
23	67	71	75	78	81	83	86	90	94	27	11	5	4-5	23
24	70	74	78	82	84	86	90	94	98	28	12	4	4-5	24
25	73	77	82	85	88	90	93	98	102	29	11	5	4-5	25
26	77	81	85	89	91	93	97	101	105	28	12	4	4-5	26

You may or may not have realized that Table 2 started off being part of Table 1, just as Table 4 started out being part of what is now Table 3. They were split because the Theme used by Campaign Mastery permits only about 550 pixels of content on a line, and the tables would have spilled out of the ‘contents’ area into the navigation panel to the right.

Why, then, has this table not received the same treatment? Primarily because the four columns to the right of the “5” column are analysis of the 9 columns to the left (including the “5” column, and the value of this analysis would be almost completely wiped out by breaking the table up. Secondarily, by the time the article reaches this table, I would hope that the RHS Nav would have ended – and I’ll pad the article with illustrations, if necessary, to achieve this. That left only one objection – that it might not render properly on a mobile phone, or when printed. Well, the first is a risk that is always present – Campaign Mastery wasn’t designed to be viewed on such devices – and the second has been solved by providing the tables in separate, downloadable form.

But I thought it important to explain this to readers in order to place the content description below in context.

If you can determine a percentage chance of success (as shown in tables 2 and 4), then you can construct a table in which nominated percentage chances are the headings, and the table content provides the target numbers that yield that %chance of success (or better). It was this thought that led to the creation of table 5.

The columns that read “95”, “88” and so on are the % chance of success. You’ll notice that the extremes are color coded as “not recommended”.

There’s a subtle element of game psychology that explains why this is the case.

Even on very likely actions, there should be a reasonable risk of failure (given that there are so many ways in which the chance of success is improved – additional dice, virtual sixes, more time, and cooperative actions being the major ones). Similarly, even on very unlikely-to-succeed actions, there should be a measurable chance of success, perhaps one far in excess of what is reasonable.

All RPGs are Adventure Games of various flavors. That means that you can’t remove the thrill of uncertainty. But, at the same time, the PCs are the stars of the show, and should succeed in doing the near-impossible on a reasonably-regular basis.

Structurally, then, this can be thought of as combining tables 1, 2, 3, and 4. Except that the whole “averages” concept has been embedded and submerged in favor of selecting a given chance of success – which is then modified by the requirement of sixes, the inclusion of extra dice for skills and equipment, and the litany of chance-enhancing game mechanics features mentioned in the panel above.

What comes across quite starkly in the table, even from the first row, is how small a change in target is needed to have a significant chance in the chance of reaching that target.

The “Spread” column is the first of the analysis features. It subtracts the lowest target number – the one in the “95%” column – from the highest target number – the one in the “5” column. This is the maximum range of results that you have to play with in setting a target. You can actually halve the spread and write the range of useful values as 50%-target plus-or-minus (spread / 2).

Outside of this range, the chances of success or failure are so high that you normally not even have to roll.

The “Narrow Spread” deals only in the more useful range, defined as the lighter-colored entries. Once again, the low-chance value (in the “25%” column) is subtracted from the high-chance value (in the “75%” column).

Finally, the “Plateau” represents the range between a 60% chance of success and a 40% chance. When you look at the shape of a statistical bell curve, which all rolls of Nd6 are if N>1, you find that there is a slow rise, a rapid rise, a leveling off, a rapid decline, and then a slow decline. The plateau is defined, for the purposes of this analysis, as the range described.

You quickly reach the conclusion that the size of the plateau includes a 0.5, which rounds down unless paired with another the same. The plateau for 6d6 is not actually 2, under this theory, it’s 2.5 wide. Rounded, that becomes an alternating pattern of 2’s and 3’s for even numbers of dice and odd, respectively.

You then congratulate yourself on the insight, and are so busy doing so that you never actually absorb the fact that you’re wrong.

If you look more closely at the table, you find that it’s the even numbers of dice that have the twos, the ’round downs’, and the odd numbers that have the “round ups”. At best, you’re half-right – the pattern is the result of a rounding error, but it’s caused by the definition of the target numbers as “the first target number which has the indicated % success rate or better”. This is the same phenomenon that caused every second row in the middle column (the “3.5 average” column) to have values greater than 50% on tables 2 and 4.

Having discerned this pattern, I noticed a pattern within the pattern, and that is described by the “plateau group” column, which is color-coded for easy reference. From 6d6 to 11d6, the plateau is 2-3 target numbers wide; from 12d6 to 21d6, it’s from 3-4; from 22d6, it’s 4-5. Or maybe the ranges are 6-11, 12-22, and 23-?. Or 6-10, 11-21, 22+. It’s hard to decide exactly where the border lies.

Anyway, the point of all this is that it quickly lets you zone in on the range of possible target numbers that are appropriate for the challenge facing the character.

It’s a tool, in other words.

Which brings me to the three-part table six. I wanted to present the basic information in as many formats as possible so that the most useful one could always be employed. Tables 6-1, 6-2, and 6-3 exchange the two axes of tables 2 and 4, putting the number of dice across the top, and listing every possible target for any of the dice indicated. There are a number of possible entries – in order, high to low:

100 (red background) = 100% certain, guaranteed to succeed.
~100 = 99.9% or better chance of success.
>99 = between about 99.1 and 99.9 % chance of success.
~99 = between 89.9 and 99.1 but not 99.0 % chance of success.
Number between 99 and 1 without a symbol: the number % chance of success.
~1 = between 1.1 and 0.9% chance.
<1 = between 0.1 and 0.899% chance.
~0 = between 0.1 and 0 % chance, i.e. 1 in a thousand rolls or worse.
— = 100% certain failure (unless additional dice are brought in.)

This table isn’t about the patterns across a row, it’s about the specific chances of success for any given target and number of dice. They show just how compressed the information in tables 1-5 actually were. But more than that, because I was able to extend these up to 30d6, larger than any reasonable die pool should ever be expected to get.

Wherever possible, I have ‘collapsed’ rows which had exactly the same results – this can be seen for target numbers 57 and 58 on table 6-1, where two rows had exactly the same content; they have been conflated to make the table a little smaller. That means that there is no difference between the two target numbers within the given range of numbers of dice,

TABLE 6 – % SUCCESS BY TARGET & NUMBER OF DICE

-Target

4d6

5d6

6d6

7d6

8d6

9d6

10d6

11d6

12d6

6/-

>99

100

>99

~100

100

>99

~100

100

>99

~100

100

>99

~100

100

>99

~100

100

~99

>99

~100

100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

—

>99

—

>99

—

>99

—

>99

—

57-58

—

61-62

—

63-65

—

67-72

—

TABLE 6 – % SUCCESS BY TARGET & NUMBER OF DICE (cont)

-Target

13d6

14d6

15d6

16d6

17d6

18d6

19d6

20d6

21d6

13/-

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

22-24

~100

25-27

>99

~100

28-30

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

—

91-92

—

94-96

—

97-98

—

100-101

—

102

—

103-105

—

106-108

—

109-111

—

112-114

—

115-117

—

118-120

—

121-126

—

127

—

TABLE 6 – % SUCCESS BY TARGET & NUMBER OF DICE (cont)

-Target

22d6

23d6

24d6

25d6

26d6

27d6

28d6

29d6

30d6

22/-

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

~100

100

31-40

~100

41-49

~100

50-51

>99

~100

>99

~100

53-54

>99

~100

>99

~100

56-57

>99

~100

>99

~100

59-60

>99

~100

>99

~100

62-63

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

~99

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

~100

>99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126-127

128-129

130

131-132

133-134

—

135

—

136-138

—

139-144

—

145-150

—

151-156

—

157-162

—

163-168

—

169-174

—

175-180

—

181+

—

This trio of tables contain the raw data from which all the other tables were derived. There are five ways to use them.

The most obvious one – find the right column for the dice pool, track down to the row that contains your target and read off the percentage chance.
Almost as obvious – find the right column for the dice pool and track down that column until you find the base chance of success that you think is right, then left to get the target number that will deliver your chosen percentage.
You can estimate what the required number of sixes involved does to the chance of success. Remember that each is essentially +6 to the target and +1 to the number of dice.
You can quickly determine the impact that skill and equipment has on the chance of success – these add (or in some cases, subtract) from the dice pool without changing the target.
Having no skill reduces the size of the dice pool by two without changing the target. So it’s very easy to see what effect that has on the chances of success, and whether a roll is even necessary, or if the nominated task is beyond someone without the appropriate skills – just go left two columns and read off the chance of success. Note that equipment can replace some or all of those lost dice.

Click the button to download a compressed folder containing the above tables (with a small error in one that won’t detract from the usefulness) in both PDF and XLS formats (111kb).

I have to admit that if I had these tables available, I might have used them now and then, even with the quick and easy method given earlier; so I gave some thought as to how to make them accessible. The downloads I am providing are the solution I came up with.

I don’t think they should take the place of the system of calculation that I use, but use for verification, for estimating the impact of a sixes requirement, and for estimating the capabilities conferred by a given number of skill ranks for a particular PC or NPC* cannot be underestimated.

* It has to be for an individual, because no one else is likely to have exactly the same combination of Stats and Purposes, and this is especially true in light of the self-defined stat.

Image by Parker_West from Pixabay

Designer’s Notes & Discussions: Doing Things

I’ve been a little lazy in this article in terms of separating notes and observations from the rules. I thought I should start what remains in this section by explaining why. The purpose of these posts is to communicate how this game system works, and I have set a structure in place that, in general, promises to do that with minimal distraction and side-issues – but I am perfectly willing to set that structure aside if that seems to me to be more effective in achieving that purpose.

That being said, I do still have a few points to discuss, mostly related to the probabilities involved, and hence applicable to any system that uses multiple d6 to determine damage – and indirectly relevant to any system using multiples of some other die size..

Observations of Results Distribution

The more dice there are in a roll, the more room for small drifts from even distribution because that only needs one or two of them to roll higher than averages would dictate.

At the same time, the more dice there are in a roll, the smaller the room for large deviations from the mean outcome, because that requires an increasing number of dice rolling significantly higher or lower than the average.

The entire action resolution system rests on these two effects.

These phenomena mean that characters with high stats & purposes can perform moderately-difficult tasks under normal circumstances with greater reliability, in addition to being able to attempt more challenging actions with some chance of success. The influence of skill ranks and equipment on these probabilities are even over both, as are the circumstantial difficulties that need to be overcome, whereas the stat/purpose effect is more relevant to the reliability question.

In other words, you can have low Stats and Purpose, but if you have enough skill and equipment bonus, you can still attempt difficult tasks and will, every now and then, succeed.

Another way to look at the results distribution is that the probability curves become increasingly narrow with flat trails to either side. I have seen some who describe the difference between a 3d6 roll (which does not display this curve shape) and higher die rolls (which do) as being a “pinch” in the probability curve.

For these higher dice populations, a probability curve consists of four features distributed amongst 7 regions on the curve:

- A pair of regions of low-probability extreme results which grows rapidly in range with additional dice and is very flat in terms of the probability of a specific die roll. One of these will exist for high rolls and one for low.
- A pair of regions of rapid increase in probability of results, the probability rising in almost a straight line.
- A pair of regions of transition between these regions, often quite small, perhaps even only a single result.

A central region in which the probability looks like ballistic motion, rising to a peak and then declining. An increasing share of the total number of possible results will be found within this region.

In addition, there is a pair of regions at which the high-rising probability joins the “ballistic” motion. Interestingly, if you scale the probability curves of multiple different die rolls and superimpose them, you will find that these points are very closely the same, in relative terms, regardless of the number of dice (Ndn with N greater than 3). Larger numbers of dice show that there is actually a curve formed by these points.

Below are a number of probability curves for your consideration.

The first shows the true results of 9d6, 15d6, 21d6, and 27d6 (increases of 6d6 each time)- values chosen to make the features described above more readily visible. They are a series of steadily-flattening patterns, which is exactly what you would expect with results being distributed over a greater range of results. Note the red line showing the trend in maximum single-result probability.

The second graph aligns the minimum possible result of these die rolls and also scales them so that the maximum possible results are also aligned. This naturally means that the points of maximum probability are also aligned. The curves were all scaled so that the maximum probabilities were the same for each of the die rolls, enabling a more direct comparison of the shapes of the curves. Finally, each result was raised to permit each of the curves to be seen. All of which sounds more complicated than it was. The patterns of probability that I describe are made quite clear by the direct comparison this set of graphs provides.

The third graph is, I admit, an afterthought. Similarly to the second graph, it shows “ridiculous” numbers of dice, scaled to fit: 25d6, 50d6, 100d6, 200d6, and 400d6. Given that the area under each is going to be the same (100%, in total), it clearly shows how the “effective” range of results continues to narrow as the number of dice increases.

Implications: Number Of Sixes

The average number of sixes in any given die roll are equal to the number of d6 divided by six. If you get a remainder, that indicates a chance at one more than the integer result, which you can guesstimate as 100 sixths of the remainder (%), (roughly, multiply by 17). So,

Remainder 1 = 17% of +1;
Remainder 2 = 34% of +1;
Remainder 3 = 51% of +1;
Remainder 4 = 68% of +1;
Remainder 5 = 85% of +1.

The environmental and circumstantial difficulties to be overcome are represented by requiring more dice to come up sixes, or ‘virtual’ sixes, on top of this minimum expectation.

It is only logical that the more dice you are rolling, the more opportunity you have for some of those dice that aren’t expected to roll high to do so. In other words, with increasing dice in the pool, you have more opportunities to get the additional dice imposed by circumstantial difficulties – and those are dice from any source, including skill levels and equipment.

In game terms, then, the system naturally makes characters able to routinely overcome adverse conditions, regardless of whether that’s through native talent (Stats + Purpose) or acquired expertise (Skill + Equipment).

In fact, if Skill+Expertise totals 6, you can reasonably expect one of the them to be a “bonus” six, completely on top of whatever can be achieved through ‘natural ability’. But 1/6th of the time, one rank is all that you need.

All this makes perfect sense, but it’s a reassuring reality check to observe that the game system conforms with the logical reality that it’s trying to simulate. The great news is that it does all this with no additional workload imposed on the GM.

Implications for Game Mechanics

In general, then, small die pools tend to be either spectacular successes or failures and will less often be routine expectations. As die pools grow, the probability of a result at or near the average increases.

These are facts that the GM should take into account when setting targets. The smaller the die pool, the lower the target should be if the character is to have a reasonable chance of success, in relative terms. As die pools increase, it gets harder to achieve even a modest increase in the average result, but easier to achieve that average result.

Whereas with a die pool of only 6-10 dice (on the low end), I might expect an average of 4 or more for an inherently difficult task, with a die pool of 11-14 dice (fairly common) an average of 3.75 might represent the same task, and a die pool of 15-18 dice (quite high) might require an average of three-and-two-thirds.

Why the Virtual Sixes?

Originally, there were no Virtual Sixes in the rules, as I have explained elsewhere, and the demand for additional sixes was far more critical than the target (which represented the inherent difficulty of the task. In favorable conditions, it was too easy to work miracles; in unfavorable conditions, it was too hard to achieve even modest successes. What’s more, the need to stop and actually count the number of sixes rolled was slowing the game system down quite noticeably. Bringing in the ‘Virtual Sixes’ system enabled me to determine a target at the same time as the player was rolling and totaling his dice – as close to 100% efficiency as you’re going to get.

The Limitations Of Virtual Sixes

The problem is that this devalues the rolling of an actual six. That was something that I addressed with the critical success mechanics. It follows that even though they are described as an optional rule, I strongly advise in favor of them.

What’s more, I found that the player organizing his die roll into tens for easy counting made it easier for me to – at a glance – determine whether or not the number of sixes were greater than required, or if there was a significant population of ones (in the event of a failure). It represents virtually no overhead to the GM, in other words. That starts to change with pools of more than 18 dice, when the maximum number you need to count to with that glance becomes (for a very difficult task) 6 or more – even under ideal circumstances.

But, what I discovered was that the length of time it took to sort and total more dice increased faster then the increase in overhead caused by this problem. I still had more than enough time to determine a target AND count the number of sixes or ones – and I could tell with that initial glance which one of those options might be relevant. The Critical-Hits-and-Fumbles rules remained an option with no overhead cost – for me.

I’m not everyone – others might not find it so easy (though they will improve with practice). So I’ve provided the simplification of playing without the criticals – but don’t recommend it unless you are forced into it by a total inability to do simple math, AND don’t have the game tables to hand.

Recommendation: Critical Hits and Fumbles

I strongly recommend playing up the drama of critical hits and fumbles. That often means that the former should be led up to in the narrative by narrowly escaping failure until ‘the stars align’ and the character does something spectacularly well – all of it part of the ONE die roll. PAD if you have to.

Similarly, a fumble shouldn’t be a simple “you drop your sword”, it should be more in the nature of a train-wreck or farce with the character in the starring role. I try to avoid dues-ex-machina when doing this (unless I’ve set the stage for them already) but that’s the only censor. So, unless combat is taking place in a region known to be extremely volcanicly active, I generally won’t have a fissure open beneath the character’s feet – but I’m quite happy for them to lose their grip on their weapon in mid-swing, propelling it into the ceiling or high up a wall, cutting the cords holding a chandelier along the way, which crashes to the ground right next to the character, showering him with shards of glass or crystal.

Part 6 of the Sixes system will deal with doing more things – like combat – but there are a few quick pieces of infrastructure that I should put in place first. So Part 5 will deal with them: Base Values (how many character points a character should be built on), Disadvantages and what they can be used for, Character Penalties, Experience, and What you can do with it (i.e. Improving Characters).

Tags: Game-Mechanics, Original-Game-Systems, PCs, RPG-Theory, Writing

Comments Off on The Sixes System Pt 4: Doing Things 2

Rainbows Of Neon Gray: Moral Topology

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in D&D / Pathfinder, Game Mastering, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, PCs, Players, The End Of The Rainbow, Tools & Techniques, Writing & Authoring & The Games Industry on Mar.31, 2020

Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay

Part 4 of the Sixes System is almost done – It only needs another day-and-a-half of work. Sadly, 1.5 doesn’t fit into 1, and I reached that point with only 1 more working day to get a post ready. So here’s one of the fill-in articles that I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for just such a contingency…

It is said that everyone has their price, a button that – if pushed in just the right way – will get them to roll over and say “Uncle”.

In theory, having a player specify what his character’s “squeal-point” is, would make them a more rounded character. It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately; Players inevitably sense an ulterior motive at work if a GM asks the question, and GMs can’t help but play with that button when it would serve their interests more to leave it alone until exactly the right time.

It is also said that there is a line that each person will refuse to cross, no matter how villainous. That’s more fertile ground for the GM, because it throws a tiny little swirl of light in the Villain, making their motives unclear and complex.

But these two thoughts, taken together, can form a powerful tool for the delineation and creation of more interesting PCs and NPCs – because I think they are both oversimplifications of more complex phenomena.

Moral Topology

If you were to map an individual’s life in some fashion – job, hobbies and interests, individual relationships, spending, relationship with government & authority, recreation, education, travels, etc – you would find that each area has different lines that the person will not cross, and different prices or valuations that the person places on them. Quite often, moral dilemmas come down to which of two of these the person values more highly.

This means that you could describe a personal morality as a topography – higher means more moral, i.e. more stringent lines that won’t be crossed, and a much higher value. Lower means less moral restraint.

What’s more, each of these broad areas would have specific peaks and valleys. For example, few people would contemplate an act of murder, but many will flirt with speed limits and parking restrictions, and it’s considered normal to push the limits when filling out tax returns.

It is possible for public policy to push morals higher in selected areas, simply by increasing the price of a “moral” violation through fines or imprisonment. Those who are prone to moral behavior in their relationships with authority will increasingly desist from such behavior. This has been proven by the implementation of drink-driving laws, and laws making it an offense to use a mobile phone while driving.

At the same time, there are some who react to challenges to their independence by embracing the very behavior that is being suppressed. Rebellion and Independence are necessary additions to all such maps.

Moral limits, in this context, are triggers for a change in behavior; they don’t determine what the new behavior will be or value one above another.

Different Topological Interactions for different Demands

It’s still more complicated than that, of course. If someone makes a demand of you, some areas of the individual’s morality will be engaged, while others will not. The areas that are triggered are cumulatively measured against the value placed on loyalty to the person or organization making the demand, if the loyalty is higher than the price to be paid for any violations, then we accede; if not, then we don’t.

For example, let’s say that your boss comes up to you and tells you that he needs you to falsify a document to be sent to the government. Do you do it? It’s easy to give a blanket answer, but it’s not that simple. If the reason is just that the boss wants to make more money – no. If the boss is willing to share that money with you – probably not (depends, for some, on how much money). If the boss were to tell you that if you don’t, the business will go under and everyone will lose their jobs – that’s a harder choice, and largely depends on the state of the job market at the time. In the 50s and 60s, when work was plentiful, the answer would be a no – but for anyone who grew up more recently, when the number of applicants started outnumbering the number of vacancies by up to five-to-one, you might have to think twice. And, if in a corner, you might need to find some third option – like becoming a whistle-blower.

Every demand – no matter what it is – can thus be viewed as presenting a fixed topological overlay to the morality “map”. Where the morals form a deeper valley than the demand, you find it to be reasonable – under the circumstances. Where a moral ‘peak’ tries to push through the overlay, you have some sort of objection – a line that you won’t cross. However, every line has its price; and if that price is met, the “line” is lowered to a new position.

Compare the example with a demand that you work a couple of extra hours on the weekend. This automatically comes with extra pay, according to most laws, the amount being deemed sufficient by the lawmakers to compensate the worker for the inconvenience involved; but that level of inconvenience would differ both from one individual to another, but with transitory individual circumstances. If you were being asked to miss a friend’s wedding, for example, the answer is probably a ‘no’. If the overtime is to be un-payed, there’s a lot less incentive to accept – but you might do so, anyway, either in self-defense (if the business was struggling and you wanted to help keep it afloat to protect your employment), or because your employment was directly threatened by the boss. Each of these changes – what you are being asked to give up, how inconvenient acceptance is going to be, what the price being attached to the demand is, all change the face of the demand, and how we will respond to it.

Different Moral Topologies for different Temptations

Temptation is the other side of the coin to Demand. Temptation is all about offering a reward, or a value, in return for doing something – that something might be morally questionable, or legally dubious, or personally catastrophic in one or more areas, or just plain wrong in one of these areas. The temptation may be an offer from the outside or an opportunity that has been observed by the individual on the inside.

It’s easy to sum up all of the above with one simple question. “Here’s a lovely piece of delicious chocolate – do you eat it?” A huge number would respond with an immediate, even enthusiastic, ‘yes’. Some, like those trying to control their weight, or who suffer from diabetes, might hesitate – but most will say ‘yes’ anyway, and make room within their diet plan for the extra calories involved. Others will weigh the pleasure of eating the chocolate against the extra time in the gym needed to burn off those calories, and may or may not refuse. So there is a clear price to the consumption of the tid-bit, and various ways of paying that price. It’s not a temptation unless you are looking for a reason to say ‘yes’; you will only say ‘no’ if you can’t find such a reason (assuming that you like chocolate, of course).

“Here’s a lovely piece of delicious chocolate laced with arsenic – do you eat it?” Suddenly, the price of enjoying the treat rockets up to a life-or-death decision. Almost everyone who said “yes” before is now saying “no” – and society considers those who aren’t doing so to be mentally abnormal.

The temptation – to enjoy a delicious piece of chocolate – is the same in both cases, but the prices are extremely different, they engage in different areas of the moral map, and so yield markedly different results.

The details, therefore, matter, and markedly influence how we interpret the various temptations that come our way, which we will accept, and which we will deny.

Ambition is like Rainwater

That was about as far as my initial burst of thought on this subject took me; I had the one insight (moral topology), deriving from reflection upon the two maxims that I listed earlier, and that was it – at least until I began organizing this article a day or two later, when a fresh thought came to me.

In this context, Ambition is like rainwater – it will run to the lowest point of the moral topology, forming lakes that will fill until they overflow, overcoming lesser boundaries.

Ambition is wanting something, or wanting to achieve something. It might be a promotion at work, or the respect of your peers, or a solid-B average, or becoming a millionaire, or buying your own home, or marrying someone and raising a family, or studying beekeeping – there are as many ambitions as there are characters. In fact, we can generally sustain two or more ambitions in most of the different regions of our map.

The questions are always, What would you do to satisfy the ambition? What would you not do? What price is too high? And always, what is the smallest possible price we can pay?

There may be multiple different ways of satisfying the ambition. Choosing between them is a function of the price and the degree of satisfaction; we naturally want to maximize the reward while minimizing the pain. That price might not be purely or even mostly financial, there is often a time component, for example. If you’ve always wanted to study astronomy, that ambition might be satisfied by stealing a telescope – but the potential price is high (jail) and the potential for self-education in the field using the telescope is limited, especially if it gets found and taken off you. But how about buying a black-market telescope? Is that quite as morally worrying as stealing the telescope yourself? Some will answer ‘yes’, but others will have no problems with a bargain – “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”.

The low-ground of the topology are our weak points, the areas in life where there is the least amount holding us back. That can be a good thing, making us agreeable to what someone else (who we value) wants – or it can be a very bad thing, when we see a shortcut that isn’t quite moral or legal to getting what we want.

Ambition isn’t general, affecting the entire morality map; it’s regional or even specific. In other words, moral weak points aren’t relevant if they don’t provide an avenue to the satisfaction of the ambition.

It follows that the arrangement of the different areas of morality is critically important, because quite often decisions are based on the way the different areas relate to each other.

An RPG is not a 500-page novel

You don’t have pages of exposition to explore a character’s thought processes; it follows that the morality map has to be simplified, even abstracted as much as possible (to be fair, a good novelist shouldn’t use multiple pages for this purpose, either!).

One attempt at doing so is clearly the traditional alignment of D&D, but this has extreme problems – it’s too generalized to be useful, either full of exceptions or an invitation to a cliche or caricature of a personality.

Click on the thumbnail to open a larger (higher-resolution) version suitable for printing and pasting.

But it’s possible to take that basic concept – two axes – and map out where a character stands on a given topic, as though we were taking a spot measurement of the moral topology. Let’s call the result a Moral Compass.

One axis should be desire vs caution – or, perhaps, risk-vs-reward ratio, from low to high. Most people will find the first pairing easier to visualize. One extreme points to a character who is very risk-averse in a particular area, even for considerable reward, the other to a character whose desire is sufficient to outweigh considerable risk.

The other should be fear vs bravery within the specific field of morality that is being considered.

What those fields should be is up to the individual – the more strong opinions he holds about what he will and won’t do, the more of them are needed. Of course, this should be carefully documented.

The image below is of a blank moral compass. Below are nine examples – all for the same player (Matthew), character (DeBarre), and topic (Patriotism) but showing all the possible choices, so that each can be analyzed.

This is important because there are some superficial contradictions in the axis labels – how can you be cautious and brave at the same time?

Bravery & Desire both high: The character has no fear of consequences and will take any reasonable risk which has a reasonable chance of benefiting his nation, with or without orders. He is quite capable of sacrificing his life for even a moderate chance of gain for his nation. A suicide-bomber mentality. Capable of betraying anyone if the reward is high enough.
Strong Desire, balanced bravery-vs-fear. The character will accept moderate risks, if the benefit to his country is strong enough; and will accept small risks for a moderate return. He considers his life to be valuable and not to be thrown away unless a tangible benefit to his nation would result. A professional soldier. Will be cautious if approached for any kind of illegal activity, but can be corrupted.
Strong Desire, high fear. The character is capable of sending hundreds of people to die on a battlefield but won’t risk his own life; it is too valuable, at least in his opinion. Will pursue risky foreign-policy and military options if there is no personal risk and potential gain for his nation. The ruthless-commander type. No potential gain is worth the risk of illegal activity – a by-the-book mentality
High Bravery, moderately cautious. If his nation gains, any risk is acceptable, but must be managed. He will actively pursue measures to reduce the risks involved, even if that compromises the chances for gain. Resources should not be thrown away without a clear objective to be gained. Not overly self-protective. Many would consider this the ideal military commander; he will keep his men alive if he can, but will do what is necessary to achieve the mission. Not the type to take a bribe or betray his country at any price, but is fully capable of playing along to get more information and getting himself in too deep.
Moderate in all ways. Will protect himself, but not be overcautious; will look for certainty of achievement before committing himself. A planner, who can hesitate to seize opportunities and who is as protective of the status quo as he is desirous of advancing it. Can be seduced into corruption and betrayal but will always try to cover his backside.
Strong Fear, Moderate Desire. Will protect himself first, and look to advance his nation second. Will tolerate measured and controlled risk to others if the reward is reasonable. A back-seat driver who is capable of issuing orders so long as he can dodge responsibility for them. Might be promoted into middle-ranks of command but will lack the ambition and drive to rise higher – and is fine with that. Better to be an adviser, a whisperer behind the throne, than to stick one’s neck out. The “Yes, Minister” ideal of a civil servant. An honest Joe, most of the time – unless there’s an opportunity for substantial gain at minimal risk. Likes to bet on sure things.
High Bravery, High Caution. The reluctant hero who will see a commitment through to the end, and knows it – so he is careful not to over-promise. Will follow orders to put himself at risk, but constantly belly-ache about it. Very typical of privates and other low-ranking military types who will do their duty but never volunteer. Annoying but reliable. Unwavering loyal to his country, so long as they behave honorably.
High Caution, moderate Bravery. Take no risks, but accept responsibilities. There are times when this personality type makes the ideal leader – such as preserving as much as possible after a defeat, or when severely outmatched. Will always take back doors to success without direct confrontation. Put someone of this personality in charge of your intelligence apparatus in peace-time, and you will only have to take half the precautions they recommend to be reasonably safe; the trick is to know which half! Supports his nation so long as they don’t put him at risk – genuinely conservative.
High Caution, High Fear. This person will never take a chance, either personally or indirectly. That could make them a good supply sergeant or other specialist role. Loyal to his country just enough not to make waves, but otherwise can’t be bothered. Not brave enough to commit treason for any reason.

Of course, there can be other interpretations. That’s part of the virtue of the system!

Abstractions – Things an important character cares about

You can also choose to forego that level of detail, and no-one would think any the less of you as a GM. An alternative is to get the player to list a few abstract guidelines to the character’s priorities, or to do it yourself for an important NPC.

Let’s start with three things that the character cares about that he already has, or is already in the process of acquiring. Name them, one to a line or so, and then think about them.

What will the PC do to protect each of them if it’s necessary? (This shouldn’t be the same answer for all). Some things will be more sensitive to risk, temptation in some things will be sweeter.

Examples: What will a character do to get a promotion? Where will he draw the line?
What will a character do to become rich? Where will he draw the line?
What will a character do to become successful – and how does the character define success, anyway?

Abstractions – Things an important character opposes

Next, list three things that the character hates or would oppose. These shouldn’t simply be the opposite of any qualities that he values – those can be taken as read!

What will the PC do to protect himself/others from these things if it’s necessary? Again, the same answer for all is unacceptable. The PC should be more sensitive to some subjects than others. The answers will also likely vary from one relationship to another – note any important deviations from the standard.

Things to think about in relation to these issues: What might a partner do to their husband/wife to protect their children?
What might someone put on their children’s future to protect/benefit their parents?
What burdens might someone impose on their parents to benefit their children?
What will a character do to help someone they care about that they wouldn’t dream of doing to benefit themselves?

Abstractions – Ambitions, Things a character wants to do

This is the area to go wild. List three ambitions that are long-term bucket-list items, no matter how pie-in-the-sky; list three that are mid-term and reasonably realistic; and list one or two that the character expects to achieve in the next six-to-twelve months.

What will the character sacrifice to achieve them? How strong is each desire? How will the character react to something that threatens these achievements in the short-term – or forever?

Try to distill these questions down to a single answer. “This character confronts obstacles by digging his heels in and refusing to change unless forced.” or “This character confronts obstacles, no matter how trivial, by immediately abandoning any plans for achieving them and looking for a different path to his satisfaction. This never bothers him because he never grows too attached to anything.”

The Depths Of Morality – even more complex characters

It’s entirely possible that a character’s morals are more akin to an onion skin, a series of lines that will not be crossed – unless the reward is good enough.

What will a character with a chronic illness do to be free of his medical problems?
What will he or she do if it’s a husband or wife with these problems?
What will he or she do if it’s his or her child?
What will he or she do if it’s someone else’s child?
What if it’s a friend? Or a parent? Or a sibling?

This is far too complex for simple modeling of the sort I’ve offered in this article. But you can simulate it fairly effectively by prioritizing and nesting ambitions – in which one of the things that can be sacrificed is the capacity to achieve one of the long-term goals (or, more likely, one of the short-term goals because you can always start one of them again in a year or two).

Such a character may be bought – but that only takes you through one layer of the onion, and brings into play a new line that the character will not cross – not without some additional benefits or reassurance, anyway. And that, in turn, will only cut through to another moral limit.

“Listen, I don’t mind a little petty mischief on the side, but you’ll have to pay me a lot more to get me to commit murder.”

“Okay, so we had no choice but to kill him, but I won’t abandon my wife. We have to take her with us.”

“All Right, so the cops got to her first, but I’ll never buy my freedom by betraying my country.”

“I guess, technically, that was committing treason, but I’ll die before I step aside for mass murder. I’ll do whatever I have to, to stop you.”

(Sorry about the chunkiness of that example, I’m running out of time to get this posted).

At the same time, there is the opposite phenomenon – the Slippery Slope. A good person lets one small thing slide, has to let something more substantial go undetected to keep his slip secret, and so on – one thing leading to another until the stakes are truly enormous and the person has to ask “how did I get myself into this mess? It all started so innocently…”

I have no problems with a villain who will knock on the hero’s door to alert them to a bigger threat that he’s uncovered, and even work with the PCs to eliminate the threat. Only afterwards should the PCs discover that the Villain has been able to obtain something that will materially advance his own plans. He need not have had any ulterior motives; just have seized an opportunity when it presented itself. Or maybe the PCs discover what their “ally” has done just when they are most dependent on him for assistance, turning this into a ‘deal with the devil’.

Morally-complex characters don’t have to be all gray, and not all gray needs to be washed-out and faceless. Morality can be a rainbow of neon gray – and your characters, both the PCs in your game and your NPCs – will be more realistic, and more interesting, as a result.

Tags: Inspiration, PCs, Player-Goals, Players, D&D, Tools & Techniques, NPCs, Pathfinder, Writing, Resources

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The Sixes System Pt 3: Doing Things 1

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Mike, PCs, Players, Rules & Mechanics, The End Of The Rainbow, Writing & Authoring & The Games Industry, Dr Who: Lovecraft's Legacies, Metagaming & Metagame Theory, Original Game Systems on Mar.24, 2020

This entry is part 4 of 9 in the series The Sixes System

Image by dric from Pixabay

0. Fundamentals (repeated for all posts:)

— The Sixes System has been used in my Dr Who campaign since September 2014, and has just come to a successful conclusion.

— Characters are constructed using a point-buy methodology with NPCs generatable using die rolls for speed.

— Success or Failure on tasks is determined by adding dice to a pool based on ability and circumstances which are then rolled against a target number determined by the GM.

5. Resolving Actions

The broad process is simple:

The player decides what the character is trying to do;
The player and GM collaborate on translating that desired action into game mechanics;
The translation determines the number of dice that are in the character’s pool;
The GM sets the target required, based – in part – on some elements of the size of the pool;
The player rolls the dice in the pool;
The outcome is determined and interpreted by the GM based on the roll.

Typically, it proceeds about that fast in play, too.

When you break it down step-by-step, there are a number of small details that complicate the process, which is detailed below in its entirety. Two symbols will appear now and then in the detailed procedure:

† needed to determine the target number in step 14;
‡ further explanation in subsequent subsections.

It should be remembered that many of these steps are designed to proceed virtually simultaneously, or can be carried out that way.

The player describes the action that his character is attempting to perform. Note that if the player includes a triggering condition, the GM may abort the die rolling process at this point and wait until that trigger is met, or he may carry the process through to the actual point of rolling and hold there until the triggering condition is met. The second is more dramatically effective but more work for the GM.
The player proposes a stat and the GM either concurs or modifies the choice.‡
The player announces the value of the stat.†
The player sets aside dice equal to 1/2 this value
The player proposes a purpose and the GM either concurs or modifies the choice (may be combined with 2 above)‡
The player announces the value of the purpose (may be combined with 3 above)†
The player sets aside dice equal to this value, announcing the total number of dice.
The player chooses a skill from his list that he considers appropriate and the GM either concurs or modifies the choice. NB: The character might not have an appropriate skill.‡
The player announces the number of ranks that he has in the skill.
The player sets adds dice to the pool equal to the number of ranks. It simplifies the process if these are in a different color to the other dice in the pool. Note that if the character does not have a suitable skill, he will be directed by the GM to remove two dice from the existing pool.†
The player announces any other skills that he has that he thinks might contribute to his chance of success. The GM concurs or disagrees.‡
The player adds one dice to the pool for each additional skill accepted (usually done as each skill is accepted).
The player announces the effect value of any equipment contributing to the success or failure and adds to or subtracts dice from the pool accordingly. The number of dice of color 2 may not drop below 1 due to poor equipment, and good equipment can only replace dice of color 1 unless the character has a skill in using it that applies.
The GM assesses the conditions, situation, and what the character is attempting to do and determines both a target number and a number of “sixes” required. These assessments and how to set a target are defined in section 6 of the rules.
The GM announces the target number. He does NOT announce the number of sixes required.
The player rolls the accumulated die pool and organizes the results for easy counting (totals of 10 are best). While he is doing so, the GM counts the number of ‘true’ sixes that have been rolled and compares this to the requirement that he determined in step 14, above. He also counts the number of true ones.‡
The player announces the total and the GM compares that to the target.
There are four possible combinations of interest:
- The total equals or exceeds the target and the number of true sixes exceeds the requirement (possible critical success);
  (a “true six” is a die with a result showing on its face of 6).
- The total equals or exceeds the target (success);
- The total fails to reach the target, and the number of true 1’s is greater than the number of true sixes (possible critical failure);
- The total fails to reach the target, but the number of true 1’s is not greater than the number of true sixes (failure).
Critical Success and Failures are considered an optional rule outside of combat. They are interpreted as adding extra flair or flamboyance to the outcome or the performance of the act described by the player. (In combat they are ‘critical hits’ and ‘fumbles’ and NOT optional). If the GM does not exercise this option then critical successes simply become successes.
- On a critical success, the character succeeds in performing the action described, possibly with extra flamboyance as described.
- On a non-critical success, the character succeeds in performing the action described within a reasonable time frame. He may encounter difficulties en route, described by the GM in narrative, but overcomes them, also in narrative.
- On a non-critical failure, the character may fail outright or achieve a partial success. The GM may also determine that additional time may yield a success.
- Fail outright: the character fails and may not make a further attempt; the game narrative moves on.
- Partial Success: this may permit the character a second attempt at the GM’s discretion. This process is described in section 5.9 below.
- Further Time to Succeed: game focus shifts to determining how much extra time will be required and what else might take place in the meantime. The character can abandon the attempt at any point. This process is described in section 5.10 below.
- On a critical failure, the events should be more spectacular and may result in negative consequences beyond the obvious. The GM may still permit a partial success, albeit with an additional handicap resulting from those consequences.
- The failure should be such that additional time and effort will not and cannot achieve a success. This last restriction applies even if the (optional) other critical success & failure rules are not implemented by the GM.
The GM describes the action in narrative form, incorporating the character’s attempted action into the unfolding story.‡

There is a lot to unpack in that process, and some steps are missing significant details, as shown by the ‡ marks!

Image by Alexander Antropov from Pixabay

5.1 Choosing A Stat

Most of the time, the choice will be obvious from the described action. The Self-defined Stat will usually account for about as many rolls as the rest of the stats put together, with exceptions where something like Strength is considered the defining characteristic by the player. The shared stat is the least-used, and it’s generally a last resort.

In theory, the choice should be value-agnostic, but in reality, it never will be. In part 1 of the game system, I recommended listing stats in sequence from high to low; this not only improves speed of play, it assists players in making decisions (“Is stat #1 appropriate? No? Then how about Stat #2?”) – it places stats in their order of relevance and importance to the character, and the things that the character tries to do in-play should be a reflection of those defining traits.

There will be times, however, when you need to fall back on the exact definitions provided in part 1, and even do a little hair-splitting, before you can come up with the right choice.

Note, too, that the player proposes the choice of stat, and the GM can either accept that proposal or modify it if he has good reason to do so. Some players will have problems with this, especially if the rulings are inconsistent, because the GM is almost certainly forcing the player to choose a lower-value stat. So it’s important to always have an iron-clad justification that derives from the players’ statement of what the character is attempting to do.

5.2 Choosing A Purpose

Experience shows that choosing a purpose is often trickier than selecting the appropriate stat. Is trying to change someone’s mind about something an attack? Or a defense? Or – well, you get the point.

It’s for this reason that the rules about tie-breaking were included. The specific definitions may also provide guidelines in a nuanced situation.

The other weapon that the GM has in his arsenal is always the question, “How?” The player will usually respond in relatively detailed form (from past experience) which the GM can then abstract to reach a decision on the overall process.

It can sometimes be that the player is attempting to do too much at once – breaking the one plan into a couple of die rolls for different sequences of events can cut many a Gordian knot.

One other aspect of the tie-break rule needs to be pointed out: just as the player can with stats, so the tie break means that the purposes can be considered in sequence until one is found that fits. This can greatly speed the resolution of this question.

5.3 Choosing A Skill

This is usually straightforward – once the rules described in 5.4 and 5.5 are taken into account. Without those rules, splitting hairs is often undertaken in an attempt to choose the right skill.

5.4 A difference that is no difference: Speeding the process

If two skills have exactly the same number of ranks, it doesn’t matter which one is ultimately chosen (except possibly to the GM’s flavor text). So choose one and be done with it.

5.5 Related Skill contributions

A related skill is one that can’t be used to perform the entire action, but which may make part of it significantly easier.

A term that I came across in relation to motor-sports about twenty years ago is “Mechanical Sympathy” on the part of a driver, meaning that the driver in question had a clearer understanding of the limitations of the mechanical components of his vehicle and of the amount of stress being placed on them by different maneuvers, and could manage those stresses to reduce the likelihood of something breaking.

A term often used by Pilots is spacial awareness; a pilot who has a better spacial awareness than another has a clearer idea of exactly where other aircraft are, relative to his own, and where they will be. This can allow them to maneuver and put the enemy into his cross-hairs far more efficiently than a pilot with a more limited spacial awareness.

In neither case can these attributes control the vehicle – they are not Driving and Piloting, respectively – but Mechanics and Spacial Awareness (respectively) can clearly improve a character’s ability to do so.

In practical terms, a related skill is anything that the GM thinks would help the character perform the task in question. That becomes significant when trying to select between two skills of the same rank – because you can pick one (it doesn’t matter which) and the other becomes a related skill.

Some game systems / GMs require a successful skill roll against a related skill before it can contribute to the main problem. Others place limits on the number of related skills I recommend against both practices with this game system; the former is usually associated with much larger benefits than the +1 rank that this system confers, and the latter is less significant because of the small size of the
related skill’ benefit. Instead, this system views the skills, experience, and expertise that the character can bring to bear on the problem of carrying out a desired action to be a compound of all the relevant skills, experience, and expertise that he possesses. The combination of a nominated skill and any number of related skills is a quick and straightforward mechanism to achieve that compounding.

5.6 True Sixes vs Virtual Sixes

The development history of this game system is replete with good ideas implemented that, in practice, went a little too far and needed moderation. The very name of the game system, The Sixes, refers to one such idea – the notion of setting a target and then reflecting situational difficulties as a number of dice that must come up sixes within the scope of the target. The results, in practice, were all little too knife-edge; so the ‘moderation’ was introduced, in the form of the concept of Virtual Sixes.

By incorporating the sixes requirement target into the main target number, virtual sixes come into existence, because any die that exceeds the specified average contributes to a total in excess of the target. If the target average is 3, for example, every 4 rolled contributes 1 pip toward a “virtual six”, and every 5, two pips – with a total of three pips needed to transform an on-target roll (a three) into a “six”. So, against a target average of three, a four and a five creates a “virtual six”, distributed over two dice, and three fours creates one distributed over three dice.

A target of 3.5 is more interesting. A four contributes half a pip in excess of the target, a five, one and a half pips, and the target requirement is – theoretically – a total of 2 1/2 pips. So the minimum number of dice over which a virtual six can be distributed is three, and it may take five.

Equally, ones and twos, being below the target, undermine virtual sixes by taking away pips.

But the bottom line is that a total rolled in excess of the modified target is enough to satisfy BOTH targets. And that means that a very fast, very simple mechanic can encompass a raft of subtle complexity – beneath the surface. And it makes it easier for a good roll to succeed, while still preserving the essence of the game mechanics.

5.7 True Ones vs True Sixes

Remember what I said about good ideas going too far? The ‘moderation’ of virtual sixes is an equal fit for that description. The thought runs that natural sixes should represent some sort of advantage – if there are enough of them.

If you have more natural or ‘true’ sixes than you do ‘true’ ones, the odds are pretty good that you’re going to achieve any reasonable target. The greater that inequality, the more unreasonable the target that you can expect to achieve. So an excess of sixes becomes naturally associated, conceptually, with critical hits, and an excess of ones with a fumble.

As a general rule of thumb, the number of dice divided by 6 gives the expected number of both sixes and ones, on average. Natural variation will add or subtract one to each tally every now and then, especially if rolling 12 or more dice – the more dice, the more opportunity there is for one of them to ‘go rogue’.

The natural consequence is that if you have a large die pool – i.e. good Stats, strong Purpose, and significant Skills – you are both more likely to achieve a critical hit – or a fumble.

5.8 Describing A Success

It’s important that the GM be guided in his narrative by the constituents of the successful or failed die roll, and by the original description of what the character was trying to achieve and how he was trying to do it. The definitions of the different elements provide clues to such interpretations.

This matters because the narrative should provide reinforcement and reminders of the game mechanics even as it abstracts the game mechanics. It’s as though there was a virtual layer between the player’s narrative and the game mechanics labeled ‘abstract interpretation’ – or possibly, ‘metagame interpretation’.

For example, if the character is using attack and a skill labeled ‘intimidate’ to coerce an NPC’s decision, then he is (1) actively trying to intimidate the NPC, and (2) instructing the NPC on ‘how to get on his good side’ or ‘get him off you back’ or whatever. That requires the player to be clear from the outset on what he wants the NPC to do or agree to. So the GM should first describe the intimidation and the NPCs reaction to it, and then the demand and the response.

5.9 Partial Success

A partial success generally means that part of the action was completely successful, but that another part went off the rails somehow, but sometimes it means that some of what the character wanted to achieve was done, but not enough to completely achieve the whole. How the GM interprets a situation depends on what the PC was trying to do.

The GM should be particularly mindful of two possibilities: More Time To Complete, and Second Chances.

Image by Peter Lomas from Pixabay

5.10 Further Time To Success & Second Chances

Further Time means that the task is going to take longer than the PC originally thought it would, for some reason, but – given that time – the die roll was good enough that they will succeed eventually.

How much extra time – and, in fact, anything else about the process – are entirely up to the GM’s sense of what’s reasonable. Is it reasonable that the player be able to set the research aside, do something else for a while, and then resume it? Then it might take weeks or months, but as long as the player makes room in the character’s life for the ongoing effort, he will get there eventually.

A Second Chance means that whatever went wrong with the previous attempt to create the partial success, it isn’t unsalvageable. As a general rule of thumb, targets should be one grade easier, maybe more – part of the task has been completed just fine, and doesn’t have to be re-done.

The difference is that a second roll, made immediately, catches the error and corrects it. NB: The GM is perfectly entitled to decide that the failure rules out any attempt by the character who failed to notice and correct the mistake, but that another PC can make a roll to step in and fix the mistake at the last possible minute – if he has the skills to do so.

5.11 Describing A Failure

As a general rule of thumb, outright failures should bring a full stop to attempts to achieve the character’s goal by the described means, but should not exact any further penalty (except in unusual circumstances). Attempting to defuse a bomb, an outright failure would not mean that the bomb goes off immediately, but it does mean that the character was unable to defuse it for some reason which the GM then has to provide in his narrative.

It’s possible for a character to fail and not know why but it should be relatively rare.

5.12 Describing A Critical Failure

At the very least, a critical failure should actively rule against another attempt by that character. It may in fact rule out any chance of success by ANY character (the bomb detonates). On a less critical task, perhaps a key tool breaks – something of that nature.

The very least outcome should be that the character is frustrated. It should only get worse from there. But the GM should be careful not to put words or actions in the PCs ‘mouth’ – having something happen that will frustrate or anger the PC is fine, deciding how the character will express that emotion, or what he will do about it, is going too far. By all means, tell the player that his character is angry and frustrated as a result of the failure – but let him them describe how those emotions manifest.

5.13 Shared Actions

There are two types of shared action: Constructive, in which each participant has an identified role to play, and Collaborative, in which there are no such defined roles. An example of the first might be two people building a wagon or boat or whatever; an example of the second is two characters searching a library for a clue about something, or engaging in a research project together.

The two participants do not have to be equal, and usually will not be; whoever has the larger die pool when the time comes to roll will take the lead in the project.

In a Constructive shared action, the participants roll separately to achieve “their part” of the whole. I like to use the basketball team analogy: ‘A’ grabs the rebound and passes the ball to ‘B’, who takes it part way up the court before passing it to ‘C’, who immediately passes it to ‘D’, who rushes the basket and attempts to score. While all rolls can take place at once, and this can be described as the single action “We grab the rebound and try to score”, the success of the whole is dependent on each part being successful enough. If B fails, his attempt to pass to C may be blocked, for example; either way, C and D find themselves with a clear path to the basket but no ball. However, B might have a chance to correct the failure, or another player (D or A) might attempt to do so. So the ball gets passed to D, say, and then to C, who stalls while D gets into position, passes the ball back, D shoots, he scores….

In a Collaborative shared action, there is one die pool – that of the character who is taking the lead. Other characters may contribute skill ranks to the total, increasing the size of the pool. Alternately, the GM may permit separate die rolls against a single target by both, with ones and true sixes being added to the lead character’s total; if the score reaches the target, the team succeeds.

5.14 (Advanced) Coordinated Team Actions

The most extreme type of shared action is when two or more individuals combine to achieve a specified strategic outcome with a pre-planned (and usually practiced) tactic. These outcomes can’t be as grandiose as “beat the enemy”; they have to be more granular and specific than that. But one character pinning the enemy down so that his or her slower but more powerful ally can get a clean shot? Totally acceptable. Attacking while falling back to lead an enemy into position for an ally to knock them off the balcony by swinging from the chandelier? Totally acceptable. Tickling a dragon (literally or metaphorically) to get it to expose the hole in its defensive armor to an ally’s bow-shot? Totally acceptable.

The GM can rule statements of intent as too broad to be a coordinated team action, but he cannot define an activity as a coordinated team action, even through an NPC; at best, he can suggest it to the players involved. The players have to invoke this sub-section of rules. If they do not, the GM must define what they are attempting as either a Collaborative or Constructive shared action, and use the rules in the previous section to resolve the action.

Declaring a Coordinated Team Action means that the players are foregoing the option of a partial success for an all-or-nothing combined action that has a better chance (overall) of success.

Coordinated Team Actions have to be split into components, each to be performed by a different character. Implementing this may require accepting a broader action description than the GM would normally permit; if that occurs, the GM should compensate by designating one part of the action to be the ‘heart’ of the action, using that as the basis for the skill check, and increasing the target average one step (this will make more sense after reading section 6, below).

The character responsible for the first component of the coordinated team action (sequentially) rolls as usual, and sets aside any (true) sixes and ones if successful. Note that the GM cannot determine a partial success, but can permit the action to succeed after extra time is taken, based on whether success is better or worse for his narrative. The character responsible for the second component then rolls as usual. He can replace any die (other than one with a true 1 showing) that he has rolled with a six from the first component, but must also replace another die (other than one with a true 1 showing) with a matching true 1 if there are any remaining unallocated. If there is to be a third component to the tactic, true sixes and ones are then set aside (provided that the second component was a success), and the process repeated.

Let em offer an example (shorn of context to make it more universally applicable).

The coordinated team action is to have three components. The first component has a pool of 12d6 and a target of 27. The player rolls 2×1’s, 2, 2×3’s, 4×4’s, 2×5’s, and 1×6, easily achieving the target; the 1’s and 6’s are preserved.

The second component has a pool of 10d6 and a much harder target of 33. The player rolls 1, 4×2’s, 2×3’s, 5, and 2×6’s, for a total of 32 – one short! But he can import the preserved true six in place of a rolled 2 – at the price of importing a true 1 in place of another 2. That makes his roll 2×1’s, 2×2’s, 2×3’s, 5, and 3×6’s – a total of 35. The second component succeeds; the three 6’s and two 1’s are preserved for the benefit of the third character.

The third component is the coup-de-grace, the payoff for the whole team action. Everything else has been about creating the right conditions and positioning to create the opportunity for this part of the whole action. It is 12 dice against a really difficult target of 45. The player rolls 2×1’s, 3×2’s, 2×3’s, 4, 2×5’s, and 2×6’s, a total of 40 – not even close. He turns to the dice whose results were preserved from earlier components. He replaces one 2 with a six, another with a matching 1. He replaces the last 2 with another 6 and one three with a matching 1. That leaves only an unmatched six in the inherited dice, with which he replaces the last three. His roll is now 4×1’s, 0×2’s, 0×3’s, 4, 2×5’s, and 5×6’s, a total of 48. The teamwork succeeds, and the Coordinated Team Action is successful.

Note that while many of the terms are suggestive of combat, because that is where the majority of Coordinated Team Actions will be utilized, these can be used in any other coordinated activity if the GM approves the request.

That makes the GM’s power of veto especially important to understand. In essence, the GM should look for a purity of purpose, i.e. an objective which is simply stated, but very specific; an intentional chain of events that are intended to provide the opportunity for that purpose to be achieved, in which no character plays more than one role; and the dramatic benefit to the plotline of multiple characters uniting to achieve something that they could not accomplish with individual efforts. In particular, the logic connecting the components of the proposed coordinated team action that makes each preliminary step essential to the success or failure of the whole, must be (relatively) iron-clad.

This rewards characters working out tactics that combine the efforts of two or more of them at the same time.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

5.15 (Advanced) Uncoordinated Team Actions

An uncoordinated team action can be described as several characters attempting to do the same thing, and failing to trip each other up or get in each other’s way. For example, it might be determined that a target is vulnerable to attacks from the rear, so a plan is hatched to surround the target; whenever he turns toward a character, whoever is on the opposite side will attack while the character faced will step back out of reach (a brutal but effective strategy which relies on sheer weight of numbers to whittle away a defense).

Or, it might be determined that a character’s motivation is his weak point, with multiple characters successively targeting the reasons why the target is where he is, doing what he is, by engaging in conversation. Some may use persuasion, others ridicule, or intimidation, or even bribery. All of them are doing essentially the same thing – trying to find a way to reach the target and reason with him.

Uncoordinated Team Actions cannot be invoked by the GM, even through an NPC, just as the GM can’t invoke a Coordinated Team Action. Only a player can make that call. The GM can, however, veto one or deem certain contributions as ineligible to be included because there is insufficient commonality amongst them.

The GM sets a target based on the character with the smallest pool. This target will be the same for all characters. Actions are resolved in sequence of small pools to high. (break ties with a die roll). If any one of the characters succeeds, the overall action will succeed. It follows that – all else being equal – there will be an increased chance of success with each subsequent character’s attempt. Unfortunately, all else is not equal.

Any true ones rolled by the first character to attempt the team action are preserved and ‘displace’ unrolled dice for the next and subsequent characters, providing a cumulative handicap that has to be overcome. However, each subsequent character in the uncoordinated attempt may discard one of these inherited dice after his roll.

Once again, an example might be useful about now: Five characters, die pools of 9, 10, 10, 11, and 13. The GM sets a target of 38 based on the 9-die pool.

The 9-die pool character goes first. He rolls very well – 2×1’s, 2, 4×5’s, and 2×6’s – but his total of 36 is still short of the target. Worse still, both ones are preserved to handicap the others.

One of the 10-die pool characters goes next – but two of his 10 dice are displaced by the ones preserved from the first attempt, so he only gets to roll eight dice – but he also rolls very well. His results: 2×1’s (+2 more that were conserved), 2×4’s, 2×5’s, and 2×6’s, for a total of 34 – not enough, and now there are 4 ones to be conserved – except that he discards one of them.

The other 10-die pool character follows – but three of his 10 dice are displaced by the ones preserved from earlier attempts, so he only gets to roll 7 dice. His roll is good, but not as spectacular as those who have gone before – 3×1’s conserved, 2×3’s, 3×4’s, 5, and 6, a total of 32 – not enough, but at least he hasn’t added to the penalties faced by the rest. In fact, he is able to make a contribution by eliminating another of the conserved ones, reducing their number to 2.

Second last to attempt to act is the character with an 11-die pool. He inherits two ones, so he gets to roll 9 dice. His roll is very average – 1 (+2×1’s conserved), 2, 4×3’s, 4, 2×6’s, for a total of 33. The target is proving elusive, and now the group are down to their last chance. Three ones should be conserved, but this character is able to at least discard one of them, even though he has rolled a replacement.

The last character has a 14-die pool, with two conserved ones. He rolls 12 dice, getting a very good result: 2×1’s (+2 more, conserved), 4, 6×5’s, and 3×6’s, a total of 56, and succeeds easily.

The GM’s narrative should be filled with a comedy of errors as one PC after another almost trips (literally or metaphorically) over each other.

You may be wondering what the advantage is to this game mechanic – after all, if the 14-die pool character had gone it alone, he would have probably succeeded on a roll like that, and would not have inherited any ones.

The answer is that it provides multiple attempts to reach the target, and only ONE of them needs to succeed. What’s more, the target that is set is based on a lower number of dice – and a glance back at the introduction post will show how powerful that can be. If I were to set the target for the 14-die pool alone, it would have been 48, not 38 – and his chance of success would thus be substantially reduced. You can think of an uncoordinated group action as all the early attempts showing the most skilled character all the ways to fail, eliminating blind alleys and letting him focus in on a path to success.

5.16 Long-term Actions

There is nothing stopping a character from declaring an action that will take weeks or months to come to fruition. “I’m going to design a deep-space observatory satellite for positioning in Neptune’s L3 and L4 points relative to the sun, and an ion-propulsion constant-G rocket to get it there,” says the science nerd of the team when faced with the prospect of an interstellar invasion. “I’ll position two more in the orbit of Uranus. Between them, we should have a constant early warning system.” “You realize that this will take quite some time?” replies the GM. “Yep,” replies the player. “O-o-k-a-y, then,” answers the GM. “How many dice will be in your pool?”

Long-term actions differ from most actions in that the GM secretly rolls the success or failure of the project, then determines from the roll how much work is involved before the project comes to fruition. Each natural 1 indicates a breakthrough of some kind is involved; each natural 2 or 3 indicates a problem or bottleneck that has to be overcome. The GM counts these up, assigns descriptions to them that can be provided in narrative form as the project proceeds, (two steps forward, one step back principle) and decides how long it will take to achieve the required sub-success. In addition, the GM can add any other breakthroughs or problems that he can foresee, in the form of additional 1’s and 2’s, REMOVING 6’s, then 5’s, then 4’s and so on as necessary. The difficulties may well mean that the project is officially a failure until they are overcome, or they may simply handicap the result.

When a milestone is achieved (i.e. the character makes a breakthrough or solves a problem), the GM should permit the character to roll against a difficulty assigned to the task. If the character succeeds, the ‘1’ or ‘2’ becomes a ‘6’. Achieve enough successes, and the overall project goes from a failure to a success – at which point, the character has the option of ending it, or continuing to eliminate problems and shortcomings that the GM can use to compromise the results. This means that a character who improves his die pool while a project is underway can bring his improved capabilities to bear on the ongoing problem.

One more example: A character has 12 dice in his pool when he begins a long-term project. The GM sets a difficulty of 52 to the overall project, and then rolls 3×1’s, 2×2’s, 2×3’s, 2×4’s, 2×5’s, and a 6, which total 37 – nowhere near enough. To make matters worse, he imposes an additional 3 problems (on the principle that problems, which are more easily solved than breakthroughs needed, should outnumber the harder problems), replacing the 6 and both 5’s with 2’s. The total is now 27; more importantly, there are 3 breakthroughs (natural ones) required, and 5 problems to be overcome along the way.

The GM doesn’t tell the player about the problems right away, but he does announce two of the three breakthroughs needed. He resolves that the milestones of the project will be:

• Breakthrough #1 (success: a 1 becomes a 6, total becomes 32)
• Awareness of Problem #1
• Awareness of Problem #2
• Solution to Problem #2 (success: a 2 becomes a 6, total becomes 36)
• Breakthrough #2 (success: a 1 becomes a 6, total becomes 41)
• Awareness of Problem #3
• Solution to Problem #1 (success: a 2 becomes a 6, total becomes 45)
• Solution to Problem #3 (success: a 2 becomes a 6, total becomes 49)
• 1st Prototype construction
• Discovery of Problem #4
• Discovery of Problem #5
• Solution to Problem #4 (success: a 2 becomes a 6, total becomes 53)
• 2nd prototype construction to test solution – succeeds but reveals the need for Breakthrough #3.

The character will be able to end the project at this point, but the consequence will handicap and maybe even cripple his creation. But it will achieve part of the intended purpose, and will partly achieve the rest. The GM is required to assume that the character will choose to continue his efforts, though:

• Breakthrough #3
• Third prototype succeeds
• Assembly begins.

The GM decides that the breakthroughs needed are (1) Sensor Precision, (2) Ion Engines, and (3) Signal Compression, respectively. The problems are (1) Cavitation in the Drive, (2) A Computer Programming Bug (3) Electrical Stability (4) Analysis Of observations & rejection of irrelevant data and (5) Progressive Memory Corruption (indexing error) that will eventually leave the on-board computer with insufficient RAM. If the player goes ahead with the Prototype 2 design, the observatory will be able to report or observe, not both at the same time.

No more detail is needed; the GM can wing it when describing specifics if the player wants them. Though the GM may want to develop some specific technobabble if he isn’t good at extemporizing such. The project will proceed at the speed of plot – the GM sets a baseline of 1-2 game sessions for each breakthrough, and 1 for each problem. This means that he can provide ongoing narrative on what the character is doing to advance the project at regular intervals, and change/update the report regularly. Thus, the character will feel like he is making ongoing progress.

Again, most of these will be research projects or artistic projects (including writing a book). The term “breakthrough” is capable of multiple meanings, some literal.

5.17 Turn Structure & Initiative

As a general principle, the GM just goes around the table and asks each player what their characters are doing, then decides what the NPCs are doing in reaction / response, and so on. Whoever makes the decision to act, first, has (effectively) the highest initiative.

In a lot of cases, who has the opportunity to choose first to act will be obvious from the circumstances. But, from time to time, a die roll may be needed.

The GM selects a stat for each PC based on their personality and what they are doing, and translates that into a die pool. He may or may not permit a Purpose – this usually indicates some sort of forewarning. The player then rolls an initiative total; most sixes goes first, break ties with most 5’s, then most 4’s, and so on.

If a character is deemed to be ‘surprised’ by the GM, they may not act until they roll a cumulative total based on the depth of the surprise. This is a skill check like any other, except that the totals keep getting added together for the character until he comes out of surprise. Certain actions – including someone else saying “snap out of it” or words to that effect – may confer extra rolls toward the target.

Total Surprise: 120
Deeply Surprised: 90
Moderately Surprised: 60
Slightly Surprised: 30

The stat selection is obviously very important. It should be based on how the GM expects the character to react to being surprised.

I should point out that two sections of the rules above have been labelled “advanced”. It is recommended that players and GM spend several game sessions getting used to the rules before implementing the rules in those sections.

I knew from the moment I broke this post down into topics that it would be a struggle to get it finished in time. If absolutely everything had broken right, it might have been possible to pull it off, but it didn’t.

That left me with a choice: a filler post or splitting the planned part 3 into two posts. And I had a filler topic in mind, ready to go – but events left no time to actually write it. And so, my choices narrowed down to one, if I was to post on time.

All of which means that the other half of what was intended to be above this wrap-up will appear in the next post. As always, I’m happy to resolve anything that readers don’t understand, but I would ask readers to bear in mind that this was all written with the expectation that the other half would be here.

Tags: Game-Mechanics, Original-Game-Systems, PCs, RPG-Theory, Writing

Comments Off on The Sixes System Pt 3: Doing Things 1

We Interrupt Our Regular Programming 2: Covid-19 Myths

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Management, Mike, Players, Opinion on Mar.19, 2020

This article has now been split into three parts, because of the pace of growth of this middle section.

Part 1: Covid-19 Facts, Analysis, and Advice
Part 2: Busting Covid-19 Myths
Part 3: Should My Game Be Canceled?

Each part will link to the other two, and they will all be extended and updated as necessary.

Don’t Panic, Art will still be here tomorrow!
Pattern image by
Matt Dragseth via FreeImages.com, text and layering by Mike

Part 2: Many A Covid-19 Myth Jabbed

UPDATE March 19, 2020: 35 additional myths busted throughout the article, leading to the splitting of the original article into three.

UPDATE March 22, 2020: Section 2.17 / 2.18 updated with more information about Pet infection & possible zoonosis.

UPDATE March 27, 2020: New myths busted: 3.18 and 3.19 inserted, busting new myths about alleged treatments.

UPDATE March 27, 2020: Additional information about 3.7, the impact of Cold Weather / Hot Weather / Winter / Summer, added.

UPDATE March 27, 2020: New myths busted: 2.22 inserted, busting a new myth about race and Covid-19.

UPDATE March 27, 2020: New myths busted: 2.23, 2.24, 2.25, and 2.26 inserted, busting new myths about ways to protect against Covid-19.

UPDATE March 28, 2020: New Myths busted: 1.4 (Russian response), 2.27 (Flu Vaccine), 3.22 & 3.23 (Putative prevention methods).

UPDATE March 29, 2020: Section 2.17 / 2.18 updated with more information about Pet infection & possible zoonosis.

UPDATE March 30, 2020: Added a new section, “4. Coronavirus Scams”. Regretfully.

UPDATE April 5, 2020: More things that won’t cure/prevent Coronavirus added in sections 3.24, 3.25, and 3.26. Added a new entry about the return of Prohibition in the US and UK in section 1.5, and a myth about Covis-19 and 5G phones in 1.6.

UPDATE April 25, 2020: Added mention of Newsguard to the introduction. Added 1.7 about children being separated from parents, 1.8 about body-bags and a temporary hospital in an ice-skating rink, 1.9 about Sandra the Orangutang, 1.10 about a South African Priest, and 1.11 about a Poem allegedly about Covid-19. Added 2.28 about cleaning face-masks; and added 3.27-3.34 with new alleged cures and treatments. And added some more information about transmission to pets to 2.17/2.18. And fixed a couple of numbering errors.

Misinformation about Covid-19 has been spreading at warp speed in all directions since the beginnings of the current outbreak. It’s time to puncture ~~some of those myths~~ as many of those myths as possible. Do NOT spread these myths. Doing so undermines legitimate channels of information and could potentially kill people if they act from a position of unwarranted security. Alternatively, it could spread panic, and that helps no-one, as I explained in my opening remarks to part 1.

For the purposes of this debunking, I have (generally) divided the myths into ~~three~~ four categories:

1. Origins & Responses
2. Detection, Susceptibility & Spread
3. Treatments & Cures
4. Coronavirus Scams

I have no doubt that many entries in the second and third categories are the result of ignorant but well-meaning advice. People offering such myths should be corrected, not censured. The first category stems from a lot of speculation and not enough fact and should be squashed as quickly as possible when you encounter it. Don’t attack those echoing or repeating what they’ve heard, or even their belief in a theory; just puncture the theory and move on.

Never presume malice when fear and stupidity can account for people’s actions.

A brief word about format.

I write in the paragraphs above not to spread the myths. To ensure that I am practicing what I preach in this respect, I’m not even phrasing the myths in the form of misinformation that’s about to be busted; instead, I’m phrasing the headings in terms of the facts. For example, the myth might be:

“Eating [XYZ] increases immunity to Covid-19.”

This will be phrased as “Eating [XYZ] does not increase immunity to Covid-19.”

The first states a myth; the second states the truth of that myth.

UPDATE April 25, 2020: NewsGuard

NewsGuard have compiled a list of websites knowingly propagating or originating Coronavirus / Covid-19 misinformation, with 169 entries when I first made my notes for this update (now 190-odd). They want the public to use it when they see something outrageous or suspicious to see if the source is a known purveyor of nonsense – before you hit “share” or “retweet”. It seems to be helping a bit too – if it weren’t for Donald Trump, the number of new myths being added to this article would be a lot shorter than in recent weeks. Each site listed is also given an individual credibility report.

Check the list for yourself at the NewsGuard Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center.

While in the neighborhood, you might also want to read their article on the top Covid-19 myths, how they emerged, and how they spread across the internet.

While on the subject, fact checkers in Georgia have determined that the majority of misinformation circulating through the country originates with “openly pro-Russian” news websites and is overwhelmingly political in nature, including some BBC and CNN “clones” with inserted content, deliberately designed to mislead readers. While it’s questionable whether or not these are significant contributors to the global misinformation that is circulating, and hence are not listed as myths being “busted” on this page, it is food for thought. Amongst the misinformation being spread, according to the (Australian) ABC’s Factcheck newsletter, are stories that the virus was man-made in the US, that the EU had “abandoned” Italy, and that only authoritative countries like Russia and China could handle the outbreak. I don’t knoe about anyone else, but I find the thought that someone would seek to gain political advantage from the current situation to be deplorable and despicable.

1. Origins & Responses

1.1. Covid-19 does not derive from bats.

The best evidence at the moment says that the first humans to contract it were fishermen in China. Bats may be hosts to all sorts of nastiness, but that doesn’t make them the source of all ills. Other sources trace the initial outbreak to a live-animal market.

A few weeks before Covid-19 became known, there was a mild hysteria over Chinese bat soup. The potential for diseases to spread from Bat to Consumer was one of the frequent comments (which assumed that the soup was not hot enough to kill any pathogen present). The last such commentary predated news of the virus by a matter of days at best. I think that when the news broke about Covid-19 (and long before it was named that), people put two and two together to make 23.

1.2. Covid-19 was not genetically-engineered. It did not escape a lab, and it was not released by the Chinese to wipe out “unproductive” segments of their population.

More anti-Asian paranoia, this time courtesy of a disgraced Australian ex-politician appearing on right-wing TV. This virus has become one of the most intensely-studied diseases in the world over the last few weeks and months. No-one has reported finding the genetic markers that would be necessary signposts of artificial construction. And the Chinese revere their elderly, particularly in comparison to the West. They are not considered “unproductive” members of society. So this frothing fails to find credibility on every front.

1.3. Covid-19 was not created by the US to harm the Chinese Economy.

Where to begin with this rather silly conspiracy theory?

(1) There is no evidence that Covid-19 is artificial, as noted above.

(2) China doesn’t want to be the biggest economy in the world and has taken active measures to try and prevent that from happening; they don’t want the additional scrutiny that comes with the position, they don’t want the added responsibility, and they don’t want to be the currency of international trade because that means that the value of that currency would then be no longer under their control. And the US knows all this. So there was no need for such an action.

(3) The reason that the US and other nations have outlawed biological weapons is because it is too easy for these to rebound on the sender. Once released, a virus doesn’t care two bits about international boundaries. All you have to do is look at the number of deaths in the US, the number of cases there, the disruption being experienced by the US Economy, and you can immediately see that at least some of that would have been forecast to occur, and that the cost would be massively greater than the hypothetical gains.

I have absolutely no doubts that if Covid-19 had been cooked up in a lab somewhere in the US, there would have been some hyperactive idiots who would argue in favor of its deployment – and a lot of people shouting them down. If the proposal was even seriously contemplated, there would have been mass resignations and a lot of people speaking out about the proposal regardless of classification in the name of ‘national security’. This theory is total nonsense.

1.4. President Vladimir Putin did not release lions and/or tigers into the streets of Moscow to force citizens to stay indoors in response to the threat of Covid-19.

This has been doing the rounds on social media lately. It’s completely false. The footage/photo(s) that accompany the claim are from a 2016 film production in South Africa.

1.5 Alcohol has not, and is not going to be, banned in parts of the US or in the UK because of Covid-19.

Some people have equated the economic effects of official responses to the Covid-19 effects to the Great Depression (in reality, they are likely to be somewhere in between the GFC and the Depression, in terms of severity), and extrapolated that as a result various US states and the UK will ban the sale of alcohol. The closure of taverns, pubs, and other licensed premises has added further fuel to this fire, ignoring the fact that social distancing is the reason for those closures.

There have always been those arguing in favor of temperance; one need only look at the links between alcohol abuse and domestic violence or automobile accident deaths to understand their position. During the 1920s, the US listened and enacted Prohibition. Result: Criminals supplied booze and organized crime became extremely powerful. The alcohol was not subject to any sort of quality control measures, and was often based on methanol, not ethanol – making it extremely poisonous. More people died as a result than were saved, which is ultimately why Prohibition was repealed. Bottom line: it didn’t work, and everyone knows it (though they may not know why)..

It’s not an experiment that is ever likely to be repeated.

This is speculation, so I’m setting it apart from the above answer. What might happen is that a new tax is placed on alcohol, with the intention of progressively increasing it. This is what was done with tobacco, at least here in Australia, and alcohol kills far more people in a year than tobacco did prior to the anti-smoking campaigns. It’s an accepted fact that for every dollar that the price rises, the percentage of people who smoke drops by a specific percentage, and I don’t see why the same wouldn’t apply to alcohol. Note that I don’t think this will happen, and I won’t agree with it if it does, but it’s possible.

Related to the above, a facebook post here in Australia that was eventually shared more than 100,000 times which claimed that “all bottle shops will be closed at mindnight” was an April Fools’ Day prank.

1.6 5G phones/networks are not responsible for the Coronavirus.

This appears to be a vested axe-to-grind being retooled to buy into the crisis, in other words, an attempt to capitalize on the death and misery of thousands. That’s reprehensible and disgusting. But it’s also possible that this is simply paranoia about mobile phones and radiation combining with fear and confusion about the virus – in other words, adding two and two together to get twenty-two (I’m trying very hard to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it’s not easy in all cases, as you’ll see).

There are at least three versions of this “theory” floating around out there, debunked by the fact checkers at Full Fact in the UK (Theory 1 – Theory 2 – Theory 3). Reuters have also investigated the claims and dismissed them.

A video, supposedly showing a 5G tower in China being torn down to stop the spread of the virus is wrongly captioned, according to Snopes. The video is not from 2020, dating from prior to the outbreak of the Coronavirus and the tower shown has nothing to do with 5G networks or Covid-19, making it a completely bogus wilful misrepresentation.

New: 1.7 Children are not being separated from their parents by hospitals

I’m not sure where this story originated but it has been circulating through the US, UK, and here in Australia. Children being transported to hospital can be accompanied by at least one parent. There may be restrictions on the number of visitors at the hospital, this varies from one institution to another. Fact checkers in all three nations have confirmed that at least one guardian/parent is OK.

New: 1.8 five hundred body-bags have NOT been delivered to a makeshift hospital in an ice-skating rink in Adelaide, South Australia.

As far as I can tell, this started with someone speculating that an ice-skating rink COULD be used as a temporary morgue. The ice-skating rink themselves have crushed the story, stating that to save on power bills while restrictions are in place, their refrigeration units have been shut down, anyway.

New: 1.9 Zookeepers are not washing their hands so often because of Coronavirus that an Orangutang has begin to imitate the hand motions.

There is a video that has been making the rounds on some social media in which a caption makes this claim while showing footage of Sandra the Orangutang wringing her hands in a hand-washing motion. The video actually dates from weeks before the first known case of Covid-19; the caption is – at best – wrong, and – at worst – deliberate misinformation.

New: 1.10 A South African Priest did not instruct his congregation to drink Dettol to prevent Coronavirus, killing 59.

This has been debunked by AFP and Politifact, and the South African police have decried and dismissed the story as false claims. A South African pastor did make churchgoers drink Dettol back in 2016; none died, but many became sick as a result. Afterwards, the manufacturer contacted the pastor to advise “in the strongest possible terms” that Dettol is not suitable for human consumption and advising him to stop the practice immediately. That incident is likely the foundation of the current fiction.

1.11 The Poem being circulated on Facebook, allegedly written by “Kathleen O’Mara” was not written in 1869 and is not eerily prescient.

The tale is that this poem was supposedly written in 1869 and reprinted during the 1919 pandemic. In fact, it was written by a teacher in Wisconsin named Catherine O’Mara in March, 2020.

2. Detection, Susceptibility & Spread

2.1. Chinese populations are not more susceptible to Covid-19. You are not more likely to catch it from an Asian or middle-eastern person than from any other particular nationality.

When the initial outbreak occurred in China, people prone to paranoia about Asians (and perhaps some with vested interests in anti-Asian sentiments) began spreading the notion that Asians were more susceptible. This was quickly debunked, and largely vanished from the conversation.

It was initially replaced with the slightly more valid suggestion that you were more likely to contract Covid-19 from an Asian – but that wasn’t because of their ethnicity, it was because they were more likely to have been in one of the initial hot-spots (China, Korea). This suggestion has also gone away as the virus has spread, but not before inciting sporadic acts of violence in different parts of the world against Asians.

The other major population segment about whom people are often paranoid are those deriving from the Middle East, and the third major center of an outbreak is Iran. While I’m unaware of any suggestion that such people should be avoided out of fear of Covid-19 – perhaps there wasn’t time before some other rumor took center-stage – the same ‘logic’ applies, and the same counterargument punctures the suggestion. Hopefully, with the fourth major center being Italy, such paranoid delusions are now behind us.

2.2. The Chance of catching Covid-19 is currently low, unless you visit an infection hot-spot.

This is true even in places like Italy, which is a known Covid-19 hot-spot. While there is a chance that you will catch it eventually, as many as 75% will never contract it. Yes, if you have recently been in Wuhan, or South Korea, or Iran, or Northern Italy, then you have a significantly increased risk – to such an extent that if you show symptoms your infection will be considered likely until proven otherwise, and you will be told to isolate yourself until you know for certain, as a precaution.

2.3. You are not more likely to catch it from someone who has been quarantined or released from isolation.

Once you have recovered from the virus, you are no longer infectious. So either you never had it, or you are no longer able to spread it; either way, the risks these people pose to the general population are not greater than that of a random stranger. Just the opposite.

2.4. Covid-19 is not spread through mosquito bites

The Coronavirus is a viral respiratory infection that spreads primarily through droplets generated when an infected person coughs or sneezes, or through saliva droplets or nasal discharge. There are no known cases of it being transferred from the blood of the victim.

2.5. Thermal Scanners have only limited effectiveness in identifying people with Covid-19.

Thermal scanners are good at identifying those with significant levels of fever. But people are infectious for up to two days before they develop a fever, and not everyone develops a fever. Testing has suggested that thermal scanners, at best, will pick up one case in three – until symptoms manifest.

2.6. Youth does not protect against Covid-19. The elderly are not more likely to catch it.

It is less likely to be serious in young patients, and more likely to be serious in elderly patients, but there is no evidence that any given age bracket confers protection against the virus. Everyone should protect themselves, because anyone can catch it.

2.7. Antibiotics are not effective at preventing or treating Covid-19.

For as long as I’ve been alive, patients have been demanding antibiotics when they have a serious viral infection. For a long time, doctors went along with this, on the presumption that it would do no harm. People took the medications until they felt better and then stopped. In the 1990s, possibly earlier, word began to circulate of a new breed of super-bugs that were resistant or even immune to antibiotics. These have only become more prevalent and dangerous over time, and the cause of their rise is the over-prescription of antibiotics. So the myth that antibiotics will do any good other than possibly protecting against (rare) secondary infections by bacteria is not only demonstrably false, but places the future health of the planet’s population at greater risk.

2.8. Being able to hold your breath for 10 seconds without discomfort or coughing doesn’t mean that you don’t have Covid-19.

Most young patients with Coronavirus will be able to hold their breaths for a lot longer than 10 seconds, and many elderly without the virus won’t be able to do it. So this “test” delivers both false negatives and false positives. Its therefore a totally unreliable guide.

2.9. Donating Blood is not a way to get tested for Covid-19.

So far as is known, no blood bank anywhere in the world is testing donations for Covid-19. There is no evidence that it is even carried by the blood. Giving blood is a good thing, but do it for the right reasons and not to obtain a false sense of security.

2.10. Covid-19 is more significant than the flu or automobile-related deaths.

The myth runs that because X people die in car accidents in a year, Covid-19 is not a big deal. A related myth draws the same comparison with flu deaths.

Obviously, the specific numbers will vary from place to place. So let’s take the US: Car accidents kill about 30,000 a year. Colds and Flu kill about 27,000 a year on average. Covid-19 could kill 300,000. It probably won’t, but it could. Car accidents aren’t contagious, they don’t cause mass panic (whether or not they should is a discussion for another day), and they don’t cause stock market crashes and global recessions.

2.11. Hand Sanitizer is not more effective than soap and water at killing Covid-19.

Soap and water actually kills and washes away the virus from the skin. Most home hand sanitizers are anti-bacterial, and may be less effective for the killing of viruses. Hospital-strength hand sanitizers may be a different answer but why not simply use something you know works?

2.12. Disinfecting every doorknob in your home is not an effective risk management strategy for the prevention of Covid-19.

I’m sure (with no evidence) that this was devised by someone to give someone else who was verging on panic, something to do. And then spread.

If you have Covid-19, then cleaning every surface within reach will give you something to do while you are in isolation and will reduce the risk of infecting others – but it’s a non-stop never-ending job until up to 9 days after you recover. And if anyone visiting you takes reasonable precautions – washing their hands after touching anything – it’s wasted effort, anyway.

If you are a healthy person who is caring for a Covid-19 patient, cleaning common surfaces might be more useful. While wearing a mask, etc – because you are still far more likely to contract it from direct exposure to someone’s coughing or sneezing. Just make sure that your hands don’t go anywhere near your face until you’ve washed your hands.

2.13. Children can have Coronavirus even if they don’t have headache and/or fever.

More than 50% of children with Covid-19 don’t have fever and more than 15% have no symptoms whatsoever but they still have the virus and others can still catch it from them. That said, unless they have come in close contact with someone who has the virus, they are unlikely to have caught it, so don’t panic.

2.14. If you have a cough or sniffle or sore throat, the odds are that you have an ordinary cough or sniffle and not the Coronavirus.

Unless a patient is having extreme difficulty in breathing, wait 24 hours and see if the symptoms have improved. If it hasn’t, call your GP and tell them that you have a persistent cough / sniffle. They will determine whether or not you need to get tested for the Coronavirus based on your particular circumstances. If you have a fever, don’t wait that 24 hours; contact your GP by telephone and inform them of your condition – and then self-isolate unless or until you have trouble breathing.

By far the most likely story right now is that you do not have Coronavirus. So don’t panic, don’t head straight for the local hospital’s emergency department, and don’t head straight to your doctor.

2.15. Covid-19 cannot mutate into an airborne pathogen.

Maybe in a Scifi/Horror movie. In real life, it doesn’t happen. Even when viruses mutate, as they all do, their mode of transmission doesn’t change. Influenza has mutated many thousands or millions of times but it remains a droplet infection.

2.16. Coronavirus does not thrive in the sinuses.

Again, people are confusing Covid-19 with other illnesses (the common cold in this case) that have an overlapping symptomology. It’s not the common cold.

Some people have extrapolated from this erroneous foundation to speculate that blow-drying your nostrils with warm air will kill the virus. It won’t, but it might kill the helpful bacteria that help the body fight off colds and other infections. It certainly won’t kill any virus in your throat.

2.17. Covid-19 is not spread by pets.
2.18. Pets are extremely unlikely to catch Covid-19.

There have been NO cases reported of pets getting Covid-19. There have been NO cases reported of people getting Covid-19 from pets. Since there are now 200,000 confirmed cases worldwide, any such report would represent a 1 in 200,000 event or more. If it was even seriously suspected anywhere that this had taken place, it would be headline news around the world. It isn’t and hasn’t been.

UPDATE 22 March 2020:

There are now unconfirmed reports from Hong Kong* that two dogs have contracted Covid-19 from their owners. It is noteworthy that a different breed of dog also owned by one of these individuals did not contract the illness. There are still NO reports of a human catching Covid-19 from a pet.

* It’s apparently a thing in Hong Kong to kiss your pets, and there have been suggestions that this is how the Virus was transferred. Hong Kong’s health authorities have been warning residents to stop this practice while Covid-19 remains a threat. I have to emphasize (1) that this is just a theory; and, (on the other hand), (2) there are still no reports, confirmed or otherwise, of this sort of event from anywhere else. So Don’t Panic!

UPDATE 29 March 2020:

Reports overnight from the veterinary department of Liège’s university in Belgium describe a case of a cat contracting a strain of Coronavirus. It is not confirmed that this is Covid-19, but it is believed that the cat contracted the illness from its owner. Veterinarians have questioned the testing methods, and said that even if it were true, it would be a rare and isolated incident, and not an event that should influence the general public.

To amplify that last point: There are now more than half-a-million active cases, worldwide. If pet-to-human or human-to-pet transfer were a thing, it would be completely obvious by now, and the vet downstairs from me would be inundated with appointments – not closing early.

UPDATE 25 April 2020:

There have now been two confirmed cases in the US of dogs catching Covid-19, presumably by licking their owner’s faces. Two – after several months. There are now more than 2.8 million confirmed human cases, world-wide, and we have two confirmed cases of pets catching the disease – and NONE of anyone else catching the Coronavirus from a pet. This isn’t something worth worrying abour.

2.19. Exposure to someone who has been exposed to Covid-19 is an extremely low-risk situation.

Let’s say that there’s a 15% chance of catching it from someone who has the virus (it is probably lower). That person doesn’t become infectious immediately, and there is an 85% chance that they won’t get it at all. Even if they ‘beat the odds’ and subsequently become ill, at worst there is only a 15% chance that you will have contracted it. The greater likelihood is that neither of you will get sick, or (if you do) that it will have been as a result of direct contact with an infected patient.

2.20. It’s not suspicious that Celebrities are catching Covid-19.

There are only three protective measures: social distancing, good sanitation, and self-isolation if necessary. A better lifestyle won’t protect you. Being wealthy won’t protect you. Being a germaphobe probably won’t protect you except insofar as you are already practicing those protective measures. There are relatively few people infected at the moment, so the risks are minuscule verging on the tiny – but growing.

But that’s for you and me (assuming neither of us is a household name). Celebrities (by definition) come into contact with dozens of people more than most, every single day. So I would have been greatly surprised if celebrities did NOT catch Covid-19.

The virus doesn’t discriminate. It has no way of knowing if you are Tom Hanks or Hom Tanks. It doesn’t pick and choose. If you are exposed to it, it will try to infect you. If you get it off your hands before it can do so, you won’t catch it. If you stay far enough away from people that it doesn’t get onto your hands in the first place, you can’t catch it.

2.21. Coronavirus isn’t just the flu.

No. The symptoms are different (but there is partial overlap) and Covid-19 is roughly 35 times as severe and likely to result in death. It’s not just the flu.

2.22. People of any race can catch Coronavirus.

Some sites known for spreading misinformation and rumor as fact – literally, fake news – have been suggesting that Black people can’t catch Covid-19. The “theory” states that the melanonin in their skin makes them more resistant.

It’s a pack of total nonsense. Covid-19 doesn’t attack the skin; skin cells are too tough for it. The best it can do is hang on until the skin brings it in contact with a bodily location which is more vulnerable, like the nasal cavity or mouth, eventually (in at least the worst cases) reaching the lungs and/or gastro systems.

No race is demonstrably more immune than any other, just as no race is demonstrably more vulnerable.

2.23. Gargling / Drinking Oils will not protect against Covid-19.
2.24. Gargling / Drinking Herbal Tea will not protect against Covid-19.
2.25. Gargling with Salt Water will not protect against Covid-19.
2.26. Gargling with Mouth Wash will not protect against Covid-19.

I’ve bunched these all together because they all seem to have emerged from different places at the same time. I could have added things like Cow Urine to the list, but those are fairly localized to one part of India, whereas these have the potential to spread beyond their site of origin, even if they have not yet done so.

Coating the throat with oil doesn’t protect you. Even if the oil is herbally-infused, or contains garlic.Save this stuff for cooking with.

Probably the number-one herbal tea market in the world is China. It didn’t do them much good. If you like Herbal tea, drink it for that reason alone; it’s more than good enough justification.

The Salt-Water Gargle is something that my old doctor (before I moved) was very big on, and I can confirm from personal experience that it is great for preventing (or unblocking) blocked sinuses and the headaches that they cause, and for mitigating against colds. But it doesn’t do squat against Covid-19.

Finally, anti-bacterial Mouth Wash can be a valuable adjunct to good oral health. It does a pretty good job of killing the mouth bacteria that cause tooth decay and bad breath, and if you care enough about those things to use Mouth Wash, you probably also brush thoroughly and regularly, which also helps. Covid-19 is a virus. Mouth wash is useless against it; it lurks inside the cells, as noted already.

2.27. The Flu Vaccine does not make you more susceptible to Covid-19.

There’s a myth that the Flu Vaccine makes you 36% more likely to catch Covid-19. This appears to be people with an existing ax to grind, popularly characterized as “Anti-Vaxxers”, who feel threatened and marginalized by the public, political, and media support for a Coronavirus Vaccine. It has long been held by some people that the flu vaccine stresses the immune system and reduces the protection against other illnesses. Others point at the medium that is used to contain the flu vaccine, which used to have a slight impact along these lines – but that medium hasn’t been used for at least 5 years. So the whole thing is a nonsense.

New: 2.28. You can’t disinfect a facemask by.microwaving it.

The Washington Post spoke to Benjamin Neumann, chair of the Department of Biological Science at Texas A&M University about this suggestion. He replied that while there was some laboratory evidence that microwaves could kill some viruses, there has been no confirmation that Covid-19 is one of them.

Furthermore, some masks – like the top-of-the-line N95 surgical masks have a small metal plate attached which “absolutely cannot go in a microwave”; other masks have a metal strip or wire to shape the mask to the user’s face, and can’t be microwaved safely; and still others will be rendered ineffective by the heat created by the microwaves.

It’s also a fire hazard, according to Reuters, and can potentially destroy your microwave oven. The CDC says that a washing machine should be more than sufficient to clean a face covering, with the detergent breaking down the virus.

If your mask can’t stand up to that, you really shouldn’t be reusing – or trusting – it, anyway.

3. Treatments & Cures

3.1. There is no known treatment.

There have been false reports of cures circulating, thanks to con-men. These are no more effective than a placebo and conceivably could be harmful. Trust me, when there is an effective treatment, you will hear about it.

3.2. Traditional Cold and Flu remedies are a shot in the dark and can NOT be assumed to keep you safe or make you safe to be around.

Which brings me to Traditional treatments. Those advocating such treatments are unable to answer one simple question: don’t they think that the Chinese, Koreans, Iranians, and Italians would have at least tried such treatments, and that the range of cultures means that a similarly broad range of possible treatments would have been trialed? How, then, do they explain the death rates in those places being so much higher than elsewhere? Eat chicken soup if you like it, but don’t expect it to be a miracle cure.

3.3. Ventolin will not cure the symptoms.

There are panic-stricken idiots out there who seem to think that Ventolin, which asthmatics need in order to breathe, will relieve the symptoms or cure Covid-19. No, No, No! Just because asthmatics are more susceptible to developing a more serious case requiring hospital treatment in the event of being infected by Covid-19 doesn’t mean that an anti-asthma medication will help anyone else – it won’t.

3.4. Ibuprofen is safe for Covid-19 patients to take.

There is no evidence to the support the ‘reckless opinion’ that Ibuprofen should be avoided.

3.5. Summer won’t make Covid-19 go away.
3.6 Going someplace warm will not protect you.

In the Southern hemisphere, autumn and winter is fast approaching. Conversely, in the Northern climes, summer is approaching. Some people have erroneously equated Covid-19 with influenza, and therefore expect that it will go away as summer takes hold. An extension of that logic is that going someplace tropical or semi-tropical will protect you from the virus. There is no evidence to support these contentions; just the opposite, in fact; the evidence says that the virus can spread just as readily in hot weather and warm climates. Just look at Spain’s experience as proof! What these will do is make self-isolation more frustrating, but DO IT ANYWAY if that is what is appropriate. Adopt protective measures.

3.7. Winter won’t kill Covid-19.

I have to admit that this myth makes absolutely no sense to me. I can only surmise that some people have taken the thought that Covid-19 is not like the flu and ‘run with it’, assuming that the Coronavirus is the exact opposite of the flu, and therefore goes away in conditions wherein you are at an increased risk of catching the flu. But that’s only a guess.

Regardless of the weather around you, the human body is designed to maintain an internal temperature of 36.5-37°C. Various immune-system responses increase that temperature when you have a virus because they are also optimized by nature to operate at a normal body temperature, and the disruption to normal biological activity within the host caused by an elevated temperature is less than the disruption to the infection. Running a fever is, biologically, the lesser of two evils. That means that the body is just as conducive to hosting the virus regardless of the external temperature.

UPDATE 27 March, 2020:

There is a Chinese paper circulating that suggests that Covid-19 has an infectious rate of 1.6% in summer and 2.6% in Winter.

This paper has NOT been peer-reviewed for validity, and has been criticized by medical experts for comparing countries without taking into account those countries differing national responses to the outbreak. Australia is NOT New Zealand is NOT the Bahamas is NOT Brazil is NOT… well, you get the point.

Each of those nations has responded to the situation in its own way, and ignoring those differences in favor of assuming their data can simply be aggregated because they are all warm at this time of year does not make the findings all that credible – and completely undermines their reliability.

3.8. Taking a hot bath does not prevent Covid-19.
3.9 Taking a cold shower does not prevent Covid-19.

It may make you more comfortable, depending on the temperature of the environment (or it may be less comfortable). Taking a hot bath does not have any substantial impact on your internal body temperature, only on how hard your body has to work to maintain that body temperature. If it’s cold out, your body shivers to prevent a decline in body temp. If it’s hot out, you sweat so that you can be cooled by evaporation. If it’s hot and humid, the effectiveness of this cooling mechanism is hampered, which is why a temperature can be insufferable/lethal in high humidity conditions that would be quite tolerable on days of lower humidity. So neither a hot bath nor a cold shower will aide you in avoiding infection; they will only increase or decrease your comfort level relative to the surrounding environment.

3.10. Hand Dryers will not kill the virus.

Use soap and water. That will and does kill the virus, if you have it on your hands from touching something handled by an infected person. A hand dryer does nothing but dry your hands afterwards (and some studies say that paper towels are even more hygienic, but that’s neither here nor there).

3.11. Ultraviolet disinfection lamps should not be used in an attempt to kill Covid-19.

UV lamps shouldn’t be used to sterilize hands or other areas of skin. Period.

UV can cause skin irritation. UV causes sunburn and skin cancer. UV can contribute to dehydration and heatstroke. Artificial sources may be less powerful than the sun, but that only mitigates the dangers, it doesn’t eliminate them.

And it has not been demonstrated that any level of UV will kill Covid-19. Certainly not as effectively as soap and water.

3.12. Spraying your body with alcohol or chlorine will not kill Covid-19.

Such substances will not kill any virus that has already entered your body, and can be harmful to clothes and to the mucous membranes (eyes, nose, mouth) that help to protect you from the virus. These substances may be useful in disinfecting surfaces, but not for human cleanliness.

3.13. Vaccines against Pneumonia do not protect against Covid-19.

Such vaccines target, and provide protection against, specific illnesses that cause this condition. They provide no protection against any disease that doesn’t match this genetic profile. Covid-19 is so different from all illnesses against which we can currently vaccinate that it will require its own specific vaccine.

That said, there is a caveat: Any illness has a negative impact on the immune system until the body has recovered. If you are susceptible to these respiratory conditions, vaccination against opportunist attacks is strongly recommended. It does no good to fight off Covid-19 only to get Pneumonia anyway.

3.14. Saline nasal sprays do not protect from Covid-19.

There is limited evidence that regularly rinsing the nose with saline solution can help recovery from the common cold. There is no evidence that such rinsing prevents ANY respiratory infection, and there are no cases in which such practices have protected people from contracting Covid-19.

3.15. Eating Garlic does not protect from Covid-19.

Garlic may have some anti-microbial properties, but there is no evidence that eating Garlic has protected people from Covid-19. On the contrary, just look at the situation in Italy, where Garlic is a recommended home remedy for just about everything. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration…

3.16. Eating Bananas does not protect for Covid-19.

Bananas are good for a lot of things – but this isn’t one of them.

3.17. Taking vitamin C will not protect from Covid-19.

Vitamin C is great for preventing Scurvy. There is – at best – anecdotal evidence that it helps ward off the common cold (and there are lots of studies out there that find this claim to be dubious). There is NO evidence that Vitamin C helps protect against Covid-19 in any way.

3.18. Drinking lots of water will not push the virus into the stomach where it will be killed by stomach acids.

The virus penetrates and lives IN the cells of the host. It may do so by way of the throat, but it can’t be washed away.

3.19 Sniffing boiling orange peel & cayenne pepper does not eradicate a Covid-19 infection.

The “theory” allegedly goes that this forces mucous to be discharged from the nostrils, washing away the virus. While it may make your nose run, that is only likely to spread the virus further, and this can exaggerate any existing respiratory problems – perhaps to the point (cumulative with other factors, like the impact of Covid-19) of death.

There is some suggestion that the difference between the 15-20% who require hospitalization and the 80-85% who do not relates to whether or not the virus, or discharge containing the virus, gets into the lungs. There is absolutely no proof of this, either way; but if it is the case, this so-called “treatment” only becomes more dangerous.

Seriously, this is playing Russian Roulette with your life and the lives of everyone who comes near you. Don’t do it.

3.20 Chloroquine is not the answer (but this might eventually change).

President Trump waxed poetic on the potential of Chloroquine, an anti-malaria medication in development, as a Covid-19 treatment, in his March 19 statement. In the course of that address, he stated that it had been approved by the FDA. It hasn’t, that’s number 1 – the FDA has NOT certified Chloroquine as safe for human consumption. It is undergoing laboratory testing as a possible treatment, nothing more.

The lessons from the first SARS vaccine should be remembered clearly – 60% of those to whom the medication was administered became worse, some fatally, and it had to be withdrawn. And that was after the FDA gave the green light.

Unfortunately, this enthusiasm led a couple to self-administer a medication for the killing of parasites in pet fish which contained Chloroquine Phosphate. He died, she is still in critical condition. The source I saw did not state whether or not they had even tested positive for Coronavirus! But even if they have done so, given the 80-85% who will only experience mild symptoms, the “cure” would seem to be far worse than the disease. It’s like cutting your head off to cure a headache – sure, the headache won’t bother you any more, but…

It’s entirely possible that in a safe dosage, Chloroquine will prove to be effective. It’s equally possible – if not far more probable – that sufficient dosage to impact the disease will be completely unsafe, or even that it has minimal or no effect. Such outcomes are common with new medications.

The FDA approvals process

The FDA approvals process is currently estimated to take 5-10 years. Even fast-tracking a Covid-19 treatment as much as humanly possible, it’s hard to see it being ready in less than six months, possibly longer, by reducing the safeguards.

Think about what’s involved. First, you have to determine what (if any) dosage is effective.

Then you need to find a delivery mechanism that is controllable and safe for humans and effective at delivering the drug; and ensure that there isn’t some horrible reaction to the combination.

Then you have to manufacture enough of the drug to have a human trial, and plan that trial, and enough placebo for those not selected to get the drug. Get that planning wrong and you can end up with another Thalidomide – where no-one noticed that the drug had not been tested on Pregnant Women even though it was an anti-morning sickness medication. So there are numerous cross-checks to make sure that the test doesn’t have gaps or holes, and may even need to be conducted in several phases.

Then you need to analyze the results and have that analysis confirmed by an independent third party.

Along the way, there will be inexplicable impacts – a percentage will undoubtedly have adverse effects – and each of these cases needs careful analysis to ensure that they aren’t indicative of a broader contra-indication.

Only if all these hoops are successfully jumped through can a treatment get approval for public use.

So, what’s happening with Chloroquine and the other potential treatments being looked at, world-wide? Well, a lot of things are being done in parallel that normally wouldn’t, because of the costs involved. Manufacture is proceeding on the assumption that the lab testing will show that the medication is effective. A different group are designing the trial on the assumption that the manufacturing process will be safe, and that the lab tests will be successful. Once enough of the medication has been manufactured for testing, the pharmaceutical company would normally stop; this time, they are going to proceed with manufacturing and packaging doses on the assumption that the human trials will be positive. The instant they are given the green light, they will be ready for mass-distribution.

There are so many places where this process could go off the rails. But it only has to work once for the dozens of treatments and vaccines currently in development or being tested for efficacy against the virus. What are the odds that one of them will tick every box? I alternate between pessimism (based on how long it took to develop effective anti-HIV medical treatments despite bucketloads of money) and optimism (based on the human history of developing vaccines). Right now, no-one knows.

It’s at least as likely that by the time a successful treatment has been developed, it will no longer be needed, because the Pandemic has burned out or been brought under control. But public confidence will take years to recover if that’s how this crisis ends – not with a flourish but with a soft whimper – whereas a successful cure / treatment / vaccine will reduce this to a mere annoyance, part of the fabric of society, just like the flu.

UPDATE April 25, 2020: A study in the US has now found that Chloroquine is of no benefit to sufferes of Covid-19.

3.21. Social Distancing is not an over-reaction; the virus will do significant damage.

The number of confirmed cases, world-wide, exceeded 200,000 overnight. If there are relatively few cases, and only 10,000 or so American Deaths, that will STILL be a significant event.

Social Distancing is designed to slow the rate of transmission of the virus, not stop it. The goal is to keep the number of victims in severe distress below the limits of the nation’s respirator capacity, so that there is medical assistance available to everyone who needs it. In Italy, that limit has been exceeded, and doctors are forced into triage situations, deciding who gets treatment and lives, and who does not, and dies, as they would in a war zone.

If you don’t see that happen eventually wherever you are, it will be because social distancing has worked; it will not be evidence that it was unnecessary.

3.22. Let’s talk about immunity after recovering from Covid-19 for a moment.

Sure. No-one knows for certain but it’s very very VERY likely that those who recover from Covid-19 will have an immunity to it for a period of time afterwards. How long that immunity will last is uncertain – it could be a year, a decade, or life. It’s an important question, because it will determine how frequently people will need to be vaccinated. But, once we have a vaccine, it’s a problem that’s at least a year away, and until we have enough vaccine for an effective mass-vaccination program, we have higher priorities.

3.23. Sipping or Drinking water will not cure Covid-19.
3.23. Drinking Tea (Herbal or otherwise) will not cure Covid-19.

These appear to be derivations of the myths busted in 2.23-2.26, above. They don’t work.

3.24: Drinking Alcohol will not prevent Covid-19.

As I understand it, the theory runs that alcohol-based hand sanitizer works as a means of killing Covid-19 so drinking alcohol should also do so. Problem is, as has been noted before, your stomach is where the alcohol ends up, and that’s not where the virus is. Maybe if you snorted it, and gargled it, and rubbed copious amounts of it into your eyes, it might possibly help a little – but that’s as good as it gets (ever had alcohol in your eyes? It’s not worth it).

3.25: Vitamin C will not prevent Covid-19.

I know I’ve already busted this (see 3.17, above) but it seems to be the myth that perpetually rises from the dead. Look, Vitamin C is at best a marginally beneficial substance in fighting off the common cold. There’s no evidence whatsoever that it helps in preventing Covid-19.

There is a report that high doses of Vitamin C delivered intravenously may be beneficial in the management of Covid-19, which has been investigated by the Australian Government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, who found no ‘robust, scientific’ evidence to support the validity of the ‘treatment’.

3.26: Regular use of a sauna will not prevent or mitigate Covid-19.

This story comes from YouTube, where a man identifying himself as “Dr Dan Lee Dimke” announces what he describes as the Achilles heel of the coronavirus – exposure to high temperatures. He claims that ending the virus is “remarkably easy” and cites “scientific studies” – a ‘few days of 20-minute sauna sessions will do the job. If you don’t have a sauna, spray water onto your face and aim the hot air from a blow dryer up your nose for 5 minutes twice a day. It looks authoritative, according to medicinenet.com – but it’s completely bogus, according to Anatoliy Gruzd, PhD, holder of the Canada Research Chair of Social Media Data Stewardship at Ryerson University, Toronto, where the Canadian Government has provided nearly a million dollars in funding to tackle Covid-19 misinformation.

New: 3.27: Natural Ginger Ale is neigther a cure nor a preventative.

This actually qualifies as a form of “Herbal Tea” which supposedly confers the dietary benefits of Ginger – which some claim includes bolstering the immune system. Not only is this claim unproven, not only are the dietary benefits of ginger unproven, but there is no evidence that those benefits can be transmitted by means of a Ginger Ale. Drink it if you like it – but for the flavor, not the health benefits.

New: 3.28: Lemon Juice and Bicarbonate Of Soda did not prevent people in Israel dying of Covid-19.

This has been squashed several times, but continues to crop up – which is suprising. The claim is false in many different ways, not least of which is that there have in fact been 198 deaths in that country. Even on the date of the first identified Facebook post, March 30, there had been 15 deaths.

There are those who suggest that this myth got started because Israel initially seemed to have relatively few deaths from Covid-19. There are also claims that the myth was an attempt by anti-zionists to imply that Israel engineered the virus, which falls victim to the same problem as many other Covid-19 conspiracy theories, ie that the virus is not artificial. Which makes this the first Covid-19 myth about a Covid-19 myth – a dubious distinction, to be sure.

New: 3.29: Induced Coughing does not assist in resisting Covid-19.

This myth gained massive publicity after being touted by author J. K. Rowling, who claimed to have had all the symptoms of Covid-19 and to have recovered with the help of this technique, which she learned from a video by a doctor from Queens Hospital, London.

— This technique will not clear virus from the lungs
— It can actively spread the virus over an even greater area
— It can actively infect others
— One of the symptoms is coughing, anyway
— In some places, depending on who is around you and where you are, this may even be illegal, if it is construed as deliberately coughing on an essential services worker (doctors, nurses, police, etc). In my state of New South Wales, that’s a A$5000.fine.

It won’t help you, could kill others, and could ruin your life. Talk about bad advice!

New: 3.30: Cocaine does not cure Covid-19.

I’ve never met anyone who could follow the alleged logic of this proposal, which first appeared at the end of January, 2020. The only sense I can make of it is that a stimulant might help overcome the lethargy that is one of the common symptoms. It turns out that this was produced by an online News Generator, which is a site designed to produce “Breaking News” Memes; but someone has deliberately obscured the watermark in the top-right corner to hide the origins of the story.

New: 3.31: There has been no Vaccine trial in Senegal.

The claim that seven children have died after being given a Covid-19 vaccination in Senegal is completely false and has been debunked by at least 6 fact-checking agencies in multiple countries. The allegation is contained in the voice-over to a video posted to Facebook.

The reality is that a man selling cosmetics door-to-door was arrested in Senegal for claiming to have a Vaccine in a joking manner – while wearing a Health Ministry T-shirt. If it weren’t for that last detail, he might not even have been arrested, just warned – but it was felt that the “official” air lent to his claim, regardless of its manner, elevated this “joke” to the level of a scam. But that hasn’t stopped it being distributed by a number of groups of anti-Vaxxers, unfortunately.

New: 3.32: Hand Sanitizer is not dangerous to pets.

Facebook claims that hand sanitizer contains elethyne glycol, which is used in anti-freeze and is toxic to humans, are completely false. So long as you don’t let your pet lick your hands immediately after applying hand sanitizer, there is no problem; break this fairly-obvious rule and your pet might get sick from the sanitizer, which are usually alcohol-based, but unless they are already at death’s door, even this is unlikely to kill them – though it will probably make them very miserable. For the brain-dead out there, let me point out that this does not mean that it’s a good idea to feed your pet hand sanitizer.

New: 3.33: People with Diabetes are not more likely to catch Covid-19.

In fact, there are no known co-morbidities that have been proven to increase the risks of infection, though it seems sensible to expect that those with compromised immune systems could be so proven. However, those with other co-morbidities are far more prone to become gravely ill, or even die. Chinese data suggests that the worst such impact is from smoking, but this is not supported by data from other countries, where respiratory problems like asthma are considered more serious.

New: 3.34: It is not safe to inject or ingest bleach or disinfectant. Don’t breathe the fumes, either.

We can thank the man in the White House for spreading this story all over the place, but he doesn’t appear to be the originator of this particular idiocy. That particular dishonor is reserved for Mark Grenon, leader of a group falsely promoting the use of an industrial cleaner as a Coronavirus cure.

The group, named Genesis II, claims to be a church, with Grenon as its “Archbishop”, who are in fact the largest producer and distributor of Chlorine Dioxide (the cleaning agent in question) in the US, claiming that it is a “miracle cure” for 99% of all diseases, including Cancer, Malaria, HIV/Aids, and Autism. Grenon claims to have written to Trump in the week prior to the infamous press conferance to tout the benefits of his church’s “product”.

In reality, this substance is toxic and can cause life-threatening side effects, according to the FDA, who have successfully forced the removal of Covid-19 claims from the websites of supporters in the Federal Courts.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there is a microscopic grain of truth to the proposal, especially as reformulated by President Trump; the Coronavirus is contained within lipid-based cell walls when expelled from the body of an infected subject, ie an oil-like substance. Soap breaks the oil down, exposing the virus within to a hostile environment it is not equipped to face; it breaks down almost immediately. That’s why and how washing hands and cleaning surfaces kills it. So, if it were possible to coat the interior of the lungs in such a material without drowing in it, it might well kill the virus. It’s not; the “cure” would be 100% fatal.

4. Coronavirus Scams.

Two words that I hoped never to connect to each other, even though I knew better. Rather than trying to list every scam that comes to light, this section will provide specific advice on how to avoid the most prevalent cases.

Do not open any video you receive in an e-mail.
Do not click on any link to a video that you receive in an email unless you know and trust the source.
Be careful buying online. You can’t buy a reliable test kit. You can’t buy a preventative agent. You may be able to buy low-quality masks. There has been at least one case of fraudulent hand sanitizer (won’t do you any good) being sold online.
If you receive a contact seemingly from an official government body requesting details in order to process support or payments, check the link and proceed with caution. Remember that it’s easy for a link to claim to lead to one site and to actually lead to another. Be particularly suspicious of any such links using a link shortener like bit.ly. Government services don’t use them, so this is always a red flag.
The CDC and WHO will NOT send anyone a direct email with news about the outbreak. This is a scam, don’t click on it.
More Information / Source: https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/coronavirus-scams-and-bogus-products. Note that this article specifically covers scams currently targeting Australians, but if these scams are not targeting your nation yet, you can bet that they – or something similar – soon will be. But that’s why I’ve kept the information and advice as broad as possible.
While there may be legitimate apps for the purpose, at least some apps claiming to track Coronavirus are actually ransomware. Only get your apps from a trusted source.

This article continues in part 3 in which I analyze the question: should your next game session (pick-up basketball game / scout jamboree / whatever) be canceled?

PRINCIPAL SOURCES (in no particular order):

ABC-TV (Australia): Coronavirus symptoms explained – what happens when you get COVID-19 and how likely is a full recovery?
ABC-TV (Australia): Coronavirus FAQ: Frequently asked questions about COVID-19
Australian Government Dept Of Health: Coronavirus (COVID-19) web-page as retrieved 14th March 2020
KVIA.com: Coronavirus Outbreak Timeline Fast Facts
Facebook: Coronavirus Q&A with Dr Norman Swan
ABC 7 (New York): Busting COVID-19 Coronavirus myths: Facts from the Centers for Disease Control
ABC News (Channel 24, Australia): “The Virus”, broadcast March 8th, 2020
ABC 7 (New York): How is Coronavirus spread? Symptoms, prevention, and how to prepare for a COVID-19 outbreak in the US
Worldometer: Coronavirus Web-page
ABC News (Channel 24, Australia): Covid-19 Stimulus Package Review & Analysis with David Spears, broadcast March 12th, 2020
World Health Organization via New York State Senator Alessandra Biaggi (Twitter Account)
Dr Faheem Younus, MD, Chief of Infectious Diseases, University of Maryland UCH (Twitter Account)
ABC-TV (Australia): Fact Check Website

Tags: DM-Advice, Game-Administration, News, Player-Advice, Opinion

Comments Off on We Interrupt Our Regular Programming 2: Covid-19 Myths

We Interrupt Our Regular Programming 1: Covid-19, The Facts

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Management, Mike, Players, Opinion on Mar.19, 2020

My original article on Covid-19 has now been split into three parts:

Part 1: Covid-19 Facts, Analysis, and Advice
Part 2: Busting Covid-19 Myths
Part 3: Should My Game Be Canceled?

Each part will link to the other two, and they will all be extended and updated as necessary.

Part 1: Covid-19 Facts, Analysis, and Advice

UPDATED March 15, 2020, in the section “Timeline”.

UPDATED March 24, 2020, in the section “Infectiousness & Viral Persistence”.

UPDATED March 26, 2020, in the section “Infectiousness & Viral Persistence”.

UPDATED March 27, 2020, in the section “Timeline”.

UPDATED April 5, 2020, in the sections “Symptoms”, “Treatment” and “Infectiousness & Viral Persistence”.

UPDATED April 25, 2020, in the section “Infectiousness & Viral Persistence”.

Coronavirus. Specifically, Covid-19. What are the facts? What do they mean? And what should you be doing about them, to protect both yourself and others?

Douglas Adams said it best:

Don’t Panic! Beauty will still be there tomorrow.
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay, text by Mike

Don’t Panic. There’s a lot of misinformation, speculation, and panic reaction floating around out there, and social media channels are more adept at spreading it than they are distributing reputable information.

Panic is an unthinking reaction to a situation in which there is a perceived emergency requiring clear thinking – and, as such, it is never helpful. Panic might lead to making the right choices by pure chance, but it probably won’t.

One reaction to panic is to try to calm people down – and the avoidance of measures that would be reasonable, but would promote further panic often implies an under-reaction to the current situation. Not that you can blame the authorities for that; they are walking a fine line between taking effective action and exacerbating any existing alarm, as well as triggering new public alarm.

The truth is that the situation is almost certainly both better than the doom-and-gloom merchants would have you believe, and worse than authorities can admit, unless they have been forced into drastic measures.

The absence of information is therefore a logical inevitability of managing a health crisis of this sort – but is also a breeding ground for misinformation. If you compare the information presented on the Australian Government’s Department Of Health on the subject, much of it has a vague or incomplete feel to it, at least in comparison to the public information page hosted by our national broadcaster.

With that in mind, this post will attempt to answer a serious question: should we suspend RPG gaming for a month or so?

To answer that question, I’ll be looking at the symptomology, the known clinical picture, the people believed to be at greatest risk and why, and so on.

This post will contain the most accurate information I can find, as of the 14 March 2020, and explain it as much as possible. Where I am including speculation, it will be specifically labeled as such and I will take extra care to explain the basis of that speculation, and will attempt to analyze how being wrong will impact on the analysis of the question.

At the same time, I want to make this post as short and digestible as possible. Nevertheless, along the way, I want to bust one or five of the myths that I’ve seen circulating. There’s a lot to get through, so this is likely to be one of those occasions when “short” is a relative term.

Pandemic

First, Coronaviruses are nothing new. At least one type of “Common Cold” is a Coronavirus. The human race has been living with them for a very long time. From time to time, a specific variety comes along that is notably worse than usual, that’s all. Covid-19 is one such case.

That has led to Covid-19 being declared a Global Pandemic.

What this declaration means is that the virus is now spreading in more than 100 countries, and that the illness itself is potentially serious.

In a practical sense: Each level of spread of an infection, when officially declared, triggers certain powers within and responses by, the government. What these are will vary from country to country. The most extreme responses to the current health emergency, by China and Italy, are empowered by such triggers.

Don’t Panic! Tranquility will still be there tomorrow, if we look for it.
Image by Diese lizenzfreien Fotos darfst du zwar verwenden from Pixabay, text by Mike

Contagion

Covid-19 is known to be highly contagious. Nevertheless, a runny nose or scratchy throat does not mean you have Covid-19. You almost certainly do not. It does mean that you should take precautions like self-isolation, and if symptoms get worse, make arrangements to get tested.

That’s not as easy as it should be. In countries with a single-payer health system like Australia, the cost of the test is paid by the government if a test is deemed necessary. Here, the number of cases not occurring as a result of travel from an area with a serious outbreak (China, Iran, South Korea, Italy) is a handful, and those who have not traveled overseas at all number only 1 or 2 cases, nationwide. This is because Australia has put strong containment measures in place quite early on – we were treating it as a potential pandemic at least a week before the World Health Organization confirmed the status.

There have been reports that the test can cost as much as US$3500 to conduct, and they do not have a single-payer health system. Those on lower incomes are thus much less likely to be tested and can thus act as carriers for the disease. They are also far less likely to be willing to self-isolate on the mere chance that they are infected and attend work anyway.

For a long time, the orientation promoted by the pharmaceutical industry, backed by the Medical profession, has been “soldier on” – take precautions not to infect others, but the priority is to get back on your feet and back to doing whatever you do, as quickly as possible. That is considered terrible advice where COVID-19 is concerned. Instead, the advice is to minimize your chance of infection in the first place, and self-isolate at the first sign of symptoms, just in case.

Transmission

The Virus is spread by small drops of moisture we release when we sneeze or cough. The moisture has to get into your body to make you sick, which means you can catch Coronavirus if those droplets get into your eyes, nose or mouth.

The skin is always covered by a layer of dead cells and the living cells beneath are relatively tough, designed to cope with wear and tear. The virus can’t get through. The greatest danger is that you get the virus on your skin and then rub your eyes or nose or bring your hand to your mouth for any of a dozen reasons – for example, I have the habit of stroking my beard and mustache when thinking. Washing your hands to remove the virus almost completely eliminates the danger – unless you’ve touched one of these “forbidden areas” in the interval.

That’s where face-masks come into the picture. They not only stop transmission of the virus if you cough or sneeze, but they stop you putting your hands to nose or mouth. If everyone had access to one, it could help slow the spread of Covid-19 significantly; but that’s not going to happen; there is a global shortage of masks right now. Ironically, Wuhan was the world’s #1 manufacturer of surgical masks. With that supply disrupted, countries all over the world have been scrambling to make up for the deficit.

Whenever a discussion on this subject arises, my mind instantly (and persistently) flashes back to an episode of Mythbusters, from, I think, the final season with everybody. The episode aired on June 9, 2010, entitled “Flu Fiction” and the segment in question asked, “Is it true that Nasal secretions from a person with a cold can spread so far and so quickly that anyone in the vicinity can become contaminated.?”

The Wikipedia write-up of the experiments reads:

Adam and Jamie consulted with an otolaryngologist and learned that a person with a cold may secrete up to 60 milliliters of mucus per hour. Jamie built a rig from a syringe and tubing to match that drip rate with fluorescent dye, and Adam wore it by his nose as he did model-building work. After one hour, he and everything he had touched were stained with the dye.

They then set up a party for Adam to host, with three ‘germaphobe’ guests (Kari, Grant, and Tory, who were briefed to try to avoid contact with Adam) and three unsuspecting ones. Thirty minutes later, Adam, the whole table, and every guest except Kari – who admitted that she actually was a germaphobe – were heavily contaminated. In a second experiment in which Adam consciously did his best to avoid physical contact (such as bumping elbows with his guests instead of shaking hands and asking the guests to pass certain things out to the other), all six guests came up clean.

Adam and Jamie declared the myth confirmed at this point, commenting that a healthy person would find it very difficult to avoid being contaminated by a sick one who did not attempt to keep from spreading his/her germs.

I was hoping to be able to present a screen shot of the table with the horror show of the fluorescent die everywhere, but couldn’t find one. But I was able to find a youTube video of the experiment up to this point which includes those unforgettable scenes of contamination. It’s ten years on, and those scenes remain firmly lodged in my memory, for good reason.

Don’t Panic! Sunsets will still be awaiting appreciation tomorrow.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay, text by Mike

Timeline

There’s a lot that is still not known about COVID-19. Statistical data is still being gathered, and is a secondary priority to actually treating those with the disease. As a result, the timeline of infection is a little vague, and this has shaped the advice being given.

A day or two, possibly three, after you become infected, you enter a stage of being infectious while showing no symptoms. Between one and three days later, you begin to experience the symptoms but remain infectious. Most people suffer only very mild symptoms and there is a strong temptation to go about your normal routine, enabling the virus to spread. You will typically experience symptoms for three-to-seven days, usually 5. Add all that up, and you get 13 days at most. There is a possibility that you will still be contagious for a day or so after that, but this is unconfirmed.

UPDATE 19 March 2020:

Over the last couple of days there has been some additional clarification on some of these subjects.

Most people become ill 2-4 days after becoming infected. Symptoms may be so mild, especially in younger people, that they do not realize that they are infected.
In the majority of cases, people have become contagious 24 hours before symptoms develop.
In a few cases, people have become contagious up to 48 hours before symptoms develop – but it’s entirely possible that the symptoms developed sooner and the victim simply didn’t notice them. For the sake of prudence, health authorities and the rest of this article will use two days as the infectious pre-symptomatic period.
It is therefore possible for one set of responses to an infection to occur while the commencement date and time of symptoms is unknown or only approximately known, and for those responses to be shown to be unnecessary when the patient is interviewed and an accurate determination of the onset of symptoms made. The current advice in Australia is that if you don’t have that accurate information, use the 48-hour rule; if you do, you can use the 24-hour rule. That’s to determine if you have potentially been exposed, whether or not you need to self-isolate, whether or not you may need to be tested, and so on.

UPDATE 27 March, 2020:

More information has emerged on the timeline of the illness. In general (and in a nutshell), the second week is more uncomfortable and symptoms are more serious; the first week, they may be comparatively mild, even in serious cases (i.e. those requiring hospital treatment). I don’t have further specifics.

Thus the advice that if you come down with possible symptoms, you should self-isolate for 14 days, and if they get worse, seek medical advice. In most people, it’s all over in a week or less, but in a few cases it may last longer – so the 14-days is long enough to not only cover the immediate victim’s experience with the disease, but any immediate family who are likely to have been exposed to the virus. If none of you are showing symptoms after 14 days, you’re clear – for now, at least. That’s not unlike any cold or flu.

There have been some reports of incubation periods of 14 or even 21 days. These are now regarded as extremely rare if they are even accurate at all.

Symptoms

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of Covid-19 is that you can be contagious and experience no symptoms at all. That doesn’t happen often but it is a known fact. In a sample group of 100 people with Coronavirus, about 80 will have only minor symptoms, if any at all. About 15 people will have more serious symptoms, and between one and three people out of 100 may die as a result of pneumonia and respiratory complications. The current mortality rate, globally, is 3.7%, but the trend is slowly downward. Compare that with influenza, which normally has a mortality rate of 0.1%; even a bad year, like 2019, only elevates that to about 0.5%.

By far the majority of people who contract Covid-19 infections report symptoms similar to those of the common cold. The “Fifteen in 100” mentioned above might report symptoms ranging from those of a mild influenza to a serious influenza.

The limited clinical reports available suggest that those under 18 are less susceptible to the virus. Those over 40, and especially over 65, are at a higher risk of developing more severe symptoms as are those with pre-existing conditions like heart disease or asthma. Those with any form of respiratory complaint are especially susceptible to the more virulent reaction. Below the age of 80, survival rates are quite high, but over that age, they suddenly ramp up considerably.

It should be remembered that diseases evolve to maximize their own spread and survival, and one of the mechanisms that they use is not killing the host.

UPDATE April 5, 2020:

Further reporting of cases has revealed some more subtle patterns to the symptomology. Most cases take two weeks to run their course; there have been outliers who have taken mere days and others who have experienced symptoms for three or more weeks. Symptoms in the first week are relatively mild for most people, becoming more intense in the second week. In a mild case, people might not even notice that they have it until that second week.

Last night I read a very moving first-hand account of what the experience is like for those who experience more severe symptoms They do not make for a pleasant experience, to put it mildly. You can read it for yourself at Quora (and if you click on the question after reading it, you will find at least 71 other stories, most nowhere near this severe), but it is worth remembering that at worst, this is the experience of a minority. Nevertheless, spare a thought for those suffering through the worst of this pandemic, the next time that restrictions and social distancing begin to bite.

One thing that several (but not all) mention is stomach pain and itchy or dry eyes as early symptoms. Others report the loss of their sense of taste and smell as the first symptoms. Intense lethargy is also a common symptom. In most cases, the fever predates the cough, but not always. It does seem at the moment like every case is just a little different and unique to that individual in terms of the sequence. However, there are definitely common themes in terms of what is experienced, and a lot of the treatments are aimed at controlling the symptoms. A number of complcations have arisen through dehydration – keep an eye on your weight and if it declines markedly, increase your fluid intake. One patient with a confirmed case lost 2kg in 2-3 days through dehydration and came close to needing hospitalization for that alone. Drinking hot liquids is reported as assisting in the breakup of the mucus that causes breathing difficulties, and gargling warm salt water helps clear the throat, which can become very painful during the coughing phase.

It is also now known that blood type makes a minor difference, though research is not clear on exactly why. Essentially, those with Type A blood are slightly more at risk of a serious case, while those with type O blood are slightly less at risk of a serious case. Types AB and B blood are about the same, and are therefore the standard against which the comparisons have been drawn. Understand that these are minor influences – perhaps plus-or-minus 5% to your risk of a serious case.

Infectiousness & Viral Persistence

Viruses are generally not the super-bugs that people like to imagine (there are specific exceptions). According to some reports, Covid-19 has very limited capacity to survive outside a host body; estimates that I have seen suggest a 24-48 hour period, and it might turn out to be considerably less. However, studies of other Coronaviruses suggest that the virus might be able to survive on a surface for as long as 9 days, though almost certainly most of it will be dead long before that, so the risk would decline even before that date.

UPDATE 24 March 2020, REVISED & UPDATED 25 April, 2020:

A study recently published in the New England Journal Of Medicine is the first serious investigation into the question of how well Covid-19 survives outside of an infected person. In air, it lasts at least 3 hours before settlng on a surface. Once there, it’s lifetime is variable, depending on the surface: Plastic and Stainless Steel, 72 hours; Cardboard, 24 hours; Copper, 4 hrs (note that no-one knows why copper is so much shorter than other materials – this research is simply too new).

There is also new evidence that the virus breaks down very quickly and completely in bright sunlight, but that hasn’t been confirmed.

From the moment that Covid-19 comes into contact with a surface, the danger that it poses is diminishing. On plastic, the amount of viable virus had halved after 6.8 hours; at 72 hours, none could be detected. It is not known from the summary of the research that I sighted whether or not this rate is consistent across all surfaces; logic suggests that it can’t be, because of the way the copper and cardboard results differ from plastic and stainless steel; it must be dying off more quickly.

The recommendation emerging from the study is to clean surfaces more regularly than you normally would, but that ordinary household cleaners are more than adequate to the task; Covid-19 seems to be extremely susceptible to soap, bleach, and alcohol-based hand sanitizer – much more so than many other viruses.

To those, I would add / reiterate: wash vegetables and fruit when you bring them home; you don’t know who had been at the bin before you. Wipe down cardboard packaging and plastic packaging with a rag moistened with a diluted bleach solution and dry it carefully. (Note added April 5: These are my personal recommendations; they are considered overcautious according to most health advice. Make sure not to use an antibacterial cleanser for these; not only could that attack useful bacteria if consumed, not only could it be inherently harmful in other ways if consumed, but we are already massively increasing the quantities of such materials being introduced into the environment, which risks long-term impacts. Wev’e already seen this with an older version of cleanser. Whatever we can do to reduce such threats is necessary to the long-term health of our societies. End note.) Continuing the advice: Try to get your hands on a box of disposable gloves (no pun intended) and wear a pair anytime you have to go out, so that you reduce the impact of other people having pressed the elevator call button, etc. Wash your hands before you make a meal, and do it again before you eat. Note that washing hands frequently can dry the skin, so a small amount of moisturizer afterwards may also be useful.

UPDATE 26 March 2020:

Bad news from the CDC – according to this report, “SARS-CoV-2 RNA” (aka Covid-19, aka Coronavirus) …”was identified on a variety of surfaces in cabins of both symptomatic and asymptomatic infected passengers up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess but before disinfection procedures had been conducted (Takuya Yamagishi, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, personal communication (to the CDC/report author) , 2020).”

This is hearsay, but from a credible source. Now, RNA alone doesn’t mean that there was still viable virus on those surfaces, but it does mean that there might have been. These were closed-up rooms, and there have been stories of flu strains preserved on surfaces by freezing in the past. The rooms had not been cleaned. There is a suspicion that something in the environment on board a cruise ship increases the susceptibility to the virus – it might be as simple as encountering the same infected people day after day, or it might be something more serious, relating (for example) to the way they distribute cool air to cabins.

All of which adds up to uncertainty as to whether or not this information is relevant to a domestic surface that is cleaned reasonably regularly. No-one knows what this means for you and me (assuming neither of us is on a cruise ship). We can’t simply assume the worst because that is contradicted by the actual lab-condition studies described in my March 24 update. At best, we can say that If you don’t follow the advice of health officials, as relayed above, your chances of infecting someone else if you have the bug are potentially much greater. We always knew this particular agent was extremely infectious; this might be the first hints as to the reasons for that.

Now, back to the original post…

This vagueness is partially responsible for the conflicting information in this area; I have seen suggestions in the past that virus survival should be given in half-lives, like radioactivity: “wait this long, and half the virus population on an isolated surface will no longer be dangerous”. But that is not the way things are done at the moment. The bottom line is that just being exposed to it doesn’t mean that you will catch it – the most reliable estimates that I can find suggest a 10-30% infection rate.

That’s still scarily high. Let’s do some math:

One person becomes infected.

If they come into contact with 10 people a day (a low number), and are infectious for 2 days before noticing symptoms, that’s 20 people exposed. If 20% of those 20 people then catch the virus, that’s 4 people, even assuming that the original victim does his best to self-isolate. Two days later, 4 people become 16, 16 then become 64, 64 become 256, 256 becomes 1024, 1024 becomes 4096, 4096 becomes 16384, and 16384 becomes 65,536 by the time the original carrier’s two-week isolation period is up.

If the average is contact with 20 people a day, those two days infect 20% of 40 people, or 8. Then 64, 512, 4096, 32768, 262144, 2097152. That’s 2.1 million.

But these numbers are unnecessarily pessimistic. For one thing, the contagion rate outside the worst-affected areas appears to be closer to the 10% mark, or less, than to the 20% used above, or the 30% originally reported from China. For another, taking reasonable steps to minimize infection like coughing or sneezing into your elbow (far more effective than covering your mouth with your hand) and washing your hands regularly can drop the risks 100-fold or more.

A more realistic number of contacts, daily, is 100. Let’s try a more realistic set of calculations, with precautions: One person, two days, 200 people contacted. 10% of 200 is 20, divided by 100 is 0.2 people. One fifth of a person. That means that to get even one more victim, we need to start with five people infected, spreading the disease.

The real danger is of people not taking enough care. You only have to miss once – touch an elevator call button or a door handle or whatever and fail to wash your hands afterwards – and that 0.2% can leapfrog back up to 20%. Do so five times and the chance of being infected climbs markedly to 67%.

On top of that, the calculations shown assume that there are none of these potential 200-per-day encounters in common between the sufferers, and that’s improbable beyond description (but the math is a lot easier that way). The reality is that there would be overlaps, people exposed to the virus multiple times, and hence far more likely to catch it, and this results in clusters of people becoming ill.

You may have wondered why “Pandemic” is such a big deal, based on what I wrote earlier. The answer is that when a disease is “Epidemic”, it’s confined to these clusters, but when it becomes “Pandemic”, the size of the clusters and the number of clusters are such that the risk becomes general to the whole population. The “Pandemic” declaration means that the World Health Authority think that there is a very good chance that this will happen. That’s the reason for governments having greater powers in such events, and what they are trying to stop.

It’s statistics like these that led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to forecast that she expects as many as 70% of the German population to contract the disease – eventually. She may be correct – but for the immediate future, that prediction is alarmist. It may take years for that to occur – or it might be a lot more rapid; we just don’t know, yet.

National social habits will undoubtedly play a big part in determining the rate of infection. In France, for example, it is normal to kiss people on the cheeks in greeting; while I have no doubt that the current advice is not to do so, this would have increased transmission of the disease markedly before the restriction was put in place. That’s why there is now a surge in French cases taking place.

Don’t Panic! Nature will still be waiting for us tomorrow.
Image by Patty Jansen from Pixabay, text by Mike

Detection

There is a test for Covid-19. Currently, it takes 24 hours to process a test kit. Various labs are working on faster-response kits – South Korea reportedly now has one that is 99% accurate and gives results in just three hours.

Early kits were even slower and – in the case of the first kits released by the CDC, flawed. I’ve mentioned the impact of those flaws and the consequences elsewhere.

When developing such test kits, there are four goals that are almost contradictory – affordability, speed of manufacture, speed of results, and reliability. Often, one or more needs to be compromised. Sometimes, a two-tier approach is needed – a cheap and somewhat unreliable test that never gives a false negative for an initial screening, and a more expensive test with high reliability for those possible cases flagged by the first test.

Testing regimens for Covid-19 are not yet that advanced. The US test kit is particularly expensive – I can’t speak to the cost of the tests of other nations. I can simply state that for the same price as getting tested in the US, I could have a double hip replacement here in Australia (not that I need one, thank heavens).

Kits will get cheaper, and faster to manufacture (which will also make them cheaper). They will get faster at giving results – hopefully without compromising reliability. But they aren’t there yet. And that means that unnecessary testing becomes a significant problem, eating into the limited supplies of the kits that are available. It’s in addressing this problem that the Australian government has made its’ most serious misstep in its management of the emergency to date.

We know that eventually, inevitably, there will be cases of people becoming infected as a result of exposure to someone who caught the virus overseas, rather than catching it overseas themselves. This is secondary transmission. Until now, the policy has been to test anyone presenting symptoms – but demand has outstripped supply and analysis resources. That tends to happen in a panic. In response, the government has decided to develop a protocol for assessing whether or not someone needs to be tested for Covid-19. So far, so good. The problem is that in the meantime, the advice is that unless you have recently been overseas, you don’t need to be tested. With at least two reported cases of secondary transmission, it’s too late for that restriction; it will only be counterproductive, enabling the broader spread of the disease here. It’s a white flag, an act of surrender to the circumstances. It’s an acceptance that the virus has escaped containment, and an unwillingness to be told how bad it really is out there in the real world.

If this policy goes ahead, what will happen is that the government will buy itself some room for complacency until the protocol is developed; they will then find that far more people are meeting the standards for testing than they were expecting (return of the problem), and that an unexpectedly high number of those tests will result in confirmed cases (the consequences of the misstep). Thus, the number of confirmed cases will skyrocket even faster than they would otherwise have done, and if anything is likely to induce panic, that’s what will do it. Of course, if that’s the only mistake they make, they will be doing an exemplary job of handling the crisis; but it signposts the possibility of other failures of the decision-making process, and that’s the real problem.

Sorry, letting myself drift off-topic there. Getting back on-track: since the initial announcement of the three-hour kits, I have heard nothing more on the subject. Results continue to be overnight, here in Australia, some weeks after the report. That says to me that the Korean test kit has a significant failure in one of the four criteria; taking their reliability and speed of results at face value, that means that it either takes too long to mass-manufacture, or costs too much, or both. At best, if that’s the case, it demonstrates that a faster test is at least possible. But we don’t have it yet.

Treatment

Currently, there is no effective treatment other than general respiratory support in the event of a serious form of the illness. A human vaccine is probably a year away, and it will still need testing and mass-manufacture, a process that the most generous of fast-tracking cannot reduce to less than about six months. The clock on this is already running; it started the moment a lab outside China succeeded in culturing the virus, three or four weeks ago. In effect, they learned how to manufacture more of the virus so that it could be studied in multiple locations under laboratory conditions. But don’t expect it to be announced before December 2020 or widely available sooner than mid-July 2021.

The current expectation is that Covid-19 will be like the flu – it will mutate relatively rapidly from one strain to another. Immunity to one will confer a limited immunity to other strains that will probably further mitigate symptoms upon reinfection, except in those who have become more vulnerable in between due to other medical problems or advancing age. I speculate that It will take years before the vaccine achieves full effectiveness.

To understand this last, it’s worth briefly recounting how the flu vaccine works because the Covid-19 vaccine is likely to work in a similar manner.

There are four major strains of influenza. Each year, labs select the two that appear most likely to be widespread in the coming winter and prepare a vaccine against those strains. This confers immunity to those strains for two or three years, slowly reducing in effectiveness. Some of this protection goes away more slowly than the rest; a vaccination may help mitigate symptoms from a strain as much as five or ten years afterwards. But that will vary from individual to individual, so one of the pillars of the vaccination programs is not to rely on that residual benefit. It is also widely believed that the benefits of a fresh immunization before the last one targeting that strain will have minimal benefit. That’s why they don’t target all four strains every year. So, this year they might target the A and B strains, next year the A and C strain, the year after, the B and D strains, and so on. That’s why, if you are considered vulnerable to the flu, you should get the shot every year.

The A strain, twice in a row? Yes, because the vaccine-makers can’t assume that you got vaccinated last year. For those who did, the A-strain vaccination a second year in a row has virtually no benefit, but for anyone else, it confers protection against one of the two strains most likely to be circulating.

There are times when the predictions are wrong, or when a particularly nasty sub-variety emerges, and the vaccines have to be re-made with different priorities.

So, let’s apply this knowledge to the likely form of a Covid-19 vaccine. How many strains will it have? No-one knows; we’re busy dealing with the one that’s circulating at the moment. But it’s likely that it will be more than one. The vaccine, as first developed, will probably only protect against one of these strains – the one that’s currently running rampant.

Diseases don’t come out of nowhere; they are simply a more virulent strain of something that’s been around for a while. Quite often, they will culture and evolve in animal hosts until getting a toe-hold on the human population. That’s true of flu, of the common cold, of Ebola – and almost certainly true of Covid-19. What that means is that from time to time there will be an outbreak, but in the meantime, there will be little or no risk from the virus. It’s entirely possible that by the time we have a vaccine, we’ll no longer need one – for this outbreak.

The US Center for Disease Control knew all this years ago, and established a program to specifically look for the next pandemic and prepare for it in advance as much as possible. President Trump and his republican allies gutted that program when he came to office, deeming it a waste of money. I can only speculate on how much better-prepared we might have been if this short-sighted decision had not been taken. You can’t blame Covid-19 completely on them, but they bear more of the blame than others for the social and economic harm that is now occurring.

What a vaccine will do is put a full stop to this strain, for at least the time being. And it is exceptionally unlikely that the next strain will be anywhere near as serious – if that were likely, there would have been an outbreak before this, and we would have known about it before now. The mere fact that Covid-19 seems to have come out of nowhere shows that it’s usually pretty harmless. What we are now learning – the very hard way – is that it can assume a more malevolent form, and that we need to actively monitor it. It might be fifty years, or seventy-five years, or a hundred years, before the next life-threatening outbreak – of this strain of this disease. But, when it does, we’ll be ready for it.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be looking now for the next bird-flu, or SARS, or swine-flu. It’s out there, waiting. The CDC program described was an insurance policy; most years, you pay it and don’t need it, making no claims against it. But every now and then, something catastrophic will happen and you will be desperately glad that you have that insurance – unless you’ve let it lapse in the meantime.

UPDATE 5 April 2020:

Some sites have been reporting that there have been 8 strains of Covid-19 currently circulating globally, all extremely similar genetically. I have not seen this confirmed by a compelling source but it fits information that has come from such sources.

The virus has been genetically sequenced in at least 32 different countries. Contrary to the expectations raised above, it appears to be extremely slow to mutate significantly. This means that a vaccine is likely to be much longer-lasting, conferring immunity for years or even decades. It also means that it’s slow to become a threat and slow to stop being a threat once that transition is made.

That says to me that Covid-19 will become another of the childhood immunizations that everyone needs to get, and that there may need to be booster shots at regular intervals. More like measles than the flu, in other words.

Recovery

Eighty percent of victims recover with no special treatment whatsoever. Most people with minor symptoms will be told to quarantine themselves at home, keep up fluids and take paracetamol to control their temperature. Australian patients have generally recovered in about four weeks according to some reports, and that’s the long extreme; most are reported to recover within a week to fortnight.

People suffering from more severe symptoms may need to go to hospital, where they will be cared for in a negative pressure ward (to keep the virus from spreading) and might be given intravenous fluids and possibly oxygen in more serious cases.

A few may develop an infection which could lead to pneumonia. These patients would be treated in an intensive care unit where more aggressive life-support is available. Severe pneumonia can lead to respiratory failure, which is the leading cause of death from Covid-19.

Don’t Panic! Flowers will still bloom tomorrow!
Image by Edda Klepp from Pixabay, text by Mike

Health-care Capabilities

One of the primary goals of containment is not to eradicate a virus, but to buy enough time for the health-care system to prepare by slowing the spread of the virus. Until there is a vaccine, the spread of a really infectious agent like Covid-19 can only be slowed, not stopped, unless there is really low levels of exposure.

This pandemic will almost certainly be a lot worse in the US than in someplace like Australia, for a number of reasons. First, the health-care system, as mentioned previously, is not set up for mass testing and mass-immunization; it operates on the premise that all medical treatment is optional, to be paid for by the person opting for treatment. Health insurance may or may not relieve them of part of the burden. But a LOT of people can’t access health-care, promoting the spread of the virus. Second, the emphasis of the Trump Administration was on keeping the number of confirmed cases low at all costs – not on locating and identifying those with the illness. This gave the virus still more opportunity to spread. Third, the test kits that were initially released were defective. If they merely gave the occasional false positive, that would be bad enough; but they actually permitted a false negative, telling infected people that they were not infected, enabling them to further spread the virus. There have been some estimates that for every confirmed case in the US, as a result of these circumstances, there may be as many as 10,000 undiagnosed cases. And the math I presented earlier shows in graphic (if exaggerated) terms just how quickly 10,000 can become a hundred thousand, and how quickly 100,000 can become a million.

If 1,000,000 people become ill with the virus, 800,000 will be fine – but 200,000 may require medical treatment in hospital conditions. The US Hospital system is not set up to cope with that level of demand, but they can hardly be faulted for that – few national health systems are. The Chinese managed this problem by building three temporary hospitals in the heart of the outbreak at astonishing speed. While it seems unlikely that this can be matched everywhere in the world, the success that has resulted suggests that the temporary re-purposing of existing structures and the erection of temporary structures might be enough.

The current population of the US is almost 309 million. If 10% of them become infected, that’s 30.9 million. That’s 6.18 million requiring hospitalization. Those are the sort of numbers that the alarmists are offering. The reality is not that bad, because those cases won’t all occur at the same time. But the long-term picture is still gloomy; the current expectation is that even with all possible precautions, 25% of any given population will catch the virus over the next six months.

Six months is 26 fortnights. 25% divided by 26 is roughly 1% – certainly within the margin of error. But the cases won’t be evenly distributed; they will increase for a while, and then peak, and then die down. The peak might be as high as 5%. For the more heavily-populated northern hemisphere, that six months includes some spring, a whole summer, and some autumn – which is also good news. For those living in the Southern Hemisphere, though, we are entering our cold and flu season. Inevitably, both the number of confirmed cases and the number of people presenting as possible cases is going to explode here.

The other troubling number is that the number of confirmed cases in Australia is roughly doubling every five days. In six months, there are roughly 182 days – which is 36.5 lots of 5 days. Two to the power of 36.5 is 97,184,015,999 and a fraction. That’s only 3790 times our total estimated population – if we had only one confirmed case. We don’t; we have 160, of whom 26 have recovered and three have died, leaving 131 current cases.

You can see why the authorities here are pushing measures to contain the spread. Even reducing the rate of doubling to every six days or seven days has a massive impact due to the exponential growth involved. Six day doublings is only 30-and-a-fraction doublings, which still produces a monstrous number – but not as big a number as before. Seven days gives, as you might expect, 26 doublings, and two to the power of 26 is only 6,7108,864. Every increase from that point only lowers the total number of cases – both overall and that have to be coped with at any given moment.

It follows that even if your local authorities are not implementing emergency measures to achieve containment, you shouldn’t wait; you should prepare now and implement a considered stay-safe plan without waiting.

There’s a secondary consideration: Covid-19 is happening on top of all the usual things. There will be no fewer heart attacks or accidents or cancers because it is happening. That becomes a problem when the hospital bed, or hospital equipment, that would normally be available to treat your condition has been appropriated to care for someone suffering from acute Covid-19. Inevitably, the mortality rates from other conditions will rise because some of the health-care capacity of the existing system will have been diverted to the Coronavirus.

Once again, the reality is slightly better than this grim picture; there is always some slack built into the system for moments of peak demand. But part of the process of making private hospitals profitable and public hospitals affordable is to cut that slack to the bare minimum; so this is a very limited balm to spread on this problem.

Many forms of emergency are localized, and when that happens, additional capacity can be brought in from outside, or patients transferred elsewhere. This has enabled the slack in the system to be further reduced. Because of its international scope, that’s not a viable approach to Covid-19. That’s the grim reality being experienced in Italy at the moment., where patients have overflowed from the available capacity into field hospitals, and the mortality rate is skyrocketing from lack of equipment that could have saved some.

Rate of Serious Responses

There has been some suggestion today that the risk of serious health complications for the under-80s – that’s the vast majority of people – is 3%. I’ve also seen figures of 5% and 8% reported. The trend in reporting lately has been downward. Above the age of 80, the rates rise to 15% or more, and there is at least three times as much risk that death will result from such serious health conditions as there would be in a younger person.

Do whatever you can to avoid exposing the elderly to Covid-19, therefore.

Don't Panic + Mountain, Lake, & Butterfly

Don’t Panic! Butterflies will still fly tomorrow.
Background by Lisa McLean, Butterfly image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay; Text, additional sky, and arrangement by Mike

Child Exposure

Initially, it was suggested that children were also at elevated risk. Their immune responses are still forming, after all, and they are well-known to be germ factories; if there’s anything going around, kids seem sure to catch it and pass it on. In part, that’s because they have no judgment – while a slight unease can feel like the end of the world, at least as often, enthusiasm makes them willing to forget and ignore feelings of ill-health. They are also less likely to wash their hands often enough, and more likely to touch hands to mouth or nose. In other words, to do all the things that you don’t want people to do under the current conditions.

To some extent, the urgency has gone out of this advice. Children are still a special problem, but not quite for the same reasons as were initially assumed. The indications are that they are less prone than adults to get seriously ill from Covid-19, but no more- or less-likely to catch it. And schools are natural mass-gatherings. Effectively, so are park and playground equipment. Consider both to be petri-dishes incubating whatever is going around; normally, that’s just a cold or flu. Right now, it’s more serious.

Therefore, the concern is not about the kids being at direct risk, but about them passing the disease on to someone of lower resilience.

Here in Australia, it had become a regular thing for preschools to visit nursing homes. Normally a brilliant idea, under current conditions, it’s one of the worst, and was the first activity curtailed here in response to the outbreak. The resumption of the practice will almost certainly be one of the last signals that the crisis is past. (That’s not meant to say that our government has gotten it right 100%, just that we’re batting above average when it comes to this crisis. It doesn’t forgive or make up for past lapses nor any current/future idiocy on the part of our elected officials).

Some people don’t understand these facts, and call for schools to be closed. That’s part of the playbook for dealing with an influenza pandemic, and it works because when it comes to influenza, children are super-spreaders. They’ll not only catch it, they’ll pass it on to someone else. Wherever schools have been closed in the current crisis, it’s because people have been treating Covid-19 like the flu – when it isn’t. There is presently no evidence that closing schools does anything whatsoever to contain the spread of the disease.

An exception has to be made for schools where a student or staff member have actually tested positive for Covid-19, and if the virus spreads far enough through a population, that will eventually be all or most of them. And Universities are not the same thing.

Of course, the other reason why most governments will be reluctant to close schools is that this automatically removes almost half the workforce, who then have to be home to care for the children. Child-care facilities, even if they were affordable, are no better than a school would be; they kind of defeat the purpose. Given that Covid-19 will already have economies under extreme pressure, dealing yet another body-blow is something that most governments will consider only reluctantly.

Mass gatherings

The most recent emergency measure here is a banning of unnecessary mass gatherings, which have been defined as more than 500 people. That’s a problematic number because our mass transit systems can carry that many aboard a single train at rush hour, and there can be thousands of people waiting on the train platform for their ride home at the end of the day. It’s not a problem of the same scale going the other way, because the numbers are dispersed over a much greater number of railroad stations and therefore platforms.

Our government has deliberately excluded train travel, for this reason. They are referring to sporting events and social events and cultural events. There are still some problems to be surmounted; the question of movie theaters, for example, where a premiere can pack in hundreds at a time and far more than 500 in a day – without time to disinfect the seats in between. Big businesses with more than 500 staff are also an uncertain proposition – which includes the Australian Government itself; there are about 5,000 staff in parliament house, and while they don’t routinely gather, the number of contacts is still significant.

Fortunately, these have been described as preemptive and preventative measures. They aren’t actually necessary here, yet – so there’s time to work out any bugs before they do become critical.

Sporting codes across the world are either suspending their 2020 competitions or competing behind locked gates. Conventions are being canceled. Broadway has closed. Everywhere you look, society is making it easier for you to do so. But these measures will do no good if patrons who would normally attend such activities simply gather to mourn the absence of their preferred pastime.

This is an area where there is no one-size-fits-all advice; it depends on the number of cases and the rate of spread and the estimated number of undiagnosed cases, all of which combine to determine the potential exposure of a group of size X. The one rule of thumb should be that if you don’t have to go somewhere where there are such crowds, you should not do so.

Don’t Panic! Waterfalls will still flow tomorrow.
Image by Barbara Jackson from Pixabay, text by Mike

Smaller Gatherings & Events

These are currently unrestricted here. They are drastically restricted in Italy. The US is currently somewhere in between the two of us – but it’s probably closer to Italy in terms of the number of undiagnosed cases.

A Keep-yourself-safe plan

The advice being offered at the moment is very simple and sensible stuff.

Washing Hands

Wash with soap and water. You don’t need an anti-bacterial hand sanitizer, Covid-19 is a virus and won’t be affected. Wash frequently and thoroughly.

Zone of separation

Stand at least three feet away from a person who is sick to avoid being sprayed with liquid droplets from their bodies.

Self-isolate

Be prepared for the need to self-isolate without further warning. That means having 14 days worth of food and medication and other essentials on hand at all times. In particular, if you feel unwell, do not visit the elderly.

Face masks

If you are a member of a vulnerable group, or if it is confirmed that you have Covid-19, wear a surgical mask. If your job involves contact with a lot of other people, e.g. cashier, wear a surgical mask. Otherwise, don’t wear a mask; doing so only takes one away from someone who may need it more.

Consciously avoid touching your face.

Put a reminder on your hands – a fluorescent label or tag or something. Write the word “STOP!” on it in big black letters. Whenever it comes into view, you should glance at the label and be reminded – because it’s all too easy to get distracted and forget.

Save.

Especially if you’re a casual or part-time worker, or a recent hire, cut your spending to the bone until you have enough set aside that you can live on it for about three weeks, paying any bills that will be due in that time. Your income might disappear tomorrow, either directly (you or your boss gets sick) or indirectly through economic impact.

Spend

The effects of the Coronavirus outbreak on the global economy are only guesswork at the moment, but current expectations put the magnitude as roughly double that of the Global Financial Crisis. Yes, that bad. And that’s without fools making the problem worse.

To combat these economic impacts, governments are putting various stimulus packages in place to support their economies. The specifics vary from country to country, government to government, economy to economy; just as every country is different, so their exposure to the consequences will be different.

There is also an inherent inertia to stimulus packages. They take time to prepare and implement, and by the time you find out whether or not it has been enough, it may be too late for another.

In large part, these stimulus packages are designed to do two things: sustain the businesses that are impacted so that people have jobs to go back to when the crisis is over; and keep an economy ticking over, even if at a reduced level of activity, until a recovery can begin.

Part of protecting yourself from Covid-19 has to be doing your best to prevent damage to the essential economic infrastructure around you. And that means keeping the economy moving by spending what you can afford, taking into account the realities of freight and delivery. So as soon as you have the savings minimum in place (a moving target), spend every cent in excess of it that you can, and spend on local products as much as possible.

Casual workers are a problem that will be faced by a great many countries, and are one of many reasons why this economic emergency is not the same as the GFC. In Australia, 25% of the workforce are now casual labor, accruing no sick leave or other benefits; if they are required to self-isolate, there’s a huge economic problem. Because they can’t afford not to do so, they would probably work on – spreading Covid-19. There’s a great deal of uncertainty as to whether or not the current plans adequately address this problem. It’s a situation that will be replicated the world over; most countries have this problem to some extent. In the US, the percentage of casual labor is even higher at 30%, for example.

Right now, the world has a high fever, and it’s rising. Adding a recession to that won’t do anyone any good.

Avoid Panic Shopping

I said at the start, Don’t Panic.

Panic Shopping is a form of panic in which the victim assuages their jangled nerves by performing an unreasonable act of shopping. In Australia, we’ve seen shelves emptied of toilet paper (even though few victims of Covid-19 experience symptoms that would require unusual quantities), shelves emptied of hand sanitizer (more reasonable, but ordinary soap will work just as well), and mass buying of staples like rice and flour (month’s worth). You need to keep enough food for a fortnight’s isolation – that’s it.

Support others

If you suspect that someone around you – a friend, co-worker, or neighbor – is self-isolating, contemplate what you might be able to do to help them. Supplies of perishables – milk, bread, sugar, eggs – can go further than you think. Even simply inquiring as to their health through a closed door can have a tremendous positive impact on the psychological problems that result from self-isolation. Call people on the telephone. Interact with them over the internet. Do all the things that you would hope someone would do for you if you were the one isolating yourself.

Self-isolation in the modern age does not mean that you have to become a hermit.

Avoid perpetuating myths

…at least, myths about Covid-19. Squash misinformation whenever you come across it – but be aware that the information sources you are relying on may have dated; the impact that Covid-19 is having is constantly evolving, and the responses to it are also evolving in response. The content of this article was best advice on Saturday the 14th – it might be out of date by Monday March 16th, when it’s actually to be published.

Be friendly, supportive, and polite

Have you ever had to do two people’s jobs because someone was out sick? How about three people’s jobs? With unreasonable customers screaming at you because you were slow in wiping their nose and rolling out the red carpet? While you were worried about making ends meet because there weren’t enough customers?

Assume that everyone still on-the-job is operating under maximum stress and difficult circumstances as best they can, cut them as much slack as you can, and don’t be the unreasonable a**-hole in the picture. Do what you can to relieve some of that stress. It’s a good habit to get into, regardless of the circumstances.

And, should bad news come, don’t shoot the messenger and don’t shoot bystanders. There’s always someone whose life is worse than yours.

Minimize exposure

Avoid large crowds as much as you can. If you can’t avoid a crowd, take appropriate precautions while in that environment, like washing your hands before and after. Don’t shake hands with others. Avoid unnecessary contact. Don’t kiss strangers. Contain sneezes and coughs. If unwell, stay home – and avoid contact with the vulnerable, especially. If you need it, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Wash Everything You Buy (or cook it)

With the uncertainty over how effective the virus is at surviving on a surface, assume the worst. When you buy something, it will have been touched by at least one person (the stockist who put it on the shelf) and may have been handled by many. So wash the fruit and veg (DON’T use soap!), wipe the packets and plastic containers with a moist cloth and dry well, cook the meat well, and so on.

A Covid-19 Myth Or Two (or three, or four…) Jabbed

This section of the article has been excerpted into it’s own post – it was simply growing too quickly, and had reached the point where it needed to be out there on its own.

The Central Question: Should My Game Be Canceled?

Answering this question was the original motivation for publishing the article, and the advice within remains: three different ways of getting to the right answer to the question. Those techniques have been placed in their own standalone article.

PRINCIPAL SOURCES (in no particular order):

ABC-TV (Australia): Coronavirus symptoms explained – what happens when you get COVID-19 and how likely is a full recovery?
ABC-TV (Australia): Coronavirus FAQ: Frequently asked questions about COVID-19
Australian Government Dept Of Health: Coronavirus (COVID-19) web-page as retrieved 14th March 2020
KVIA.com: Coronavirus Outbreak Timeline Fast Facts
Facebook: Coronavirus Q&A with Dr Norman Swan
ABC 7 (New York): Busting COVID-19 Coronavirus myths: Facts from the Centers for Disease Control
ABC News (Channel 24, Australia): “The Virus”, broadcast March 8th, 2020
ABC 7 (New York): How is Coronavirus spread? Symptoms, prevention, and how to prepare for a COVID-19 outbreak in the US
Worldometer: Coronavirus Web-page
ABC News (Channel 24, Australia): Covid-19 Stimulus Package Review & Analysis with David Spears, broadcast March 12th, 2020
World Health Organization via New York State Senator Alessandra Biaggi (Twitter Account)
Dr Faheem Younus, MD, Chief of Infectious Diseases, University of Maryland UCH (Twitter Account)
ABC-TV (Australia): Fact Check Website

Tags: DM-Advice, Game-Administration, News, Player-Advice, Opinion

Comments Off on We Interrupt Our Regular Programming 1: Covid-19, The Facts

We Interrupt Our Regular Programming 3: Cancel My Game?

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Management, Mike, The Adventurer's Club (Hero System 5th Ed), Zenith-3 (Original system based on Hero System 4th Ed), Players, Opinion, Zener Gate on Mar.15, 2020

This article has now been split into three parts.

Part 1: Covid-19 Facts, Analysis, and Advice
Part 2: Busting Covid-19 Myths
Part 3: Should My Game Be Canceled?

Each part will link to the other two, and they will all be extended and updated as necessary.

Don’t Panic! imagination will still be here tomorrow.
Image by Patty Talavera from Pixabay, text by Mike

Part 3: Should your next RPG Game-session be canceled because of Covid-19?

Having summarized just about all the available knowledge on the subject, we’re now in a position to consider the question originally posed: Should your RPG be canceled for a month or so?

There are multiple ways to analyze the current situation where you are in order to answer that question, hopefully with a fair degree of consistency between them. They rely on the facts and analysis already presented, and don’t rely on any of the myths. They do presume that you are following the advice given.

Rather than answering a definitive “yes” or “no”, let’s look at the conditions under which you should cancel:

Gaming At Home, and you are feeling unwell. Don’t take chances, self-isolate. That means the game should be canceled. And your friends warned that you may have already exposed them.
Gaming At Home, and one of your players is feeling unwell. This is a more difficult decision. If there’s any risk that the ill player has exposed anyone else in your group to the virus, the game should be canceled.
Gaming At Home, and someone started feeling unwell a couple of days after you last played: Absolutely cancel the game; the previous session almost probably took place while the ill person was infectious, assuming they have contracted Covid-19, and that means that everyone else at the table might be infectious but not yet experiencing symptoms right now. Respond accordingly.
Gaming At Home, and everyone is already suffering from presumed or confirmed cases: Why, you self-centered bastard! Don’t expose others by traveling to someone’s place to game and don’t require others to do so. Cancel that game!
Gaming At Home, and the entire city/country is in lock-down: Anyone contemplating gaming in this situation isn’t just self-centered, they are stupid. And a menace to the public health.
Gaming in public with more people than the current association limit: Stupid, stupid, stupid. Violating the limits of association for ‘frivolous’ reasons in this manner leaves you open to prosecution almost certainly, fines if you’re lucky, jail if you aren’t. Assuming that the cop you are endangering doesn’t solve the problem directly – if the association limit is 500 people, they probably won’t, if the limit is 5 or less then the odds go way up, because the limit would only be set that low (or lower) if the situation was truly dire. Of course, if you or one of your players is showing symptoms, all bets (and games) are off.
Gaming in public with 1/5th the current association limit or more, but less than the actual limit: I’ve chosen my wording very carefully on this one. The game store where I co-GM the Adventurer’s Club campaign usually has some sort of trading game tournament underway at the same time – twenty-plus tables with 4-5 people at each, and there used to be more until they moved to smaller (but more accessible) premises. That puts them at the bottom of this range. Frankly, this situation is more about the travel to and from the venue than anything else; if unnecessary travel is banned or advised against, then cancel. If not, and the venue isn’t providing hand-cleaning to everyone entering the premises, either take your own or relocate the game, or cancel. Finally, even if all the other conditions for a go-ahead have been met, if anyone’s unwell, cancel is the prudent course of action.
Gaming in public with less than 1/5th the current association limit: Take reasonable precautions – but game on! – unless someone is showing symptoms or has other reason to suspect possible infection.

In other words:

DON’T break quarantine or isolation
DON’T break limits of association
DON’T put others in a position of violating restrictions
DON’T put others at risk
DO think of others
DO protect yourself
DO protect your friends
DO look ahead

Looking Ahead

If things get as bad as they possibly might, the Italian solution might be the right one. Right now, no-one knows for certain. The time to start preparing for the worst case is now. The trigger for implementing your plans and preparations is the day that citizens are advised to avoid unnecessary travel, or even to avoid travel altogether. Very few countries are at that point yet, and some may never reach it. Others may implement the restriction by the back-door method of shutting down public transportation.

Have a plan agreed upon with your players and friends.
Establish channels of information.
Investigate the option of virtual gaming in advance.
Contemplate figuring out how to run your campaign by email, or by chat room.
Plan for alternative venues, and for alternative digital venues.
Make sure everyone knows, and can access, any software required. And any URLs required.
Prepare any physical venue appropriately.
Know whose responsibility it is to verify whether a game can go ahead or not.
Know when the decision has to be made.
Take responsibility. It’s your game.

Don’t Panic! Our dreams will still be there tomorrow.
Image by Jin Neoh via FreeImages.com, text & trickery by Mike

I was already contemplating this much-larger-than-a-fill-in post when it became clear that the next part of the Sixes System would take longer to write than the available time.

So, when my free time was suddenly opened up by the cancellation of the Australian F1 Grand Prix, I took it as a sign…. Part 3 of the Sixes System, “Doing Things” will follow next week, I hope (and expect).

Because of the subject matter, and it’s urgency and relevance, I might post this early.

Addendum 15 March 2020:

This morning, as I was contemplating the question posed in the last line above, and whether I could make my conclusions any clearer, and before I’ve caught up to date with developments over the last 24 hours, a different way of looking at the question came to me, which provides the clearest guideline yet.

Count up the number of people who will normally be in attendance at your gaming venue. At home, that’s probably just you and your players; at an outside venue, it could be hundreds or thousands.
Subtract about 20% for people who will stay home because of the current situation.
Add an estimate of each unique individual that any of your players and GM will encounter on their trip to the gaming venue. Depending on the route followed and the means of transport, that might be a handful (travel by personal automobile or walk), dozens (travel by public bus), or over a hundred.
If there are going to be other people at the gaming venue, or that you will encounter in the course of normal activities like buying lunch, add in 10% of an estimated number of contacts for them, too.
Compare that result with the limits currently recommended for congregations. Where I am, that’s a limit of 500; at other places, it might be 5,000, or anything in between. If there are any reported cases in your country, state, or city, assume a figure of 5,000 in the absence of any guidance. Since we’re counting people encountered casually en route, and they aren’t double the limit.
If over the original limit – cancel. If over the elevated limit: cancel.
If anywhere close to the increased limit (above, say, 75% – cancel through prudence. If none of you are in the higher-risk categories, you might increase that to 85% of the limit. For each person in the higher-risk categories, drop it by 5%, or even 10%, depending on how cautious you want to be.
If more than about 10% of the limit, proceed – but with precautions.
Otherwise, go right ahead. Unless the travel itself is forbidden by your local authorities.

Using this test, let’s take my planned game for next week: 2 players plus myself. I don’t have to travel, so +0. One of my players has to catch two buses: figure a worst-case of about 20 people on each: +40. The other has to catch a train and a couple of buses: figure 250 for the train and 40 for the buses: +290. Getting lunch: 2 vendors, plus 10% of the number of customers they are likely to encounter in a day: +10% Î 2 Î 500 = +100. Total = 433. All three of us are in the high-risk group (two diabetics and one person around 65), so start with the 75% threshold and drop it by 15% to 60%. The current limit of congregations where I am is 500, which doubles to 1000 – 60% of which is 600. It’s safe for this game to go ahead – at least at the moment. Especially if I force the players to wash hands after buying lunch (and before eating it).

The week after is my superhero campaign. Four players, including both the players listed above. Another traveling by train (+100, these aren’t as packed as the other trains). The fourth travels with the second, so his encounters are already counted. Same venue, same lunchtime arrangements. 4+40+290+100=434, plus the lunchtime 100. This is getting close to the threshold of 600, but if the same limits still apply, this should still be fine – especially with the same requirement as above. However, elevated risk categories suggest an abundance of caution, so “should be fine” is probably a 50/50 proposition – with a bias toward prudence.

A week after that, the Adventurer’s Club campaign with the same players plus two more, and a public venue, normally with about 60 people present. One of these additional players takes the train (+200 people), but both the player who normally takes two buses to my place usually travels with myself and the sixth player (-40). Lunch probably increases in risk to 200 people, +100 over the previous figure. Figure that those 60 people have probably contacted (collectively) another 1200 discrete individuals in the course of their day – that’s another +120. Putting those together: 534+2+60+200-40+100+120 = 976. Unless the venue cancels its regular activities (removing those 60 people and their 1000 contacts), this is right at the limits of permissible risk. We should at least talk to the players about cancellation or relocation. Given that several participants are in the high or highest risk categories, it’s probably a washout.

Being Realistic with some Worst-Case projections

Sydney currently has a population of about three-and-a-half million. At last count, there were 112 known cases current in this state; I’ll assume that they are all here.

Number of current cases doubling every 5 days? That means that they are increasing by a factor of a touch under 1.15 per day. If you’re infectious for two days before developing symptoms, that’s 1.15 Î 1.15 = Î1.32. So 112 known cases means 148 people undiagnosed. It’s easy to postulate a worst-case situation in which there are ten times as many people carrying the disease as there are known cases, but the mathematics just doesn’t stack up; if that were the case, there would be virtually zero chance of not catching the virus over the next twenty days, and the country would be locked down like Italy. It’s not – yet.

We also know that in up to 20% of cases, people will experience no symptoms at all. That’s a times (100/80)^5 factor that we should also take into account. That works out to be a Î3.05 factor. And 3.05 Î 1.32 = 4.028.

Worst-case, then, there might be as many as four times as many infectious people out there as there are currently-active cases.

Next Weekend’s game

For Sydney, under the assumptions given, the projected number of infectious people, based on these simple calculations, is currently 448 people.

Given that those are yesterday’s numbers, and that they are doubling every five days at the moment, continuing with the worst-case calculations, next Saturday there will be Î2^(7/5) = ×2.64 cases. 448 Î 2.64 = 1182.

Even if NONE of these have self-isolated, the odds of encountering one of them are infinitesimal: 1182 / 3500000 = 0.03378%.

Most of us will encounter only 100 people, maybe 200 at most, in a day. If you work in a busy store as a cashier, you might get to 1000 encounters a day. To calculate the risk, we need to work on the part of the equation that reduces – that’s the chance of being safe. 100 – 0.03378 = 99.96622% per encounter.

0.9996622^100 = 0.966778 = 96.68% safe, 3.32% risk.
0.9996622^200 = 0.934661 = 93.47% safe, 6.53% risk.
0.9996622^1000 = 0.7133 = 71.33% safe, 28.67% risk.

A week from now, expect the number of hours a cashier can work to be restricted. Halve the number of contacts in a day, drop that 1000 to 500, and you greatly reduce the risks to us all:

0.9996622^500 = 0.84457 = 84.46% safe, 15.54% risk. Even that is higher than the government will probably be comfortable with, so there will be even tighter restrictions if current trends don’t improve.

But for most of us, a 3-to-7 percent risk? We might think about it, and then we’d probably take those odds – in a game. But this is real life, with no mulligans on your saving throw. Exercise appropriate prudence according to the situation around you.

The risk to next week’s game is – well, not negligible, but not substantial, either. And remember that all these numbers are the worst-case scenario.

A week later?

1182 Î 2.64 = 3121 infectious people. Out of 3.5 million, that’s 0.0891714% risk, or 99.911% safe – per daily encounter. (Remember, divide the estimated infectious by 4 to get the number of confirmed cases expected at this point; 3121 / 4 = about 780).

0.99911^100 = 0.9148 = 91.48% safe, 8.52% risk.
0.99911^200 = 0.8369 = 83.69% safe, 16.31% risk.
0.99911^1000 = 0.4105 = 41.05% safe, 58.95% risk.

If current trends continue, the risks will have become too high at this point for life as normal. Further restrictions on travel and association are virtually certain, as are the closure of non-essential businesses.

But the risks to Saturday Week’s game are – still not trivial, but not all that dangerous, either.

Two weeks from now?

Twenty days from now, the Adventurer’s Club campaign is due to continue. If cases double every 5 days, that’s 16 times the current number of cases – so 112 Î 16 = 1792. Four times that gives the number of infected people out there, worst-case: 7168.

7168 divided by the population of Sydney is 7168 / 3,500,000 = 0.002048, or a massive 0.2048%. That means that 99.7952% of the time, you will be fine going about your usual daily routine.

But:
0.997952^100 = 0.81464 = 81.464% safe, 19.536% risk.
0.997952^200 = 0.66364 = 66.364% safe, 33.636% risk.
0.997952^1000 = 0.12872 = 12.872% safe, 87.128% risk.

Those risks are clearly significant. Before this point is reached, I would expect significant restrictions on congregating and traveling to be put in place. In the worst-case scenario.

The Adventurer’s Club campaign is almost certainly going to be a casualty of the pandemic, at least for the time being. If current trends continue, and the worst-case materializes.

Don’t Panic! The world will go on, tomorrow.
Image by Nikki Ovadia from Pixabay, text by Mike

Applying these standards elsewhere

Some numbers will change when you’re looking at somewhere else. The number of confirmed cases, the size of the population, the estimated ratio of confirmed cases to infectious people, the number of encounters per day – these are all subject to local variations. I’ve given my calculations in such detail for two reasons: first so that you can copy them and do your own, relevant to your situation. Remember, worst-case means being pessimistic but not alarmist.

If you only have total numbers for your state, assign them proportionately by population to your city or town. For example, as I type this, Illinois has 32 confirmed cases and 92 test results pending. Worst-case scenario, all 92 come back positive, so that’s 124 cases. According to Wikipedia, Illinois has 12,419,000 people, with one major city (Chicago, obviously) and several smaller ones. If you are in Springfield, Illinois, population 114,694, your “share” of those cases will be 0.924% – call it 1.24 cases. Worst-case scenario, so let’s assume that you’ve got more than your share and bump that up to 3 by doubling it and rounding up.

Because of the problems described elsewhere in this article, I’m inclined to bump the ratio of infectious citizens to confirmed cases up by at least 50%, to 6. So that gives 18 infectious people theoretically loose on the streets of this small city.

18 / 114694 = 0.000157 = 0.0157%.

In a city this size, you might encounter 50 people on an excursion down to the local gaming store (assuming this city has one).

1 – 0.000157 = 0.999843.
0.999843^50 = 0.99218 = 99.218% safe, 0.782% risk.

Right now, gaming is as safe as it’s ever likely to get.

Three weeks from now, we’re talking about a 16-fold increase in the number of cases (worst-case scenario). The 18 people has become 288 people and the 0.0157% has become 0.0157 Î 16 = 0.2512%.

1 – 0.002512 = 0.997488.
0.997488^50 = 0.8818 = 88.18% safe, 11.82% risk.

The odds are still in your favor, but I’d start taking precautions.

Five days later, 0.2512% becomes 0.5024.%
1 – 0.005024 = 0.994976.
0.994976^50 = 0.7774 = 77.74% safe, 22.26% risk.

It hasn’t quite doubled, but it’s close enough to it that you would have to seriously consider canceling. And five days after that, if there’s another doubling, that’s about 44% risk, and there would be no question but to cancel. That’s a 20+10=30 days prediction – worst-case scenario.

An observation

The rapidity of change within the situation implied by a doubling every five days is absolutely massive. Public authorities can’t make policy based on the way things are right now – they have to assume that the information they have is already out of date. Instead, they have to make policy based on next week, and the week after, in an attempt to corral that increase and cut it down – massively. If it sometimes seems like the policies being put in place are premature, or a panic-based response, take that into account.

Why these calculations are totally bogus

There’s one absolutely massive factor that these calculations aren’t taking into account. As a result of policies now in place, whatever they might be and wherever you are, the number of encounters per day that you are likely to experience is almost certainly way down on the norm. As things grow worse – which they will, for a while yet – that number will further decline.

And that makes a huge difference.

0.999^1000 = 0.3677 = 36.77% safe.
0.999^500 = 0.6064 = 60.64% safe.
0.999^100 = 0.90479 = 90.479% safe.
0.999^50 = 0.9512 = 95.12% safe.
0.999^25 = 0.9753 = 97.53% safe.
0.999^20 = 0.98 = 98% safe.
0.999^10 = 0.9900045 = 99.00045% safe.

The more this number declines, the more that “doubling in five days” slows down. Modeling that is beyond my basic math; I can see how to do it, but not how to determine all the variables. But it would be a computer algorithm that takes each day’s result and uses it to calculate tomorrows’ result, and the result the day after, and so on, because the key variables would change on a daily basis.

This is why I kept on insisting that the projections were a worst-case scenario – because I knew that I was willfully ignoring a compensating factor that would make a BIG difference. Once again, the lesson from these projections is: Even the worst-case scenario looks scarier than it actually should be. Take appropriate precautions and obey the restrictions placed on movement and gathering in numbers, and DON’T PANIC.

PRINCIPAL SOURCES (in no particular order):

ABC-TV (Australia): Coronavirus symptoms explained – what happens when you get COVID-19 and how likely is a full recovery?
ABC-TV (Australia): Coronavirus FAQ: Frequently asked questions about COVID-19
Australian Government Dept Of Health: Coronavirus (COVID-19) web-page as retrieved 14th March 2020
KVIA.com: Coronavirus Outbreak Timeline Fast Facts
Facebook: Coronavirus Q&A with Dr Norman Swan
ABC 7 (New York): Busting COVID-19 Coronavirus myths: Facts from the Centers for Disease Control
ABC News (Channel 24, Australia): “The Virus”, broadcast March 8th, 2020
ABC 7 (New York): How is Coronavirus spread? Symptoms, prevention, and how to prepare for a COVID-19 outbreak in the US
Worldometer: Coronavirus Web-page
ABC News (Channel 24, Australia): Covid-19 Stimulus Package Review & Analysis with David Spears, broadcast March 12th, 2020
World Health Organization via New York State Senator Alessandra Biaggi (Twitter Account)
Dr Faheem Younus, MD, Chief of Infectious Diseases, University of Maryland UCH (Twitter Account)

Tags: DM-Advice, Game-Administration, News, Player-Advice, Opinion

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The Sixes System Pt 2: Education, Abilities, and Tools

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Mike, PCs, Players, Rewards, Rules & Mechanics, The End Of The Rainbow, Writing & Authoring & The Games Industry, Dr Who: Lovecraft's Legacies, Vehicles, Metagaming & Metagame Theory, Original Game Systems on Mar.10, 2020

This entry is part 3 of 9 in the series The Sixes System

Image by Noupload from Pixabay, background, shadows, sparkles, and crop by Mike

0. Fundamentals (repeated for all posts:)

— The Sixes System has been used in my Dr Who campaign since September 2014, and has just come to a successful conclusion.

— Characters are constructed using a point-buy methodology with NPCs generatable using die rolls for speed.

— Success or Failure on tasks is determined by adding dice to a pool based on ability and circumstances which are then rolled against a target number determined by the GM.

Clarification
Some feedback I got from the previous part of the series said “some interesting ideas, like the Nimbleness/Intelligence thing. But it also leaves me wondering how you can have an Int-based character without an Int score.”

My reply: If you need to and can’t find a better general term, you could use “Intelligence” for the sixth stat. But there will usually be a better choice: Engineer, Detective, Problem-Solver, Archaeologist, Jet-jockey, Inventor, Science, or even Time Lord. And any of them will tell you more about the character than “Intelligence” does.

3. Skills

Skills define a character’s expertise and abilities. The breadth of what that encompasses means that there are a lot of rules relating to Skills.

Characters may spend as many Character Construction Points on skills as they have unspent.
Stats cost 2 Construction Points to buy to rank 1 and the one point to raise by 1 thereafter.
Characters may buy skills as hobbies (rank 0) for 1 point. It only costs 1 construction point to elevate a hobby to a full skill.
Players define their own character’s skills.
Skills include spells, super-powers, mutant abilities, etc, as appropriate. Where necessary, the effect should be described in both in-game and game-mechanical terms. Such descriptions should occupy no more than 1 line each. See sections also 13 and 19, and section 3.1 below, for guidelines.
When acting, Characters may divert “skill ranks” from a spell or power (reducing the ability to target/use a spell correctly) into greater levels of effect. Each capability of this type will have an irreducible base level of effect that must be approved by the GM. Capabilities with a better base level of effectiveness may incur additional character construction costs to (1) purchase and (2) improve. See section 3.1 in the discussion below for guidelines.
The GM must approve a character’s skills, and is free to require greater precision if that seems appropriate, or to reject a choice as being too narrow. These decisions must be justifiable in terms of the campaign genre.
Skills may be as broadly-defined as a player wishes provided that they do not encompass an entire profession, or as specific. Cultural and Social context thus defines the expected norm. Since the GM provides this cultural and social context through his campaign background, and furthermore interprets genre through that background, these should be considerations in determining whether a skills is too narrowly-drawn or too broad.
Skills are defined by their name. Skill names may be interpreted in any one of three different ways: (1) as a profession, encompassing everything that the practice of that profession uniquely demands; (2) as an action, in which case the name must be, or must contain, a verb; or (3) as a field of expertise, i.e. knowledge, which incorporates practical knowledge at one rank lower unless a character also has the appropriate practical skill.
As a rule of thumb, no one skill should encompass everything that the character does with the user-defined stat.
A character attempting a task for which they have no skill subtracts two dice from their pool.
A character with only a hobby only subtracts 1 dice.
A character with an appropriate skill adds 1 dice per rank in the skill.
Where a character has no specific skill that exactly describes (in general terms) what the character is attempting to do or know, but which comes close, the GM may designate the skill as “tangential” to the attempt. This adds no additional dice to the die pool, but avoids the subtractions described earlier.
Where a character has two or more skills that could apply to a situation, the character may add 1 temporary skill rank for each such skill. The GM is entitled to restrict this as he sees fit. That may include excluding certain skills, requiring those skills to have a minimum number of ranks, or any other restriction. He should be consistent in his approach, though exceptional circumstances may lead to exceptional rulings.
One skill that should be highlighted is the character’s primary attack skill, if any. Unlike most skills, compound terms may be entirely acceptable. For example, “Broadsword with medium shield” is a perfectly-reasonable skill.
Any other combat skills must have fewer ranks than the primary attack skill. A combat skill is defined as a skill that can be used to inflict damage on an enemy. Note that “damage” may have a broad interpretation, it is not necessarily restricted to physical harm.
Normal characters skills are capped at 4. Exceptional characters are capped at 6. Explicit GM permission and written justification, which must be approved by the GM, is required to exceed these caps.
Characters may take Handicaps to increase their Character Construction Points. A Handicap is a Skill that is reduced to negative ranks, i.e. below zero. Such handicaps are worth as many skill points as the negative ranks. Handicaps can only be reduced with GM permission; they are considered part of the character’s definition.
In play, a character may only improve a skill by one rank at a time without GM authorization. Essentially, the player will have to justify the change in terms of the concept that he sold to the GM in the first place. The GM may mandate a disadvantage or other penalty to compensate.

Designer’s Notes & Discussions: Skills

The Innovations

I hesitate to describe “choose your own skill definition” as am innovation since I used this as a feature of the Zener Gate system. However, this dispenses with the classification into broad, narrow, or specific and treats all skills as the same. I also want to note that skills should be interpreted as Holistic (see Precision vs Holistic Skill Interpretation).

Greater novelty is shown in the idea of including everything from spells to paranormal abilities into the skills structure. While this notion derived from the notion that all such abilities have an incorporated skill that defines how good the character is at using that ability and how successfully they can go beyond the normal restrictions that they or the rules have defined for that ability, it is important to note that in this game system, these have no other existence. A skill is an ability to do something that has been refined and improved through education, training, and practical experience – and that includes all those extraordinary abilities. Beyond that, it all comes down to genre limits and character concept.

Incorporation of “Handicaps” as negative skills is both a new concept and something that has antecedents ranging all the way back to the original Hero System, if not further. The concept that they are treated as “locked skills” is the new thought in this aspect of the game system. A number of similar treatments are contained in the game mechanics used for my superhero campaign, and have been since the 1990s.

Finally, the presence of a “define your own skills” mechanic in a game with at least one self-described stat choice makes this game system more responsive to character concept than just about anything else I’ve seen. That also skirts close to being an innovation – close enough to warrant mentioning, anyway.

Self-Defined Skill Choices

I want to quote a couple of the rules above as the starting point of this subsection:

Skills are defined by their name. Skill names may be interpreted in any one of three different ways: (1) as a profession, encompassing everything that the practice of that profession uniquely demands; (2) as an action, in which case the name must be, or must contain, a verb; or (3) as a field of expertise, i.e. knowledge, which incorporates practical knowledge at one rank lower unless a character also has the appropriate practical skill.

As a rule of thumb, no one skill should encompass everything that the character does with the user-defined stat.

I thought it might be helpful to discuss example skills that reflect each of these rules.

“Blacksmith” or “Blacksmithing” is clearly a profession, and is a perfectly satisfactory skill for anyone but a Blacksmith. If the character has listed “Blacksmith” as his sixth stat, he can’t have a skill of the same name – and no single skill is precise enough to distinguish his capabilities within his field. The best approach is to list all the sub-skills that a blacksmith might have – “Blacksmith: Design”, “Blacksmith: Metal Purification”, “Blacksmith: Metal Casting”, “Blacksmith: Metal Fabrication”, “Blacksmith: Horseshoeing”. “Blacksmith: Repair Metal Object”, “Blacksmith: Accountancy”, and so on. Then delete the word “Blacksmith”, if necessary, rearranging the sequence of words to make more sense; thus, this list becomes “Design, Metal Purification, Casting (Metal), Fabricate (Metal), Horseshoeing, Repair Metal Object, Accountancy,” etc. This breaks the profession down into its essential skills list, things that the character should reasonably expect to have at least one rank in. Another valid choice would be “Blacksmithing: History” which would become two skills, “History (Blacksmithing Tools & Techniques)” and “History (Blacksmithing Styles)” – though I would personally recommend to the player that “Metalwork Styles” might be a better definition, simply because it becomes clearer what the skill encompasses.

The above paragraph also contains examples of all three skill-name interpretations:

– “Accountancy” (or perhaps “Bookkeeping”) is a profession.
– Casting (Metal), Fabricate (Metal), and Repair Metal Object are clearly examples of actions, each containing a verb – casting, fabricate, and repair, respectively.
– The two history skills are clearly defined as Knowledge skills.

It’s generally fairly straightforward. But there can be traps for the unwary – and I’ve just demonstrated one of them without most people even noticing.

“Accountancy” can also be considered an area of Knowledge, with both a theoretical branch and a practical branch. Simply taking “Accountancy” means that the character has studied the theory and law of accountancy, which implies the practical skill of “Applied Accountancy” at a rank one lower – unless the character buys it explicitly.

What the character really wanted was that practical skill – perhaps better described as Bookkeeping. All of the above still applies, but this time, the theory of bookkeeping – why it works – is inherently relevant; you can’t perform it by rote without slowly absorbing and understanding the principles behind it, at least in its basic and most common forms.

This shows both the subtleties and complexities with which the GM must grapple, but it only has to happen once, during character generation. The speed in play, responsiveness, and flexibility of the game system makes it a price worth paying.

Spells, Powers, and Abilities

Line of thought #1:

When you attack with a weapon, there’s a skill roll to see if you connect and a game mechanic for determining the damage that you do. The critical requirement is the use of a piece of equipment, to wit, a weapon.

When you attack with your bare hands, there’s a skill roll to see if you connect and a game mechanic for determining the damage that you do. If you do not have an appropriate combat skill, everything remains the same, but you lose some dice from the die pool.

When you attack with a spell or an ability, it works exactly the same way. So why not list spells and abilities as skills, the same as either a bare-hands or weapon usage skill?

Line of thought #2:

When you attempt to force open a door (for example), you make a roll with a die pool in an attempt to reach a target number that has been set by the GM. The number of dice in that pool derive from the Stat (probably STR, possibly the self-defined stat) that you are using and the Purpose with which you are using it (probably Attack). The size of that die pool is modified by any relevant skill you might have (or the absence thereof). You may also get some additional dice in the pool from a crowbar or other tool (see equipment, below).

When you attempt to force open a door using Telekinesis, you make a roll with a die pool in an attempt to reach the target number that has been set by the GM. The number of dice in that pool derive from the Stat (probably “Psionic” in the 6th slot) and the Purpose with which you are using it (probably Attack). Instead of additional dice from equipment, you get additional dice from having a genuine skill called Telekinesis. Sound familiar?

When you attempt the same trick using a Telekinesis spell, the only real difference is that your stat is probably “Spellcasting” or “Magic” or some-such, still in the sixth user-defined slot. That’s the only difference.

Those lines of thought explain how powers and abilities of all types are implemented within the game system. If the game mechanisms are the same, why should such abilities be handled any differently by the system?

Similarities and Differences between Spells, Powers, and Abilities

Is a Beam Of Light, defined as a “Blinding light so bright that it can cause unconsciousness” the same thing as a Stun Ray, defined as an “Energy beam that causes unconsciousness”?

The game mechanics are exactly the same, but that doesn’t make the two abilities the same. Your target might have a force field that prevents stunning attacks and other physical harm. That would stop the Stun Ray but not the Blinding Light. At the same time, the target might have a smoke grenade (or equivalent), which would interfere with the Blinding Light – but have no discernible effect on a Stun Ray.

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

When it comes to the use of powers, spells, and special abilities, the GM has to determine what happens, guided by – in sequence – the name and narrative description; the game mechanics description; and the basic game mechanics.

That gives an extraordinary capacity for uniqueness to the system. I expect players to initially simply copy the vernacular and descriptions from some other game system with which they are familiar, but that won’t last.

The Effect of Spell Diversity

It may be pointing out the obvious, but there is a reasonable correlation between “skill” in a spell and it’s effectiveness. Having more ranks means that more difficult tasks or targeting can be undertaken, and also means that more ranks can be diverted to enhanced levels of effect without compromising the ability to use the spell.

The typical D&D Mage gains access to an average of 39 spells every 2 levels – call it 20 spells a level – and that’s not counting the 19 cantrips (3.x). It’s rare for a mage to actually acquire anywhere near that many – my experience suggests that at high levels, a mage might know up to 75% of the available spells, at mid-level, that’s more like 50% (and there are fewer spell levels to which the mage has access), and at lower levels, 30% is doing well, and 25% is more common.

Let’s divide the spells, including the cantrips into three groups: 0th to 3rd level, 4th to 6th level, and 7th to 9th level. That gives us 150, 127, and 94, respectively, in terms of availability. Applying the percentage estimates gives:

Low Level: 25% of 150 = 38
Mid Level: 50% of 150 = 75; 25% of 127 = 32; total 107, increase from low-level of 107-38=69.
High Level: 75% of 150 = 113; 50% of 127 = 64; 25% of 94 = 24; total 201, increase from mid-level of 94.

Let’s further assume that half these spells are just improved versions of spells the character already has access to, conflating these similar spells. That gives 19, 53, and 101 spells, respectively.

At one rank in each, under the sixes game system, that’s 19 skill points, 53 skill points, and 101 skill points. Typically a beginning character, even an exceptional one, will have about 30-50 character construction points to spend on skills and equipment; 19 chews up a considerable number of those. By mid-level, you might have a dozen adventures under your belt, earning an average of perhaps 7 construction points each – that’s 84 in total, under estimates that are fairly generous. From that 84, some will have been spent improving stats, some will definitely have been spent improving non-spell skills, and some will have been invested in improved skill in the spells the character already knows. That doesn’t leave a lot – perhaps 20 – to cover the 69 needed for additional spells. The gap only gets bigger with high-level characters.

And that’s only pushing the existing spells by a couple of ranks, nowhere near the six maximum permitted by the rules.

Too few points, too many things to spend them on – that’s a recipe for individuality.

There’s a feedback loop: things that the character finds useful, he will sink points into. The more points that have been invested in something, the more flexible and useful it becomes. The more flexible and powerful an ability is, the more it will be a first resort – in other words, the more the character will find that ability to be useful. You can start with 10 identical characters and each will find his own M.O. and improve different things by different degrees. Some may diversify, becoming a jack-of-many-trades; others will narrow their focus and become experts in a narrower field. This is especially true if they are adventuring together, because the next character over already has the specialist skills needed to handle certain problems; this character will automatically get “more bang for his buck” by focusing his efforts elsewhere.

None of this is accidental.

3.1 Effectiveness Levels

As a rule of thumb, each spell or ability rank will translate into a d6 of effectiveness or less. So a knife or a sword will cost 1 point, a great-sword having 2 dice of effect will cost 2 points, a large-caliber pistol having 3 dice of effect will cost 3 points, a large-caliber rifle will have 4 dice of effect and cost 4 points, 5 points gets you a grenade, and 6 gets you a ww2 mortar shell, several sticks of dynamite, etc. 7 would be a world-war-two bomb with several hundred pounds of high explosive, 8 would be a small a-bomb, 9 gets you a thermonuke, and 10 would be a doomsday weapon. That’s all on the personal scale, the effect on the individual; vehicles handle things differently, and so do starships. Of course, since 1 rank costs 1 point once the initial purchase to 0 ranks has been made, these translate directly into ranks in a skill. The biggest thing that’s man-portable here is the mortar, and that’s only because we’ve developed shoulder-mounted missiles that do equivalent damage.

Any of the above can kill you, but the odds go up rapidly with increasing ranks of effect. Still, most things are survivable (under the right conditions) until you get to the 6-ranks level – then, the only survival option is to be elsewhere or prevent it going off somehow.

This same scale is intended to apply to everything (again, talking at a character level). If you’re using TK, then 1 rank gets you “enough TK to have 1 dice of effect under normal conditions and circumstances”, two ranks gets you 2 dice of effect, and so on.

Range is another factor. 1 rank is close-quarters, 2 ranks is arm’s reach, 3 ranks is maybe 100 meters (use feet if you’re more familiar with them even though 100 feet is nothing like 100 meters), 4 ranks is perhaps 1500m (or feet), 5 ranks and you’re measuring in kilometers or miles, and on up from there.

Except that increasing the range for the base level of a power, or increasing the ranks of effect for that matter, sucks ranks out of the skill base. A base level with 2 dice of effect and 3 ranks of range – a sniper rifle, say, without enhanced sights – extracts an additional 1 rank and 2 ranks, respectively, for a total of 3. This “penalty” is added to the cost of rank 0 in the ability – so rank 0 now costs 3 skill points, rank 1 costs 1 more skill point, and so on.

If and when advancement means that the six-rank limit is violated, this cost is also added to the price of each additional rank, and it may be necessary (it usually will be) to get GM approval.

To continue the sniper rifle-equivalent example, once the character has purchased 3 ranks in the “skill”, he is theoretically at the 6-rank limit. However, he still does not have 6 ranks in the “skill” itself, which is the hard limit – so he can continue to improve it. Each increase in rank will now cost +3 points, however – so rank 4 costs 4 points, and so will ranks 5 and 6.

Instead of 7 points to reach rank 6, this ability would cost 16 points – more than double.

I tried putting this in game mechanics with the rest of the skills rules; it was just confusing. So I decided to violate my own post architecture and put the commentary/explanation first, foregoing the rule. In the standalone rules compilation, the above will be translated into game rules.

4. Equipment

The possession of any skill implies access to the normal equipment required. That means that very few rules are required to handle equipment.

Most equipment simple adds or subtracts ranks from a skill that uses the equipment.
- Superior equipment/tools add +2 to +4 ranks. NB: +3 and +4 are only available through “extra-normal” means).
- Good equipment/tools add +1 rank.
- Standard equipment adds 0 ranks and is presumed to have been acquired in the course of gaining the skill that uses it. This presumption means that it doesn’t have to be listed – but there are exceptions discussed in 4.1 through 4.7, below.
- Poor equipment/tools costs -1 rank.
- Substandard equipment costs -2 ranks.
- Inferior or Improvised Equipment costs -3 ranks.
- Cursed Equipment costs -4 ranks and is only available through “extra-normal” means.
Poor equipment cannot reduce skill ranks below 1 if the character has 1 or more ranks in the skill.
Good equipment cannot increase skill ranks higher than 6 except through GM permission and exceptional circumstances. However, unused ranks can be taken into account by the GM in setting target numbers or to otherwise offset penalties that might apply; this is a circumstantial factor for the GM to take into account.
Good equipment cannot compensate for a handicap to anything better than a hobbyist standard of ability (0 ranks). Unused equipment ranks cannot be used to offset penalties elsewhere. Having better equipment than skill and training warrant is useful up to a point, but after a while it becomes sheer affectation.
“Extra-normal” equipment may violate the above restrictions at the GM’s discretion. Such equipment should always be central to the immediate plot.
If the character doesn’t have the equipment that is normally assumed to come with a skill, in addition to any other penalties accruing through the rules, the GM can reduce the primary die pool of the character by 2 for any rule requiring that equipment.
Some equipment is “demanding” in that it can only be used at less than its potential if you do not meet the required skill minimum. An unskilled driver can essentially learn to drive a formula-1 car at a fraction of its capabilities (it may take them a dozen attempts to actually get it moving without stalling, however). Only if you have the minimum skill level that the vehicle requires can you even get close to it’s limits. Similarly, certain weapons are “demanding”, sacrificing accuracy for power – until you become sufficiently skilled in their use. Each rank in skill required equals one rank of “demanding”.
“Demanding” equipment may also require a specific Stat to have a value greater than 10 for the effective use of the equipment. Each +1 to the Stat minimum over 10 is one rank of “demanding”.
“Demanding” equipment may also require the character to have a skill in using this specific piece of equipment rather than a more general skill. This is worth a single point in “demanding”.
“Demanding” ranks can be used to offset additional base effect limits. This increases the rank at which the increase in cost takes effect, but does NOT alter the amount of the increase. See 3.1 above.
The cost of equipment equals the number of ranks of benefit that it provides, plus any extra ranks required to meet the base description (refer 3.1) in either range or level of effect, less any unused ranks in “demanding”.

4.1 Magical Gear

Any equipment or tools can be designated “magical”, explicitly “stating” how the benefit is achieved, and that wards and protections against magic are effective against this particular equipment. Magical equipment may bypass some ‘mundane’ protections or reduce their effectiveness.

Magical equipment can contain one or more spells. The maximum rank in beneficial or nominally advantageous spells that can be contained is equal to the ranks that the equipment confers. The base cost of a spell is the number of ranks in the spell, plus one.

If the spell is self-recharging, +1 point.
If the spell can be replaced with a different spell by the user (Variable spell), +1 point.
If the character is required to know the spell, -1 point.
If the spell is triggered automatically or at will, +2 points. If it requires a spoken command word or a gesture, +1 point. If it has a more complex activation procedure that will take a character’s full turn, +0 points.
If the item already has a spell incorporated that is not to be replaced by this spell: +1 per additional spell.
If the spell can be used an unlimited number of times per day, +3 points. If it is restricted to the number of ranks conferred by the equipment per day, +2 points. If it can be cast only once per day, +1 point. If it can only be used once in a longer period or once only, and is not self-recharging, -1. Anything else: +0.

For example, as explained in 3.1 above, a standard broadsword costs 0 points but would only have 1 rank of effect. To fully meet the description of the item, it must have an additional rank in range (to arm’s length) and an additional level of effect, a total of two ranks of improvement. Thus, the cost of a non-magical broadsword is Quality+2 points.

It’s not reasonable to impose a STR minimum or DEX minimum in excess of 10, and the character might not have DEX anyway – this is a common weapon in its era and genre. So there can be no reasonable “difficult” modifier for stats.

This ubiquitousness also restricts the other major form of “demanding” on offer – a skill minimum – as the GM makes clear that he won’t accept a rank requirement of more than 1 to use the weapon. That’s “Demanding -1”, though, which is better than nothing, and reduces the cost to Quality+1 point.

The third avenue of “demanding” would mandate a named piece of equipment and a specific skill in using this equipment rather than the general “broadsword” or even more general “melee combat”.

Since the character intends this to be a magical weapon, this is tempting, but it would also restrict his options if this weapon was unavailable for some reason. The situation is closely-enough balanced that some players would choose the additional rank of “demanding” and the lower cost, while others would not.

For the sake of the example, we will say no, and keep the price to Quality+1. Next, the character chooses the quality of item; since this is not D&D, in which magical swords are next to unbreakable, the character decides to limit his risk and go for quality +2 ranks, a total cost of 3.

This brings the total ranks of the sword to 3 – the base 1 and the +2. So the sword, being Magical, can contain spells totaling three ranks. The character decides to choose one rank 2 ability and one rank 1. For the rank 2 ability, he chooses “Heal, command word, self-recharging, 3 times per day, self only.” For the rank 1 ability, he chooses “Mend, automatically activated, self-recharging, 3 times per day, self (magical broadsword) only.”

Heal: Rank 2=2+1=3 points; command word=+1; self-recharging=+1; 3 times per day=+2; total cost = 7.

Mend: Rank 1=1+1=2 points; automatic activation (damage to weapon (self))=+2; self-recharging=+1; 3 times per day=+2; one spell already in the item=+1; total cost = 8.

This leaves only the “self only” restriction, which is not listed above on the standard list of price modifiers. The player tries to convince the GM that it’s worth a -2, but the GM stands firm and lists it as a -1 cost modifier. However, he offers the player a deal: if the one set of activations covers both spells, he’ll consider that worth another -1 each. This would mean that the sword can heal itself or its wielder, once per day, and – given the activation methods, the sword will take care of itself first and it’s wielder as an afterthought. While the player dislikes the restriction from a purely tactical perspective, he likes the amount of character it gives the weapon. So he accepts the devil’s bargain offered by the GM, but tries to argue that this restriction should be worth -2 points instead of -1. The GM listens, then again offers a compromise bargain: -2 to the Heal spell, because it might not be available at all if the weapon is badly damaged. Expecting the GM to again stand firm, the player accepts the offer. That gives him a 3-point reduction in the cost of the Heal spell, and a 2-point reduction in the cost of the Mend spell, for 4 and 6 points, respectively.

The final description of the sword now reads:

3 Broadsword, magical +2 skill, 2 effect, range: arms reach, difficult: 1 rank rqd.
    4 Heal, 2 ranks, command word, self-recharging, 3 times per day*, wielder only.
    6 Mend, 1 rank, automatic, self-recharging, 3 times per day*, self only.
        * activation limit covers both spells

‘Molthar’ is a typical broadsword with red-leather handle and round guard. If it is damaged, the pieces will fly back together and the sword reform. It can also be ordered to heal it’s wielder. ‘Molthar’ looks after itself first and its’ wielder second, and has the personality of a crotchety old man, reluctant to get up in the mornings, needing to take naps regularly, and bone lazy the rest of the time. [Character name] needs to talk to it for at least a round before it is willing to ‘get with the program’ at such times. He also imagines that ‘Molthar’ talks back to him in his head if he speaks aloud, maintaining a running commentary on his owner’s faults, the current situation, and his opinions in general, and won’t listen to anyone who tells him otherwise.

The GM chides the player on being overly fulsome in his narrative description – easily twice the three hand-written lines allowed – but approves the weapon for use.

4.2 Hi-tech & Sci-Fi Stuff

In terms of game mechanics, this works exactly the same as Magical Gear. What it can do is sometimes a little more nebulous; the GM should continually revise his estimates of what a “Gadget” can do based on the needs of the plot, the player’s ingenuity in using what he’s got, and the cost paid. Many things will function “at the speed of plot” and in accordance with the “rule of cool” – within reasonable limits.

Image by Iván Támáís from Pixabay, crop by Mike

4.3 Vehicles

Dice of effect in vehicles can be used in five ways (not all simultaneously, thank goodness!); Speed, Acceleration (to top speed), Handling, Load, and Stopping. Each of these has 1 base rank at no cost. Specifications can impose modifiers to these actions; increasing one costs 1 point, decreasing one costs -1 point. In addition, each vehicle has “controllable effect” which is purchased like any other ranks of effect in other gadgets; this can be applied to any ONE of these four criteria at any one time. The rest are maintained at the base levels. “Load” represents the vehicle’s ability to carry a load.

Weapons and Armor are “extras”, that is, they start at 0, but they are common add-ons. In addition, the vehicle designer must spend points according to the top speed of the vehicle.

When operating a vehicle, in most cases, the GM will focus on navigation, or the environment through which travel is taking place, or simply hand-wave the entire journey. Most vehicles will operate at the speed of plot, within reason. But there may be times when more substantial determinations are required.

If the character decides to act principally on the current Speed of the vehicle that means that his priority is maintaining the current speed and operating the vehicle in a safe manner. The “controllable effect” ranks are applied as extra dice to the relevant driving skill, as is the modified base ranking in the four ‘stats’. The GM sets a target as usual (still to be covered) and if the character beats it, he can increase or decrease the speed as he sees fit; the GM interprets the results to decide how much or how little the speed changes. He then compares the Base Speed given above with the other functions and if they are going to be needed in the ensuing Round. If they are, he notes the difference in base levels and recalculates the success without the difference in the best and worst die results, in that order, against the same target.

I appreciate that’s not terribly clear, so let me clarify with a theoretical example or two.

Let’s say that a vehicle has speed 2, acceleration 1, stopping -1, handling -1, and load 2. It has three ‘controllable effect’ dice as well. From the Stat and Purpose, the character gets 8 dice, and from his ‘driving’ skill, 2 more.

The vehicle is proceeding at high speed, weaving in and out of traffic. The Character has to make a driving roll not to get cut off and be forced to slow down, so his focus is on speed. That adds 2 more base dice and three controllable effect dice, for a total of 15.

The car is big and doesn’t handle very well, and the conditions are clear; the GM sets a target of 39 and because of the heavy traffic, requires 3 sixes. The character rolls 6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, a total of 44. What’s more (despite appearances), the character has achieved his target number of sixes – two of them directly, and the third by compounding the three fives and both fours. So he has succeeded in keeping his speed up.

However, he’s weaving in and out of traffic, which the GM feels will require a handling check. Disregarding the three effect dice and 2 speed dice gives 5 dice off. The -1 to handling removes a sixth. Alternating between the high and low ends, starting with the high, the dice previously rolled are excluded – that’s the 6, a 1, the second six, the second 1, a five, and a third one, and leaves 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, for a total of 29. Fortunately, the number of sixes requirement doesn’t stand, but the character is 10 points short of the target, so he has hit something in the course of his maneuvering. Since this hasn’t cost speed, it’s not a stationary object; it’s most likely that cars have been hit and possibly spun around.

The GM decides that two cars and another object have been struck in one major collision and two smaller ones, doing (respectively) 6, 3, and 1 dice of effect to the PC’s car. Using random rolls without a table and proceeding by instinct, he announces that one car has been spun around, damaging the handling of the car still further, a second hit has taken off the bumper and forced another car to brake suddenly to avoid hitting it, causing a possible pile-up; and the minor collision is rear-ending a police car, damaging the radiator and possibly the engine.

Having split up the dice of effect, the GM rolls for each of the impacts and determines the damage done to the vehicle being pushed way beyond its safe limits, given the conditions.. He’s clearly thinking Smokey And The Bandit or the car chase scene from The Blues Brothers. But going any further is beyond the scope of this example.

Compare that with the outcome with the same rolls but in a sports car:

The vehicle has speed 3, acceleration 2, stopping 1, handling 2, and load -3. It has three ‘controllable effect’ dice as well. From the Stat and Purpose, the character gets 8 dice, and from his ‘driving’ skill, 2 more.

The driver makes Speed the focus of his action, as before. That adds 3 more base dice and three controllable effect dice, for a total of 16 (one more).

The car is small and nimble and conditions are good; the GM sets a target of 39 and because of the heavy traffic, requires 3 sixes. The character rolls 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, a total of 50 – and three sixes outright. So he has succeeded in keeping his speed up.

To the handling check: Disregarding the three effect dice and 3 speed dice gives 6 dice off. Handling 2 puts two of them back, a net loss of 4 dice. Alternating between the high and low ends, starting with the high, the dice previously rolled are excluded – that’s the 6, a 1, the second six, and the second 1, leaving 6, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, for a total of 41, two better than the target.

This is what this type of car is built for! It dodges in and out of tiny little holes in the traffic like they were custom-fitted.

Environment
The GM may add additional costs to reflect unusual operating environments.
Surface only = 0 points; submersible or in the air = 1 point, submarines and extreme altitude aircraft (above 35000 feet/ 6.6 miles / 10.7 km high i.e. above the cruising altitude of a 747) = 2 points, near-earth = 3 points, permanently submerged = 3 points, local planets = 4 points, and so on.

The presumption is that these are traversible in a “reasonable” time-frame, but “reasonable” is in inverted commas for a reason. A “reasonable” trip to the outer planets takes years. If the vehicle can go faster than that, the GM should increase the cost. Each additional point should increase the speed at least 5-fold (except the first, which is only 3-fold), so we’re talking about a significant increase in pace.

Automobiles
Example: Ordinary Cars in the 50s typically maxed out somewhere in the vicinity of 100mph (161 km/h). If that’s our baseline, then +1 points would get a car that operated at between 100mph and 300mph (formula one cars and elite racing motorbikes). +2 points gets us into the territory world land speed record attempts (1500mph – almost Mach 2). +3 points takes us way beyond the known limits of mechanical systems (4500mph, Mach 9.855), +4 points takes us beyond even that. The current world land speed record is 763.035 mph, to put these speeds into context.

But in the 2020s, you can get ‘production’ sports cars that rival formula one cars, and a standard production car costing around $20,000 US new will get closer to 160mph (about 260km/h) at top speed. Reflecting the limits of mechanical systems and the efforts of rule-makers to contain burgeoning speeds (and safety risks), formula 1 cars aren’t going much faster in a straight line, but go around corners enormously faster than they could in the 50s. The net effect, according to one set of calculations, is that the 1955 cars were only 10% as fast as the 2017 cars, and they have only gotten faster since. Part of that increase is the result of building down to the race limits – f1 cars at one point were designed to last for two hours or 300 km, whichever came first! – and then had to be completely rebuilt. Recent changes to the rules have forced many key components to last for multiple races and qualifying and practice sessions, by limiting the number of units that can be used in the course of a season, so this is only partially true these days.

Aircraft
These speeds are also not that far out of the ballpark for propeller-driven aircraft, which have a maximum service ceiling somewhere in the vicinity of 60,000 feet. In 1912, the 100mph limit was broken for the first time; in 1918, the record was raised to 163 mph, and a year later, to 191.1. Neither of those last two records are officially recognized though; so for that we have to wait until 1920, when the record officially goes up to 191.9. The 200mph mark is broken in 1921, the 300mph mark in 1928, and the 400mph mark in 1931. The record for a propeller driven aircraft was raised a number of times through the years that followed until a new mark was set in 1939 of 469.220mph – and then the jets took over. It would not be until 1960, more than 20 years later, that this achievement would be bettered in a propeller-driven aircraft – 541.45 mph in level, controlled flight.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective: cruising speed for a modern aircraft is likely to be around the 250-300mph mark. +1 points covers all propeller-driven aircraft. It also covers all 747s and similar aircraft. To go supersonic is +2 points, and covers all aircraft up to about Mach 5. Faster than this are Hypersonic aircraft, like the Lockheed X-17. All told, and not counting Spaceplanes, there are 8 hypersonic aircraft models, and 19 more in development. These cost 3 points. Four points would cover everything from Mach 25 to Mach 125 – speeds at which Mach numbers are actually irrelevant. That’s fairly close to the highest speed ever achieved by a manned earth vehicle – Apollo 10 when it orbited the moon.

Spacecraft
But you wouldn’t use those speeds for space vehicles. The baseline here is probably the Atlas rockets used by project Gemini – 6,700 mph – though it’s more normal to use speeds per second and kilometers which gives a nice, neat 3. +1 points gets you triple that, or about 9 kps, or 20,000mph. +2 points is 45 kps, or 100,000 mph. +3 points is 225 kps or 500,000 mph – or 0.075% of the speed of light.

Starships
Starships and other interstellar craft therefore require a new scale: let’s pick 1C for the baseline. 1 point gets us 3C; 2 points gets us 15C; 3 points is 75C; 4 points is 375C; and 5 points is 1875C.

Again, we need to put those numbers into perspective. Alpha Centauri is 4.1 light years away. To get there, and ignoring the need to accelerate and decelerate, 3C is almost exactly 500 days. 15C is therefore 100 days; 75C is 20 days; and 375C is 4 days. 1875C is a little over 19 hours. 36 days is how long it took Christopher Columbus to reach the Bahamas in 1492. That time-span comfortably in the 3-point range.

Sailing Ships
For sailing ships, it’s probably more reasonable to pick a top speed and work backwards. We aren’t talking about modern liners or warships here; these are olde-time vessels of canvas and wood and the occasional nail. Let’s say that the fastest modern racing yacht is a 5-point affair and see where it gets us, working backwards.

According to Google, In November 2012, the Vestas Sailrocket 2 was clocked at an astonishing 59.23 knots (68.1mph), smashing the previous Speed Sailing record by 4.1mph. Six days later, and it broke the record again, clocking 65.45 knots. Let’s assume that this is not the absolute limit, but it’s getting close to it, and set an absolute limit of 75 knots. One glance at the opening paragraph of the Starships section tells the story: Like most of the other land vehicles, we have a 3-point scale, and 3 points gets you speeds up to 75 knots. 2 points therefore gets you speeds of from 3 to 15 knots. This comfortably encompasses 17th century sailing ships (4-6 knots) all the way through to modern container ships (12 knots). It’s quite possibly too broad a scale – but the difference (a point or two) isn’t worth fussing about.

Military Warships
Introducing military vessels complicates matters because they vary in size and weight so much. It’s hard to pick a baseline, and one or two points is almost certain to cover everything there is. It’s probably more important to scale their displacement tonnage and assume that the speed costs are all 1 or maybe 2.

But that brings me to weapons.

4.4 Melee Weapons (M)

Melee weapons generally do 1-4 dice of effect. They can have ranges of 1-3 points, as described earlier (see 3.1 and the example earlier). A critical hit in combat will multiply the dice of effect.

4.5 Ranged Weapons (R)

Excluding firearms, you’re looking at 1 dice of effect for everything that’s not a siege engine. Those are up around the 4-5 dice of effect. Maybe even 6 for a really big one.

Accuracy is far more important with ranged weapons; it can be almost impossible to hit the broad side of a barn – if that barn is far enough away, of course!

0-50m = no loss
51-150m = 1 additional six required
151-750m = 2 additional sixes required
750+ m = 3 additional sixes required

(this may not mean much until we get to the combat section, but the “fundamentals” at the top of the post should give you a clue).

4.6 Firearms (F)

Firearms don’t rely on muscle power to launch a projectile; they use a chemical reaction. That gives the relatively low-mass bullet a relatively enormous velocity, at least when it leaves the muzzle; at a range of 500m (assuming your weapon can shoot that far), it will have lost roughly 1/2 it’s velocity, and will be down to 1/4 of it’s kinetic energy. That’s 1/4 of the damage potential. If you fire straight up, you’ll lose energy faster due to the force of gravity – but not a lot faster.

In it’s own way, the rough equality is a godsend, because it means that you can more or less aim for where you want to hit; if there was a significant difference, due to atmospheric density or a different gravity field, the accuracy would vary with the angle of elevation of the weapon, and you would need to make a significantly different correction for targets that were higher than ones that were lower.

The system makes the assumption that all firearms are optimized around a particular maximum range dictated by the ammunition, and that within that range there’s no range effect to worry about. Outside that range, you’ll lose a dice of effect against targets of triple the range of effect; beyond that, you’ll lose two dice of effect, but by this point, accuracy is by far your bigger concern.

0-100m = no loss
101-300m = 1 additional six required
301-1000m = 2 additional sixes required
1001+m = 3 additional sixes required

(Same comments as at the end of the section on ranged weapons).

4.7 Bigger (Heavy) Weapons (H)

The simplest way to construct vehicles in a game system is to construct them as characters and then vary the scales. Instead of referring to how much a character can carry, the STR value now relates to the amount that a vehicle can carry in it’s holds (or in the boot or back tray or whatever’s appropriate).

This system doesn’t go quite that far, but it does state explicitly that different vehicle types have different scales of movement. But that, in turn, implies that there are different scales of weapon – the bottom end of the next scale up being more effective at killing or damaging a target than what’s normal in the previous one, even if that means that you have to cap the previous scale, or have them overlap.

Tanks are great against other tanks and lightly-fortified installations. They aren’t much against heavily-armored warships – though they could probably make a mess of a cargo ship with repeated fire. Tanks will get unprotected people – defined as anyone not in armor or having protection of some sort – very dead very quickly. If we include all forms of artillery in this one scale, the baseline is the WW2 mortar – which has six dice of effect against unprotected humans, but probably won’t do much to a tank except possibly with a direct hit. So that’s what you get for one point. Two points gets into modern artillery, and modern tank weapons. These are designed to kill other tanks and lightly armored installations. I don’t know if they would be enough to take out a heavy bunker from the WW2 era, though. In this category we would also find shoulder-mounted missiles.

Next up, for three dice of effect, we’re into the naval guns on a modern battleship – twenty-inch stuff. A single ship might have three or more of these and be able to lob the shells over the horizon. Four dice is a big bomb, with several hundred pounds of high explosive. Five dice is an air raid of such bombs, up to and including the fire-storming of Dresden in WW2. This is also where the a-bomb can be found. Thermonukes are six dice of effect – from the hundreds of kilotons of explosive or low megatons, all the way through the range to the big ones.

But it’s worth noting that Nuclear weapons have been shrinking for many years. That’s because the value in terms of destruction doesn’t increase in proportion to the force of the explosion when you get to these scales. Not even close, though the actual drop-off is not a settled matter – I’ve seen everything from an inverse-fourth-power relationship to an inverse square-and-a-half relationship put forward. Anything more than about 20 Megatons is considered waste, spending most of the extra making sure that you’ve killed something that’s already dead. Instead, multiple warheads in a single missile is the more frequent design objective these days – break that 100 Megaton weapon up into 5 20-megaton devices and spread them around for five times the pain inflicted.

If spacecraft and satellites weren’t built to the flimsiest possible standard, a Nuke in space wouldn’t be much more than an inconvenience – unless you achieve a direct hit, or close to it. Of the 360×360 degree panorama, the target occupies a minuscule fraction of the sky and therefore receives a minuscule portion of the total harm doled out by the weapons. At least 95% of the fury is likely to just vanish – and that’s for a large and relatively close target. The farther away it is, the more infinitesimal that tiny fraction becomes.

No, effective space combat a-la Star Wars will require a whole new order of weapons, and a 20-megaton thermonuke is very much the bottom end. Plasma Torpedoes and Phaser Banks and what-have-you. And these vessels tend to have defenses to match. Against these weapons, bomb shelters and concrete bunkers will crumble and your best battleship steel is so much tinfoil.

Anything else / In general

Characters should pay what they want a vehicle or other piece of equipment to be worth to them. 1 point is enough to give a character an ability they didn’t have before, 2 points makes it better in one significant respect, 3 points begins to confer flexibility, and so on. If a player decides to spend 4 points on a superior handgun (and it’s genre-acceptable), the GM should determine the specifications of the weapon based on that price and what else the character would have been able to buy for the same points. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a hovercraft, or a crate of eels. You get what you pay for..

Designer’s Notes & Discussions: Equipment

The Innovations

Describing equipment in terms of the bonus or penalty they confer upon skills when used is nothing new. But the notion of equipment as ‘demanding’ in various ways (as opposed to merely being restricted in usage) is semi-new (directly inspired by the ‘limitations’ in the Hero Games system, and using that to create and express a personality is definitely newish. The multiple-scale approach to defining equipment is something that I haven’t seen before.

Equipment Descriptions

Descriptions should concentrate on putting everything that the game system “needs to know” on one line. Most equipment requires no further explanation than the name, possibly preceded by the quality – “Superior Lockpicks”, “Good Handcuffs”, “Magical Ring”, and so on. Narrative descriptions should focus on the effects (if any) but may note anything unusual about the item. Where possible, this should be placed on the same line.

3 Superior Lockpicks +2 – smaller, lighter, and more easily hidden than usual

is a perfectly satisfactory description.

Note that the description does NOT restrict the bonus to lock-picking; while there may not be many skills with which a set of lockpicks can be used, there are other pieces of equipment that are more flexible.

Vehicle Descriptions

Vehicles often require more lines of description. One for the make, model, color, and interior color/decor, and any identifying number that is externally visible or can be interrogated; one spelling out the dice of effect and other mechanics details; one giving the vehicle a personality; and one reserved for recording any damage that needs repairing. Players will often add a fifth, providing additional description.

Weapons Descriptions

Weapons need one line of specifics (Maximum Range should be noted, ammunition (if any), clip size (if relevant), and so on.) and may have a second line of description. It is often useful to append the range modifiers relevant to the weapon. Additional line(s) may be required for any spells, extra abilities, and add-ons that have been incorporated. I gave an example of a Magic Broadsword earlier; other, non-magical add-ons can be incorporated the same way and within the same rules. For example, a +44 magnum may be bought with “Intimidation +1” as an add-on. One point that should have been made earlier is the weapons code – this was shown in sections 4.4-4.7 in brackets – M, R, F, H – which is a shorthand reminder to the GM of the applicable rules. It may also be necessary to state the scale of the weapon – so H-Artillery or H-warship or H-sailing ship or H-starship or whatever

Not all weapons need a narrative description. But exceptional weapons and any that have been customized or modified from standard should have those alterations explicitly stated.

It may be observed that these rules still haven’t told you how all this is actually used in play, not completely, anyway. That’s the agenda for Part 3, “Doing Simple Things”.

Tags: Game-Mechanics, Original-Game-Systems, PCs, RPG-Theory, Writing, Vehicles, Equipment

Comments Off on The Sixes System Pt 2: Education, Abilities, and Tools

The Sixes System Pt 1: Fundamentals

Written by Mike Bourke

This entry is part 2 of 9 in the series The Sixes System

Image by sinepax from Pixabay

0. Fundamentals (repeated for all posts:)

— The Sixes System has been used in my Dr Who campaign since September 2014, and has just come to a successful conclusion.

— Characters are constructed using a point-buy methodology with NPCs generatable using die rolls for speed.

— Success or Failure on tasks is determined by adding dice to a pool based on ability and circumstances which are then rolled against a target number determined by the GM.

1. Stats

Stats have 8 basic rules:

Normal Characters may spend 30 Construction Points on Stats during character construction. Exceptional Characters may spend 50 points.
Stats cost 4 Construction Points per stat point to improve during character construction and 6 Experience Points thereafter.
Characters can reduce stats to harvest points, but these points can only be spent on improving other stats. Since the price is the same, this is essentially one-to-one transfer û put one stat up and the other down.
There are 6 stats: Strength, Nimbleness (or Intelligence), Dexterity, Glibness, Aim, and “?”. See below for definitions and explanations.
Stat values range from 2-12. Characters cannot exceed these limits during creation but may do so through the expenditure of experience.
All characters start with a base value of 6 in each stat for free.
No more than two stats should have the same score at the conclusion of character generation, and only one such pair is permitted. Once play has commenced, the expenditure of experience may cause violations of this rule.
Players/GMs should consider listing stats in sequence of high-scores to low-scores. Refer designer’s notes for explanatory comments.

1.1 Strength (STR)
- Strength is the ability to effect or resist change in a situation by physical force.
- Characters can typically lift 2.5 kg per point of STR with an adequate grip, up to STR 6.
  - STR 7 +5kg = 20kg
  - STR 8 +5 kg = 25kg
  - STR 9 +10 kg = 35kg
  - STR 10 +10kg = 45kg
  - STR 11 +15kg = 60kg
  - STR 12 +15kg = 75kg
- Weightlifting or equivalent skill multiplies these amounts by (1+ranks).
- Each point of success in a STR check adds 1kg. Each point of success in a Weightlifting skill check adds 4+d6 kg.
1.2 Nimbleness or Intelligence (NIM or INT)
- Nimbleness is used for Intelligence-oriented characters. Intelligence is used for Physical characters.
- This stat represents the characters ability (or lack thereof) outside their relevant basis of expertise.
- Nimbleness is the ability to effect or resist change by shaping or moving the hands and fingers.
- Intelligence is the ability to effect or resist change with the power of the intellect.
1.3 Dexterity (DEX)
- Dexterity is the ability to effect or resist change in a situation by altering the location of a character.
- It should be used for all movement-related skill-checks unless assistance is needed and not available.
  - Climbing a ladder uses DEX.
  - Climbing a rope uses DEX if there are climber’s knots and STR if there are not.
  - Climbing a cliff uses DEX if there are ropes and pitons and STR if there are not.
  - Running without tripping uses DEX.
  - Changing location in combat uses DEX.
  - Sneaking uses DEX.
  - Swimming uses DEX. (Staying afloat uses STR because there is no movement involved.)
- Characters can move 2+DEX in meters in combat or over difficult terrain before triggering a movement check. Checks are made AFTER movement out of combat, BEFORE movement in combat.
- Characters can sneak DEX/2 meters in combat before triggering a movement check to remain stealthy.
- Characters can run 2.5 times as far as they can walk before triggering a movement check.
  - Running skill adds 0.1 to the multiplier, and 1m to the total distance, per rank.
  - Marathon Running skill adds 1 to the multiplier, and 5 meters to the total, per rank.
- Carrying weight in excess of what the character can normally manage reduces the multiplier by 0.2 per point of additional required STR. Results less than zero indicate that the character is immobile (and probably crushed).
1.4 Glibness (GLIB)
- Glibness is the ability to effect or resist change in a situation using words, be they written or verbalized.
- Glibness is not used to employ Telepathy, but is used for any Telepathic communication.
- Glibness is used for all interpersonal interactions. It can focus on concision/minimalism, expression, plausibility, or morale, as the circumstances dictate.
- Glibness checks (usually checks against some interpersonal skill) are usually made against a target determined from a resistance roll made for the targets. Beat the target and you succeed.
1.5 Aim (AIM)
- Aim is the ability to effect or resist change in a situation using accuracy with a thrown or fired weapon.
- It presupposes that the character has the strength required to throw the object the required distance.
  - For every point of STR, a character can throw a 1/2 kg weight 1m. Multiply or divide accordingly to get the base range of any given thrown object.
  - If the object is designed to be thrown, triple the range.
  - If the object is fired by a device that stores or amplifies a character’s STR, e.g. a bow, multiply the base range by 5. Such weapons will have a STR cap; character strength in excess of the cap is wasted.
  - If the object does not use a character’s STR (e.g. a firearm) it will have a designated range, but will still have a STR requirement to use; the same principles apply.
1.6 “?” (to be determined)

This is reserved for a campaign / class-specific stat. The GM will usually mandate a default choice appropriate to the campaign genre, but it is generally recommended that characters choose something more specific to their characters. SUCH CHOICES SHOULD NOT OVERLAP PREDEFINED STATS.
- To achieve maximum benefit, the stat should encompass as much as possible of what the character normally “does”; so there is a drive towards generality, but the strictness of interpretation creates a drive towards precision.
- The limits of a skill’s meaning are to be interpreted strictly by the GM from the terminology used in the name of the stat.
- Stat titles must be encapsulated within a single word with no qualifiers.
- The GM must review and approve each choice, and should recommend a more generic term if one is appropriate. He or she is the sole arbiter of what is acceptable and what is not. As a rule of thumb, if it requires a written definition, it is not general enough and should be rejected. If you need to look it up in a dictionary, it isn’t general enough and should be rejected. If you can’t tell what a character does for a living (or will do within a campaign/adventuring party, it’s probably too general and needs refining or replacing.
- “Adventuring” or anything similar is so vague as to defy precise definition, and so is not considered a valid or permissible choice.
- This Stat is the equivalent of character levels in other systems to at least some extent. By giving characters the capacity to “choose their own stat”, the system effectively permits characters to define their own character classes while retaining game balance.
- Technically, these stats are defined as ‘the ability of the character to effect or resist change using (STAT).

A Dalek from the Doctor Who Experience, 11 July 2008, location uncertain, Image by Paul Hudson from United Kingdom / CC BY via Wikipedia Commons; background, contrast enhancement, and minor edits by Mike.

Designer’s Notes & Discussions: Stats

The Innovations

There’s a lot to unpack in the rules given above. The system contains two innovations that I haven’t seen anywhere else: The shared Stat, and the Self-Defined Stat.

By defining itself as the element that is least relevant to the character, the shared stat makes room for the Self-Defined Stat. Neither of them work well in isolation; by being a generic catch-all for “(almost) everything else”, the shared stat makes possible the Self-Defined Stat.

Self-Defined Stat Choices

Because I want the main rules to be as genre-agnostic and concise as possible, I’ve excerpted several bullet points from section 1.6 about suitable choices and translated them into paragraphs of designer’s notes below. In any published version, expect these to be relocated – some to the sections dealing with genre (Posts 7 & 8 and some back to the 1.6 from whence they came. Putting them here permits me to be a bit more fulsome than that would permit.

The “No qualifying words” is important. “Quorsh Politics” is excluded; “POLITICS” is fine. This forces both generality and concision, even though the two objectives are frequently at odds. These trends are further constrained by the need to be able to interpret the term without recourse to a dictionary or written definition; the name of the stat alone should be all the GM needs to interpret the stat and its breadth, i.e. what it covers and what it doesn’t.

In Sci-Fi campaigns, “TECH” is a popular choice (“SCIENCE” would make the character well-versed in the theory, “ENGINEERING” would make the character well-versed in practical applications, “TECH” covers both). But others might be “HELM” or “COMMS” or even “WEIRDNESS”. Or “SECURITY” or “OPERATIONS” or “TRANSPORTERS” or “TEMPORAL MECHANICS”. The last is an important example because it implies that the general terms “Mechanics” and “Physics” don’t encompass the totality of “Temporal Mechanics” as a subject – which would not be the case if it was purely a theoretical discipline; so this implies that the Stat deals with practical matters of what happens to paradoxes and temporal changes in the real world, how to employ technology relating to time-travel, and so on, in addition to the theory. And, of course, in some campaigns, some other terms might also be valid – “Swordsmanship” for example.

In a fantasy campaign, Sages might take Knowledge; Wizards would take MAGIC; Fighters might take Swordsmanship or Fortifications; Nobles might choose Duelling; Leaders would choose Command or perhaps Tactics; and so on. Rogues might choose Theft or Item Possession or Sneak Attacks û so long as they can make the case of these being significantly different. Purchasing skills, abilities, or tools, that are restricted to that mode of action would do so û something to be covered in more detail in the next part of this series.

Each genre will have it’s own set of appropriate possibilities. It’s impossible to think of all of them, which is what makes even similar characters unique and differentiated from each other. This stat, from a player’s perspective, is all about the character carving out a niche within the campaign for themselves; it’s then the GM’s responsibility to make their choice relevant. This is something that should be borne in mind when approving or rejecting choices. “Great idea but it won’t mesh with the rest of the party” should be a response always at the GM’s fingertips – but at the same time, should not be an automatic response. Take your time and try to find some way of making the choice work.

Although he’s never played the system, I know at least one player who is likely to present three choices, in order of preference. I’m not saying that you should mandate this approach; I know another player who would struggle to define one, never mind three.

It should also be noted that choosing a Stat that doesn’t encompass something a character might want to do (e.g. Casting spells when your stat is not “Magic” or equivalent) does not prohibit them from doing that task with an appropriate skill, it simply means that the character lacks a natural talent in doing so – and will therefore always be second-rate in comparison to characters WITH such an advantage.

Finally, another implication of the concept should be amplified and stapled to every players’ forehead: A clear character concept is essential to the creation of a character. That can simply be a personality within the context of the genre, or it can be a profession, or it can be a vision of how the party will function in-game – that’s all up to the player.

It does bring up an interesting choice for the GM to make, though: whether or not everyone should generate characters at the same time. If the answer is ‘yes’, you should get each player to describe their character before character generation starts and for there to be a group discussion about the choices and how the party will work together. If the answer is ‘no’, each player should be firewalled from the others as much as possible during character generation. The first promotes greater unity and overall cohesiveness, with the strength that this implies; the second promotes greater individuality. Some players will struggle under the first approach, others under the second – and some will simply struggle with choice, either way. A description of the “virtual person” and what they do and what their basic personality is, provides guidance and inspiration for the choice of Stat.

Personally, I think that the system permits such diversity of characters that no party is ever likely to have everything covered, so you might as well go for the maximum of personal expression, which means private character creation, free from the influence of others. But that might be impractical, and theory should always give way to practical reality.

Stat Sequence

It is recommended that players and GMs consider listing a character’s stats in sequence from high-score to low-score as this should speed game-play (presuming that a character relies more often on a high-value stat than a low-value stat) and should shape the player’s thought processes when playing the character, assisting roleplay. However, it is possible that some players will find consistency more useful in permitting them to know exactly where to look for a given score. As the best alternative will vary from group to group, I can’t put it more strongly than that.

Using stat sequence to encode aspects of a character’s personality probably qualifies as a third innovation within the game system, but it’s not for everyone, so I haven’t counted it.

Stat Specifics

I’ve included some specifics on how fast characters can move, how much they can lift, and so on. GMs should ignore these as much as possible – they didn’t even exist in the working draft of the rules. Instead, everything should proceed at the speed of plot – if it advances the plot for the character to do something, they should be able to do it (on a successful roll, of course). Even whether or not a roll is required should be determined by the GM on the basis of plot and excitement / fun.

Basic Stat Rules

I tried very hard to winnow the list down to only six items so as to tie into the system name, but couldn’t quite do it without conflating points that should be separate.

Mixed Scores

The system deliberately forces characters to start off better at some things than others. While it permits the expenditure of experience to equalize the different Stats, the presumption is that a character will orient himself around what he is good at, and prioritize that for improvement at least some of the time. Besides, this doesn’t matter as much once a character’s style has been established – and while a PC is busy flat-lining his stats, another is becoming very superior within his “Shtick”.

Leftover Improvement Points

The system deliberately leaves a remainder of unspent Construction Points at the conclusion of character construction. This is intended to offset the first point of Stat Improvement from Experience Points, reducing the price of that improvement to the same level it would have been at during character construction.

Optional Rule:

GMs may find it simpler to state that stats have starting values of (normal characters) 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 (exceptional characters) 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, to be allocated to the specific stats as the player sees fit. This is not the only way to arrange the scores such that the rules are met, but they should all bear a reasonable resemblance to valid arrangements.

2. Purposes

Purposes describe what a character is attempting to do with a Stat. Purposes have 7 basic rules:

Normal Characters may spend 8 Construction Points on Purposes. Exceptional Characters may spend 12 points.
Purposes cost 2 Construction Points or Experience Points per Purpose Point to improve.
Characters can reduce Purposes to harvest points, but these points can only be spent on improving other Purposes.
There are 4 Purposes: Attack/Build/Unbuild, Explain/Persuade/Emote, Defend/Repair, and Analyze/Understand/Spot. See below for definitions and explanations.
Purpose values range from 1-6. Characters cannot exceed these limits during creation but may do so through the expenditure of experience.
It is important that the sequence in which the purposes are listed is maintained. In the event that more than one Purpose might describe what a character is attempting to do, the one listed first takes precedence.
All characters start with a 6 value points to distribute amongst the four Purposes, for free.

2.1 Attack/Build/Unbuild
- This Purpose is to use a Stat to effect change in a status or situation.
2.2 Explain/Persuade/Emote
- This Purpose is to use a Stat to effect change in an attitude, personality, belief, intention, or relationship.
2.3 Defend/Repair
- This Purpose is to use a Stat to prevent change in a status or situation, or to undo a change that has previously been introduced to a status or situation.
2.4 Analyze/Understand/Spot
- This Purpose is to use a Stat to investigate, analyze, or understand a status or situation to whatever extent of which a character is capable.
- It includes the accessing of prior knowledge that may or may not be relevant. A separate action check may then be required to interpret that past knowledge.

Designer’s Notes & Discussions: Purposes

The Innovations

The entire concept of having different ways of applying Stats that apply to ALL stats probably qualifies. With six Stats and four Purposes, there are 24 possible combinations. Some will be used frequently, others only rarely.

At first, some combinations might seem to have no relevance – for example, Attack/Build/Unbuild and Glib – but then a player announces that he is attempting to intimidate an NPC. This is not explanation, not quite persuasion, and not emote unless the player states that he is simulating anger to intimidate. If that’s not the case, then it ca be assumed that some sort of physical threat is being used to intimidate, perhaps some demonstration of physical prowess – and that is certainly edging into the territory of Attack/Build/Unbuild. As soon as it does so, the precedence rule clarifies the rules situation – and suddenly, Attack + Glib = Intimidate.

Rather than trying to anticipate every possible action by a character, the system relies on the player describing what the character is doing, in narrative terms, and perhaps proposing a game-mechanics interpretation of that action, which the GM is free to accept or amend. This flexibility is key to the system being able to cope with every possible choice by a character – no more holes in the game mechanics due to the GM’s failure of imagination.

Purpose Descriptions

The intentions described by the name are the most common purposes of such a change. It’s for cases that don’t quite fit any one, exclusively, that the precedence rule exists.

Some GMs & players will understand that “Attack/Build” implicitly incorporates “Unbuild”, i.e. Destroy, and it is common to leave it off. Similarly, “Understand” and “Analyze” may be considered synonymous by some. If such compression is understood by all, the names of the Purposes may be simplified. The simplest definitions are, respectively, “Change”, “Connect”, “Resist”, and “Observe” (the latter in the Holmsian sense). But prior attempts to use these terms resulted in confusion, hence the more explicit terminology used in the Dr Who campaign, which worked quite satisfactorily..

The Nuances Of Fighting Style

One of the benefits of this system is that it permits a wide range of combat styles to be expressed while maintaining parity amongst them.

- Attack + STR = Physical Force, with or without a weapon, battering through the enemy’s’ defenses.
- Defend + STR = block an enemy’s attacks until an opening presents itself.
- Attack + DEX = Using Agility to evade an enemy’s defenses. More likely to do damage, not as likely to do a lot.
- Emote + GLIB = Using prattle, insults, etc, to goad an enemy into a rash move.
- Attack + AIM = Staying out of reach while throwing/firing missiles or bullets.

The above is just a small selection, there are many more. Whichever one a character is best at will obviously be their preferred fighting style.

It may be observed that these rules haven’t yet told you how these combinations are actually used in play – in fact, outside of the designer’s notes, there’s not much of an overt suggestion that they do, in fact, combine, though that would be a logical inference. I’ll get to that in Part 3, but first, there are more ingredients to list – in Part 2, “Education, Abilities, and Tools”.

Clarification Update:
Some feedback I got from the previous part of the series said “some interesting ideas, like the Nimbleness/Intelligence thing. But it also leaves me wondering how you can have an Int-based character without an Int score.”

My reply: If you need to and can’t find a better general term, you could use “Intellect” or “Intelligence” for the sixth stat. But there will usually be a better choice: Engineer, or Detective, or Problem-Solver, or Archeologist, or Jet-jockey, or Inventor, or Science, or even Time Lord. And any of them will tell you more about the character than “Intelligence” does.

This update will be repeated at the head of the next post in the series to ensure that everyone sees it.

Tags: Game-Mechanics, Original-Game-Systems, PCs, RPG-Theory, Writing

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Introducing The Sixes System: A Minimalist Universal RPG

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Game Mastering, Game Philosophy, Mike, Rules & Mechanics, Tools & Techniques, Dr Who: Lovecraft's Legacies, Original Game Systems on Feb.25, 2020

This entry is part 1 of 9 in the series The Sixes System

0. Preface

I’ve been thinking about writing this article – and the rest of this series – for a while now.

You may be wondering, what is The Sixes System?

It’s a slight refinement of the sophisticated but minimalist game system that I’ve been using for my Dr Who: Lovecraft’s Legacies campaign for about 3 1/2 years now.

The thought was that I might want to publish the game system as a cheap download through RPGNow or through gumroad, the front end that we’ve been using to distribute Assassin’s Amulet.

I gave myself until the final session of the Dr Who campaign to get something organized, but the reality – as it has been with other side projects from time-to-time – is that unless I can make the work do double-duty through Campaign Mastery posts, I just don’t have the time or physical capability to get it done.

So for the first couple of months of this year, I’ve been investing thought and energy into planning the best way of doing just that. This series is the solution that I’ve devised.

I’ve designed the structure of the posts in this series so that I can transform them easily into two separate documents: a rule-book and a set of designer’s notes. The rule-book will be very minimalist, which is appropriate given the way the game system works, and the designer’s notes will be everything else from these columns edited down into a very tight little bundle of explanation and underlying concepts.

These articles, in comparison, have a comparatively unlimited budget for side-issues and exposition and analysis, for additional material that will get in the way of actually using the game system, but which will ultimately shed a lot more light on the design philosophies and underlying mechanics – the proverbial nine-tenths of the iceberg that aren’t normally on display. You won’t need these notes to use the game system – you will need them to understand the why’s and wherefores.

For this reason, I don’t know how many posts it will take to corral and contain the entirety of the game system. Ideally, it will be three or maybe four. But it could be more, maybe a lot more – a more pessimistic breakdown gives eight posts. Right now, the intention is to publish them continually until the series is complete, but with the occasional break for something completely different, just as a way of keeping myself fresh. The series will be designed to be read in one continuous lump, so there will be minimal introduction between parts of the series.

Each post will consist of sections in pairs and occasionally triplets – rules & instructions, designer’s notes, and – optionally but usually – explanations and expansion and discussion. Then move on to the next section.

The table of contents below will start as theoretical (and pessimistic) but be revised after the publication of each part in the series to reflect the reality as it happens on the page.

And, at the end of it all, I can collate the text, extracting like sections, to create the publishable version of the system. Today’s post is intended to be an overview and introduction, with some very general observations.

0. Table Of Contents

Post 0

0. Preface
0. ToC
0. Underpinnings (Introduction)

Post 1: Fundamentals

1. Stats
2. Purposes

Post 2: Education, Abilities, and Tools

3. Skills
4. Equipment

Post 3: Doing Things

5. Resolving Actions
6. Setting Targets

Post 4: Campaign Infrastructure

7. Base Values
8. Disadvantages
9. Penalties
10. Experience
11. Improving Characters

Post 5: Doing More Things

12. Simple Attacks
13. Complex Attacks
14. Operating Machinery
15. Character Interactions

Post 6: Characters

16. NPCs
17. The Scales Of Ordinary
18. The Scales Of Extraordinary

Post 7: Genre Notes

19a. Sci-Fi
19b. Fantasy
19c. Superhero
19d. Spies/Agents
19e. Crime & Cops
19f. Mystery/Detective

Post 8: More Genre Notes

19g. Cyberpunk
19h. Pulp
19i. Wild West
19j. Horror
19k. Animated

Underpinnings (Introduction)

With two different campaigns starting at the same time, it was inevitable that the game systems would be compared. Just like the Doctor Who campaign, the Zener Gate campaign was always intended to have a fixed end-point.

But the Zener Gate campaign has two players, not one, and had an initial list of 24 adventure ideas while the Dr Who campaign had just ten – so the latter is finishing soon while the former still has ten or so adventures to run, and probably won’t conclude until next year sometime.

The Zener Gate campaign operates on the third Saturday of each month, while the Dr Who campaign initially operated only on the 5th Saturdays of the month (when there was one) and more recently on the second Saturday of the subsequent month as well. The latter change was to enable adventures to be completed more quickly, creating an increased sense of urgency and pace as things began to come to a head. That meant that the Zener Gate campaign was initially getting twice as many game sessions, reducing to 50% more per year than the Dr Who for the past year.

None of this is accidental; when they were to be played (and the number of players) was an integral part of the design of each campaign.

And both had bespoke game systems, though those systems had very different underlying philosophies.

The Zener Gate system was built on a bedrock of using minimal dice. Instead, it shifted target numbers with modifiers and made a big deal out of rules to add or remove one or more dice. We’ve been using it for a couple of years with only a minor tweak or two, and it works well – but it can take longer to set a target number than is really desirable.

The Dr Who system doesn’t adjust the target numbers all that much per die, and a primary functionality is adding or subtracting dice from the pool to be rolled in an attempt to reach whatever the target is. What’s more, it’s a soft target specific to that individual under the current in-game circumstances.

That means that despite any superficial similarities, the two really are chalk and cheese. The Zener Gate system is about 40 pages long (as presented here at Campaign Mastery a few years earlier); I will be very disappointed if the Sixes System takes more than about 4 pages. My original hand-written draft, used throughout the Dr Who campaign, was on one page!

But one thing that the system demands absolutely is an understanding of probability with multiple dice. If you get this understanding wrong, you will make target numbers too easy or too hard – and the difference can be only a point or two. Fortunately, any GM worth his salt can learn from experience and acquire or improve such understanding in only a game session or two. If you aren’t confident, just be a little conservative in setting your success targets until you are.

Or you can simply take the tutorial that comprises the remainder of this article!

Average, 10%, 25%, 50%, and 75%

Below, you will find a graph showing how the probability curve rises with an increase in dice. (I’ve omitted 1d6 as trivial).

Plotting with thanks to AnyDice. I appreciate that it can be hard to read something this small so you can click on the image to get a MUCH larger version to examine.

This is a really interesting image to those who are even moderately mathematically-inclined. What grabs your First, the most acute rise and fall is with 2d6; every extra dice increases the average (by 3.5, obviously), but it also flattens and spreads out the curve. Particularly interesting is the trend of the peak probability result – which not only drops a little with each such spreading of results, but the amount of drop is clearly decreasing. Finally, it should be noted that at 30d6, more than 1/3 of the curve at the low end and more than 1/3 at the high end of the results are virtually flat, essentially 0% chance of occurring. (Technically, it’s about 0.15%, which is the limit of resolution of this graph).

By itself, this isn’t terribly useful, a point that I’ve made before. What’s far more useful is a table of thresholds – the result at which there is 10% likelihood of success, and 25%, and 50%, and so on.

A table like this one:

Roll	*Ave*	10%	25%	50%	75%	90%
2d6	7	11+	9+	7+	6+	4+
3d6	10.5	15+	13+	11+	9+	7+
4d6	14	19+	17+	14+	12+	10+
5d6	17.5	23+	21+	18+	15+	13+
6d6	21	27+	24+	21+	18+	16+
7d6	24.5	31+	28+	25+	22+	19+
8d6	28	35+	32+	28+	25+	22+
9d6	31.5	38+	35+	32+	28+	25+
10d6	35	42+	39+	35+	31+	28+
11d6	38.5	46+	43+	39+	35+	32+
12d6	42	50+	46+	42+	38+	35+
13d6	45.5	54+	50+	46+	42+	38+
14d6	49	58+	54+	49+	45+	41+
15d6	52.5	61+	57+	53+	48+	44+
16d6	56	65+	61+	56+	52+	47+
17d6	59.5	69+	65+	60+	55+	51+
18d6	63	73+	68+	63+	58+	54+
19d6	66.5	76+	72+	67+	62+	57+
20d6	70	80+	75+	70+	65+	60+
21d6	73.5	84+	79+	74+	68+	64+
22d6	77	88+	83+	77+	72+	67+
23d6	80.5	91+	86+	81+	75+	70+
24d6	84	95+	90+	84+	78+	73+
25d6	87.5	99+	94+	88+	82+	77+

Again, the mathematically-inclined will notice patterns, both across the rows and down the columns. From quite early on, the differences are 3 or more to achieve the next best result. A 50% chance is the average, rounded up or down. As you get closer to 36d6, the differences across the rows grow fractionally, until they are all 5 or 6 across at 25d6. In theory, at 36d6, they will be uniformly 6 across the board.

So, the average minus 3 to 5 is going to give a 75% chance of success; the average minus 6 to 10 will give a 90% chance of success; the average plus 3 to 5 will give a 25% chance of success; the average plus 6 to 10 will give a 10% chance of success. Every 5d6 or part thereof added to the roll will increase these gaps by 1 (25%, 75%) or 2 (10%, 90%).

Master these ready-reckoners and you will be ready to grasp the shape of the probability curve that matters almost instantly once the number of dice are determined.

What’s more (and this is the other part of the game mechanics), for every 6 dice, you would expect at least one “six” result. So that’s 6d6, 12d6, 18d6, 24d6, and so on. Requiring additional sixes in excess of this average adds steeply to the difficulty – but if you get there by adding 2.5 to the target required, each, (the difference between an average roll on one die and a six), you automatically configure a system in which enough fives can accumulate to be worth the equivalent of a six.

Similarly, for each six that’s probable, you would also expect a 1. A good roll is one in which the number of 5’s and 6’s exceeds the number of 1’s and 2’s. It only has to do so by one or two to achieve a result 10 or more better than the average result – and that’s our 10% chance of success again.

Finally, let’s look at what happens to the chances of making each target by adding one or two extra dice to the mix without shifting the targets. Rather than do another massive table, which would undermine the importance of the table above, let’s pick a few representative cases. I’ll go with 5d6, 10d6, 15d6, and 20d6.

5d6:	10% = 23+	25% = 21+	50% = 18+	75% = 15+	90% = 13+
+1d6 = 6d6	23+ = 36.3%	21+ = 54.6%	18+ = 79.4%	15+ = 93.9%	13+ = 98.03%
+2d6 = 7d6	23+ = 66.3%	21+ = 80.8%	18+ = 93.9%	15+ = 98.8%	13+ = 99.72%

10d6	10% = 42+	25% = 39+	50% = 35+	75% = 31+	90% = 28+
+1d6 = 11d6	42+ = 30%	39+ = 50%	35+ = 75.8%	31+ = 92%	28+ = 97.5%
+2d6 = 12d6	42+ = 53.3%	39+ = 72.1%	35+ = 89.6%	31+ = 97.5%	28+ = 99.4%

15d6	10% = 61+	25% = 57+	50% = 53+	75% = 48+	90% = 44+
+1d6 = 16d6	61+ = 25.7%	57+ = 47.1%	53+ = 69.4%	48+ = 89.2%	44+ = 96.66%
+2d6 = 17d6	61+ = 44.4%	57+ = 66.4%	53+ = 83.9%	48+ = 95.6%	44+ = 98.9%

20d6	10% = 80+	25% = 75+	50% = 70+	75% = 65+	90% = 60+
+1d6 = 21d6	80+ = 22.3%	75+ = 45%	70+ = 69.4%	65+ = 87.4%	60+ = 96.3%
+2d6 = 22d6	80+ = 37.8%	75+ = 62.2%	70+ = 82.4%	65+ = 94%	60+ = 98.6%

The more dice there are to start with, the smaller the impact of adding one or two more – but those impacts are still profound. At the worst case analyzed, a 10% chance of success becomes 22.3% with one extra dice and 37.8% with a second additional dice. And, for the record, adding a third dice increases the chances of the “10% success” to 54.8%!

Reducing the number of dice can be equally profound:

5d6:	10% = 23+	25% = 21+	50% = 18+	75% = 15+	90% = 13+
-1d6 = 4d6	23+ = 0.1%	21+ = 2.7%	18+ = 15.9%	15+ = 44.4%	13+ = 66.4%
-2d6 = 3d6	23+ = 0%	21+ = 0%	18+ = 0.5%	15+ = 9.3%	13+ = 25.9%

10d6	10% = 42+	25% = 39+	50% = 35+	75% = 31+	90% = 28+
-1d6 = 9d6	42+ = 2.5%	39+ = 8.7%	35+ = 28.2%	31+ = 57.6%	28+ = 78%
-2d6 = 8d6	42+ = 0.2%	39+ = 1.4%	35+ = 9.1%	31+ = 30.5%	28+ = 54.1%

15d6	10% = 61+	25% = 57+	50% = 53+	75% = 48+	90% = 44+
-1d6 = 14d6	61+ = 3.6%	57+ = 12.2%	53+ = 29.4%	48+ = 59.2%	44+ = 80.4%
-2d6 = 13d6	61+ = 0.7%	57+ = 3.7%	53+ = 12.9%	48+ = 37.4%	44+ = 62.6%

20d6	10% = 80+	25% = 75+	50% = 70+	75% = 65+	90% = 60+
-1d6 = 19d6	80+ = 4%	75+ = 14.2%	70+ = 34.5%	65+ = 60.5%	60+ = 82.5%
-2d6 = 18d6	80+ = 1.1%	75+ = 5.6%	70+ = 18.6%	65+ = 41.9%	60+ = 68.4%

Again, the impact becomes less when you have more dice to lose, but it still has a massive impact. The chance of getting 60 or better is 90% on 20d6, but drops to only 82.5% if you take one of them away, and to 68.4% if you take two. Remove a third and you are down to a 50-50 chance of success!

So this is a game system in which small differences in target number make a big difference, and small changes in the number of dice required have an equally significant impact.

It might seem like this is a recipe for getting things wrong in as many different ways as possible, and yet, because the targets are based on the number of dice to be rolled, it is actually a very forgiving system, and one that can be front-loaded with drama.

And that makes it a very good mechanic to build a game system around.

Tags: Campaigns, Game-Mechanics, Original-Game-Systems, RPG-Theory, Tools & Techniques

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Would all Deities please take One Step Forward?

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Creation, D&D / Pathfinder, Game Mastering, Mike, Fantasy Games, Pulp Games, Superhero Games, SciFi & Space Opera Games, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, PCs, Planning & Preparation, Players, The End Of The Rainbow, Tools & Techniques, World Design, Pirate/Swashbuckling Games on Feb.18, 2020

Image by intographics from Pixabay

When a deity shows up in your game, how do you make sure the PCs – and more important, the players – know what they are dealing with? How do they recognize that the being that stands before them is something more than mortal?

Of course, sometimes it’s obvious that the creature before them isn’t human, but is not animal either – but in a Fantasy world full of strange creatures, some of them sentient, that’s not enough. And besides, a great many Gods look, well, human.

Cleanliness

In a game in which bathing is an infrequent luxury or a once-a-week ritual, an immaculate appearance might be a clue – but the nobility generally adhere to higher standards of personal hygiene and present just such an appearance of cleanliness, as much to associate themselves with Divinity as anything else. So that’s not enough.

Divine Aura

You could have the deity radiate an emotion that is appropriate to their divine nature and/or portfolio – but telling players that their characters feel a particular emotion can put noses out of joint, or (almost as bad) simply be ignored and discounted by the players. It’s not good roleplaying, but when the principles of good roleplaying and the principle of player independence collide, the latter tends to win, hands down, every time.

What’s more, this solution compromises your ability to express the emotional state of the NPC deity, either masking their emotion or their divine ‘aura’, or sending mixed messages.

Recognition

One of the worst possible solutions is simply telling the players that their characters recognize “X” the deity. This immediately posits the reaction, “what makes them so special?”, undermining the entire objective of introducing a deity.

Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay

Miracles / Productions

That tends to leave doing something “impossible” to establish their bonafides. But that’s a solution with a number of problems, too; for one thing, it’s not always appropriate, and for another, it makes the Gods look like arrogant show-offs. Which is fine if that’s how you want to characterize them, but not so good otherwise.

Incognito

There is a long history of Gods walking incognito amongst men, recognized only after their departure (and sometimes only with uncertainty even then). Perhaps this is the solution you’re looking for?

The problem with this approach is that it makes Deities too easy to ignore. You WANT the players paying attention when one turns up. As with the “do something spectacular” option, this is a choice that might be useful in some situations but not as a general rule.

And we’re fast running out of solutions.

Proxies

Perhaps the Gods only work through their priests, and only through dreams and visions? I’ve made the point before that it’s one thing to ignore the shouting man or woman standing on a soapbox, and quite another to ignore them when their God has given them the power to create Miracles and cast lesser spells. Even being able to summon the likeness of a God without retribution is a big deal, and would go a long way to silencing critics – of the Priest.

This solves the problem by putting it in the too-hard basket and saying “It will never happen.” Sometimes, that will work, depending on the campaign – and sometimes it won’t.

And woe betide the deity if he attempts to persuade a cynic under this model!

Image by Jills from Pixabay

Divine Aura II

What if there was something compelling about the Deity, something that forced saving throws for things that a PC would normally be able to do without a second thought – like turning away, or interrupting the deity?

We had earlier dismissed the notion of forcing actions on the PCs, but this uses an already-established mechanism for doing so. Of course, judging the difficulty involved is a bit of a tricky art – too high, and you might as well not permit a saving throw in the first place; too low and once again, you might as well not bother, because the PCs will do what they want to do, anyway.

There’s something to be said for the following approach to this question: Rate the Deity’s desire for the PCs to pay attention, his intensity, on a 1-10 scale, and set the difficulty equal to the average save value of the PCs plus this amount plus 3, 4 or 5. That means that the ‘average’ PC needs to roll something like 15 or better on the dice to break the compulsion – some may have a better chance than that, and some a worse one, but it’s not often that there is a five-point difference in save values between characters. And if there is? Instead of the +5, use a +3 or whatever to broaden the scale. Yes, it makes it easier for the characters with a good save – but it preserves the principle that even characters with a bad save have SOME chance, however small, of resisting.

And this is not a compulsion to obey – unless the instruction is “Listen Closely” or words to that effect; it’s simply to hear the Deity out and be inclined to judge him as sincere. Which means he either is sincere or is a very good liar – either works!

Another interesting option to contemplate is making this save of a type that would not be expected. The most common expectation would be for a WILL save or its equivalent – which makes it attention-getting when you need a FORT save instead, to physically force yourself to look away or stop listening. This implies that the connection is somehow more primal than conscious, at an instinctual level – which suggests interesting things about the relationship between Deities and Mortals, a bonus!

This is definitely a contender for our default position. But I always like to offer at least one alternative, on the assumption that a single choice might not suit every GM and every campaign. The more solutions, the better!

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

Proxies II

If I had been too quick to dismiss Divine Auras as a solution, perhaps I was also too quick to dismiss Proxies. After all, biblical manifestations have the voice of God coming from all manner of animals and even a pillar of flame – and such manifestations are, in their own relatively low-key way, as spectacular as a full-blown light-show.

Alas, it’s my feeling that the existence of a Ventriloquism spell undermines the drama and miraculous sense of this answer – especially since Ventriloquism is such a low-level spell (second level, from memory).

But that doesn’t completely rule this solution out; the column of fire shows that a relatively low-key manifestation in combination with the Voice can still work.

Of course, there’s a vast range of possibilities in between “just noticeable” and “over-the-top”, and that gives each deity room to exhibit their personalities. Differences between the deities can also be manifested through changes to the basic theme that reflect those differences. If you’re crossing a desert and suddenly a spot by the side of the path ahead sprouts and blossoms and erupts into greenery, centuries of growth in a few seconds, the message is pretty clear, and there is a very short list of candidates as the sender. A column of fire that doesn’t burn anything is equally good as a signature move, and so on.

That makes this a valid second default option.

Gateways

And, of course, if someone should walk out of one of these manifestations, using it as a gateway, that personage will probably do as a Deity until something better comes along, if you get my drift.

So that provides a third default answer.

This combines an image of Thoth by ErikaWittlieb from Pixabay with a beautiful Egyptian background by beate bachmann from Pixabay.

The moving finger

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” – from Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the poem The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859, with thanks to The Phrase Finder for providing the accreditation and full quote.

One of the most compelling ways a Deity can establish their divinity is by interrupting the normal flow of events – at least long enough to say their piece, maybe bestow a gift or two, and then get out of the way again. When everything except you and ‘this guy’ freezes in the middle of combat – full bullet-time effect – you tend to pay attention to ‘this guy’. Or girl. Or dog, or cow, or whatever.

I have used this approach once or twice myself as an exception, not as a default, because of a subtle undercurrent: the implication that whatever happens in that frozen moment won’t be noticed unless something is changed when time resumes. Then it’s like a jump-cut in a piece of film, the jump in a piece of looped tape that reveals the deception – see Speed if you don’t know what I mean, but it’s a gimmick that has been used a number of times!

Minor discontinuities can be ignored or pass unnoticed. But everyone should be back in their places when time resumes.

I have also employed a variant in which the universe forced the PCs to “assume their proper places” at the end of such a freeze.

Of course, the implication is that this assistance or advice or warning or whatever is forbidden – raising the question of who has the power and authority to both forbid a Deity from doing something and to make the prohibition stick – at least, up to a point. There’s a sense of evasion, of being surreptitious and covert, that you simply can’t get any other way. So, while this option could be employed as a default, I prefer to keep it in my back pocket until that special occasion for which this added sense is appropriate.

The Rarity Of Exotic Spice

Of course, none of these options should be overused, or they will lose their magic. Divine visitations should be rare events, signals that matters of greater significance than any that have come before are in the offing. Nor should they be positive from the PCs point of view, at least not all the time. It’s perfectly acceptable for a deity to turn up and warn the PCs that they are in over their heads and should go home and leave the celestial problems to “the big boys” – and just as acceptable for the PCs to disobey the instruction.

Not every manifestation should be by a friend to the party – not even a friend they haven’t met yet!

And, always remember that if the PCs receive divine assistance or instruction, so can their enemies…

Afterthought

It might behoove you to contemplate a Divine Visitation on three scales of reaction. One for the ordinary folks, one for the followers of some other deity, and one for the worshipers of this particular Deity. Ask yourself who the Deity is trying to impress? and go from there.

Personally, I would add something along the lines of reinforcement of personal convictions in the latter case, and would vary the drama of the Visitation for the other two depending on how the two Deities in question get along. If allies or neutrals, save the big production for the infidels sorry, for the non-priests. If they normally tread on each other’s toes and antagonize each other, go all out for the worshipper of the misbegotten Deity. But that’s a nuance that can sometimes over-complicate things – if in doubt, one size should fit all.

You can also think about the visitation in terms of what each character will take away from it, and put your variations there – giving a lead to your players for roleplay with pointed questions, NOT decreeing what those takeaways are going to be (except in the broadest possible terms).

Which takes me back to the earlier question: Who is the Deity trying to impress, and how are they going to react?

Tags: Behind-The-Screen, Campaign-Setting, Campaigns, DM-Advice, Encounter-Design, Game-Mastery, Inspiration, PCs, Players, Running-Encounters, D&D, Cultures-&-Societies, Tools & Techniques, NPCs, Pathfinder, Adventure-Creation

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Sparkle and Clink: Objective-Oriented Loot Placement

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Management, D&D / Pathfinder, D&D 3.x, Game Mastering, Mike, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, PCs, Planning & Preparation, Players, Rewards, Rules & Mechanics, The End Of The Rainbow, Tools & Techniques, House-Rules, Opinion, Vehicles on Feb.11, 2020

This image combines an Egyptian bracelet image by Zorro4 from Pixabay with an agate background image by Ludwig Willimann from Pixabay, photo-manipulation by Mike.

Some History

It used to be so simple, back when I first started GMing AD&D.

Each monster had a treasure type, and each treasure type had a table (or sequence of tables) that you rolled on, and a set of rolls on that table determined what treasure would be found in the vicinity. Room, Inhabitant, Treasure, Rinse, Repeat – easy!

The cracks in this edifice began to show very quickly – the first time a monster rolled up a treasure that they should logically use (instead of the crappy default weapon his race was normally stuck with).

And then, monsters with Treasures they should run from, screaming, or drop into the deepest, darkest bog that they could find. Weapons that were anathema to their kind. Armor that conferred immunity to their greatest attack. Like, any rational entity was going to leave those lying around. Pull the other one, it has bells on.

In the original DMG, there was also a table to indicate how much treasure a humanoid NPC with levels should have on them. That was fine, because such didn’t get a treasure type, they got this stuff instead. And, unless you decided otherwise for some reason, all the goodies were on or about their person, making them easier to find.

Some More History

Then I went away and did other things for a long time. But I did design a new D&D campaign, with the full intention of using AD&D once again. I knew and understood those rules, I knew where the weak points were, and what changes I would be introducing through house rules.

When I finally found the time and players to bring this new campaign to life, I was persuaded – somewhat reluctantly – to use the 2nd Edition AD&D Rules, even though I didn’t have a copy and hadn’t read them. It was, according to the most insistent player, just “AD&D with some of the bugs fixed”.

This was supposed to start out as a magic-light campaign and slowly gather magic as the party went further and further afield. After all, virtually every magic item in existence had become a fused lump of base metal in an apocalypse a little over 100 years earlier, and at the same time, Elves and Dwarves virtually vanished and mages were banished (and usually lynched) because they got blamed for said apocalypse. That eliminated most of the sources of magical equipment, so it stood to reason that magic would be lower level and far less widespread than in a standard campaign..For a while, things seemed to go okay. Bit by bit, though, things started to escape control.

Systemic Woes

And so, even though I had never GM’d the game system, and hadn’t read it in about 20 years, the decision was made to port the campaign to Rolemaster, on the grounds that it was designed to be closer to the magic-light environment that was supposed to contain the campaign.

It was an unmitigated disaster. Character conversion didn’t take the PCs back to where I thought they should be at that point in the campaign, it took them to a point equivalent to what they had achieved, perpetuating the problems and compounding them with other difficulties.

Less than a year later, the whole campaign transitioned again, this time to D&D 3rd edition. For the most part, this conversion was a success, though the characters seemed to have gained about 5 levels in process – and, unlike AD&D, and 2nd Ed, these levels were capped to a maximum of twenty. What’s more, the players demanded that their characters be equipped with things that were deemed reasonable for PCs of their level, according to the DMG.

I compromised, since it was about time for magic to start becoming more widespread than it had been before in the campaign. Where the book suggested a +3 or +4 item, it became a +1 or +2. Once again, this didn’t reset the characters to what they should have been, but it didn’t mess things up too much in the treasure department, only in the character levels department.

The new system didn’t incorporate the old Treasure Type tables, which I would have happily house-ruled to bring my campaign planning into fully-formed existence. Instead, there were a more universal set of tables in play. The problem was that the guidelines offered in the text and in the different tables didn’t match up with each other. If I set an encounter at a level that provided a suitable challenge to the PCs and was appropriate for the in-game circumstances, it came with a bucket-load of loot, and earned lots and lots of XP to boot. A large part of this discrepancy arose because of the game-system contortions, I admit, but it was an in-game reality.

In particular, it was really difficult to reconcile the treasure levels given in monster descriptions with the treasure tables in the DMG. It didn’t help that certain rooms had their own treasures provided as necessary decorations, or that monster treasures were entirely too easy to find, because I had not yet discovered the truth about the DC scales provided by the rules – which worked fine at low character levels but broke down hopelessly at higher levels.

The Bigger Picture

In part, these problems can be laid at the altar of inexperience with the game system. I was literally learning it “on the fly”.

But set that aside.

The popularity of articles like With An Evil Gleam: Giving Treasure a Personality and all the articles that were offered when the Blog Carnival topic was Making The Loot Part Of The Plot (including no less than six articles here at Campaign Mastery) – the link is to the roundup page; unfortunately, all too many of the sites are no longer in existence – shows that I’m not alone in being interested in the subject.

I’ve already suggested uncoupling XP from encounters (see Objective-Oriented Experience Points). I was thinking about that while writing last week’s article on Random Encounters, when an even more radical proposal came to mind – and that’s the subject of today’s article.

Why not uncouple treasure from the encounters, too?

A reality check of the most brutal kind

The loot that should be recoverable after an encounter should be the intersection of three different considerations: What the PCs can find of what was there for them to find, what was there for them to find because the encounter had collected it, and what the encounter had collected out of what was there for them to choose from.

Those treasure tables sure pack an awful lot of unsubstantiated assumptions into their nice simple figures, don’t they?

If the primo loot was never there in the first place, it can’t become part of a creature’s hoard.

Even if something was there, the creature will obviously either use it, destroy it, trade it, or conceal it.

If they conceal it, it may be hidden nearby or it might not.

If they use it, they may not actually have it on them – they might use it to bait a trap, or to lure dangerous enemies closer to a more deadly encounter.

Even if they use it in the traditional manner, the item may have been lost or stolen in the meantime. (The party in my Fumanor campaign at one point attracted the attention of a high-level rogue, who correctly tagged them as a pack of up-and-comers. While they were busy dealing with an encounter, he was carefully and secretly filching the best of the loot that was on offer. They never figured this out. It was only when he lost their trail in the depths of the Drow City that their treasures returned to “normal”).

If they can’t destroy it, the next best thing is putting it in the most inaccessible location the creature can reach. How many would-be thieves are really going to spend round after round groping around in that river of lava looking for dumped magic items?

There are, therefore, multiple factors eroding the retained treasure relative to what was there to begin with.

Then we get to the whole question of where the creature keeps it’s goodies. Does it bury them? Hide them on shelves? Disguise them? In one place, or dispersed over many places?

Because the searching is tedious, GMs tend to hand-wave it and simply list the treasure that’s available to be found as the treasure that has been found – I know, I’ve done it myself. If the entire party rolls, to search, and only one of them needs to succeed in order for them all to succeed, the odds of failure quickly become vanishingly small.

I don’t know about your players, but once mine found some treasure – any treasure – they tended to assume that was all that there was to find, and moved on. Smarter creatures used to leave a few “trinkets” (and a few things they had misidentified as trinkets) where they could be found relatively easily so that their main cache went undiscovered. Not that it helped the creatures much – most of them would have been killed by the PCs long before this loot was found.

The point is, of course, that the treasure tables are blatantly unrealistic and PC-friendly compared to anything even remotely realistic.

The History Of Each Object

In theory, if you can back-trace the path taken by each object to get to where it is when the PCs find it, you can make the entire campaign a far richer experience for the PCs. Arcana skills become knowledge of this history, once this unique item is identified, and each item is made a whole lot more special as a result.

The downside is that this is an impractical amount of work. I can see the potential upside quite clearly, and in my opinion, it isn’t enough.

What’s needed is to shortcut the process, killing off as much of that extra prep requirement as possible.

After tossing the problem around a time or two, I’ve come up with a two-pronged attack.

1. Create Legendary Artisans
2. Histories of Key Items only

Create Legendary Artisans

A legendary artisan is one who was so skilled that his handiwork is still routinely found, today. There should be a legendary sword-smith, a legendary armorer or two, a legendary leather-worker, a legendary potion brewer, a legendary wand-maker, and one or two more – a legendary weapon-maker, for example. Most if not all of these should be long-dead.

Each should have some distinguishing trademark by which their handiwork can be recognized.

And, finally, each should have a percentage chance of any given loot of the appropriate type being their handiwork. This need not be all that high – 5-10% – for the name to quickly be recognized. In general, the more ubiquitous a loot item is, or the more diverse, the lower the percentage needs to be. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with your Legendary Sword-smith being responsible for 25 or 30% of the blades that have survived the eons, if you want to.

Personally, I think that level of productivity probably takes away the uniqueness and becomes suggestive of an industrialized process – churning out low-end magic items to empty the wallets of tourists. If that’s you guy’s personality, then fine – but otherwise, reign in that enthusiasm a little.

This sort of detail is clearly what the authors of D&D, from 3.0 onwards, had in mind – the process of creating a magic item makes that clear with the need to create a Masterwork item. But it’s never carried to its logical conclusion.

A Problem Of Population

The sheer number of magic items that would be present in a typical game world is at odds with the concept.

If nine out of every ten characters survives to achieve their next level, we get:

which could be more usefully stated:

Log (Ln) = Log (L[n-a]++0.04575749a

So, to get one character of tenth level, we would expect there to be 10^1.4575749 = 28.6797 first level characters out there. Seems reasonable.

To get one character of fifteenth level, we need 43 first level characters.

To get ten characters of twentieth level, 74.02737 first level characters – and 82.25 zeroth level characters.

If you do the math, one twentieth-level character requires 82 zeroth + 74 first + 67 second + 60 third + 54 fourth + 49 fifth + 44 sixth + 39 seventh + 35 eighth + 32 ninth + 29 tenth + 26 eleventh + 23 twelfth + 21 thirteenth + 19 fourteenth + 17 fifteenth + 15 sixteenth + 14 seventeenth + 12 eighteenth + 11 nineteenth + the 10 at twentieth, or a total population of 733 (according to my quick math).

Let’s say that on top of that, each of these needs 10 people to feed, clothe, and equip them, and another person doing the admin. And someone needs to be in charge, so 1 nobleman. That carries us up to 8796 people.

So, in a kingdom of 100,000 people, there would be 113 or 114 such twentieth level people – each with, according to the DMG guidelines, something like 80,000 gp worth of magic gear. That’s 9 million, 120 thousand gp of loot floating around in the world.

In a kingdom of 1 million, there would be 1137 twentieth-level characters and 90 million, 960 thousand GP worth of treasure amongst them.

Okay, you say, that all sound reasonable. And then you realize that this means that the average wealth per citizen – counting everyone (except the level twenty characters) as having nothing – is more than 90 GP per head.

The problem gets worse if you factor in the assumed wealth of all the other character levels. That almost 91 million becomes 596,834,040 gp – or almost 600gp per head.

And that’s still with every peasant and noble and churchman and tradesman and salesman who doesn’t have character levels supposedly having nothing. Which I find very hard to believe.

With these survival rates and this level of wealth, that Kingdom of 1 million doesn’t really need to have any sort of economy other than adventurers going out and bringing back goodies.

The common-sense solution is to say that these NPCs form an economic hierarchy at least equal to that of the adventuring population, and probably several times it – five or six times sounds about right. If you do that, then adventuring becomes a minor part of the economy, important for other reasons, but no more-so than wheat or mining or livestock or land or trade.

What’s more, social mobility up the economic scale is likely to be a lot harder to achieve – the equivalent of a far lower survival rate. If only 1 in 10 achieves the next step in social standing, then for every noble with 80,000 gp in goodies, times that factor of five or six to get 480,000 gp or so, you need 10,000,000,000 peasants with nothing.

That 1-million-people kingdom has become a 10-billion-people problem. We don’t have that many people on the entire earth right now!

Which simply means that 1 in 10 is too harsh. Maybe it’s one in five, yielding a bottom-of-the-heap population count of 9,765,625. Suddenly, that’s sounding a lot more reasonable, if still a little high.

But you can’t reduce it too much, or adventuring becomes a disproportionate share of the economy.

There are lots of variables that you can play around with – even reducing the adventuring survival rate from 90% to 89% has a significant effect, increasing the numbers at the bottom of the pyramid a lot faster than those at the top.

If you’re really interested, get yourself a spreadsheet and start calculating the parameters of Kingdoms in your game world. And be prepared to lose a lot of time, it tends to suck you in.

Of course, all this stems from my gut feeling that an average of 90 gp a head is way too high, that it should be more like 4 or 5 gp a head, average, or less.

For our purposes, it’s enough to say that there’s a LOT of money out there. And that’s the problem – if the typical 15th level character has 22,000 gp and the typical 18th level character has 47,000 gp, how many 15th-level characters does the 18th level character need to bump off to have more wealth than most 20th-level characters (80,000 gp)?

Two.

Just two.

Yet, the disparity in levels means that you would expect the eighteenth-level character to win seven days a week and twice on Sunday. In terms of risk-vs-reward, the reward WAY outweighs the risks – if you can tell what level a character is from the gear they are carrying.

If you try and analyze table 3-3 in the 3.0 DMG, it seems to be all over the place. The first four levels are linear multiples of 300gp, at level five, that goes up to 320, and at level six, 333.3. If you plot the table on a graph, however, you get a surprisingly orderly result.

Plot of Treasure per encounter against EL

Anyone who remembers any high-school maths will glance at that and say “that looks like an exponential curve”. It might be something else, but as a first guess, that seems pretty good.

Graphing the Log of the treasure values is even more revealing:

Plot of the Logarithm (base 10) of Treasure per encounter, vs EL

From level 3 onwards, this is essentially a straight line (at least to the eye), confirming an exponential relationship. What’s more, Level 2 isn’t that far removed from that straight line – but it is noticeably just a little lower. The one case where the results have clearly been massaged is first level, and that’s entirely forgivable. No doubt a ruler applied to a printout would uncover all sorts of minor bumps and shallows, caused by rounding – every value on the chart has been rounded to a value in the hundreds.

These are results that you clearly would not have expected, just from looking at the raw numbers, which demonstrates the usefulness of the graph as an analytic tool.

An exponential or a geometric curve is exactly what you would expect to find, in any event. The question that needs to be posed is whether or not that curve is too flat? Perhaps whole thing should be shifted to the left so that the “bend” (where vertical increases become larger than the horizontal) should happen at 10th level and not 16th?

This would give a higher value for 20th level – I estimate it to be roughly 10^5.4 (using the log graph), which equals 251200 (rounding to ’00’). But we can scale everything proportionately, simply by multiplying the results by 80,000 and dividing by 251,200. Better yet, we could neaten things by setting the 20th level to 100,000gp.

If I do that, I get

EL	Official Result	Calculated Result	80k Result	100k Result
1	300	787	500	570
2	600	1033	600	750
3	900	1356	800	1000
4	1200	1780	1000	1300
5	1600	2335	1400	1700
6	2000	3065	1800	2200
7	2600	4022	2300	2900
8	3400	5279	3100	3800
9	4500	6928	4000	5000
10	5800	9092	5300	6600
11	7500	11932	6900	8700
12	9800	15659	9100	11400
13	13000	20550	11900	14900
14	17000	26969	15700	19600
15	22000	35393	20600	25700
16	28000	46449	27000	33700
17	36000	60958	35400	44200
18	47000	80000	46400	58100
19	61000	104989	61000	76200
20	80000	137784	80000	100000

What’s clear, looking at these results, which were derived using the average change in the logarithm results from 3rd level through 20th (because it gave the nice, neat total of 2.125, well almost) is that until quite high levels, the 80k adjusted result is low by almost exactly the amount that the 100k result is high – so 90k would probably yield the best fit to the existing table. But I don’t care about the existing table, I want neatness.

The first level results will still need to be massaged – the 80k adjustment to 300, and the 100k to 500.

From 3rd level to 18th level, the 80k adjusted results are down – encounters would be worth less treasure. The amounts start small – 100, 200 gp worth – but ramp up massively from 13th to 16th levels, with differences of -1100, -1300, -1400, and -1000. But there’s a difference of 500gp or more from level 9 all the way to level 18.

The 100K results are different. Every level gives more than the existing table, so if you are looking at this as a way to control treasure disbursements, you will need to find another – increasing the value of magic items MIGHT be the better way, but is a double-edged sword. The best method is a magic tax – 10% of the value to the crown every time a magic item is bought or sold. This puts the price of magic items up for the purposes of allocation, but puts them down for the purposes of PCs actually selling loot. And puts them up again if the PCs commission or buy magic goodies, to boot.

For the most part, the differences between the official numbers and the 100k results aren’t all that great – 100gp, 200gp – until 6th level. Then it’s +300, +400, +500, +800, and it all rockets up from there.

So, let’s revisit the question I posed earlier: how many 15th-level characters would an 18th-level character have to pillage before he had more gp / loot than the average 20th level character? The official numbers say 2 – but, in fact, that puts him a long way over; the truth is one-and-a-half.

With the 80k adjustment, he gets 20,600 from a 15th level character, and he needs 80,000 minus 46,400 or 34,600. So the answer is still 2, or more like 1.7.

With the 100k adjustment, he gets 25,700 and he needs 100k-58,100 or 41,900. Still only two, but the real number is about 1.6.

So both the changes provide a better answer to the problem without being completely satisfactory – and the 80K adjustment is the best of them.

Once again, feel free to set up your own spreadsheets and start playing around – and the same warning applies – prepare to lose a LOT of time. A base log value of 2.54 and a change of approximately 0.12 per EL will get you started. The lower the base, the lower the 1st level value; the higher the value per EL, the faster the curve will rise. The second is VERY sensitive.

Histories of Key Items only

Major caches might have one “signature” item per 25,000 of value. It’s worth thinking about the history of that one item. Your 20th level character will probably have 3 of them, and a 20% chance of a fourth. Fewer than 1% would have five.

These are items whose history can be discerned from details of the construction, decoration, and makers’ marks, at least in part – it might not be clear how they came to be where the PCs find them!

I’m fond of the idea of a mad alchemist whose potions are always in a bottle of green glass. Sometimes his healing potions are an ointment, sometimes you have to quaff them. He was notorious for adding little “extras” to his potions – sometimes enhancing their effectiveness, sometimes ruining them. He never took notes – not any that survived, anyway – so you never know quite what you’re going to get out of one of his bottles.

Give your Legendary Artisans personalities and find ways to reflect those personalities in the items they crafted. And let the rest be fairly generic.

To each Level, treasures!

The major reform is this: the Objective-Oriented XP system already defines an adventure as being worth sufficient XP to gain X number of levels, then divides that down to individual encounters, whose values are thus measured in terms of the advantage or detriment they pose to the completion of the adventure.

If you look up the resulting number of character levels on the chart, you get the total value of loot – that’s gold, gems, and magic – for completing the adventure. Multiply by the number of PCs to get the total on offer. Subtract the value of any goodies that the NPCs are actually using against the PCs (but don’t count any that they simply have on hand). The rest can be distributed anywhere within the adventure that the GM sees fit. There will be some temptation to make the end-of-adventure reward extra juicy with a disproportionate share of the loot value – resist the urge. If anything, since that already has a major reward – enough XP to gain a level – I would be tempted to spice things up elsewhere in the adventure.

Place your treasures, both in time and in space, in places where they make sense in terms of the story, and in terms of the opposition to be faced.

Most GMs do this anyway – but don’t make any allowance for loot that the baddies might be using when they stock their adventures. As a result, treasure quickly VASTLY exceeds the GM’s expectations.

Of course, you can’t have an enemy using something and then deny it to the PCs without good reason. (Which reminds me of another NPC I used at one point, though I forget his name. This guy would pop out of nowhere (Wand of Teleport), attack with a wand that he had looted that was almost out of charges until it ran dry and evaporated, then teleport out again. What the players of the time never realized was that he came with the treasure, and the wands that he was using against them were treasures that the PCs were expected to recover later in the adventure! Somehow, I forget how, they cottoned on to this and exiled him in the Plane Of Mirror Images by screwing with his teleport-escape…)

The power of this proposal is that it makes the connections between opponents and loot completely indirect unless the hostile can use that loot to give the PCs more trouble. The rest can be put in places where it’s sensible for treasure to be hidden – an adjacent room, a wall cavity, inside another (less valuable) treasure, or whatever – even completely outside the dungeon walls if the creature has access.

If the loot on offer using this system seems inadequate, you can increase it, knowingly – and put it in places that will take more than a search roll to find and recover. Your goal is to have the loot that the PCs find match the amount that the system says goes with the character levels that will be achieved – if they only find half the loot, you can double the amount to be potentially found without distress.

You can even rob Peter to pay Paul – if there’s an adventure that seems likely to be short in loot potential, you can knowingly give away a little extra before and after.

Loot means more than treasure

When Johnn and I were working on a more comprehensive taxonomy for Roleplaying Tips, I listed thirty or more types of reward other than “treasure”. Throw in treasure subtypes, like “Magic items” and you have a huge list.

Alas, I no longer have that taxonomy; many of the planning documents from that era were lost in a computer crash when my backups turned out to be corrupted. Nor can I reasonably hope to replicate the many hours of work that we put into that list, back in 2009. So the list below is likely to be a little abridged.

1. XP

The standard. Included for the sake of completeness.

2. Money

As standard and default as XP.

3. Mundane Goods

Often overlooked, these should be a lot more ubiquitous than they usually are. But they are often boring.

3a. Party Goods

A couple of bottles of booze and some ready-to-eat snacks that won’t stay edible long enough to sell should always be popular rewards. A sub-type of category 3.

4. Ornaments & Decorations

It’s not quite $24 worth of beads, but it’s in the same line. Should offer a circumstantial CHAR buff, the circumstances to be defined by the GM, which can be trickier than it sounds. My advice is to keep it simple.

5. Exotic Goods

How much is a jar of spice worth, if it’s a variety few have ever even heard of before? How about a whole set of exotic spices? Or an unusual die – Purple is associated with royalty because the die was so rare, and worth as much as 10x it’s weight in gold. How about seeds from a rare plant – of practical value. People forget how many of our foodstuffs were imported from other lands – everything from tomatoes to rice.

6. Magic Items

Another ubiquitous choice, possibly over-used as a reward – because they carry with them the exotic flavor of the fantasy game. But a little goes a long way..

7. Rare Coins

A favorite of mine, because unless the players look closely, this will be mistaken for category two. I once ‘slipped’ a wooden coin into a trove; the players threw it away, thinking it worthless. Only later (when I rubbed their noses in it, in character) did they discover that it came from a desperate time when metal was in short supply and was probably worth more than the rest of the trove put together!

8. Tradable Commodities

Commercial quantities of something – even as a one-off – are a great way to get the players enmeshed within the commercial realities of trade in the game world. The sheer quantity elevates this from category 3. Examples: 10 bolts of high-quality silk. 40 sacks of beans. 100 cheap long-swords. 75 Quills. A vat of fermenting wine. A set of 6 healing potions that confer an additional +1 per die if all 6 are consumed by different people simultaneously.

9. Books

I remember at one point discussing whether or not “rare books” should be a separate category with Johnn. His point was that in this pre-printing press era, all books were hand-copies, or magic copies, making every book rare and valuable. That thought should perpetuate through every detail of every book (scroll, etc) that appears in the game – either it’s an original work, or someone wanted the information within badly enough to hand-duplicate it. An educated man might have two or three books plus his own journals; a collection of 100 books is a major library. This is why the Great Library of Alexandria is vast enough to qualify as a Wonder of the Ancient World. GMs and Players undervalue books massively, our sensibilities tainted by modern publishing capabilities.

10. Entertainment

A night’s feasting, getting invited to dine with the royal court, etc make cheap rewards from the point of view of the person giving the reward – and, in theory, a once-in-a-lifetime memory for the PC. Hosting the whole group at once might be seen as giving them too much prominence, but inviting each member in succession is more low-key. And the sequence can be used to score political points, as a bonus.

11. Expertise

Almost 2/3 of the list were rewards that could only be bestowed by someone as a reward for services rendered. Johnn thought these should be all lumped together because you couldn’t stick them in a dungeon hoard – until I pointed out that the service in question could be performed in a dungeon. It might be clearing a source of local trouble, it might be the recovery of some family heirloom, it might simply be boosting the economy through the trade in exotic knickknacks. It didn’t have to be rescuing a member of the royal family from bandits or Orcs or whatever.

“Expertise” is the first of this type of reward – it’s not that the noble has it, or gives it to the PC (that’s covered separately), it’s that he pays or instructs an expert to provide his expertise to the PCs to some restricted degree. It might be “three questions”, it might be “three days”, that doesn’t matter – the point is that it’s not an unlimited resource. If the PCs want more, they will have to go out there and earn it.

12. Education

Here we have someone of substance – wealth and/or position – who pays the bills to get a PC some additional skills or expertise.

The smaller the reward in terms of game mechanics, the more the actual skill acquisition can be hand-waved. Giving someone four extra skill points is fairly major and might represent 6 months to a year of education – that’s fairly hard to skip over, unless all the PCs are doing it at the same time. A single skill point, on this scale, represents about six weeks work – quite possibly with a single lesson a week, and studies and practice the rest of the time. That’s right on the edge of hand-wave territory. Or it might all get done in a single week of intensive attention – that really is a time-frame that can be set aside. Gaining +1 to hit or +1 damage due to training in some exotic combat style is probably the equivalent of those 4 skill points. Converting a cross-class skill into a class skill is comparatively minor, but obviously bigger than a single skill point of extra skill.

Remember, no matter what your character might be getting out of it, it’s boring to sit around while others are doing something – but not much worse than doing something dull every time the spotlight points your way. On the other hand, various incidents might be intensely memorable and to be roleplayed – so give some thought as to the personality of the instructor and the reactions and identities of his other students.

It’s also worth contemplating the personality of the person bestowing this reward. If there is some expertise with which he associated, it is a lot easier for him to share that expertise than it is for him to arrange lessons from a master of some other discipline.

Nor do characters actually have to request this as a reward, contrary to what some GMs seem to think. Once the idea occurs to someone who has to hand out a LOT of rewards for service, they will exploit it to the hilt, regardless of what the character on the receiving end might want.

13. Servants/Staff

This is not necessarily any form of slavery, as some people thought when I mentioned this type of reward casually – just because gifts of slaves were common in the era when slavery was practiced. No, it might be the Jarvis solution: a manservant who is paid by the giver to care for the character whenever the character is in town (in the original comics, Edwin Jarvis was a butler given to The Avengers by Tony Stark to maintain their Mansion – in fact, he more or less came with the Mansion. But he continued to get his paychecks from Stark).

Many of the other reward types that follow can be assumed to include servants or staff most of the time (but not doing so can be a way for the giver to trim his expenses, if the giver is a bit of a skinflint). It can also be an opportunity for the giver to clean out the malcontents, incompetent, unruly, and accident-prone from his own staff – again “cheapening” the value of this reward considerably.

If the servants/staff are competent, one next has to consider questions of loyalty. The giver might be placing a spy in the PC’s household! This also speaks volumes about the character of the giver.

In some societies, having servants or staff might be a “right” that has to be purchased from the crown (or their local representative, annually). So this might not actually involve specific individuals – not until the PC goes out and recruits them.

Either way, the servants/staff are, at least potentially, recurring NPCs, and should be treated as such by the GM – as an important development within the campaign.

14. Sponsorship

Granting admission into some sort of club or private organization is another sort of reward that can sometimes be bestowed. There was a time when this was the equivalent of being Knighted in the manner of a field commission!

But this reward type can also represent Patronage, which can be significant from a character perspective – but, unless it’s a means to an end, probably means character retirement from Adventuring.

That still leaves open a broader interpretation of the concept. A small stipend, paid into an account administered by the crown on the character’s behalf (assuming there are no private banks yet), to defray the costs of adventuring? Why not? 5 gp a week while actually on an expedition, 1 gp when not – or a 2 gp flat rate each week – can be a godsend at low levels.

But the term “expedition” raises still more possibilities. It was not at all uncommon during the Age of Exploration for an individual to back an “expedition” aimed at achieving some significant goal or reaching a specific location, with the backer providing personnel and equipment for the attempt. This practice continued all the way up to and including the age of the Entrepreneur, beginning to decline in frequency only during the Great Depression. “I will sponsor an expedition, led by you, to establish a new trade route to the Crescent Sea and the wonders of Jastinople” – sounds like a great choice of reward to me! A ready-made Adventure, and everyone gets something out of it if it succeeds.

And that, in turn, suggests something beyond even this fairly traditional interpretation of the concept: “There is a pestilential hell-hole that blocks access to the silver-mines of Dunthragg, a fortress of beasts and Undead. I will pay you and your friends 20,000 gp each to go and empty it of the living and unliving. 2,000 now, the balance if you succeed and live to claim it.” Again, this sounds like an eminently suitable reward – if the personality of the giver fits. (When you first read this suggestion, many people automatically assume that the ‘giver’ is the local Nobleman. Not So! It can be anyone who stands to gain from a successful outcome – a trader, a merchant council or league, a regional mayor, a consortium of small businesses…)

15. Concessions & Licenses

This was hinted at in category 13. “I grant you the right to search the Blacklands for mineral wealth, and to establish up to two mines in your own name within that region of Crown Land”. Or perhaps it’s a license to operate some regulated business – an inn or tavern. Or to provide a carriage service for goods and people along a particular trade route.

16. Transportation/Vehicle

Which provides a natural segue into this type of reward. “I gift to you a carriage of the finest oak, and eight trained horses to pull it, suitable for the transportation of nobles anywhere in the land.” What you then do with it – what you can get away with – is then up to you. Or it could be a more practical vehicle, or a ship. The latter always includes the assumed right of being permitted to display your flag, and of being able to trade anywhere that you can reach. So this reward contains a vast breadth of possible scale.

17. Livestock

Nobles had agricultural land, which was hard to replace, and livestock upon that land, which were comparatively easy to replace. If you had to reward someone, you might give them some of that livestock and a lease on the farmland on which they presently reside, in effect putting you into the farming business. Still more canny nobles might offer livestock and title to lands that they don’t actually posses yet, requiring you to go out and “capture” it in his or her name.

Nor does this necessarily tie the character down, or not as much as many players and GMs tend to assume. Once the land has been cleared of nasties, fenced, and patrols hired to keep it clear, the livestock can move in. Throw in whatever you need to actually farm them, and an Estate Manager to look after the business side of things (with the threat of the occasional audit to keep him honest), and you’re free to wander off, and maybe even do it all again. You don’t think nobles run their estates themselves, do you? Okay, these days, many have to, but back then labor was a lot cheaper, and it was common practice to turn the day-to-day headaches over to someone else while you went off to the capital to spend and politic!

Your reward (usually described as a “gift”) might be a herd, or a breeding pair. The encumbrance placed upon a character’s lifestyle is proportionate, but temporary. It’s just a couple of very different adventures!

18. Land

The next step up this particular ladder of reward scales brings land and that which resides upon it – be that peasants or livestock. This, effectively, rewards the character with the right to be taxed.

It normally excludes mineral rights, but there can be exceptions; I once rewarded a PC with a silver mine that the noble knew was almost played out. He got a half-dozen payments of a few thousand gold, and then title to a worthless mine. But, anytime the character was significantly hard up for cash, he could head up to his mine and dig out a few nuggets of ore – worth no more than 20 or 50 gp in total, but it was enough for a fresh start.

The noble also usually reserves the right to demand or maintain free passage through the land on any established roads. Nastier types might not include rights for the landowner to use any roads in the vicinity – forcing the rewardee to bargain for access to the better, more profitable, markets – every year.

I once granted title to lands to a pair of PCs for the establishment of two towns, which would confer minor noble status upon the pair (and expand the domain of the giver considerably). One was principally an Elvish community, with a few Humans of uncommon expertise thrown in; the other was a far more cosmopolitan affair, with Dwarves and Desmodu and Humans and Halflings and Gnomes and the occasional Elf (though most of them went for the first). The catch: the budget on offer for the construction of these townships and appropriate defenses was only about half what would be needed, and that was only the set-up cost; ongoing costs would demand the establishment of industry (taxable), trade (taxable), and commerce (taxable) – plus repayment of the throne’s investment in the form of regular tithes over the coming century.

19. Property

The final step up this ladder is, ironically, not that dissimilar to where we started – the granting of land, but land with some sort of building and business already operating. In discussions, we started using the term “property” to distinguish between mere land and land with a going concern on it. Again, this could be an Inn, Hotel, Bar, Warehouse, Dock, Toll-Bridge – almost any sort of structure.

Standing above even this level of reward is the granting of land with a bespoke building to be constructed upon it. Depending somewhat on the location, this can be the ultimate reward short of bestowing titles of Nobility. “I give over the crown lands located at Wiltshire Street, and the warehouses which currently stand upon it, which are to be progressively relocated to a site yet to be determined and razed for the construction of an Academy Of Magic” was an actual reward handed out to a PC at the end of the first Fumanor campaign. From temporary structures and less than half-a-dozen students, in between every adventure, this place grew and developed through the ensuing two campaigns, becoming a completed fixture within the campaign upon the retirement of the PC in question.

20. Retainers/Retinue

There’s a big difference between retinue and staff – the latter stay more-or-less where they are, the former travel with their master and serve on the road. Retainers are more like staff, but they can be relocated by their master as desired. Both tend to be permitted to swear personal loyalty to their master, superseding any other obligation in the process. That’s a big step up. The downside is that the character is expected to pay their wages.

21. Introductions

A fairly cheap reward, in the financial sense, though there may be all sorts of politics involved in actually bringing it about, simply introducing a PC to “the right people” can be a significant reward.

22. Fame

Public admissions of gratitude and debt are a far bigger deal than simply doling out some reward that only the bookkeepers pay attention to. The difference is one of generating Fame. This is always a double-edged sword; certain people will begin to perceive the PCs as rivals and potential enemies. There’s so much juice in the question of fame and PCs that it’s a subject for a whole other day. Suffice it to say, for now, that you can do more with a fan club than with a whole company of trained soldiers!

23. Pardons

Criminal Charges – trumped up or real – can be pardoned in exchange for services. That should be enough to get the gears in any good GM’s head turning.

And remember that these charges don’t have to be leveled directly at the PC. A friend or family member, a husband or wife or child, or even a complete stranger (if it’s the right complete stranger and the right PC) can do the job.

It’s generally considered particularly bad form to arrest the people who you have just rewarded, but some underhanded types won’t mind stooping a bit – in exceptional cases. More wholesome leaders will grant pardons for any crimes committed in the course of achieving the results for which the PCs are being rewarded.

And always remember that a wholesome public image may mask the most brutal of underhanded monsters.

A minor variant of the pardon is the Head Start, which honorable men sometimes grant the unscrupulous and unpardonable as reward for services. How much of a head start depends on the services and the leader.

24. Titles

Up at least one notch is the granting of a Title – “Master Of The Eldritch Bow” or something meaningless like that. This is a bestowment without authority, though it recognizes and commends some particular demonstrated expertise (whether or not there is actually a skill to reflect it).

If a Noble is so disposed as to hand out meaningless titles as rewards, they will quickly run out of good ones, which is how you can get “Keeper Of The Royal Spittoon” and “Protector Of Mutton” being recorded. The deeds with which the title is associated, more than the content of the title, tends to determine the respect in which it is held.

25. Endorsements

This is another step up the “Name Hierarchy”, and also reward types 14, 21, and 22. Endorsements aren’t an idea of the modern age; being able to say that someone famous or respected uses your wares was a standard of advertising for as long as there have been merchants.

A ship calls into port full of foreign trinkets, you might permit them to be sold at the markets, unless captain / crew give you reason not to with their behavior; such a ship arrives with letters stating that they are trusted suppliers to the Royal Family of some distant kingdom only the scholars have ever heard of, and you are likely to invite them to the palace – with samples of their wares. The wise merchant will then offer a discount on any large purchase in exchange for a similar letter from this noble, adding to his ability to trade elsewhere.

Even without a large order, or even a purchase by the noble of any sort, the mere fact that the Noble thought the goods worth personal inspection will make selling even things the Noble doesn’t personally want easier.

One could say that the famous attract offers of endorsement the way dogs attract fleas.

26. Art / Commemoration

“We are deeply indebted to… what were their names again?… and so decree that portraits will be commissioned and hung in the entrance to the Palace that all may know of the esteem in which these gentlemen and ladies are held.”

All you could really say is, “Gee, thanks”. Possibly under your breath.

“We shall commission a tapestry to commemorate this epic heroism for all time.” Gosh, that’s big of you.

“Let the word be spread, let hymns be written and songs commissioned by the finest bards, that all may know of this example of conspicuous gallantry” – that’s edging into ‘fame’ territory, as is the commissioning of art of any sort for public consumption such as statues to be erected at the site of the deeds being commemorated.

Such rewards are popular with those who are more politician than ruler; they seek to elevate someone in popularity in the hopes that some of the popularity will rub off on the giver. Nobles who care about public opinion, and who want to do well for and by their citizens, will often reward unexpected service with commemorative art.

As a general rule of thumb, the more prestigious the artist, the more prestige will attach to the rewardee from such bestowments, and the more it will drain from the Treasury. A favorite tactic of mine is to have a short-sighted noble commission lavish public art as a reward and then be forced to raise taxes to pay for it; the public therefore blame the PCs as much as the noble for the tax rise (insert evil grin).

27. Access

This reward type is one of the more valuable. Having the right to bring any problem directly to the King, or to the Chancellor, or to the Archbishop, or the General, and be able to expect a hearing at the very least, is powerful. The toadies and courtiers and would-be advisers and those with an opinion as to what public policy should be (right down to the barman at any watering-hole you even look at) will be quick to grasp the possibilities implicit in this new channel straight into the heart of power.

Bear in mind that it’s usually a crime to be granted access and then sell access to that access. But being a conduit of truth to Nobility can be a great source of adventures enmeshed deeply within a campaign setting.

28. High Office / Promotions

Appointing someone Sheriff, in charge of law-enforcement in part of one’s domain, is pretty much the minimum form of this reward, and the adventures that can result only grow with each scaling up of the reward. You can work your way up the various non-Noble offices, with proximity to the capital being the principle determinant of reward value. After that comes the more nebulous “Member Of The Court” (giving you one voice amongst many) and the more prestigious “Adviser To The Crown”. Then you get into the real big ones, which have real authority attached to them – “Chancellor To The Exchequer”, “Commander Of Our Armies”, and the like. The only step up from there is “Principal Adviser To The Throne” and then into the Nobility.

29. Noble Titles

So let’s keep the ball rolling. One lesson that I took from the “Family D’Lambert” series of Novels (supposedly by EE Doc Smith) is that the authority and respect of Noble Titles is not the absolute that they seem to be in theory.

Having Title to a small but immensely wealthy province is more powerful than having a higher title with less wealth. So that’s a second factor.

Size of domain is a third, even if much of the land is not all that desirable right now.

Proximity to the Capital is worth more than a Title in the Inner Kingdom, which is worth more than one in the outer Kingdom.

Having a Port (especially a seaport) automatically elevates a rank, too, as does having a major trade route..

Put several of these factors together and you can easily get a Baron with more real power than a Duke, a Duke with more power than a Prince.

On top of all that, most Nobles of importance end up with multiple Titles. Not only do these compound, sometimes they can combine in other ways to vastly exceed the mere sum of their parts.

And on top of that, you have the number and total authority of your supporters. Nobles who play the long game will maneuver people loyal to them into positions to be of service to the Crown, and will use any child not a direct heir to their titles, to gain further authority – on the general principle that if they don’t, someone less to their liking will.

Many nobles spend inordinate amounts of time and effort tracking small changes to the resulting pecking order. Others pay someone else to do so for them. Minor acts in Court are often trial balloons sent up to measure such authority. The outside observer sees nothing but the court wasting its time dealing with fripperies like the color of the flowers or the cut of the drapery; the reality might be a deadly-serious game that means life and death to many.

This is politics at the heart of the Government of the realm. Throw in temporary and limited alliances and vested interests and party memberships, and you will see that modern forms of government have simply found more ways of complicating the picture.

The granting of a Noble Title is an invitation to play in this sandbox. Actually, it’s more like a Royal Command to play in this sandbox. It is only nominally a reward; the expectation is that you will be loyal to the giver, and thereby reorient the power balance within the Court. Accepting earns you enemies you’ve never even heard of; Refusing marks you as a political enemy of the Throne and a potential Traitor. Even as the Nobleman offering the Title smiles and accepts your refusal, the authorities are turning against you.

It takes luck, skill, and wisdom to successfully navigate such a maze. Which doesn’t describe too many PCs.

But this is a double-edged sword – even offering the reward can mean a vast amount of work for the GM. Dozens of Nobles will need to be detailed, at the very least. So bear that in mind!

30. Tax Relief

This is a very VERY rare reward. But excusing someone from paying direct taxes, or giving them a reduced tax rate, is at least theoretically possible.

The reason it’s rare is because it largely removes the individual from the authority of the Ruler. Not only can this be a problem in and of itself, not only can this establish a precedent that could eventually beggar the Throne, but it can give people…. ideas. Subversive ones. Intolerable ones.

But it’s at least theoretically possible.

31. Adoption / Marriage

The ultimate reward: Adoption / Marriage into the Royal Family itself, with all the obligations, Titles, ambitions, duties, perks, responsibilities, and rewards that comes with it. I once ran an adventure in which – to foil an assassin – one of the PCs was forced to go undercover as a surprise Betrothed to the Princess. By the end of the adventure, you couldn’t have paid that character enough to get him to sign up for the real thing.

If you’re feeling particularly nasty, you can have it discovered that a PC is the descendant of a lost cousin – just out of the direct line to the throne. Everyone will immediately want a piece of the PC, aside from those who want the whole carcass mounted on their walls, and that’s just from sheer pragmatism and never mind any of these alignment niceties. There will be things done in the name of the PC that he could not and would not countenance, right up to armed insurrections against the throne; the popularity of the current ruler does nothing but mitigate the scale of the disaster. A little. Ambitious men being what they are, it won’t be enough to prevent one.

Any and all of these can be given out in place of part or all of a treasure payout. Many of them have obvious utility as a springboard to new adventures or even a whole new phase of campaign. This, of course, beggars the question of how much they are worth?

If there was a simple answer to that question, I would have presented it while discussing the individual awards. There isn’t; there are just too many variables.

There have been attempts that suggest that some of these should be handed out in the form of additional experience. That’s just fundamentally wrong, in my opinion, and compounds other problems, especially since it means that full monetary rewards will still be expected.

No, what the GM needs to do is to estimate a monetary value for the reward, excluding any ongoing earnings from it other than those that can be expected prior to the character next achieving a character level or completing the current adventure, whichever is longer. That value can then be deducted from the adventure awards that have not yet been placed.

Whats’ that? Did I turn that corner too quickly for some of you?

Sand-boxed Rewards

As much as possible, specific rewards should be allocated only a session before they are to be handed out.

There are obvious limitations. Villains need their gear from the moment of their first appearance. There will be some set pieces, rewards that can’t be altered too much or you risk an anticlimax. What remains is your pool for distribution as rewards throughout the rest of the adventure, subdivided into rewards to be accrued in each chapter of the adventure.

Some of those rewards may be cash. Some may be goodies. And the rest should be drawn from the list of reward types offered. If the logical reward is too valuable, you can steal up to about 10% of the value of subsequent pools before it will be noticeable, or you can take a closer look at the fine print attached to the reward – I’ve given several thoughts in that direction in discussing the individual types.

Final Thoughts

This article has been about uncoupling non-XP rewards from encounters, just as the earlier article Objective-oriented Experience Pointswas about uncoupling XP from encounters.

I was going to use the term “Divorcing”, but it’s not quite accurate; everything, from encounters to XP to loot is still derived from progress in the plotline; it’s simply been scaled to accommodate the rate of progress that gets recommended by the books (three adventures to one character level) or whatever rate greater than that with which the GM feels comfortable.

The chief advantage that results is that the storyline is strengthened immeasurably by harnessing both experience and loot to that end; and that in turn strengthens the campaign. The chief disadvantage is that players may have grown too accustomed to feeding at the trough.

If the proposal is too radical for you, however, you can always decide on a partial implementation, or a phasing-in approach to give your players time to get used to the changes.

For example, you permit 1/2 the normally indicated reward levels and 1/2 the story-indicated reward levels, then total the two to get the actual payouts.

You could start with a 90:10 split and shift it 10% in the other direction with each character level achieved.

The danger with this approach is that if the characters gain in level faster than you are expecting, which they almost certainly will, you will then face the difficult choice between adjusting your expectations or being even more miserly.

For example, the adventure after next might be best suited to lower-mid-level characters – somewhere around 7th or 8th level. But the characters have already earned 7 character levels, will gain an extra one-and-a-half in the course of the current adventure, and another one-and-a-half in the next – making them 10th level when you want them to be only 8th. Either you adjust the end-of-adventure goal for that adventure to 11th level – meaning the PCs will potentially earn substantially less than 1 level’s rewards, or you commit to handing out minimal experience and changing nothing, making the adventure a relatively easy one for the PCs. Neither answer is all that satisfactory.

Existing campaigns will face similar problems in changing over to this new system.

Fractional Levels

Part of the solution comes from rejecting the concept of character levels being integer values. As soon as we attach a decimal point, with the integer values representing a threshold at which all sorts of nice things can happen, we gain greater scope.

For example, The PCs have achieved 10th level, and are about 1/3rd of the way through to 11th. They are, in effect, at level 10.33.

Instead of setting your target to a hard 11, and giving out only 2/3 of the XP that this system is recommending, you could aim for 11.2, giving 83% of the new XP scale; the adventure after that, you could aim for 12.1, and give 90%; then 13.05, and 95%; and then you “lock in” to the integer values.

But there are two even better solutions

My preferred solution is to break a character’s XP total into two parts: Level + excess. A character in 3.x (and it works in other versions of the game system, too) isn’t at 10.33; they are at 10th+333xp. Then you simply aim for each adventure to deliver them to Level+333xp. This has two effects: first, the fraction of a level that 333xp represents will continually shrink, so you will approach the simplest view, i.e. the integer view; and second, this creates a buffer that ensures that a character will never fall just a couple of points short of expectations and fail to get a level – something that, with a number of variable factors, is otherwise quite possible. That’s good, and it means that the system will achieve it’s intended effects.

The alternative is simply to continually aim not for the integer levels, but to maintain whatever percentage the PCs already have: 11.33, 12.33. 13.33, and so on. This is simply a redefinition of what a “whole level” means. This seems simpler, on the surface, until you realize that what was previously simple (333xp) is now complicated; you’ll need to adjust your “excess target” with each character level. 33% of the gap between 11th and 12th level is 3,667 XP; 33% of the way from 12th to 13th level is 4000xp, and so on (The numbers might be different with Pathfinder, but not too much so, or the systems would not be even close to compatible). This represents an additional level of complexity – but there is a reward for your efforts.

Virtual levels

Imagine that when you achieved a character level, you didn’t improve the character, but instead rolled/chose what you would earn BY THE TIME OF achieving your next level. It seems a subtle difference, possibly an asset to roleplaying as the character goes through the steps they imagine will lead to that character level. But the GM has more systemic flexibility, and he can use that to the character’s advantage by stratifying the development process.

Let’s break the process of gaining a level into sub-steps. You

Gain a hit die plus any modifier in HP.
Spend as many Skill Points as your character class receives.
Adjust your Save bonuses if necessary.
Adjust your BAB, possibly gaining an additional attack in a round.
Acquire any class abilities that come with the new level.
Select Feats for each feat Slot that is acquired at the new level.
Apply the benefits of each Feat.

There might be more, but those 7 are enough to be going on with. Pick one that won’t occur until the new level is fully achieved – number 5 seems like a sensible choice – and you can let the others occur at discrete intervals along the way. How you structure this is up to you – I can see merit in top-loading everything into the second half of the gap, and also see merit in distributing gains throughout the acquisition of a level. Where multiple points are received, you can even split the gain up – if you are gaining 10 HP, then getting 1 HP every 0.1 levels works. If you are going from +11/+6/+1 attack BAB to +12/+7/+2 BAB, that’s three separate changes: you might go +6 to +7 in the middle (+11/+7/+1), then give the +1 to +2 at the low end (+11/+7/+2) and then, on gaining the level completely, the +11 becomes +12.

My suggestion would be to go simple. Divide a level into 10, 20, 30 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100% fractions of the progress – perhaps throwing in 25 and 75% if you feel like it – then allocate something to each of these levels.

Instead of an interval-system in which there are massive gains, this transforms the game into a progressive system in which immutable directions are chosen for each character at discrete intervals.

Just be consistent in your approach.

This gives an ongoing sense of progress to players. There is some character reward from every significant encounter. This is especially useful when it comes to acquiring a prestige level or level in a different character class, which usually means acquiring membership in some sort of select group or subgroup or a change in attitude – because you no longer get an instant effect of doing so, you acquire it over time. Time that is presumably spent studying and learning the ways of the new class, meditating on the path to be taken, practicing lessons that they have given you to unlock the potential within you, etc.

Character development becomes an ongoing personal evolution. That’s a difference both subtle and profound, and one well worth considering.

Treasure placement. Who knew it could get so complicated?

Tags: 3.x, Adventure-Prep, Campaign-Setting, Campaigns, Encounter-Design, Game-Mechanics, House-Rules, PCs, Plausibility, Player-Goals, RPG-Theory, Treasure, Campaign-Admin, D&D, Tools & Techniques, NPCs, Pathfinder, Opinion, XP

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Jan 2020 Blog Carnival: Some Thoughts On Random Encounters

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Creation, Campaign Management, D&D / Pathfinder, Game Mastering, Game Philosophy, Mike, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, Planning & Preparation, Rewards, Rules & Mechanics, The End Of The Rainbow, Writing & Authoring & The Games Industry, World Design, Metagaming & Metagame Theory on Feb.04, 2020

Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

Maximilian Hart puts out a daily newsletter with a short thought and some links to resources that may be of value to D&D GMs called Dungeon Master Daily (subscribe and read some more about this resource here.

Of course, some of those links and resources have a broader applicability, which is the main reason I subscribe. From time to time, he’s good enough to link to Campaign Mastery.

He’s also on Twitter (twitter.com/maximilianhart_).

Last week, his editorial focused on Random Encounters, also called Wandering Monsters by some. His thought was that no-one but the GM (and sometimes not even him) loves the idea. I’ll leave discussion of why that might be the case for the relevant section, below.

He promptly received a barrage of communications disputing this premise, prompting a second editorial presenting the other side of the coin a couple of days later. You can read his Twitter thread discussing the subject at this link.

I’m a big believer in modifying the way that you play any game to suit the campaign story that you are trying to tell, but also being dynamically responsive to player wishes – something that is sometimes more difficult than you might expect.

That means that there is no wrong way to game, in my opinion, only ways that are mismatched with one or both of these objectives.

It also means that the question deserves closer inspection. Especially since there are more choices than might have occurred to many readers – including a new one that I’ve only just thought of, myself..

Today’s plan of action is to look at the known options, in sequence of decreasing randomness, and then I’ll throw in my wild card which doesn’t really fit the orderly progression – or, perhaps, fits it in too many different places!

Option 1: An Element Of Chaos

So the place to start is fully random, where the GM has no idea what the next wandering critter is going to be and how it’s going to fit into the story.

Why might a GM like such anarchy in their games? I can think of a few possible reasons.

Let’s start with Looseness. The unpredictability is a natural anodyne to any tendency to plot trains or over-planning your adventures.

We can follow that with Challenge – and there can be no doubt that making the products of anarchy seem sensible is a definite challenge to the GM.

Third is Verisimilitude – believe it or not! Real life is full of unexpected surprises, and random encounters are one way of reflecting that state in a controlled manner within a campaign.

Fourth, Random Encounters can provide an expression of The Fantastic that is a necessary part of the Fantasy Gaming experience when the adventure itself shapes up as a little mundane. It’s all about how those inexplicable random encounters get to where they are encountered.

for example, the PCs are in the middle of the Mad Elemental’s Fire Dungeon when the dice indicate a Frost Giant. You have three choices: (1) Ignore the result because it simply doesn’t fit; (2) Re-skin the encounter so that it makes marginal sense, eg to a Fire Giant; or (3) Let It Not Make Sense while making it rational, anyway – eg a random portal opens up to deposit a band of Frost Giants into this hellish (from their perspective) environment, in which they can only survive for a short time. They spot the PCs, immediately blame them for their predicament, and attack – fighting for their very survival. A diplomatic solution might just barely be possible if magic is used to extend the Giant’s capacity for withstanding the environment – which might gain the PCs a nominal ally, at least in the short-term, but also handicaps them with dependents.

Fifth, Random Encounters can be Inspiring, prompting the GM to discover solutions to their plot problems that they never even dreamed of.

Sixth, and finally, Random Encounters are – by definition – unpredictable, and so they consume game time with material for which prep is neither possible or necessary. And that can be a godsend when your prep has fallen short, either because the party have taken an unexpected direction or because the GM ran out of time.

There may be more, but those six are entirely adequate to justify a fully random approach to Wandering Monsters.

But there’s no escaping the fact that these would be meaningless filler in a book or movie. By definition, they don’t progress the plot (unless the GM is very clever, of course). That fact can turn a lot of GMs off the purely-random approach. While it must be remembered that an RPG is not the same as those forms of media, the less ‘screen time’ that’s available, the more the first comes to resemble the latter. For example, my usual campaign schedule permits only a few hours play in any given campaign, once a month. That puts a premium on story and plot advancement – any stagnation, no matter how brief, risks a complete loss of momentum and impetus. That’s like a stroke – if they recur, one of them will eventually kill the campaign, and short of that terminal state, it will be crippled, paralyzed, or even comatose.

Fortunately, for those GMs who don’t like untamed randomness in their encounters, or who can’t afford the potentially debilitating effects of stalling the campaign, there are alternatives.

Option 2: The Not-So-Random Encounter

The first alternative is to actually incorporate specific random events that are custom-fitted to form part of the main plot – a pair of wandering guards, for example.

Compile a list of ten or twelve such, and you have the simplest possible expression of the Not-so-random encounter.

A more advanced version allocates additional probability to the more common encounters and employs a larger die size – many GMs gravitate to the d20, others to the d%, for the purpose.

Still more refined is the notion that some encounters can only take place once, no matter what the dice might indicate – forcing a re-roll if they are indicated a second time – while others are naturally recurring.

Probably the most extreme version of the concept that I’ve ever encountered had a separate table (with only 6-8 entries most of the time, and only 4 on one occasion) for each room of a dungeon, based on the local geography and who was ‘living’ where. Personally, I think that’s probably going too far, but to each his own.

But a combination of these two factors – effectively treating each dungeon as it’s own terrain type – can provide the necessary randomness in a fairly controlled and confined manner.

Of course, once you have this notion in place and integrated into your dungeon design process, it’s a VERY short step to incorporating one or more critical plot elements into the encounters – like the (metaphoric) key to unlocking the next section or level of the dungeon!

A still further advance is the concept of “sticky” entries to the encounter table – once the party “encounter” a table with this entry without triggering this specific encounter, it gets attached to all subsequent encounter tables, perhaps even after they have left the dungeon. This can be an excellent way to get background information of no immediate relevance into the hands of the PCs in an interactive manner.

You don’t have to advance down this design pathway very far before you have crossed over into the next approach to random encounters to be discussed – integrating random encounters into the plot as essential parts of the story.

Option 3: All Part Of The Plan

In many ways, this isn’t all that dissimilar to the preceding approach. Essentially, it designates certain points in the dungeon (castle, whatever) as a location in which any designated random encounters that haven’t been triggered will automatically take place.

This can actually make the dungeon more responsive to PC actions. For example, there might be four different events that trigger a pair of guards to make their way along an individualized route to a guard post, where they will sound an alarm to summon still more guards. When the PCs reach the guard post, they find it manned by 8 + each un-encountered wandering pair guards. If the PC’s wandering monster rolls were unlucky (meaning that they didn’t encounter any of these pairs in isolation), there might be 16 guards to be dealt with – all triggered and on alert.

This still contains some random, ‘chaotic’ elements, but they are very carefully managed. But it’s possible to go one step further.

Option 4: One Plot To Rule Them All

You can design your dungeons and towns and whatever so that designated parts of the plot take place at random intervals.

This subsumes the very concept of ‘encounters’ into a larger schema; an ‘encounter’ might be stumbling over footsteps in the dust, for example. The “random encounters” list is dealt with in sequence (avoiding the dangers of anticlimax and incoherence that would otherwise be inherent).

This approach takes almost all the randomness out of Random Encounters while broadening the concept to include all manner of events that would not traditionally be considered an encounter. It is sometimes represented by the maxim “The dungeon’s not finished until the wandering monsters are vanquished,” which I first bumped into way back in the early 80s.

My early players meant that you should be able to close the doors and spend an unmolested evening in a cleared dungeon, but it was while contemplating the maxim that I first developed my current appreciation for random encounters.

Different Centaurs For Different Campaigns

It should be clear from my other writings and from the discussion above that I strongly advocate the deliberate choice of one or more of the above approaches for each distinct campaign. There may be times when the purely random approach is the most appropriate to the desired ‘look and feel’ of the campaign, as experienced by the players, while there will be times when one of the more structured approaches – or even doing away with random encounters altogether – may be more appropriate. Often, metagame considerations such as the frequency of play will be a significant consideration.

Nor does this exclude the other approaches. My fundamental approach in the Fumanor Campaigns was essentially the “not-so-random” encounter tables for overland travel, and a more structured choice within dungeons and set locations that were plot-significant. There were also a few locations, notably beyond the boundaries of “civilization”, where the choices were fully random.

You can have one dominant approach and exceptions wherever they seem appropriate.

Interestingly, it’s normal for players (unless you tell them differently) to assume that you are using either the fully-random or the not-so-random approaches, even in the most tightly controlled reality, and simply ‘doing a better job than usual’ of integrating these encounters into the ongoing narrative.

Which brings me to a variant sub-approach that I rarely see employed, one based on the ‘purely random’ approach, but which also works well with the ‘not-so-random’ concept: Dungeon Trivia.

Option A: Dungeon Trivia

At a fairly meta-level, dungeons should be thought of as a living organism. It needs a circulatory system (usually water); it needs lungs, i.e. some delivery system that feeds fresh air throughout the structure; it’s component parts need food, i.e. some sort of internal ecosystem; and, sometimes, it will have a brain that actively maneuvers the forces within to challenge and confound the PCs, and will react to their actions.

These are all parts of dungeon verisimilitude. Outside of that purpose, they have no function. They do not advance the plot in any way, shape or form. What’s more, even a hint that such considerations have been part of the GM’s design thinking is often enough to get the full benefits in the minds of the players.

Thinking about that gave me the idea of Dungeon Trivia, in which a list of all sorts of miscellaneous factoids about the dungeon or encounter location are gathered in a list. Each random encounter is then treated as an opportunity to highlight one of these factoids – or even just mention it. I just skim down the list (forcing the entries to be brief) looking for the one that’s most significant or relevant to the type of creature encountered.

This keeps the actual encounter backgrounds down to the minimum necessary information to tell the story and make decisions, while dusting all of the above with just enough additional color..

Because it can be used as a variation on all four of the previous options, I’ve called this “Option A”.

And that’s where this article was going to end (more or less) – until I had a moment of inspiration.

Option B: An Independent Plot

Why not have an independent second plotline that is purely derived from random encounters that may span multiple adventures before it comes to a conclusion?

That gives the GM two plotlines – one, relatively orderly and controlled, and one that is very loose and free-wheeling, with a balance that is easily controlled. The only requirement is that the second plotline must be able to connect to the PCs, no matter where they go – whether that is by some form of communications conduit, or a Dream-quest, or an actual presence/transition – a planar gate or whatever. This connection should be only partially controlled by the PCs – they might be able to initiate it on occasion, but should not be able to prevent it becoming active at other (potentially inconvenient) times.

This enables the players to use the second plot as a diversion when the first is dragging, or nothing important is going on, while the GM can use it to add secondary layers of complexity to the campaign the rest of the time.

What’s more, a second line of stimulation can’t help but provide new opportunities to explore the characters of the PCs and highlight distinctive elements thereof – elements that might get very little display in the more rigorously-plotted primary plotline.

The more creative you are, the greater the variation that is possible – and it all focuses on that interaction channel. Some channels may only be possible in certain environments – strictly local, small scale plotlines, like hunting down a bandit leader. Creatures encountered can be part of the band, or a victim, or a wandering beastie that is feasting on the remains of a victim – all of which shows that it’s not necessary for these random plots to get all existential and cosmic. Instead, they can be matched to the advancement of the PCs.

Old-school vs New Approaches to Random Encounters

An interesting thought came to me in the course of writing the above. Previous debates on the subject have largely dealt with the power level of the encounters, and whether or not they should be adapted or modified to match the capabilities of the PCs.

The division between the two possible camps – yes and no – regarding the latter question largely follows the division lines between old-school gaming and new-school.

The old-school argument is that creatures of all possible power levels are out wandering the reality of the game world, and any random encounter should therefore have a statistical probability of occurring, based purely on the rate of incidence of that creature. If you go into a realm known to be populated by Giant Spiders, the odds are that you will encounter such Arachnids – regardless of whether or not the party are up to coping with them or not.

When I first started gaming, the old-school was still contemporary, and the dichotomy was between dungeons (carefully-planned and balanced encounters) and wilderness (completely unplanned and not-necessarily-balanced encounters).

To be fair and honest, the tools for balancing encounters properly didn’t really exist until 3rd edition D&D provided them – even though those tools left a lot to be desired when you dug deeply into their workings. Furthermore, the game mechanics explicitly allowed for unbalanced encounters by fixing the experience awards for such encounters at a higher level than those of a balanced encounter. A number of the early posts here at Campaign Mastery deal with such game balance issues.

The new-school argument is that RPGs are, first and foremost, Games, and that some compromising of reality is desirable at times – and that it’s not fun to be killed in a battle in which you had all the chance of success of an ice-cube in hell or a moth drawn too close to a flame. Instead, the GM should moderate the danger posed by encounters, random or otherwise, to something that the party has a reasonable chance against – unless they are foolish enough to put their heads in the Dragon’s maw, of course.

This (mostly) avoids the catastrophic consequences of the flaws in the experience table, which can quickly spin a campaign out of control.

There are other points of difference between the two camps of gaming, of course, but they are not relevant to this particular discussion.

Frankly, I can see both sides of the argument, and while I personally am far more strongly drawn to the new-school argument in this respect, I have no problem with those who prefer the old-school camp. It certainly kept you on your toes, as a player!

Many of the thoughts regarding integration of random encounters with plotlines that have been expressed above have their origins in the contemplation of mechanisms and guidelines for this sort of encounter self-censorship.

There is also a third option, which I described in my posts about ecology-based random encounters – see the links at the end of the article.

The point that I want to make right now is this: it doesn’t matter which of the Four primary choices, or the -A or -B or even -AB sub-varieties of those choices you select, the philosophical position vis-a-vis the encounter models mentioned in this section remain completely open – “encounter level” (or whatever you choose to call it) lies upon a completely separate axis of decision. You can use the techniques and approaches described in this article regardless of your philosophical orientation.

Broadening the Random prospects

It should also be pointed out that the principles discussed should also apply to every other genre of gaming. A superhero wandering down the street should have a random chance of encountering a bank robbery or a mugging – and, if they don’t, that’s a break in reality that the GM has to take responsibility for. The more story-oriented approaches described might be a way for GMs running such campaigns to have their cake and eat it, too. Only the encounter content changes with campaign genre, not the general principles.

A hatful of links

In this section, I’ve isolated eleven posts and one series that go into some of the side-issues that I tried hard not to get bogged down with in this article.

XP & Balancing Encounters

Ask The GMs: Pacing Your Campaign
A Different Experience: A variation on the D&D 3.x Experience Points System
Basics For Beginners (and the over-experienced) Pt 6: Challenges
Objective-Oriented Experience Points
Basics For Beginners (and the over-experienced) Part 9: Rewards With Intent (includes a revised version of the system presented in Objective-Oriented Experience Points)

Encounter Philosophies:

That’s probably got even the fastest readers sorted for the next week or two.

But in case it’s not: I tried hard to get this article done and published in time, but just missed the close of the January RPG Blog Carnival at Geek Native, which had the subject of Random Encounter Tables.

If you head to this post there and check the comments, You’ll find even more on this subject!

Tags: Adventure-Prep, Advice/Tools, Behind-The-Screen, Campaigns, DM-Advice, Encounter-Design, Game-Mechanics, Inspiration, Philosophy, Plausibility, Running-Encounters, D&D, Tools & Techniques, Pathfinder, Adventure-Creation, Blog Carnival

Comments Off on Jan 2020 Blog Carnival: Some Thoughts On Random Encounters

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The Sixes System Pt 4: Doing Things 2

0. Fundamentals (repeated for all posts:)

6. Setting Targets

6.1 Difficulty Factor

6.2 Eligible Dice

6.3 Target Average

1. Average 3

2. The ED Range

3. The Difficulty Modifier

6.5 Base Target

6.4 Number Of Sixes

6.6 Amended Target

An example:

Same example, more adverse conditions:

Example 3: Same Character, Different Stat & Purpose, Very Difficult task, even more adverse conditions:

Analysis: What’s Actually Happening Here?

6.6 The Scale Of Activity: The Impact of Skill and Equipment

Reference Tables: Target Numbers

TABLE 1 – TARGET BY ROLL AVERAGE

TABLE 2 – % PROBABILITY OF TARGET RESULT

TABLE 3 – TARGET BY AVERAGE ROLL

TABLE 4 – % PROBABILITY OF TARGET RESULT

TABLE 5 – TARGETS BY % CHANCE, WITH ANALYSIS

TABLE 6 – % SUCCESS BY TARGET & NUMBER OF DICE

TABLE 6 – % SUCCESS BY TARGET & NUMBER OF DICE (cont)

TABLE 6 – % SUCCESS BY TARGET & NUMBER OF DICE (cont)

Designer’s Notes & Discussions: Doing Things

Observations of Results Distribution

Implications: Number Of Sixes

Implications for Game Mechanics

Why the Virtual Sixes?

The Limitations Of Virtual Sixes

Recommendation: Critical Hits and Fumbles

Rainbows Of Neon Gray: Moral Topology

Moral Topology

Different Topological Interactions for different Demands

Different Moral Topologies for different Temptations

Ambition is like Rainwater

An RPG is not a 500-page novel

Abstractions – Things an important character cares about

Abstractions – Things an important character opposes

Abstractions – Ambitions, Things a character wants to do

The Depths Of Morality – even more complex characters

The Sixes System Pt 3: Doing Things 1

0. Fundamentals (repeated for all posts:)

5. Resolving Actions

5.1 Choosing A Stat

5.2 Choosing A Purpose

5.3 Choosing A Skill

5.4 A difference that is no difference: Speeding the process

5.5 Related Skill contributions

5.6 True Sixes vs Virtual Sixes

5.7 True Ones vs True Sixes

5.8 Describing A Success

5.9 Partial Success

5.10 Further Time To Success & Second Chances

5.11 Describing A Failure

5.12 Describing A Critical Failure

5.13 Shared Actions

5.14 (Advanced) Coordinated Team Actions

5.15 (Advanced) Uncoordinated Team Actions

5.16 Long-term Actions

5.17 Turn Structure & Initiative

We Interrupt Our Regular Programming 2: Covid-19 Myths

Part 2: Many A Covid-19 Myth Jabbed

UPDATE April 25, 2020: NewsGuard

1. Origins & Responses

1.1. Covid-19 does not derive from bats.

1.2. Covid-19 was not genetically-engineered. It did not escape a lab, and it was not released by the Chinese to wipe out “unproductive” segments of their population.

1.3. Covid-19 was not created by the US to harm the Chinese Economy.

1.4. President Vladimir Putin did not release lions and/or tigers into the streets of Moscow to force citizens to stay indoors in response to the threat of Covid-19.

1.5 Alcohol has not, and is not going to be, banned in parts of the US or in the UK because of Covid-19.

1.6 5G phones/networks are not responsible for the Coronavirus.

New: 1.7 Children are not being separated from their parents by hospitals

New: 1.8 five hundred body-bags have NOT been delivered to a makeshift hospital in an ice-skating rink in Adelaide, South Australia.

New: 1.9 Zookeepers are not washing their hands so often because of Coronavirus that an Orangutang has begin to imitate the hand motions.

New: 1.10 A South African Priest did not instruct his congregation to drink Dettol to prevent Coronavirus, killing 59.

1.11 The Poem being circulated on Facebook, allegedly written by “Kathleen O’Mara” was not written in 1869 and is not eerily prescient.

2.17. Covid-19 is not spread by pets.
2.18. Pets are extremely unlikely to catch Covid-19.

2.23. Gargling / Drinking Oils will not protect against Covid-19.
2.24. Gargling / Drinking Herbal Tea will not protect against Covid-19.
2.25. Gargling with Salt Water will not protect against Covid-19.
2.26. Gargling with Mouth Wash will not protect against Covid-19.

3.5. Summer won’t make Covid-19 go away.
3.6 Going someplace warm will not protect you.

3.8. Taking a hot bath does not prevent Covid-19.
3.9 Taking a cold shower does not prevent Covid-19.

3.23. Sipping or Drinking water will not cure Covid-19.
3.23. Drinking Tea (Herbal or otherwise) will not cure Covid-19.