Style without substance is a soap bubble, all surface glitz and no depth – and just as fragile. Substance without style is utilitarian and contains no room for fun. For anything – including RPGs – to succeed, you need something of both.

I once saw an interview with a comedy TV writer – I forget who or in what – but the gist of it was that “Comedy needs to be dangerous.” Which is to say, that it needs to examine controversies, needs to dare to risk poking fun at serious issues and problems, or it becomes irrelevant fluff. Doing so means that a joke may fail – and be weeded out – but when it succeeds, it grants perspective and breaks down entrenched positions.

Comedy doesn’t need social relevance to be funny – but being irreverent about social issues increases the likelihood of engaging the audience, and if you can get them to laugh about something serious, they are being seriously entertained.

So you need both style and substance.

In Conflict

It’s often the case that the two are in conflict. The nuts-and-bolts of game mechanics are a “great” way to puncture mood and interrupt flow, and that’s reflected in the role combat has in building up the emotional intensity of a story, as described in my two-part series on Emotional Pacing, Swell and Lull (Part 1, Part 2). But, if the game is to have substance, it needs the crunchy bits.

In Harmony

Having the two co-exist in harmony is a lot easier said than done. You need the design of the game mechanics to play ball, and you need the substance of the style to be appropriate. If neither quite fits that recipe, then you have some ongoing conflict between the two, and only the severity is in question.

If you have been a GM for any length of time, I’m sure that you will have experienced one of those days where everything seems to go right in terms of the game reflecting the genre and engaging the players and being fun almost effortlessly for all concerned. The players laugh naturally at the funny bits, take seriously the serious bits, are pensive and reflective and contemplative when appropriate, get fired up and gung-ho on cue, and it all blends seamlessly.

Nine out of ten of such days will be days which are “pure roleplaying,” with no crunch involved beyond the mechanics of character construction. Maybe more.

But the tenth day is the one that makes a GM feel like he’s really in command of his craft and at the height of his powers – like he really knows what he’s doing. I get that feeling maybe once a year – on average. Those are the days when the game mechanics play an active role in the adventure but don’t break the mood, they enhance it, and vice-versa. Those are the days that you live for, as a GM.

Those are the days when the game mechanics and tone and adventure content and role-play interaction and narrative all work together in harmony, synergizing to produce an entertainment greater than the sum of its parts. As a general rule, you do nothing differently to what you’ve done a thousand other times – it just seems to work better than usual, for some reason.

The Crunchy Bits

It’s hard enough getting these two natural antagonists to line up in support of each other at the best of times without the game mechanics and campaign fighting each other. That’s why choice of game system for any given campaign is so important.

There’s absolutely no reason why you couldn’t use D&D to run a superhero campaign – it just requires some creative interpretation. That’s no longer a fireball spell, it’s a fire-blast power. Those aren’t Magic Missiles – they are now Cosmic Power Bolts that will twist and turn around obstacles once locked onto a target. It’s all in the flavor text and how you interpret it.

I would never do it.

There are constraints upon the D&D system mechanics that are wholly artificial in nature, such as the level system and the concept of only engagements with equal or better foes being significant or noteworthy, that simply don’t fit the super-heroics mold. In a superhero campaign, the concept is far more egalitarian: you can fight off an alien invasion this week and be crawling through the slums after a human-alligator crossbreed the week after, and both should be expected to provide a similar level of challenge to the PCs. Trouble can come from a costumed punk robbing a bank as readily as a costumed world-conqueror and be equally challenging to solve.

The game mechanics of D&D are in conflict with the genre of superheroes, and therefore with almost all campaigns belonging to that genre, and that’s all there is to it.

Even within the fantasy milieu, some concepts work better with D&D than others, and to force the two into a shotgun wedding usually means drastic surgery on the game mechanics – for example, “No-one in existence has more than 6 levels, and XP earnings are 1/10th of the book value.” If you really want high-level magic to be so rare – all but non-existent – there are better game systems out there to choose from.

If you want your crunchy bits and stylistic elements to harmonize, it’s much better if they start off on speaking terms!

Ultimately, the purpose of “the crunchy bits” of a game system are to facilitate attempts by characters to do something. They have to

• Define what characters can’t do;
• By exclusion, define what characters can do (anything else);
• Define how the chances of success should be determined;
• Define how those chances are to be tested;
• Define how the results of any such test are to be translated from cause into effect.

Every game mechanic subsystem can be defined in terms of an ordinary function that they are intended to simulate, but these usually interlock with each other. A skills subsystem, for example, ties into the experience subsystem, which ties into anything else that is or can be improved through the acquisition of expertise and field experience, such as the combat subsystem, or the spellcasting subsystem.

But the things that a character can be expected to want to try and do will be defined by the genre and circumstances – so the substance can never be fully divorced from style.

Style must hook into Substance

While game mechanics can be varied with House Rules, these are generally just tweaking the system to achieve the last few percentage points of compatibility between campaign and rules. For the most part, you need the mechanics to be consistent and predictable, and variations to be explicit and documented. Only if there are no relevant rules to draw upon can new-rules-on-the-fly be justified.

The more mature a game system, the fewer such blind spots there should be. Human error and failures of design notwithstanding, the trend should be toward comprehensiveness.

If the mechanics are fixed and not easily changed to suit the needs of the moment, it becomes clear that style must hook into substance and not vice-versa. That means that one requirement of the mechanics – and one that is often overlooked – is that they should provide anchoring points for style to integrate with the mechanics.

These anchoring points generally come down to interpretation of results. What does it mean when the player rolls a 17 on his three d6? Or gets an additional d6 to roll for something? What’s the significance of missing a target by three instead of eight?

But the style can also dictate which mechanics are relevant – circumstances which require a skill check, or a saving throw are dictated by the story, and are therefore within the GMs purview.

Style Washes and Splashes

Style in an RPG can be thought of as a watercolor painting. It comes in two basic flavors: “Washes” and “Splashes”.

In watercolor (and other painting forms), a “wash” is an area of broadly similar color, frequently employed as background. It’s achieved by using a lot of water (or appropriate diluting agent) mixed with the paint – the technical terminology is a “thin” layer of paint. “Wash” effects are practically synonymous with watercolors, however.

More intense concentrations of paint are used for featured elements of an image. There’s no one general term for using these, because there are dozens of different ways of applying the paint and each of those has its own specific name. Since I needed such a generic term for use in this article, I’ve chosen to call them “Splashes”.

The above images aren’t there just because they are pretty. The watercolor analogy is a very exact match for the use of color – what I’ve been calling “style” in this article – in an RPG. You have the persistent content, the stuff that’s there all the time in one form or another – the “wash” – and the featured, attention-grabbing bits, the “splashes”.

That also makes these images symbolic of what can be done with these two elements – and carefully-judged applications of the harsh inks of game mechanics. They depict the art of the possible.

Stylistic Wash

The analogy isn’t perfect. There are four major elements of roleplaying game-play that can carry style, or be shaped to deliver style, and they can all be used for wash or punched up in significance for splash.

Stylistic wash describes content that is always present in one form or another. Descriptions for example – you are always describing something. Skill Roll interpretations (including attack rolls in Combat) are naturally wash unless you make a big deal out of them or the results of success or failure are dramatic in story terms. Story and characterization are ever-present, but can bubble along gently without standing up and demanding attention. These are all stylistic wash.

Stylistic Splash

Stylistic Splash is when an element forces its way to prominence. But there are degrees of prominence – from in-your-face-can’t-be-ignored to first-among-near-equals. Danger, drama, intensity – these are manipulable aspects of style that control prominence and emotional intensity.

In practical terms, things that demand the PCs act should come last, and things that establish atmosphere should come first. Big-picture should precede specifics. Obvious should precede subtle. Attention-getting should precede things you have to look for or think about. Actions should precede thoughts.

By my count, that’s five different criteria, all demanding that some things go first and some things should be last – but some have to be in the middle, no two can happen at the same time, and the chances that all five will concur is vanishingly remote.

When you have multiple priorities in conflict, judgment comes into play. Genre can be a guide, but ultimately, regardless of genre, the objective has to be the telling of a clear story without confusion. And, when those decision-makers also evenly balance across two different choices, personal preference is the only remaining factor – and that’s where an individual style comes from.

Accidental Style

Some people don’t think about these things – they just tell the best story they can at any given point in time and let the chips fall where they may. They might even think that they don’t have a distinctive style.

Well, I’ve got news for them: In every game I’ve ever played – or sat next to – I could tell who was GMing just from the description of a day’s play. We all do some things better than others, and do some things by reflex (ignoring other choices that might be equally or even more valid) – unless we make it our business to explore our options and technique – and that adds up to a personal style whether we planned to have one or not.

If you don’t do it deliberately and with forethought, it will happen anyway – but it will be accidental and instinctive, and you will have no control over the process or the outcome.

Concept As The Vehicle Of Style

I stated earlier that there were four primary vehicles of style. The first of these is concept – these are the ideas that you have; more specifically, the ideas that you do not reject.

Remember the line from all those John West ads – “It’s the fish that John West reject that makes them the best”? It’s not quite right as an analogy to this situation, but it’s close. The difference is the presumption that there will be better fish to source, somewhere – a law of averages deal that would rarely let John West down – but that’s not all that true of one person working in isolation – i.e. a GM – when it comes to ideas.

Both factors – breadth of imagination and selectivity – play their part in the broad concept of, well, “concept”.

Plot

The discerning, who may have glanced ahead at the section titles to come, may well have noticed the absence of two things that they might have expected to see – I’ve written about both often enough. These are Plot and Story.

Plot is “intended story” – and it’s generally vague in some respects (or it should be) because the GMs is not the only creative mind engaged in the RPG process. To avoid too much uncertainty, plot is often produced in outline terms only, a practice that I recommend. Plot often lacks an ending; it concentrates more on the problems that will have to be overcome than it does the process of overcoming them.

Another way of saying “intended story” is to say “Story idea”, or even “Story concept”. And that is why Plot doesn’t get its own listing; I consider it to be a part of the broader term, “Concept”.

Story

If plot is “intended story” then “story” has to refer to “plot as executed, not just as planned”. But that consists of three things that are not plot: Narrative and its delivery, Character Interplay and the imputed personalities of the characters depicted, and Interpretation of situations and random results within the context of the situation at the time. Those are the only ways that the players experience plot in the RPG, so those are the terms that the GM should employ when considering the translation of plot into story, i.e. the execution of the plot.

Just as plot is subsumed into the broader term, “Concept”, so “story” is divided into the three aspects of story that are deliverable, because those are the practical manifestations of style.

Want to frustrate yourself endlessly for an infinite amount of time? Try to tell someone how to have an idea. Where they come from, we really have no clear idea – just a lot of double-talk about having a strong imagination (i.e. an ability to produce ideas on demand), or being a lateral thinker (i.e. the ability to produce ideas no-one has even thought about before). Somehow, we have the ability to abstract unfinished stories or images or whatever and project possible ‘next parts,’ or extensions of the existing content, to ‘grow’ the content – and that new content is then called an ‘idea’.

Some people have visual ideas, some have narrative ideas, some have plot ideas, some are strong in broad abstract concepts, some are gifted in emotional projection, some are gifted with musical imaginations – the list is almost endless. In every field of human endeavor, there are ground-breakers who advance the art of what is possible, and those who plod along in their footsteps.

So I can’t really tell you how to have ideas, let alone how to have good ideas, because no-one really knows how it happens. I can tell you various means of strengthening your imagination, however – as others have done – and pretend that this will be sufficient.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: all those imagination-strengthening techniques add up to exposure to other people’s imaginations so that you can mentally add to your storehouse of the ‘existing art’. You could read every novel ever published and it still won’t make you a great novelist – but it will make you a workmanlike novelist. You may not be capable of that instinctive leap that extends the art – but you will be ‘state of the art’. That’s not quite the same thing, but it’s close enough for our purposes – and may even be more suitable to our needs. Because, as with comedy, pushing the limits means sometimes failing.

Or, to put it another way: don’t fret that you aren’t a genius. Being competent is more than good enough, and may even be better.

Because that means that you have a vast number of alternatives from analogous situations cataloged in your subconscious that you can draw upon to solve most plot problems. Given a problem, you can come up with ideas.

The other half of the creativity equation is something that can only really be learned from experience. Some things are always going to be unacceptable because they contain logical flaws stemming from not having put the right foundation ingredients in place; some because they are too far removed from the genre; and some because they won’t take the story in the right direction. Others will be acceptable because the players will not tolerate them, or because they will create discomfort for no good reason.

But with thousands of possibilities, or millions, there are still going to be a wealth of choices remaining, which is where the GM has to exercise his judgment and style. The only advice I can offer in this respect is extremely broad – remember what you are trying to achieve (fun for all); remember what you are trying to achieve in plot or story terms; and contemplate what your players enjoy, and in particular, whose turn it is to have the spotlight. If you play to those requirements, and strive not to be overly-predictable, you won’t go too far wrong.

Concept is primarily a “splash” mechanism, though each “splash” leaves a cumulative contribution to the background “wash”. One reason why it’s important to make as many of your ideas good ones is that they never completely go away – good, bad, or indifferent. And it doesn’t take a lot of bad taste before the mix becomes unpalatable – or a lot of mediocrity before it simply becomes bland.

Narrative As The Vehicle Of Style

Style, in the form of flavor, is often most obvious when incorporated into narrative, simply because so much needs to be described in any RPG. At the same time, narrative can put players to sleep if there is too much of it; an RPG needs to be interactive.

Case in point: for the next game session of the Zenith-3 campaign, I have to brief the players on a situation in an unfamiliar location – which means telling them the ground rules, i.e. the political situation. I also need to establish characterizations for a whole bunch of NPCs that haven’t appeared before, which means still more narrative. As things stand, the whole thing is likely to be soporific. To solve this, I need to find ways of making it more interactive, of getting the players involved.

In the current draft, they aren’t even permitted to speak – but I’ve solved that problem, which is a start, however minimal! I need to inject more such modes of interaction, and add some more opportunities for the players to get involved. More questions for them and fewer answers from me. If that means that what would currently take about 3 hours to get through expands to need four or five hours to get through, i.e. the whole day’s play, so be it. Better a slow day than a dull 3/4 of a day!

So important is narrative as a conduit of style and flavor, and so difficult the constraints, that I have written a major series on the subject: The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative. There’s no way that I can summarize everything that’s in that six-part series in a few short paragraphs, the best that I can do is refer readers to the source.

Narrative is ephemeral, for the most part; once it’s delivered, and the players have stopped interacting with elements of it, it’s gone. Unlike Concepts, there’s very little persistence.

That’s both good and bad; it means that a bad passage of narrative, once it’s gone, does little ongoing harm, but it also means that you have to continually do a top job with your narrative, you can never rest on your laurels.

Interplay As The Vehicle Of Style

The third primary conveyor of style is the interplay between characters. It was only recently that I discovered that I had never written an article on the subject for Campaign Mastery and set about correcting that deficit; the results may be found in Speaking In Tongues.

It’s critical in interplay situations that any characterization established within the preceding narrative be sustained, deepened, and enhanced; while few players will remember what a character has said, the personality that is conveyed by their choices of language and tone will usually be remembered. If that personality accords with the narrative, the impact can be greater and more memorable than the sum of its parts; if the two are in conflict, there will be a vacuum created, an empty spot where “characters” are concerned. Players might remember someone’s identity intellectually, but those characters won’t mean anything to them.

Who are the characters that you remember from TV – from a series such as MASH (chosen because I expect almost everyone to have seen it)? Who remembers Sargent Benson? Anyone? He was the character brought in by a general whose nose was out of joint to spy on the deportment of Potter’s command for I-corps. A one-off appearance. Contrast that with Corporal Klinger – who was also brought in for a single episode, in fact, for a single joke, and who did such a tremendous job that he became a series regular.

You might think that comparison is unfair, simply because Klinger became a regular – so let’s throw in a couple of other one-shots. Captain Bardonero, BJ’s practical-joke playing friend, played by the Australian actor James Cromwell in the episode Last Laugh. Or Captain Roy DuPree, the cowboy and temporary replacement surgeon exchanged for Hawkeye by the 8063rd? Both were memorable characters because they had strong on-screen personalities, expressed through on-screen dialogue. “Here’s to the three of us. We’re gonna have more fun than a mosquito in a blood-bank” – in a Southern drawl.

Like concepts, characterization is a “Splash” that lingers as a “Wash”, leaving an imprint on the campaign. And Interactions between PC and NPC are the delivery vehicles for characterization. It doesn’t matter how complex and rich the personalities are that you create in character biographies; what matters is what you can deliver in-play.

One of the worst mistakes that new GMs make is focusing on major NPCs; this usually changes the first time one player says to another, “This must be important, the NPCs got a personality” – or words to that effect. That’s a sure sign that everyone who isn’t an obvious featured NPC is a cardboard cutout and recognizable as such – and can (and will) be treated as such by the PCs.

Make your incidental characters as rich and complex as you can. Not to the point of turning them into caricatures, but enough to make them all feel real – and the result will be that the game world will feel more real, even when those characters aren’t around.

Interpretation As The Vehicle Of Style

The last of the four major carriers of style in an RPG is how you, as GM, interact with players attempts to use the game mechanics to do things – whether that’s to call some relevant information to mind (a knowledge skill), make a fishing net out of reeds (a practical skill), bluff an NPC (an interpersonal skill), strike a target (a combat skill), or put doubts aside (an internal skill).

There’s more nuance to this aspect of gaming than you might think. You have control over:

1. Whether or not to call for a skill check;
2. The circumstances that surround that call;
3. Which skill to ask for a check of;
4. Potential substitutes or alternatives to that skill;
5. How you will handle potential synergies;
6. The translation of circumstances into modifiers to targets or difficulty numbers;
7. The question of degrees of success or failure;
8. Interpretation of the outcome;
9. How you describe that interpretation in narrative form;
10. Whether or not repeated attempts are possible; and
11. What modifiers may be appropriate for repeated attempts.

All of these can be definitive of at least part of your personal style, and of the campaign style (what’s the difference? You carry your personal style from one campaign to another, but your campaign style is specific to a particular campaign or genre.)

Some are obvious, others less so. A particular GM, for example, might be generous in the latitude applied to substitute skills and potential synergies, but harsh on the modifiers – and, if he’s consistent about that, the players will notice. It will mean that characters will either succeed easily or face catastrophic odds, and will perpetually be on a knife-edge. While the GM would probably see this as a balanced approach, the players will not, though that can be mitigated through partial successes and other forms of degree of success. All of which gives you some idea of how rich and complex the interplay between these 11 decisions can be.

I know one GM, for example, who never comes right out and indicates success or failure; instead, he describes the outcome and leaves it up to the player to decide whether or not that’s good enough. I couldn’t do that, it’s not part of my style. Which is exactly what I’m getting at.

There are a number of articles here at Campaign Mastery which collectively address all these questions and the contrivance and conveyance of style that results.

• The Nimble Mind: Making Skills Matter in RPGs;
• “How Hard Can It Be?”- Skill Checks under the microscope;
• Precision Vs Holistic Skill Interpretation; and,
• Narratives Of Skill: How To ‘Improv’ Outcome Descriptions In Advance.

One way of looking at an RPG game session is as a continuous blend of narrative and interaction punctuated by Interpretations of Outcomes. It’s an interesting perspective when you contemplate the significance of game mechanics, for example. But it’s also relevant when assessing the way these decisions deliver and manipulate style. As with several of the aspects of gaming that have been discussed, the first impression is that these will principally be “splash” elements – but players will adjust their own playing style to maximize their advantages, and that creates an ongoing effect on style that is carried beyond individual skill checks / attacks.

Whats more, the GM tends to modify his own style in reaction to behavioral changes by the players, and that is also an ongoing influence.

Wrestling With Style

All these influences on style and the human tendency to fall into behavioral patterns means that every GM has his own distinctive style, which hearkens back to what I said earlier – that after getting to know them, I could recognize each GM’s distinctive style and identify them from a description of a day’s play.

There were a couple of occasions when that didn’t work, and someone surprised me. But they were rare. Some GMs I could recognize just from knowing their style as a player.

Sometimes, the content that a GM is trying to deliver can conflict with his style. As a result, he never feels comfortable or settled and is always forcing himself to execute the material he is supposed to deliver.

There are times when, in order to run a scene, an encounter, or an entire adventure or campaign, the GM has to wrestle with his style, do combat with the instincts that he can normally rely on, and second-guess every decision.

As a general rule of thumb, if you don’t read it, or watch it, you won’t succeed at GMing it – except in comparison to someone even worse at the job. In the Zener Gate campaign, I ran an adventure set in the old west at one point – and had to struggle with it all the way, and exhausted my entire stockpile of ideas for that particular setting.

But sometimes, you can surprise yourself, too – I was never in great difficulty in running the Team Neon Phi (super-agents) campaign within my superhero game universe, and both players and myself enjoyed a romp full of cloak-and-dagger and shadowy conspiracies, to such an extent that I would not hesitate to run such a campaign again.

The Heavens Align

There are times, though, when the heavens align and everything clicks. The result is the most fun that you can have as a GM.

There is a danger, the first time that you experience it, that you will then start to chase it, meddling with one or more of things that got you there in the process. You can get yourself in such a tangle of frustration that you eventually give up completely – I’ve seen it happen.

This danger tends to be mitigated by experience; you become more aware that you aren’t doing anything different to what you usually do, and that enables you to avoid this trap. That’s the point at which you can start improving your game in a constructive way, adding to your repertoire to maximize the opportunities for lightning to strike again, without getting in the way of the prospects.

The same thing happens in other media and activities, too. You can be an actor, and discover one part that makes it all feel effortless and natural, or an acting partnership that has genuine chemistry. It happens in game design – of both the computer-game and board-game varieties.

It’s worthwhile taking a moment to consider how this would look from the outside. I think the key word to be used in description is “effortless”, or results in great disproportion to the effort that has been expended. I got that impression when reading a proposed advertisement for Gambino Free Slots – and I get to read a lot of them for such sites. With many, they have one point of distinction, and sometimes that’s of interest and sometimes not; with Gambino, it was one thing after another. It was an impressive litany of positives.

Unfortunately, there was nothing in the submitted advertisement that would make it of interest to the majority of Campaign Mastery readers, however impressive it might have been as a piece of advertising. But it was enough to get me thinking, and this article was the outcome.

Mastery of your style as a GM – or in any other endeavor – begins with an understanding of the constituents of that style, and how they manifest within the endeavor in question. Once you understand those, and the synergies that are possible between them, then you too can hope to do the equivalent of hitting the slot machines jackpot. And, if slot machines float your boat as well as RPGs, you could do worse than to take a look at Gambino; just follow the links provided.

Over the weekend, Campaign Mastery was described by the very flattering term, “one of the best Treasure Troves for a DM”. Aside from feeling very chuffed at the compliment, my mind immediately started to think about Treasure Troves. This article is the result.

The Map

So, how do you find a treasure trove? The two obvious answers are “Look in a dungeon” and “Follow a treasure map”. I’ll talk about the first of these in a little bit, but let’s start with the Treasure Map that somehow finds its way into the hands of the party.

The most important question about treasure and anything to do with it, as implied by the title of the article, is always “How did that get here!?” So, how did it come about that the treasure map was available for the PCs to get their hands on it? Answer that with any plausibility and the whole campaign’s credibility is enhanced and reinforced; fail to do so, and the credibility of everything else is threatened and undermined.

This is important because if you have a reputation for credibility, players will forgive or overlook the occasional lapse, whereas if they have to fight tooth and nail for anything even smelling of justifiably, their first reaction to anything will be frustration and “here we go again” – neither of which are conducive to having fun in most cases.

It’s not necessary to construct an entire backstory for the map (though it does leave you ready for just about anything); some hints that there is such a backstory is usually enough to “sell” the credibility of the map, which convinces the players to invest the time and effort into following it, which in turn gets the adventure moving forwards instead of having them sit around stirring up mischief and getting themselves in trouble.

It’s too easy for a GM to misapply the principle of ‘letting the players decide their own fates and make their own decisions’ into being completely passive. That just doesn’t work. You need to dangle opportunities for adventure in front of them until they decide which one to follow next. Life is full of stuff that just happens, why should a fantasy life be any different? Only the type of “stuff” should vary.

In practical terms, there are only two – perhaps three – parts of that backstory that matter.

1. The Immediate

Who did the PCs get the map from and is it credible that they had it to lose? I’m never particularly interested in identities when it comes to answering this question; generic labels tend to expose any issues more quickly. “Rufus Dowdrop owns the map and will use it in collateral in a game of Starsdrop” is not as informative as “An ex-military lowlife possesses the map and will use it as collateral in a game of Starsdrop”. Or it could be “A street punk”, or “A wealthy local”. Of those three answers, only the last needs no further elaboration or justification; but the other two are suggestive of two entirely different answers.

One more tip: there’s a very strong temptation to employ the past tense when thinking about these things; in the GM’s mind, the map is already in the hands of the PCs. DON’T DO IT. Using the future tense, as I have above, makes a huge psychological difference to the GM – instead of thinking about the map as a static thing, it suddenly becomes the key to unlocking a plot, the beating heart of an adventure. Instead of writing a heavy background sequence, you are immediately more engaged in finding ways to get the PCs into the story. Such a small thing, but it makes a huge difference.

2. Origins

Who drew the map in the first place? Again, generics are less work and more quickly reveal problems and inadequacies in the credibility department.

3. In-Betweeners

Is it a serious contention that no-one has ever tried following the map before? If so, this needs explanation in the context of the “handover” to the PCs: “I’ve held onto this map for years. It’s the last valuable thing I own; I always hoped that one day I’d be able to mount an expedition to find the fabulous treasures that must lie at the end of the trail. But I never could. Now it’s come to this…” Three sentences, but they carry a barge-load of credibility in selling the map to the PCs.

On the other hand, every time someone has tried to follow the map and failed, you have two further things that need explanation: how the map was returned to “Civilization”, and what happened to those other adventurers – at least in legend.

The Destination

The second major thing that the GM needs to consider – and the “origins” question above will play directly into the decision – is what will (in generic terms) be found at the end of the map, and is that credible?

Most maps either don’t meet the “treasure map” trope, or they are to a military cache or emplacement (if into relatively ‘known’ lands) or to a mine that has not been rediscovered (if into relatively ‘unexplored’ lands).

Everything else is simply a mark on a normal map, 99% of the time. It would take an expert eye – or long and close examination – to pick out the one marking on the map that doesn’t correspond with something well known, and that therefore might be worth exploring. “Wait, I don’t remember an [x] between Longhop Marsh and Little Bigstrap,” where [x] might be an inn, or a monastery, or a temple, or whatever, “but there’s one marked on this map. We have to check it out!” – and the adventure is off and running. But unless you spoon-feed the discovery to the players, it might take them weeks or months to notice it, because there’s no good reason for it to be marked any differently to any of the other locations on the map.

“Treasure maps” – maps with a notable and obvious “X” marking the spot (visible or otherwise) get past this problem immediately. There may or may not be a route marked; there may or may not be good reason for retracing that route if there is one, and the players may or may not have access to the information they need to make an informed choice. This is such a concatenation of improbabilities that in most cases, the players will have to make blind choices about how they are going to get to X. They might find that there’s good reason for following the trail – it’s the only viable route, for example, or that it’s the least dangerous approach (which is why it was used in the first place). Or they might have to just muddle through on their own.

The “lost mine” is problematic for the campaign, in the long run, unless it was mined out (but the players don’t know and can’t find out about this). Legend can have it be stuffed full of gold ore, or silver, or gemstones. Such things tend to grow in the retelling. But it makes a natural “dungeon”.

Outnumbering such by at least 100-to-1 would be the alternative – military caches or installations, especially ones that were set up by lost expeditions or long-past military junkets.

What’s in the Treasure Trove?

The “book” – interpreted in one specific way – says that PCs of a given character level will typically have ‘one of these at +x and one of those at +y’ – and the GM therefore, in the minds of some players, has an obligation to make those magic items available to the players – which means putting them in hoards or Treasure Troves.

Forget the book.

Using this as a guide to treasure emplacement is a short-term band-aid that will do long-term damage to the campaign.

What gets emplaced in a hoard or treasure trove should always make sense in terms of the nature of the location.

Let’s say we’re talking about a military cache. What would be there? Well, ordinary swords break from time to time; so there would be some of those. Daggers are utility devices as much as weapons, and likely to blunt over time; while they can be resharpened, that takes time and makes some noise. So letting them get blunt and having replacements on hand makes sense. Preserved food and water? Quite plausible. Other cooking supplies: salt and spices? Possibly, but these are frequently expensive. Still, the amounts needed are relatively small, so it’s not entirely implausible. Replacement tents and tent-pegs and bedrolls and blankets and other consumables like fresh uniforms? Absolutely.

Now drop in a +3 sword of Giant-slaying, or whatever. It sticks out like a sore thumb – who has enough such magic items that they can afford to leave on in a cache? Only someone in a campaign that gives away such items like a politician’s promises. It makes no sense, has zero credibility – and damages the credibility of the rest of the campaign.

An elite unit might have +1 or +2 swords. Especially if they are foreign – Elvish or Dwarfish or whatever.

Something I remembered in table conversation on Saturday: In the second campaign I ever played in, characters were 3rd level before they even got their hands on a (non-magical) long-sword as opposed to the short-swords that were ubiquitous. Three fighter-types came to blows over which of them most deserved to have this powerful weapon, and the extra damage that it could inflict.

So forget what the book says. Don’t sacrifice your credibility so cheaply. Instead of a +3 sword of Dragon-slaying, emplace three or four +1 weapons.

The Fumanor Solution

I spent almost twenty years thinking about such things before the Fumanor campaign got off the ground. That’s one reason why it (and its sequels) lasted for so long – 13 years (and still unfinished, but in hiatus at the moment).

It’s strange, but even with everything the players knew about me and my GMing style, they were still blind to some things and never discovered them in all the years they spent in that campaign.

For example, they bitched about the low level of magic floating around the campaign despite the existence of various ways to buff the plus of items within the campaign, and ways to take two +1 swords for example and create a single +2 weapon out of them. Two +2s could make a +3, and so on. Embedding a ‘special ability’ of some sort consumed as many pluses as the rating of the ability “Vorpal” was a +5 equivalent, so a +5 weapon with “Vorpal” was a “Vorpal Sword +0”. One of those plus a straight +5 gets you a “Vorpal Sword +1”. And so on.

But no sword can hold more than a +5 bonus unless the extra is consumed in special abilities. So to get from a Vorpal Sword +1 to a VS +2, you need two +5s, and two mages of equal ability (4 levels per magical plus) casting simultaneously. To get from a VS +2, you need four +5s, and four mages, and so on.

In a similar way, there were methods for embedding those “special abilities” into a sword.

Think of the typical dungeon as the bottom level of a pyramid scheme. To ascend to the next rank up, you need more people at the bottom. Or in this case, swords.

Directions Of Adventure

There’s one exception to the rule of thumb: when you’re using treasure hoards as a carrot to lead the players in the direction of the adventure after the current one. It only stands to reason that confronting, say, Giants, would be a lot more intimidating if you had only standard equipment than if you had a sword of Giant-slaying in your kit. So, when the Seneschal of the throne comes to you with a paying quest into the Giant-lands, while you could always say ‘no’, it’s far less defensible to do so if so equipped – and because of the perceived advantage, you would be more likely to say ‘yes’.

In A Dungeon?

There have been players and GMs who have tried to tell me that things should be different in a dungeon. To which I say, ‘maybe’.

You can think of a dungeon as a pyramid scheme, with the parties attempting to clear the dungeon getting a certain depth into the dungeon based on their levels and equipment. There would be – or at least, should be – more parties with +1 equipment than those with +2, and so on.

That gives a distribution model like the one to the left. This is a dungeon which has defeated one party with +4 weapons and another with +5 weapons, both of which are therefore present to be found – maybe – but you’re almost 1/3 of the way through it before you find even a +1 weapon.

When magic levels are low, it makes character levels more important. Magic is the great equalizer – until it falls into the hands of those characters most capable of taking it off a lesser character, and then it becomes a geometric or even exponential boost to their general combat effectiveness.

Goodies will stay wherever the characters who previously attempted to clear the dungeon fell (not necessarily the same thing as how deeply they got, they may have turned back but been too weak to fight off a lesser threat on their way out) – unless someone moves those goodies. Anyone who knows what a weapon is should be expected to recognize a good one. Anyone who tries to live in anything approaching a civilized way is likely to clean up the mess. If there’s a weapon or magic item, they particularly don’t like being around, they are likely to find a hole and drop it – where it then ends up is anyone’s guess. It’s also likely that some of the goodies from within will be traded with outside forces for things that the residents want more.

Sentient beings will apply whatever they’ve got in the way of smarts to any situation, in other words, and that will impact on where things will be found.

Now, it’s not necessary to compile a complete history of every item in the dungeon; that would become an onerous task very quickly. But you do need to think about things a little and give some positive indication that you have thought about them in your descriptions of areas and encounters, and especially, placement of treasures.

The Believability of Characters

Credibility has one more demand to make. If there’s a +5 weapon in the dungeon, how credible is it that a PC can retrieve it using nothing better than a +1 or +2 or whatever?

This usually works the other way around – if the dungeon is such that characters of the PCs calibers can get through it, why would anyone better equipped have failed to do so?

There are ways of explaining and justifying these situations – the most obvious is that the better-equipped characters have “softened the residents up” for the PCs. But if that’s the case, it should again manifest within encounters, and a notable absence of treasures to be found – they’ve all been scooped up by the better-equipped characters, with the only exceptions being something they didn’t find or something that was so worthless they didn’t bother taking it.

It must also be remembered that the PCs won’t know what the NPCs “ahead of them” are equipped with. At best they may find a hint or two – the corpses of a couple of creatures that the PCs would have been troubled by, for example.

In a nutshell

When you’re the GM of an RPG, you’re engaged in the processes of telling, and facilitating the telling, of stories. If those stories are full of holes, they won’t be very good. If the plot elements, including treasure placement, that you feed to the players are good, they facilitate the spinning of ripping good yarns and enhance the credibility and gravitas that you can command as a storyteller. If they are not so good, you damage your credibility as a storyteller and damage the stories that can be told using the raw materials that you are providing.

And it doesn’t matter what the genre of game is, or what the nature of the rewards are – the basic principle holds true. It could be tech or intelligence in Star Wars or a mystic amulet in Call Of Cthulhu, just as much as it is true for gold and magic in D&D/d20 or it’s many variations. The core commodities of story and credibility are just as unyielding and essential, no matter the genre.

When you put it that way, it seems to be an easy decision to make, doesn’t it?

This article was prompted by last Saturday’s play in my Zenith-3 (superheroes) game, but I use the techniques in all my campaigns.

But I want to start by quoting a question that I answered over the weekend on Quora, because it’s also relevant.

When running an AD&D game, what do you do to really make your players sweat?

A: I smile a lot, and become more generous in every possible way at the game table. “Failed your roll? ‘Nah, that doesn’t make sense, not for a character of your skill. Re-roll it.”

For a few minutes, they enjoy it. But, if it persists, they start getting nervous, and paranoid. At which point, I drop in a harmless encounter which would normally not even rate a mention, to give their nerves a focal point – and stop being “Mr Fluffy”. Which they read as an indication that the Ax-Murderer GM is stalking them!

But, if the question had been, When running an RPG, what do you do to really scare / worry your players? my answer would have been completely different. In a nutshell, I would have written:

“Know their characters better than they do”.

The GM’s responsibility

Part of the job of being a GM is to occupy the shadow of each PC that takes part (hence the title of this article). That means understanding them while having no direct control over their actions.

The benefits and advantages of doing so are almost innumerable. It enables me to tailor both campaigns and adventures to give the PCs preeminent roles, it enables encounters to be designed that will engage the characters (and through them, their players), it makes an equitable sharing of the spotlight far easier to manage, and it adds to the sense of integration between characters and the game worlds that they occupy, enhancing plausibility and a sense of realism even in the fantastic. It reduces my workload in adventure prep by focusing on avenues the PCs are likely to explore, it gives the player a deeper understanding of their own characters, increasing their levels of engagement with both character and campaign still further, and – under the theory that players and their characters share at least some common ground in terms of personality – it increases the interest in and enjoyment of the campaign by the players.

Some Background

In the Zenith-3 adventure that concluded in our last session, a plot twist that I’d been building for 20-odd years was suddenly revealed. The focal points of that plot twist were two of the PCs, one of whom has been through three different players in his lifetime.

The first player treated the character as a brick/detective. It was his first character made to the standards of this particular campaign, in which every word of background is examined minutely in the course of play. I may have provided the campaign background, but what the character had experienced in his past was up to the player (with me as reference library and research assistant). The player even commented that he’d learned more about creating personalities, not just characteristics, from that character creation session than the entire rest of his gaming ‘career’ to date.

Part of what I do as a GM is look for ‘plot holes’ in these backgrounds, things that need more explanation than the player is willing or able to provide. I dutifully point these out to the players, giving them the option to patch them, and if they can’t, and if I can see a solution, I integrate those into my campaign plan as revelations to take place during play. Sometimes, when the hole is likely to trip the player up in the meantime, I’ll even outline my answer and the core of the plotline in which it will be revealed. This enables the player a more rounded and complete view of the personality that they are playing from the beginning – which usually makes the character easier to play.

Because the player was new to this depth of engagement, his background had more holes than most – not only had the character done something completely opposed to the principles he espoused and all his professional training by stealing and using a piece of potentially dangerous equipment, but he had then lied about it. At the same time, the character’s personality seemed to shift, becoming more paranoid and apprehensive. This could all be explained by having the equipment itself influencing his mental state, so I proposed to the player that the equipment was seductive, a bit like the One Ring in Tolkien. The player also left it to me to explain how his character’s powers worked – he simply stated that they were imbued by the suit.

In play, the character displayed access to his abilities even when not using the equipment (a suit of armor). The only possible explanation for this “action at a distance” was for the suit to have changed the character in some fashion, making itself redundant – while keeping him from realizing this. In fact, the character was becoming psychologically dependent on the suit and the sense of protection that it offered – perfectly-molded body armor tougher than steel and half an inch thick (more at the soles of the shoes) will do that.

The time came when the team leader instructed the team’s scientific-type to analyze exactly how everyone’s powers worked (after they had been taken by surprise by another of these revelations). After initial measurements suggested that there was something not right with the internal dimensions of both the suit and the character, the tester made the mistake of asking the player to remove the armor. He didn’t want to, but tried to do so, and couldn’t. His muscles simply wouldn’t do what he was telling them to do. The tester suspected that the reluctance might extend deeper than suspected, and attempted to use persuasion to reassure the subject, failed, and then decided to employ more forcible measures. A flash of light, and the character being examined stood transformed into the shape of a gargoyle, only barely humanoid. The two then became distracted in examining the new physical reality of the character, and completely ignored the fact that there was no longer a suit of armor involved to be removed for independent analysis.

This transformation was only intended to be temporary, something that would occur whenever the character felt threatened – including by someone attempting to remove the suit – but the player decided to give up the campaign for unrelated reasons, and the new player liked the gargoyle idea. So it became a semi-permanent transformation. Over time, under this player’s control, the character became more and more feral, a ‘shape-shifting killing machine’.

When that player was forced by outside circumstances to give up the campaign, a third player took the reigns, initially on a trial basis (that was in 2006, and the player is still running the character, so I think the trial has been successful!) One of the first things that the new player did, before even accepting charge of the character, was to attempt to reconcile everything into a coherent picture, on the assumption that it was all the same person the whole time. The character became more balanced, got his “personal life” under control, and began rehabilitating himself both in the eyes of everyone else and in his own eyes as well – starting from a foundation of actively disliking the character as a person!

As a kind of “soft introduction,” the character had a miniseries under the new player’s control in which some of what we had collectively decided came to light and the character started coming to terms with his tangled psyche. Half of the character took his father as a role model, as many males do, especially in the absence of a strong maternal presence; because of that, the character wouldn’t let himself perceive that the father was abusive toward his daughter (and all three of his children), but it still made a subconscious impression, and part of the character both hated and was furiously angry with both the role model and with himself, while feeling guilty over his inability to intervene. Eventually, the sister ran away and joined a cult that got mixed up with aliens – as happens in a comic-book reality – and got to be rescued by the scientific type and the PC, beginning the process of self-discovery and coming to terms with his past.

In due course, he realized that the closer he came to emulating his role model in the character’s past career as a policeman, the more he resisted it, self-sabotaging. If he started getting good in the robbery division, he would put in for a transfer. If he started getting too good and it was too soon for a transfer, he did something to get himself a reprimand. At the same time, though, he had an absolute hatred and distrust of corrupt police officers and hypocrisy. All of which contributed to filling in the plot holes that I had initially identified in the character design.

Which brings me back to the revelations of the previous game session. In that day’s play, the character was finally forcibly removed from his gargoyle shape and stripped of his armor by someone the characters all thought was a villain – but who was actually just an enemy doing what was necessary. The revelations were two-fold: that the character had never been released from the dimensional confinement of the suit, in which he had been ensnared from the moment he first put it on; and that as part of its self-defense against being removed, the armor had been shunting every doubt and uncertainty to another PC – who, coincidentally, was the creation of Knight’s original character.

This addressed a separate set of contradictions in-game: we had a character who was (historically) a leader, skilled, trained, and sure, who was exhibiting poor tactical judgment and a reluctance to lead in play – a reminder that just because you write something on a character sheet, it doesn’t automatically confer the ability upon the player.

This disconnect between what the character was capable of, and what the player was capable of delivering in-play, was a different sort of plot hole, one that needed to be explained in-game and integrated into the psyche of the character the way his player was handling him.

My original draft only had the suit of armor suppressing these negatives as an explanation for the increasingly manic performance by Knight’s second player, when the character adopted the name “Blackwing”. But having the doubts and uncertainties that are natural to us all, and that hold us back from going to far, exported to the second PC made perfect sense.

A Psi Complicates Matters

Always.

In this case, the Psi in question had mentally scanned both the characters in question. So my in-game explanation for what I consider to be Metagame phenomena introduced a new plot hole that also needed filling: why had this Psi, one of the most powerful in existence, not detected what was going on?

The game session a couple of days ago dealt with the immediate psychological aftermath of the revelations and the immediate impact that was felt on the behavior of the characters, and sought to explain those – in effect, it ‘reset’ the foundations for those characters going forward.

In the process, it not only needed to address the Psi problem, it had to closely examine the personalities as they had been played in-game of the characters, providing the raw materials for the players to begin evolving their characters as they saw fit. This was something that would not have been possible had I not become at home in the characters’ shadows.

I’ll get to the how in a moment; first, let me answer the questions posed earlier. Every time the Psi had “connected” with the central character of this plotline in the past, he was actually linking to a simulation of the character that was generated by the suit. Even the character thought this simulation was the real thing, and so was completely unaware that it was being edited by the suit to protect itself.

As for why the Psi hadn’t detected the “outside influence” on the newer character, after specifically going looking for one a few game sessions ago, the explanation was even simpler – the self-confidence problems being experienced by the character were real, and the ‘dumped’ emotional states had acted only as a trigger, releasing an emotional flaw that the character had suppressed and locked up, long ago.

They were both victims of the suit. One had reacted by losing self-confidence in the field, feeling doubt and uncertainty for the first time in years, emotions that he had never learned to handle because he had never had to; and the other, being released from constraints that were being amplified and triggered by doubts and uncertainties that he no longer feared becoming wild and almost manic (reminiscent of what the first character had become at his ‘worst’, in fact, though that was left unstated).

Finding The Shadow

Before you can become so close to a character that you can be said to be occupying his shadow, you need to find that shadow.

First-order information comes from the player explaining what the character is thinking. Second-order information comes from observing the character’s behavior in the hands of the player. Third-order information comes from backgrounds and other written material provided by the player, while Fourth-order information comes from background material etc written by the GM. The process of “occupying the shadow” means integrating all of the above into a simple description of the core personality of the character, understanding how that core ‘unpacks’ into the events that shaped the character and into his attitudes to situations, and being therefore able to predict how the player-character gestalt will react to any situation you might, theoretically, place them in. Sometimes, it’s necessary to pose an adventure or an encounter just to observe a character’s reaction, filling in a blank space in your information on that character as he is in play.

First-order information

I always encourage my players to provide first-order information in-play. If they do so, and an action they have chosen does not accord with what they are trying to achieve, I will point that out to them, and offer alternative options that are a better fit, rather than sustaining a disconnect between what the character is trying to achieve and what choices the player perceives for getting from A to B.

If a character declares an action, and it doesn’t have the desired outcome, it’s too late to say what you were trying to achieve – everyone has to live with the events as described. Usually, there are exceptions and back doors that can be applied retroactively to get a “do over”.

By encouraging players to speak their character’s minds, it permits me to assist them in achieving those immediate desired ends, so their roleplay is “truer” to what the player wants. And he learns from that, becoming a better player within my campaigns in the process (the skills learned might not be fully transferable).

It also more closely simulates the in-game reality in which comms is handled (usually) by the Psionic that I mentioned earlier, for obvious reasons – she wouldn’t just be sharing intentional communications and hosting discussions, she would be conveying intentions and perceptions (something which has cause the occasional problem in the past), all raw and unedited.

That clear statements of what the character thinks or expects or desires or is trying to achieve generate a side-benefit for me in my role as GM is just fortuitous.

I have read advice here and there that the GM is supposed to be impartial. Fiddlesticks! The GM should be partisan as all get-out – his job is to generate a good time for all participants, not just in the short-term but through the life of the campaign. The PCs have to eventually win – but there is no obligation on the GM’s part to make that victory an easy one.

Second-order information

The next most reliable source of information about a character that I have is the words and actions that they perform without explaining their thought process. This places me in the position of needing to translate these actions into personality traits by observation and supposition, and hence this material is inherently a little less certain.

But there is usually a lot more of it, and patterns can still be observed.

Third-order information

This is usually more factual in nature, and requires still more interpretation by the would-be analyst. Any fact that isn’t established in-game is also subject to revision as necessary right up until it comes into play. What’s more, there can sometimes be a vast gulf between what’s on the page and what the player/character combination can actually deliver on demand, in play.

All of these combine to make this information more theoretical than actual. I often treat it as a stepping-stone to more concrete first- or second- order information.

There is a fourth source of error that can sometimes manifest, too, that needs to be mentioned: the GM has to bring any NPCs in the information provided by the player to life. It’s one thing for the player to state that there’s such-and-such an NPC in the character’s background with whom the character has a particular relationship, but the GM has to actually create and play that NPC in such a way that the player feels that the PC could and would have that relationship with the NPC. And sometimes, that doesn’t quite come off.

When this fourth problem manifests, it usually indicates – at a metagame level – that the PC is perceiving things about the NPC that they hadn’t previously observed, and their relationship will change as a result – even if those “things” aren’t part of the NPC as generated by the GM. There have been occasions where I have had to completely rewrite an NPC on-the-fly to either incorporate such “things” or to make the current situation an aberration in the normal relationship between the two.

Of course, even when events have been established, there can always turn out to be more to the story!

Fourth-Order information

This includes the campaign background, and any theorizing or analysis that the GM performs on the basis of lesser-order information until the player himself acknowledges that it “fits”, it “makes sense”. I’m never trying to tell the players how to play their characters; instead, I’m trying to understand the characters as the players are portraying them, and employing that understanding as a tool for campaign, adventure, and encounter/NPC design.

The “order” of the information represents the reliability of the information as a basis for achieving that understanding.

The Process

I’m not sure whether or not being a professional analyst would be helpful in achieving that understanding or not. I suspect that in some ways it would, while in other ways it might hinder – in particular trying to see the forest for the trees. But I don’t know – I’m not a professional analyst!

As such, I adopt a more literary approach, trying to sum up the personality of the character in a few brief words, and continually refining that summation as a result of the feedback that results when you employ it and hit – or miss – the mark.

This isn’t something that you can apply on an occasional basis – it has to be a fundamental part of your approach to GMing, so that you can get that constant feedback and become more experienced in the technique.

I start by looking for common threads and patterns in the first-order information, which I integrate into my current understanding of the character as soon as the player states it. Under the guise of better understanding what the player is trying to achieve, I will ask about any contradictions between this occasion and past ones.

Sometimes, that has resulted in a player saying “I’d forgotten about that” and changing their minds about the now; on most occasions, it will establish an exception to the previous pattern, or even undermine the perceived (and strictly hypothetical) pattern itself, as the player tells the GM, “No, that’s a misinterpretation of what I was trying to do back then.” But either way, it’s a learning experience that makes the GM better at anticipating what the character will do, or attempt to do, in the future.

I then turn my attention to any third- and fourth-order material, using second-order material as a ‘filter’ to try and weed out an erroneous or rogue associations. Always, I’m looking for patterns and parallels, and trying to imagine what was going through the character’s head. When it comes to events that occurred to the character, I try to understand what experiencing that did to the character, how he coped, and what lingering effects it might have had – being guided in particular by any actions taken in close proximity to the effect.

It sounds easier than it actually is in practice.

As an example, here are a number of snippets of information regarding the second PC who featured in the day’s play just passed:

1. “I used to sit on the docks with my grandfather and fish. We’d talk for hours when they weren’t biting.” (statement during roleplay)
2. Master’s degree in Archaeology (from the written character background).
3. “My parents thought I was wasting my time digging holes in the ground.” (statement during roleplay)
4. …was closest to his Aunt Vigdis, who encouraged his love of archaeology… (statement from the written character background)
5. “I probably looked up to that old man more than anyone else in the world when I was a child” (continuation of the first statement, during roleplay).
6. His father was a fisherman, often away at sea. (statement from the written background).
7. His grandfather taught him to sail (statement from the written background).
8. “I want to study wood-carving like my grandfather used to do” – statement during roleplay.

None of these is 1st order – they are all 2nd-order and 3rd-order. Nevertheless, when you assemble them, a cohesive picture emerges of someone whose parental figures were his grandfather and his aunt Vigdis, respectively. His father is little more than a void, and his mother gets even less attention. So compelling is this unified picture that you never question whether or not 1, 5, and 7 all refer to the same grandfather – you normally have two, after all! Assemble all of these and it becomes clear that the person who would be the character’s first choice for life-guidance would be the Grandfather, while the person he would first turn to for unquestioning support would be Aunt Vigdis.

When, in the course of the most recent adventure, the character was to encounter someone who he thought was his grandfather (conjured out of his memories), it was essential that the NPC I presented fit the mold. Little things – like sitting with legs dangling off the end of a pier, talking to the character as an adult, but simplifying things when necessary, or taking the time for one last cast of the fishing line, added up to a total acceptance on the part of the player. I don’t know about him (or you), but when the character sat down beside the old man and made one last cast with his fishing line, I could see little yellow gum-boots and the leathery texture of the old man’s skin in my minds’ eye – even though neither of those was mentioned. The NPCs’ first words were, “You’re almost old enough now, Anders, to start making choices for yourself.” There was a clear implication that the old man meant small ones – the PC would have been about three years old at the time – but by not saying so, it extended the narrative to apply to the current (adult) character. “Time to go, your Aunt Vigdis will be waiting,” implied that the old man lived with his daughter, probably too frail to care for himself full-time. The player didn’t even blink at this addition to his background. Walk with me, and I’ll make sure you don’t miss anything interesting”, said the old man. Since this was to be a walk into the character’s subconscious mind, a therapeutic tool, this statement actually went directly to the relationship between them – he wasn’t offering to guide the character’s choices, or make suggestions, just to make sure that he noticed all the choices available to him, and to assist in evaluating them. Choices and decisions were still the character’s.

In this way, the character found himself living snippets of his own background, and patterns that he wasn’t even aware of placing into it were slowly revealed to him – an overachiever who prefers others to set the standards he should live up to and who then does as much hard work as needed in order to excel, because he had learned that this was the easiest way to get the approval of, or attention of, an authority figure. The character was aware, subconsciously, of the void in his life left by his parents, and even though he had filled that void, it was still only a substitute for the real thing. Later, when for the first time in his life he was seriously injured, he experienced doubt and uncertainty for the first time, and had no-one left to pull him through. When his health returned, he found himself adrift without a guiding mission, and suppressed this lack of self-confidence, smothering it under a sense of being unable to fail when mere survival is viewed as a success. Then, when there were no authority figures to set the standards, the character’s pattern became to set himself impossible challenges so that no-one could blame him if or when he failed at them, defining his own mission in life.

All this fitted the narrative provided by the player like a glove – but it also filled in gaps and provided motivations. Presenting it in this way left the player able to make informed choices about the characters’ future behavior, while making sense of the past choices that – until now – had simply seemed like ‘the best choice on the table’.

Where to from here?

With the resetting of the mindsets of two PCs out of the four at the table, the campaign clearly felt like it was turning a corner or starting a new chapter. The last couple of adventures have all had a sense of new beginnings in other ways, so this was a continuation or new expression of that ongoing sense. It was appropriate that other aspects of the status quo receive a shake-up, too – so the adventure began to introduce a new plot-thread, an occasional campaign-within-a-campaign with a high cloak and dagger element to it that is going to introduce complications into the PCs lives that they never dreamed possible. In a very real way, they are all going to have to reinvent themselves in some fundamental ways. And, while they are doing so, the players directly impacted by the psychological revelations regarding their characters will have time to reset and set new directions for their characters, which will – to some extent – modify the ‘shadows’ that I am inhabiting.

A great campaign leaves its mark on the characters that participate in it, just as those characters should leave their marks on the campaign. If you were to take a character from one campaign as it was when it started, and insert it into a different campaign with a different GM, the character should evolve differently – no matter how similar they might be at their cores. And those differences will ultimately mean that they have different impacts on the campaigns.

Every PC is unique to the campaigns they inhabit – in a great campaign. The GM’s goal should always be to run the best campaign that they can, given their skills, knowledge, time, and the players who are going to participate. Being able to inhabit the shadows of those characters is an essential tool to achieving that.

All players expect to be thrown into the deep end from time to time by the GM, with no idea of how to solve the conundrum that confronts them. Most commonly, this results from characters not having the skills that would solve the problem via the most straightforward course. Instead, the character has to take what he does know and add some creative juice to extend what he does know into the area of what he does not.

More embarrassingly, sometimes these situations come about because the character misunderstands the scope or scale of a challenge that they know lies before them. Overconfidence is a sure way to find yourself in a truly sticky situation.

Either way, the player is forced to rely on the GM’s vested interest in not aborting the game prematurely. That’s usually a safe bet; while GMs love to cultivate reputations as absolute fiends who make players scramble for every gold piece or experience point, most of that reputation is – to say the least – inflated.

My personal philosophy is more complex than that of most GMs simply because they haven’t put any thought into this area of metagame rules.

• It is one of the GM’s responsibilities to ensure that there is always a way out – though I make no promises that it will be a palatable choice.
• I won’t kill a PC on a die roll under normal circumstances.
• One exception is when a Player is making a Heroic Sacrifice of his character. That always needs to be respected.
• That rule goes completely out the window when the player makes a mistake and ignores all hints and warnings regarding the decision. Stupidity is always fatal – eventually – and lifts all responsibility for turning into a Killer GM from my shoulders.
• With one exception: I won’t end any other players’ fun because one player does something idiotic. No matter how illogical on its face, I will find a way to bring the wrath of god down upon the character who’s player has earned it, while limiting ‘splash’. Even if that means foregoing the aptly-deserved punishment until a more opportune moment presents itself.
• And another exception: even if the players were all in on the decision, and equally culpable, I won’t let the campaign be killed by a foolish decision. I consider a lingering torture to be a more appropriate response. I know, I’m a softie.
• A consequence is that I have an oft-unspoken deal with players: I won’t use save-or-die spells or technologies if they won’t, unless I can be reasonably confident that for a particular reason, the spell won’t have any effect, in which case it just speaks to NPC villain personality.

For example, let’s take your typical D&D Fighter, give him a reasonable level of intelligence, and drop him into the control room of a nuclear reactor about to go into meltdown. Obviously, he has no idea of what the myriad of flashing lights and dials and meters and push-buttons and knobs means. However, it’s reasonable for him to interpret alarm bells as an indication of trouble, and klaxons as an attempt to bring the attention of someone to a problem that needs immediate intervention of some sort. But that’s where the freebies end.

Were I the player controlling a character placed in this situation, I would be frantically looking for ways to make some interpretation of my metagame knowledge regarding reactor controls available to my character, and relying on the leniency of the GM to find any half-reasonable suggestion acceptable as a way of moving the plot forward.

I would start by asking the GM if there are any chairs. I would then ask, based on my knowledge of basic proportions and the inhabitants of the world with which the character was familiar, what race are the chairs designed to best-suit? Let’s assume that the response is “human”. I would then take a seat and ask about any writing – I should be able to determine what language the characters appear to derive from, even if what they are saying is beyond me, or so I would argue to the GM. Perhaps an Intelligence roll, I will suggest.

This is actually a trap for the GM, establishing the principle that an INT roll and a reasonable justification permits that translation of metagame knowledge that I mentioned. But it’s an entirely reasonable suggestion, and there are no obvious grounds for denying it. One INT roll later (presumably successful) and the answer comes back that most of the characters seem to resemble human script.

Now, it’s time to use that principle to give the character a fighting chance at saving both himself and the situation. I inform the GM that my character is going to assume, based on these two findings, that standard human conventions will apply – left or anticlockwise for ‘less’ or ‘off’, green for ‘safe’ or ‘go’ and red for ‘not safe’ or ‘stop’, unless he can give me good reason why my character would not.

“I know what a meter is, because there’s one to measure pressure on a pressure cooker and I have a high cooking skill,” I will next propose to the GM. This is a relatively flimsy line of argument that could easily be blocked by the GM simply by asserting that while that may be true, Pressure Cookers have not yet been invented, so my Cooking Skill doesn’t let me know anything about them. But I’ve already established some momentum of agreement with the GM, and I’m clearly trying to work with the situation he’s presented, with some solution in mind (which brings curiosity into the equation as another factor on my side), so I would expect a cooperative GM to let it slide.

“Okay, so I’m going to extend the logic of human conventions to all the meters that I see. I’m looking for red on one side, or green on one side, and using that to estimate which side represents safe operation of whatever this huge machine is,” I tell the GM. “If there’s no such indication, I’ll assume that left is good and right is bad. I have no idea what buttons are, so I’ll ignore them unless these are the kind that stay depressed when you press them.”

This is another invitation to the GM to take a step on the slippery slope of being co-operative. If he accepts the invitation, he’ll tell me that these buttons are indeed that kind, or at least some of them are, which justifies another INT roll to deduce the basic operating principles of buttons from those examples, then generalize that to include the other buttons. If he’s not ready to let me off that easily, he’ll tell me ‘no, none of the buttons are of that type’.

This approach works because when the GM puts a character into a situation, he expects that character to do something about it, with the ‘something’ being defined by the education, skills, personality, and capabilities of the character. It usually doesn’t matter too much whether or not the ‘something’ is what the GM expected, so long as he can see that it’s a reasonable choice under those conditions and given those parameters. Since that’s clearly what I’m doing in this case, the GM is more likely to play along than not.

So, now it’s time to apply some simple logic that will give the GM a chance to bail me out of the situation that he’s dropped me into. “I’m looking for the panel with the greatest number of red lights and meters indicating danger, as it’s the most likely to control whatever function has the problem. I’m locating the nearest control to each meter or red light. If it’s near a meter, I’ll push that button for a second and then push it again to return the control to where it was, and see if the light goes out or the meter dips toward safety or gets worse. If it gets worse, or doesn’t seem to do anything, I’ll move on to the next one. If it’s a knob, I’ll turn it a tiny bit to the left and see what the meter does. If it seems to help, I’ll turn it slowly until the meter is in the green, or at least out of the red, or it’s all the way to the left. If it seems to make things worse, I’ll turn it slowly to the right in the same way. When I’ve done everything I can with this panel, I’m repeat the process at the next worst, and so on. If none of that solves the problem, I’ll look for writing and try to decipher it.”

This outlines an entirely reasonable course of action, supported by logic, and has already inclined the GM to consider it satisfactory. But it gives the GM every excuse in the world to kill the character out of hand – revealing themselves to be a bad GM, because this is a really unreasonable situation to drop such a character into – or to decide that somehow, the character finds the right combination of control manipulations to solve the problem.

As this example shows, whenever the GM puts a character into a situation, the GM has to have answered one vital question about the situation: What does the GM expect the character to be able to reasonably do about the situation?

Some General Principles

Whenever there is only one valid course of action, it needs to be pretty obvious what it is – and that, too, is a sign of a bad GM, railroading the characters, though sometimes that’s permissible, especially when it gets the character into an adventure that would otherwise not take place.

In most cases, there should be at least two identifiable alternative choices for the character to select between. And that, by definition, means that there has to be something that the GM expects the character to at least attempt to do about the situation, and a path to salvaging events if a required die roll would result in catastrophic failure.

GMs should spend at least as much time and effort making sure that any given challenge or encounter has a way for the PCs to cope with the situation that they can reasonably find as they do making that challenge or encounter as difficult and interesting and, well, challenging, as it can possibly be.

That’s not always an easy thing to do, because it pulls the GM’s thinking in two mutually-contradictory directions.

A Practical Approach

My technique for solving this problem is to employ iteration and step-wise refinement, one of the ‘magic bullets’ that are always the first tools that I reach for.

1. Consider the challenge that you are proposing. Is it difficult enough to be challenging? If it is, move on to step 5.
2. If not, think of a way to increase the difficulty level. Before doing so, however, ensure that there is still a reasonably obvious course of action open to the PCs.
3. If the condition is met, incorporate the refinement and then return to step 1. If the condition is not met, consider whether or not there is a way of making the course of action more obvious.
4. If there is, incorporate both refinements and then return to step 1. If not, return to step 2 and think of a different complication.
5. Are there at least two different solutions to the problems being presented for the characters to choose between?
6. If not, is this one of the reasonable exceptions to that requirement?
7. If it isn’t, then you need to introduce circumstances that will enable a second fairly obvious approach to be taken, and which will permit the time for the players who will be involved to identify both solutions and choose between them. When you have done so, return to step 1, as the whole challenge needs to be re-evaluated in light of the change.
8. The challenge is now both difficult enough to be challenging and yet provides a choice of approach by which the PCs can express their individuality. But before moving on to the next challenge, you should make some notes on the possible solutions and how the encounter will unfold if the anticipated choices are made.
9. It’s also vitally important to be aware of the motivations of those characters who are causing the challenge to take place and who are participating in it, because those are the guidelines that will enable you to improvise if and when the players choose a third path. Which they will, at least some of the time (if not most of the time).

Using this procedure, you start with a simple situation and keep complicating it until it achieves a difficulty standard that you deem appropriate. I want to talk about that for a moment.

An appropriate difficulty standard

I apply vastly different standards in the beginning, middle, and end of an adventure. In fact, one of the reasons for breaking a campaign up into discrete adventures is to facilitate this differentiation.

Early encounters & situations

In the beginning, I am more willing to lead characters into a situation by the nose, or by the railroad track, because if I don’t, there might well be no adventure. It’s one thing to bait one or more hooks and throw them out for the players to nibble on, but you need them to swallow something or the day’s play will be a big, fat, nothing. The best solution is to have a default defined, an adventure hook that will come looking for the characters if they are still hanging around nibbling and won’t give them a chance to say no. But this isn’t always possible, and it produces a rich but very complicated campaign structure.

You get a far simpler structure when you can simply parachute PCs into an adventure regardless of any plot trains they might have to catch – so long as their final stop is a destination that forces them to make significant choices and get involved. The other advantage to this approach is that you can integrate briefing materials into the plot train, and even view the plot train as doing nothing more than leading the PCs, breadcrumb by breadcrumb, to these necessary briefing materials. This line of argument contends that the players are unable to make properly-informed judgments until they have received the briefing from the GM, and that’s a completely valid line of argument.

Most adventures are more like a game of snakes and ladders in some respects – parts of them are locations where you roll dice (or make choices) to progress, while other parts represent a long way around (a backup that comes into effect if you don’t find and choose to use the most efficient ‘ladder’), and still others are as inevitable a complication or setback as a snake. Take one of those paths and – until it plays out by delivering you to somewhere that again permits forward progress – and events can be as inevitable as the tracks of a railroad, or a pebble rolling downhill.

The artistry in structuring an adventure lies in preparing only those parts that you need in order to convey the action and choices available to the players while containing any restriction on their choices and preparing for the choices that they are most likely to make, and avoiding wasting time preparing for parts that you will not need because they aren’t part of that pathway.

In The Middle

Middle-section challenges are far more ‘pure’ in terms of the absence of railroading. Players have to get involved in challenges as a natural outgrowth of decisions made by them or natural consequences of the evolution of the situation in which they have found themselves, both interacting with the GM’s need to pose challenges to the PCs that will force them into choices. My goal as GM in these situations is therefore simply to advance the plot, and as a result I am even more forgiving and willing to be cooperative if a player puts up a reasonable line of argument than at any other point in the adventure.

It must be noted that there is a difference between thwarting a chosen course of action and failing to advance the plot. If the PCs go down a dead-end, there should be some way to navigate back to where they were when they made that choice – perhaps with the handicap of the enemy’s plans being further advanced, or other options being curtailed as a consequence. These aren’t failing to advance the plot, they are simply adding setbacks and resolutions to the plot.

Heading For A Climax

When adventures are approaching a climax, however, the safety nets start to disappear. The die is now cast, and the choices made, and the players have to live with the consequences with far less protection from me as GM. In particular, stupid choices in this phase of an adventure can be extremely hazardous. By this point, I have made sure that the players have access to everything they need in the way of briefings to make properly-informed decisions.

Reasonable and Unreasonable Challenges

This article is rapidly approaching its conclusion. The best way to get there is to return to the example offered earlier, of the D&D character confronted with an imminent meltdown, and consider how that challenge would be handled differently at the beginning, middle, and end of an adventure, and whether or not that makes the challenge one that’s beyond reasonable.

As a way of getting a character into an adventure, it would require the GM taking an extremely generous position for it to be reasonable. The character should have every right to expect to survive the situation. So long as the GM is as willing to engineer that survival just as much as he has clearly engineered the encounter, it’s fine.

In the middle part of an adventure, some of the safety nets are gone and unless the situation is clearly the result of a player choice, the encounter is an unreasonable one, even if the GM adopts a reasonably cooperative attitude. That’s because it’s stretching credibility to the extreme to put a character into that situation and expect them to be able to find a reasonable course of action. There is no way of solving the problem without a cooperative attitude on the part of the GM and such an attitude, carried to the extremes necessary, erodes verisimilitude. As an encounter, it goes too far. Having the PCs discover a reactor that’s working perfectly well and not having its controls protected against inadvertent and ignorant control manipulation is also unreasonable, because such a character would have no reasonable justification for knowing to leave things alone.

As the climax of an adventure, however, the reactor heading for meltdown is entirely workable, provided that the GM is cooperative enough to enable any reasonable actions on the part of the characters – and, more importantly, not to punish any reasonable actions undertaken from a position of ignorance.

Failure Modes

That’s as far as most expert GMs go. But there’s one final consideration that I want to bring to your attention, one thing more that only the most elite do when preparing an adventure, and that is to consider the Failure Modes for each challenge.

When you think of an encounter before it takes place, think for a moment about all the different ways that it could go wrong. That includes being boring, being too easy or too difficult, having a flaw in it’s logic (which will inevitably be discovered only after the players are already committed to it), and failing to achieve any overall plot objectives that you have for it.

Each such ‘way of going wrong’ is one of two things: non-fatal to the encounter, or a Failure Mode.

Non-fatal Errors

If something goes wrong, but it doesn’t terminate the encounter, kill a PC undeservedly, kill believability, or make it impossible for the encounter to achieve its plot objectives (if any), it is a non-fatal error. It’s a complication – perhaps not one that you expected or intended, but one that’s taking place nevertheless. This type of complication is called ‘non-fatal’ not because it doesn’t kill anyone (though it may not), but because there is a way to recover from the mistake.

Finding and implementing that recovery path immediately becomes the GM’s top priority. If necessary, you should admit to that being an unexpected move or an unexpected complication, and take a five minute break to think about it – and by “think about it” I mean consider your recovery options.

Failure Mode

The term ‘Failure Mode’ comes from aviation, and it means all the ways a part or procedure can fail. The design objective and desire is always for these components and processes to ‘fail safe’ no matter what the cause of the failure might be. Not all of that terminology is applicable to RPG adventures, but enough of it survives translation to make the term a reasonable one – especially if ‘fail’ is restricted in definition to the things that can go wrong that aren’t a non-fatal error – i.e., that can terminate the encounter, kill a PC who doesn’t deserve to get killed off, that eviscerates your campaign’s believability, or that makes the encounter worthless because it is no longer able to achieve its plot objectives.

Identifying Failure Modes

I always take the time to at least think about what could go wrong in an encounter. While this is possible to do in advance to at least some extent, you can generally do a better job at the last possible minute; that’s because advance planning requires you to make assumptions that may not be accurate forecasts, while last-minute analysis replaces those assumptions with campaign or adventure history, and the relative certainty that it represents.

That being said, having as much leisure time to think about a problem as you need can make advance planning a more attractive option – if you make general plans and avoid getting too wrapped up in specifics. This enables you to restrict your just-in-time analysis to a little a fine-tuning and to decisions concerning the best way of dealing with the failure modes that you might be presented with.

Preparing for Failure Modes

Preparing for a failure mode essentially involves setting up a means by which the ‘fatal error’ can be rendered non-fatal, permitting a recovery to take place. That sounds simple, but it often involves weakening the encounter by making it easier to resolve in a manner the PCs will consider satisfactory. To combat this, you either need to once again toughen the encounter or problem to compensate, or you need to find a way to conceal the potential for recovering from the ‘fatal error’. Sometimes it can be as simple as inserting a line of NPC dialogue into the middle of the encounter, to be uttered only if you need to prompt a PC to activate a solution that you had delivered to them earlier in a concealed form – “Whatever you are trying will not work. Only the Book Of Anthanalum and you do not even bear its’ hilt” – which tells the PC that this encounter is equating a book with a knife, and that the empty hilt that’s in his backpack somewhere (if used correctly) might provide an answer to the challenge.

The odds of needing more than one Failure Mode recovery ‘prop’ in an adventure are relatively low, so you might even be able to designate multiple roles for the one ‘tool’ to play, depending on what you need at the time.

Responding to Failure Modes

I tend to think of such approaches as incorporating a plot ‘toolkit’ into the adventure that I can manipulate as needs present themselves. In general, I favor broad principles rather than specific solutions, enabling me to customize them into a specific solution when I need one. Salvaging an encounter with a Fatal Error, i.e. a Failure Mode, almost always amounts to a plot twist within the encounter in some shape or form, and those are better utilized only when you need to, and when you have all the specifics of the circumstances at your mental fingertips.

The only certainty about a Failure Mode is that doing nothing is not an option. That’s because there’s no such thing as a “Fail Safe” when it comes to plots – failures are either non-fatal or they have to be dealt with – and right now.

A Lesson From The Past

I learned these lessons early, when I ran a published TSR adventure in my D&D campaign revolving around a crashed space-ship of flying saucer configuration. The players damaged the ship’s systems badly enough that the central reactor was placed into a dangerous state, figured out what the alarms and klaxons and automated warnings were supposed to tell them, got the computer to tell them where the engineering section (not called that, of course) would be found, and attempted to bring the reactor under control using the methodology and lines of reasoning that I have described in my example. This occurred in the middle of the adventure, and so I found myself facing a conundrum – permit a premature climax to the adventure that left half of it unplayed, or risk the rest of the adventure being a total anticlimax.

I chose the first choice, but never forgot about it. Because it was up to me when sufficient damage had been done to cause a problem; I chose a standard that seemed appropriate at the time, but which had unintended consequences for the adventure. In retrospect, I should have allowed the auto-repair functions of the ship to at least delay the consequences being a problem until I got to a point where the adventure needed a climax, then had the situation worsen as some further damage became ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’.

So the lesson is now there for everyone. When you pose a challenge, or set an encounter, always ask yourself what you expect the PCs to do about whatever situation they are going to find themselves in. Make sure that you have an answer to that question, and that what you are about to inflict is always a Reasonable Challenge, and your campaign is more likely to survive its encounter with a bunch of untamed and unruly players.

In the current Adventurer’s Club plotline, my co-GM and I needed to create a fabulous gem to be at the heart of the story-line, the Kalhoolie Diamond. To go with this fabulous gemstone, and lend authenticity to the fabled gemstone, we needed to create a history for it. Today’s article will examine the legend of the Kalhoolie Diamond and the decision-making processes that went into the fabrication of that legend, because there are lessons there for campaigns and adventures from multiple genres – in fact, anytime there is some fabulous treasure involved, whether that be a mythic sword in D&D or a sliver mine in the old west, Dilithium Crystals in Star Trek or a particularly hopped-up bit of illegal military-grade cyberware in a superhero or cyberpunk campaign.

The Difference In Campaign Treatment

I want to start by noting that the way the gemstone has been treated in story terms was very much a function of the campaign in which it was to appear. Because Adventurer’s Club’s plotlines are largely self-contained (though with connecting threads to other self-contained stories), we introduced the gem with a minimum of foreshadowing – the players were made aware of its existence and the fact that it was going on public display almost as an afterthought; a warning that the increased security that was being arranged, and the expected crowds of tourists, might inconvenience them, nothing more – and this happened about 1/4 of the way through the current adventure, when every PC already had something to occupy their interest. In fact, the primary thrust of the adventure at this point appeared to be an alleged hidden “extra floor” in the Chrysler Building (New York City) and a number of unscrupulous businesses that occupied the premises.

If this were my Superhero campaign, which has far stronger continuity, I would have introduced the gem in a quiet moment of a previous adventure, had the PCs consulted on the extra security in an adventure following that, let things lie fallow for an adventure to give anticipation a chance to build, and then had the real plotline commence.

In one of my Fantasy Games, which was so strongly continuous that it was sometimes hard to tell where one adventure finished and the next started – though you could always recognize that the tone and subject had changed once you were into the new adventure – I would not have given the PCs much of the history at all – at first glance, just the knowledge that there was a history there that might prove enlightening. And I would have made far greater use of the plot hooks provided by the backstory – more on that towards the end of this article – by having those with an interest in owning (or re-acquiring) the gem begin to intrude into the PCs lives. To say nothing of immediately doubling the lethality of all accidents and conflicts, as though fate were attempting to add another bloody page to the already blood-soaked history.

All of which only goes to show that the campaign structure that you are using can have a profound impact on how you use various tools – like the ones being presented here today. It’s not my job to tell you how to use the advice I provide, only to give you the choice of adding something to your repertoire.

The Gemstone

So, let’s talk about this fabulous gemstone, the Kalhoolie Diamond, the third-largest uncut diamond in the world.

Why A Diamond?

We considered making it a ruby or an emerald. But, as fabulous gemstones go, there’s nothing more valuable – or as seductive – as a Diamond. In a different time and place, that might not be the case.

Why Uncut?

Once a gem has been cut, there’s little more that you can do with it. If you re-cut it, breaking it up further, you actually diminish its value, because there is a certain cache to rarity, and larger gems are much more rare than smaller ones. If the gem is uncut, the threat is always there of cutting it – so there is at least one more thing that can be done with it.

But that’s a metagame argument, not one that explains why the gem remains uncut within the game. The solution came to us from the title of the adventure, which was “The Hidden Floor” for reasons that should be obvious from preceding paragraphs. Changing it to “The Hidden Flaw” but only reading the title aloud to the players, gave us both titles for the price of one. Because so many things can be flawed, in some way, this in turn inspired all the lead-in material which was – eventually – to connect with the hidden 13th floor of the Chrysler Building and motivate the PCs to look into the mystery. (Oh, as an aside, we also had worked out a very careful history of the Chrysler Building – mostly factual – to explain the existence of that 13th floor!)

So, we postulated that the diamond contains a flaw not visible to the naked eye, but one that ensures that the value, if cut, was less than if the stone were retained intact. Or was close enough to that value that no owner would be willing to take the chance of something going wrong in an undoubtedly tricky procedure.

Why the name?

To be honest, the name was a placeholder when drafting the adventure.

There’s a town in Australia called Kalgoorlie, famous for it’s goldfields. When I originally came up with the bare bones of the plotline, It was “The Kalgoorlie Diamond”; my thought was that since diamonds and gold rarely coexist, the improbability would make the diamond more valuable. My co-GM thought that this was stretching credibility too far, and that the diamond should come from a region already known for its diamond mines. That made the name a misnomer, but one that we continued to use during planning (minus the “r”, a common misspelling), until one day I accidentally hit the “h” key instead of the “g” – and the “Kalhoolie” Diamond was born. And the name stuck because we couldn’t find anything better to meet our requirements. Those were that the name have no discernible nationality, be unique enough to be memorable, and be easy to pronounce.

The name works more functionally with Australian players, because it is still reminiscent of “Kalgoorlie”, and it’s association with valuables. Without such an association in the player’s backgrounds, does the exotic nature of the name enhance its usage, or does it damage the credibility of the diamond find? Or both? I don’t know – but this is an example of tailoring your game content for your particular players that is worth noting.

What’s it’s value?

Ooh, a difficult question! How much were uncut diamonds worth back in the 1910s? In British Pounds? It’s incredibly hard to find out. How does gem size alter the value per carat of uncut diamonds? Even harder to determine.

We started by estimating the volume of the diamond, used the density of diamond to estimate the weight in grams, then converted that to carats – 1320 of them. Next, we researched the questions posed above, finding that some guesstimation was required, but at least giving us a basis for those guesstimates. We ended up with a USD (1910s) $3788 value per carat; from memory, that’s about 3 times the actual ‘raw’ value, taking into account the fame of the Diamond. That puts the whole stone at around $5 million at the time of its discovery – or more than $60m in modern US dollars, even without any further increase in value for rarity and notoriety. We could easily see it doubling or quadrupling in value with those factors applied (plus an increase in the number of people who could afford to buy something so fabulously valuable, which would increase the bidding at auction).

Call it a nice, round US$200m+. A respectable little nest egg!

The Plot

I have to be a little circumspect here. Suffice it to say that this fabulous gem has been stolen, in dramatic fashion; and that artificial diamonds are somehow involved, and a once-respectable policeman whose medical bills have ground away that respectability in his second career as a security guard (having been wounded in the line of duty).

The History

Unless you have some specific plot need to address, or are trying to overcome writer’s block, the best place to start is often the beginning. After some research, we decided that this was an African diamond, because it placed it close to Europe, and because the conditions involved enabled us to begin a history steeped in blood and misfortune the “right way”.

Of course, history is replete with examples of the discoverers of wealth failing to benefit from their discoveries, being conned or swindled out of their fortunes, and we wanted an element of that to be part of the early story of the Diamond.

Discovery

The Kalhoolie Diamond was discovered in the Belgian Congo on July 30, 1914, but it took 3 days for the news to reach the court of Albert I of Belgium, at which time the government was distracted in deciding how to respond to Germany’s demand for its troops to have free passage through the Belgian territories. On the fourth, Albert refused the German demand and the Bosch invaded, so the court continued to be “distracted”.

The last thing that we wanted was for the stone to be declared a National Treasure and locked up somewhere, which was the fate of many fabulous gems discovered in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The discoverer, Emile Kalhoolie, traded the gemstone for the riverboat (pic 70) “Roi Des Belges” (‘King Of Belgium’) with which to establish regular trade between his upriver village and the westernized Congo.

Fabulous Gems are often named for the place of their discovery (“The Star Of India”) or their discoverer, though there are exceptions. And we needed the “Kalhoolie” name to come from somewhere. So we decided to make it Belgian Congolese, one the basis that none of the players would be able to dispute its’ validity. This was our last chance to change the name; we should probably have made it a bit more French in style, but we didn’t think of it.

An Ill-fated Gem

Okay, so the discoverer sold it for a relative pittance, a fraction of its value – but, by doing so quickly, he was able to avoid the nastier possibilities. Fabulous gems always have blood-soaked histories – but it was important to us that there be a believable human motivation at the root of the misfortunes that would befall the owners of the gem through the years, even if it was only by implication. We also considered that most gemologists of the time would have had difficulty in appraising such a fabulous gem – which said to us that the gem should pass through several hands before it’s full value was recognized.

First Owners

The new owner, Pierre Verrone, was mugged on the way to the appraisal office to have his new possession valued, but the would-be thieves were driven off by the timely arrival of a policeman. Pierre died of his injuries a day later in Kinshasa Hospital, never having had his find valued.

Pierre’s son inherited the gem, and after probate of the estate, a few days later, sold it un-valued to cover his father’s funeral expenses.

Changes Once Appraised

The history of a fabulous treasure can be divided into four phases:

1. Getting it into the hands of someone who can have it valued. Until that happens, it’s a pretty bauble that might be worth a lot of money, nothing more.
2. Getting knowledge of the Valued Item to permeate those who deal in such treasures, and then (perhaps) the general public. In this phase, the object is appreciated for it’s monetary value.
3. People start to think of the item in terms of what they could do with it, or with the wealth that it represents.
4. The value from non-monetary considerations like fame come to equal or outweigh the purely monetary valuation – value that can easily be lost or diminished if the object is damaged or broken up in some fashion, but that can be enhanced and increased by the proper activities that increase the fame of the valuable.

The history of the object should reflect these phases. With the sale of the Diamond by someone in reasonably dire financial straits to an opportunist, we were transitioning from Phase I to Phase II.

Middle Owners

The buyer was Malcolm Borland, a British trader out of Portsmouth. Borland returned to his home port in October of 1914 and had the 1320-carat stone valued at ~£2.5 million. He then returned to his home to discover that he was part of the first intake of men drafted to fight the war. He died, a wealthy man, in the Trenches of World War I.

There’s a distinct sense of Karmic Justice in this outcome – or perhaps you can look upon it as a stroke of good fortune being counterbalanced by a stroke of ill-fortune, ‘just plain Karma’.

Borland had no direct heirs, so the gem became the possession of Lionel Bond, an unscrupulous half-brother, who lost it in a card game in Monte Carlo while showing off his newfound fortune. The lucky prize-winner was an uncouth South Australian, Stevie Dickinson.

A lot of people that come into money spend foolishly, and we wanted someone in the gem’s history to completely lose their heads to their newfound wealth. It’s also worth noting that we had sought out a rogue’s gallery of disreputable-looking characters to be the “owners” of the fabulous gem.

The Professional Dealers

With the transition complete, it was time to engage those who deal in such commodities for a living, stir in some more tragedy, and deal with the elephant in the room – you can’t do anything in diamonds without at least mentioning deBeers. The first step was to get the stone back into their sphere of influence – South Africa. We also wanted to show that the “curse” had a heart of stone, as capable of destroying a sympathetic figure as the most unscrupulous rogue. Finally, I had come across some really powerful descriptions of the conditions in the South African mines of the time that we wanted to incorporate into the narrative, through the personal knowledge of a PC with experience as a miner, named Steffan. The report offered is roughly 9/10ths truth and 1/10th imagination, and derives from three or four separate Wikipedia pages.

deBeers Involvement

Dickinson set out to return to the Ballarat goldfields from whence his family’s first fortune derived, only to be murdered en route and thrown overboard as the ship neared the Cape Of Good Hope.

Note the implication that the family had already blown one fortune!

The killer, a South African servant named Mbango, left the ship at Capetown with the diamond and attempted to use to buy the freedom of several of his relatives indentured to the diamond mines of the deBeers family.

Steffan knows all too well the hellish conditions in those mines, though there is little awareness of the problems outside of the ranks of miners themselves. Temperatures at such depths exceed 49??C (120??F). The atmospheric pressure approaches 1 1/2 times normal. The dust is known to cause lung diseases, so the rocks are sprayed constantly with water, producing almost 100% humidity. The work is back-breaking manual labor, which causes miners to sweat profusely, but the humidity reduces the cooling effectiveness of sweat. Shifts are 10-12 hours in length, 6 days a week. What’s more, the belief has emerged from the coal miners of England that drinking too much water in such conditions can lead to a condition known as water poisoning; only a single mouthful is typically consumed per hour. Workers frequently erupt into convulsions or suffer with cramping exacerbated by the cramped conditions. Nourishment is minimal, and the average age of the workers indentured into the mines is 15 years of age. Only 1 in 100 workers of that age will live to see their 20th birthday. DeBeers is known for mandatory dental checks of its workers – first, to see that minimal working time is lost due to ill health, and second, to ensure that the workers do not attempt to smuggle uncut gems out in their cheeks. Pay rates are poor at best, even for experienced workers, and the company deducts the expense of food, water, accommodation, and medical care. Workers are also charged for the “protection” of deBeers’ crack security forces, who suppress any form of violence or revolt. It was common practice for deBeers to buy up unpaid debts to forcibly recruit additional workers. Anyone with relatives incarcerated in the mines is known to be willing to do almost anything to get them out!

Deciding that Mbango could not be legally entitled to the stone, they referred him to the Authorities; he was arrested and jailed, and the stone seized. DeBeers expected that the stone would be auctioned after the trial and that they could so obtain it for a fraction of the value demanded by the African thief.

Time for another dose of Karmic Justice, don’t you think?

Legend Established – the Third Phase Of Ownership

I don’t know if anyone’s been keeping count – but the South African government is the “lucky” 8th possessor, and every one of them has either sold a fortune for a pittance or come to a sticky end. We thought it was about time to change that. At the same time, we didn’t want the Diamond locked up in the deBeers Vaults; we wanted it out in the world, creating mischief and growing its legend. MBango’s possession of the stone also represented the transition Phase II of Ownership to Phase III.

So we knew someone was going to outbid the diamond merchants in a plot twist these NPCs wouldn’t see coming, but that the players would enjoy vicariously – that “Karmic Justice” thing again. The question was, who? At this point, we started working backwards, making content decisions and notes without extending the narrative.

The Current Owner – preliminaries

The current owner had to have some means of support, but those funds were running out. That forces him to do something with the gem – either sell it immediately, or make money from it somehow – and that creates the opportunity for it to be stolen. Until now, it wasn’t known that he possessed it, and there might even be some suspicion about his ownership. That all fitted the narrative of someone fleeing Europe before the coming conflict – the campaign is set in the 1930s, remember. Those who fled early were frequently able to bring possessions with them, or liquidate them for capital before the move; those who left it until it was almost too late frequently had only what they could carry, and sometimes less.

That means that the current owner must be Eastern European – Polish, Slavic or Jewish or something like that. The question then becomes, how would such a person come into possession of the stone? And how could we connect whoever he got it from to the resources needed to obtain the Diamond from the South African Government after the trial of Mbango? Would one pair of hands be enough, or did we need some intervening owners?

Filling In The Gaps I: Co-mingling History and Imagination

To fill in the gaps, we knew that we would have to revise history somewhat, but the best alternate histories are solidly grounded on authority. It was thinking about the status of the gem’s legend – Phase III of ownership – that led us to he solution. We were discussing what you could do with that much money, and Blair (my co-GM) suggested (amongst other things) that you could buy yourself an army. And who would want an Army and didn’t already have one?

Filling In The Gaps II: Signs Of The Times

The answer to that question came from looking at World History for the range of years in which the change of ownership could take place, following up on anything that looked interesting, that we hadn’t used before, and that might answer the question that ends the previous section.

The Rest Of The Story

To recap: DeBeers expected that the stone would be auctioned after the trial and that they could so obtain it for a fraction of the value demanded by the African thief.

They were surprised when they were outbid by the Mahariji Victor Albert Jay Duleep Singh, heir to the title of the last Prince of the Sikh Empire. He had been born in England after his father was driven into exile, and had been raised to be his father’s son and apprentice to the many schemes by which the older Mahariji attempted to reclaim dominion in India, including an attempt to persuade the Tsars of Russia to invade India from the north and reinstate him as ruler. Victor Singh sought the same goals and intended to use the diamond as a bribe to anyone who would assist him.

He began by attempting to enlist the Anti-Bolshevik remnants within the Military following Russia’s withdrawal from World War I, promising them wealth, places of honor, the recognition of the English Throne (because his family was on good terms with the British Monarchy), and a base of operations in India’s North from which to reclaim their own homeland. At the same time, and unknown to these potential rebels, he secretly courted the Bolsheviks, suggesting that having those members of their military that they deemed politically unreliable die in an Indian campaign would be preferable to a politically-motivated purge that would attract international condemnation.

One of our players did a face-palm at “he secretly courted the Bolsheviks”. That was the moment that I knew our history of the Diamond had succeeded in sucking the players into the story.

This scheme to invade India might have radically changed world history during the 1920s, but for a Bolshevik spy within the ranks of the Anti-Bolsheviks who reported the duplicitous approaches of the Maharajah to Lenin personally. Victor was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and died in 1928 in Gulag Sovolki in Southwestern Russia. The gem vanished from history for a time.

What is not publicly known….

….is still not publicly known. Sorry, this paragraph has to be redacted, because the players haven’t discovered the missing chapter of the stone’s history yet!

In 1923 a White Russian refugee from southwestern Russia near the Ukraine styling himself Count Viktor Alipondorov fled to Austria. He contemplated traveling further but the Beer Hall Putsch, even though it failed, convinced him that Germany was too unstable a regime to risk traveling through. When the Nazis came to power in 1929, Count Alipondorov smelt the political winds and abandoned his new estates in Austria for the safety of the US. Since arriving, he has been living on what hard currency he was able to smuggle out with him, but that has begun to run out, forcing him to reveal the existence of the largest single asset which he had smuggled out of Eastern Europe with him – the lost Kalhoolie Diamond, which had been thought to have been broken up by the Bolsheviks. To raise funds, he will eventually have to sell the Diamond, but in the meantime he has arranged for it to be publicly displayed in order to enhance it’s mystique and hence its value.

It’s All About Authenticity

There’s a lot of invention in the history of the Kalhoolie Diamond (not the least being the existence of the gem in the first place) – but all those flights of fancy are built around reality. The source of the fictitious Diamond: completely real. The assorted fates of various owners along the way: all modeled on real stories of fabulous treasures and the disasters that befell their owners. The reprehensible behavior of our mythical deBeers: all based on unproven but persistent rumors of underhanded deeds aimed at maintaining their domination over the Diamond Trade. The conditions in their mines were certainly accurate. And the Sikh and his family really were driven out in the manner suggested, and became personal friends with Queen Victoria and Prince Consort. While his aims (thwarted on a number of occasions by the British Government or the East India Trading Company) were merely to return to India, a rather more sedate ambition than the militant recapture of his homeland, there’s still a thematic connection between the two. In reality, he died peacefully in Paris at the age of 55. Nor was his son involved in any such wild ventures, though he struggled with gambling and made a number of bad investments that led him into bankruptcy in 1902, and died in Monte Carlo in 1918, so – once again – there is a thematic thread connecting reality to fantasy.

Someone once wrote that a lie should be 2/3 truth to every deception. The same is true of invented history – and every fabulous treasure should have an invented history.

Character Rubs Off

There’s a concept that I’ve never seen expounded that’s an undeniable part of the history of the Kalhoolie Diamond: Notoriety By Association. Or perhaps you would prefer the formulation, “You lie down with dogs, you’re expected to get up with fleas”.

By wrapping notorious characters and events around the Diamond, no matter how peripherally, some of that “dark stain” rubs off to make their joint possession notorious, too. Picture how much a medical instrument once used by Jack The Ripper would sell for at auction – from notoriety alone. Similarly, personal possessions of people who were anointed to sainthood tends to fetch disproportionately high values.

This is a transference of celebrity; Al Capone’s signature is worth a lot (US$60-70,000), not because he was a criminal, but because he was a famous one – but you can’t help but be reminded of his notoriety by the collectible, and so there is a “rubbing off” effect that can’t be denied. I have seen this arising a number of times on Pawn Stars, for example.

Backstory Generates Plot Hooks

The final observation that is worth making is that the backstory of the Diamond has generated a number of plot hooks that could apply if the PCs came into possession of the Treasure – the Russians, Bolshevik-oriented political groups, Indians, deBeers, and (on general principles) the Nazis would all lay claim to it – or, more probably (in a pulp environment) attempt to take it back directly.

It’s not too difficult to arrange for the PCs to come into possession of a fabulous treasure that four or five different groups want to get their hands on, all for different purposes, and all willing to employ force to achieve exclusivity. One might attempt to bribe the PCs, another to blackmail them, one to kidnap them, and a fourth to assassinate them. Maybe not all at the same time – it would take time for the news to filter through to the different groups – but possession of the item might be the central fact of several substantial encounters or even whole adventures.

Because where fabulous treasures go, trouble is sure to follow…

Because I’ll be away for most of the next 7 days at my niece’s wedding, there may not be any post next week. If not, I’ll be back 14 days from now :)

The Genesis Of An Article

A little more than two weeks ago, as I write this, I had an unusual dream (a known side-effect of some of my medications) in which I wrote two articles for Campaign Mastery. When I awoke, I remembered them, and immediately made the appropriate notes. In the dream, one had proven easy to write, and the other difficult; but when I actually laid out the articles and saw their scope, I decided that I had it backwards. So I wrote what was supposedly the harder article two weeks ago (In My Cosmological Pocket: From Portable Holes to The End Of The Universe), leaving the easier one for last week.

I knew that this article needed some research for specifics, but that proved relatively painless and easy. I knew that it would require some complicated diagrams – and that’s where the wheels came off.

The original intention was to write and post it last Monday. If need be, I could carry it over until the Tuesday – being a day late would not be the end of the world. Several hours after “Monday posting deadline,” I finished the third of the diagrams that I would need, and felt in good shape to actually write and publish the article on Tuesday.

If only it was that easy! There was just one diagram left to do, and – much to my surprise – that ended up completely consuming my Tuesday – not helped by my being somewhat smashed after Monday’s herculean effort.

Wednesday, I spent collaborating with my Co-GM in the Adventurer’s Club campaign. That always leaves me pretty wiped out, so nothing much more was possible or expected.

But I fully expected to be able to knock the article out on Thursday, Campaign Mastery’s “alternate publication day” (instead of slugging through another session of Blogdex updates). I got as far as writing most of this introduction – to about “herculean effort,” above – and discovered (guess what!) that I needed one more diagram just in case some of my readers didn’t learn basic trigonometry in school, or have forgotten it since!

By which point it was pretty clear that there wasn’t enough time left in the day to write the actual text that will frame and cloak in meaning the five illustrations that lie at the heart of this article. Which is why this is being posted on Monday, a week late Tuesday, a week-and-a-day late – I found one more diagram that I needed – in the middle of writing the article… and then another, and another…!

Guess this wasn’t the easy article, after all – and my dream-self had it right all along! I should have listened – but who goes to dreams for professional advice?

‘Spot’ and Perception Checks

It’s one of the most ubiquitous elements of an RPG – the “spot” or “perception” check. Useful for all sorts of things, from noticing the trip-wire concealed in the underbrush to observing the thin bead of sweat rolling down the suspect’s forehead when he is closely questioned, or counting the number of bricks in a step, from spotting a charging rhinoceros that’s really hard to miss to observing the odd behavior of a hummingbird at a distance that shows it to be an illusion placed on something more threatening.

Most writers, when they consider these checks, focus on how to avoid giving the game away (even in part) – having the character make such a roll automatically tells the player that there’s something out there that they should be paying attention to.

Acting on that knowledge is, of course, the worst kind of metagaming, and universally frowned upon. Hence, a vested interest in techniques to prevent even the ‘leak’ that there’s anything to spot, whilst preserving player agency.

Okay, let’s quickly run through a couple of methods of achieving this laudable and very desirable outcome, so that I can keep this article on track.

1. Method 1: Get the player to make half a dozen ‘spot’ checks in advance and write the results down on scrap paper. The GM then consults these rolls when a roll is needed, crossing off those that have been used.
2. Method 2: Get the player to make checks as needed. Instead of announcing the DC or success/failure, the GM describes what the character has ‘spotted’ – but if the check was failed, it’s something trivial.
3. Method 3: Get the player to make checks to spot even some things that are completely obvious, concealing the significant rolls in a snowstorm of meaningless ones.
4. Method 4: Make the significance of the observation extremely transitory, so that rolls can be made on the spot as needed with minimal metagame contamination.
5. Method 5: Spot checks are made by the player to the left of the player whose character is making the ‘attempt’. The player owning the character is only informed if the result is a success.
6. Method 6: Trust the players not to abuse their meta-knowledge, backed up with editorial heavy-handedness and punishments from the GM if necessary.

For the record, Method 6 is the one that I use most of the time, with a sprinkling of Method 2, and Method 1 if and only if it is obvious that there will need to be a LOT of such rolls made in a game session (for a Sherlock-Holmes style mystery, for example).

I’m sure there are other choices out there, too. If you have one worth sharing, drop it into the comments so that others can benefit from it!

Today’s article is all about failing such rolls and what that means in terms of environmental awareness – and where the GM should position cues and warnings so that characters are far less likely to see them, perhaps to the point where no roll can even be justified, and failure should be automatic. More importantly, I’m going to look at how failure can be justified.

Okay, so we’ve established that they are used for everything from “spotting the painfully obvious” to “noticing the obscure visual clue” to “assessing another character’s mood from expressions and body language”.

Visual acuity is clearly a significant factor, and that’s another source of a steady stream of occasional articles on gaming sites – what the modifiers within a given game system should be for a variety of environments and circumstances. (In fact, you could easily write an article a week on that subject for a year. No, that is not a challenge, or an announcement!)

But where do we see? It should come as no surprise that it happens not in the eyes (as was once thought), but in the brain; the eyes simply act as the cameras. That’s the difference between ‘data’ and ‘information’ – the former has potential meaning, if analyzed correctly and placed in the correct context, the latter has meaning attached because some such processing has been carried out already.

Marvels of engineering

The human brain really is a marvel of engineering. We’re still only groping in the dark toward an understanding of how it works, what the ‘mind’ is, how sentience can emerge from the simple electro-mechanical and biological processes that have been observed, and so on.

That said, we’ve learned a lot over the last century or so. There was a time, it must be remembered, when it was thought that the purpose of the organ was to cool the blood (that’s how the expression “a cool head” derives from the concept of being “hot-blooded”)!

The brain employs dozens of processing short-cuts to achieve it’s miraculous perception of the world around it. Some of these are undoubtedly biological in nature – ‘built in’, as it were – and some have to be generated as processes from first principles in the early months of development. Not all these techniques are going to be the same – some will be more efficient in various ways than others, or more accurate – and that’s going to be a major contributor to the differences in the ways that we view the world.

One of those techniques (amongst several that will be mentioned in the course of this article) is the comparison of the current situation with archived ‘snapshots’ of normality, so that the brain can focus on the differences between that archived situation and associated events, and the current situation.

When overwhelmed by other priorities – like dispelling confusion – the brain can even assume that the current situation actually is the same as the archived ‘snapshot’, blinding and deafening the individual to anything outside of that situation. This is an extreme version of ‘confirmation bias’ that has been responsible for at least one deadly aircraft accident – the pilot became convinced that he understood what was going on, and did not react to – apparently, could not even hear or see – anything that contradicted that mental ‘picture’ of reality.

EDIT: I’m updating this article to include a reference that I wanted to include (but couldn’t find) at the time. The problem that I’ve described in the previous paragraph is called ‘fixation’ and the specific situation that I was referring to as an example of fixation is the crash of Garuda flight 200 on March 7, 2007. The pilot flying became so fixated on making his first landing succeed that he ignored repeated alarms and automated instructions, ignored his grossly excessive flight speed, ignored two requests from the co-pilot to abort the landing, and became confused just before landing by the plethora of warnings and alarms ringing in his ears – but still continued with the landing attempt, touching down 1/3 down the length of the runway with such force that the aircraft bounced, landed and bounced again close to the end of the runway, collapsing the nose landing gear. Only then did it begin to slide…

The substitution of an incorrect ‘model of reality’ for the one demonstrated around us is sometimes described as a psychosis. It’s clear that these come in all sorts of scales, from the overwhelming and complete to the trivial and minor. The first can make you dangerous to be around, something in-between can endanger lives if the person affected is operating machinery (driving a car or piloting a plane, for example), and something less is a quirk or immovably-fixed opinion. (As a side-note, it’s entirely possible that flat-earth proponents really do see the world as flat…)

What to process and what to throw away

One of the more important higher-level shortcuts employed by the brain is what to process and what to throw away, i.e. consciously ignore. This is obviously directly related to the phenomena described, possibly triggered as a ‘circuit-breaker’ to prevent overload.

You might think that higher intelligence should reduce the need to employ this shortcut; certainly, that concept is a fundamental element of many characters in literature, and that concept is inherent in the basing of Spot/Listen/Perception checks on intelligence, which is what almost every RPG that has such a roll does.

Arguing against that is the concept that NO human brain is sufficiently advanced to process the entire sensory deluge in real-time while performing abstract reasoning and any other incidental tasks like decision-making. That suggests that everyone ‘naturally’ positions their sensory input levels to the maximum that they can cope with – greater intelligent awareness of the environment simply means that there’s more to distract and divert the character, who is (as a result) as susceptible to the phenomenon as anyone else.

This line of argument is backed up by the investigation of the air crash mentioned earlier. The pilot was competent, experienced, and well-trained – all of which increases the level of input at which the person becomes overwhelmed. Compare expectations of a trainee vs someone who is experienced at their job – whatever it is – to see the inherent truth of the statement. That was what made the determination so surprising to the investigators; they didn’t expect that such an individual would become so fixated on their “picture” of the situation that they totally ignored phenomena that didn’t belong in that scenario, like alarms and warnings and even what the co-pilot was telling him.

If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone. Intelligence adds to both sides of the equation.

The Relevance Of Illusion

“What to throw away” has been the basis of many of the most basic optical illusions, something that I have discussed in two previous articles – Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs and I See It But I Don’t Believe It – Convincingly Unconvincing in RPGs – but in both cases, the context of the discussion was rather different. I should also call out An Introduction To The Brilliance Of Derren Brown as relevant, at least indirectly.

Optical illusions have been used for years as a tool by psychologists for exploring the stranger areas of how the brain processes information. That’s because they shed light on the ‘shortcuts’ employed by the brain.

I originally presented this image in the article on negative space listed earlier. At the time, I wrote, “Human minds aren’t really equipped to deal with empty space. When we encounter it, our minds try and interpret the space as containing something. Some optical illusions rely on this to shape part of the negative space to such a degree of success that we can see something that just isn’t there, such as is the case in the Kanizsa Triangle (shown left), created by Italian psychologist and artist Gaetano Kanizsa in the 1970s. The mind creates an object – a white triangle, point-down – out of the negative space to ‘explain’ what it perceives as interruptions of the other parts of the image. In other words, it separates the negative space into two planes, one triangle-shaped and in front of everything else, and one flat and behind everything else. In fact, there is no white triangle, but this nonexistent element of the picture becomes the dominant focus of attention as soon as it appears.

“The mind extrapolates from cues within the event or scene to ‘fill in the blanks’ – which are then taken as actual fact even if they contradict what is actually seen. This effect also manifests in witness statements – people naturally try to place the event they have seen into a context, and will actually (entirely unwittingly) modify their recollection of events to conform to that context. If someone else strongly suggests an alternative context that makes more sense to the subject, they will ‘rewrite history’ in their mind to contain supporting details. The only hope an investigator has of finding out what actually took place from eyewitness testimony alone is to get those statements as soon as possible after the event, having kept the witnesses isolated from anyone and everyone else in the meantime. The Wikipedia article on Eyewitness Testimony makes fascinating reading for anyone unfamiliar with recent developments on the subject.

“Implanting subtle cues of any sort into the negative space helps give that space a context, a starting point, and the mind goes on to fill in the blanks to incorporate that context into the focus of the image.”

What all this means is that under the right circumstances, not only can the brain ignore something that is present, it can invent something that isn’t but that permits it to employ one of it’s shortcuts – even if that results in incorrect processing of the situation.

Every time you (or your players) think they should see something but don’t, flash the Kanizsa Triangle at you/them and tell yourself “I still see a white triangle”. I certainly do, and know all about how it was done – and so do you, if you’ve read the explanation quoted above. That doesn’t change the fact that you can’t look at that image for more than a second or so and NOT see something that isn’t there!

Clearly, perception of reality is far softer, objective, and malleable than we like to think…

Without the shortcuts

We can get some indications of the value of the shortcuts by considering a person processing an unfamiliar and unexpected environment, which means that the shortcuts are ‘what is thrown away’.

When the observed reality does not match the mental ‘picture’ we have of the world and how it works, the result is surprise. Surprises can be good, neutral, or bad; and the greater the separation between world-as-expected and world-as-experienced, the greater the surprise.

For example, let’s contemplate something positive: a surprise birthday party. If you’ve already got a suspicion that ‘something’s being organized’, you won’t be all that surprised. If not, you will be. If the guests include people from a long way away who you did not expect to be present, the surprise is going to be much greater. If the guest list includes a number of people you know to have passed away, the level of surprise will be so great that you will need to be convinced it’s not a trick of some kind.

We all have a different level of credulity, and if surprise exceeds this, then we are prone to react as though what we are seeing is not real.

But that’s only true of positive and neutral surprises. The negative valence of surprise – unpleasant surprises – brings about a very different effect, triggering a fight-or-flight response – which is the natural reaction to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. This triggers the release of adrenalin, which in turn triggers other physiological and psychological effects.

In essence, the individual is now operating on instinct, with minimal conscious thought, unless they have experienced training that can take over. Because training substitutes implanted experience and prepared decisions for instinct, it actually leaves greater capacity for conscious thought and hence a more rational modification of the individual’s behavior. This takes the form of a more selective targeting of activity, most of the time – you don’t lash out blindly, you target an enemy and engage; if that’s not possible, you take cover and prepare to engage.

When instinct demands action – fight-or-flight – and no action appears possible, is when things start to get really interesting. The response, overwhelmingly, is to freeze, both physically and mentally. It is generally believed that this stems from an early animal instinct to ‘play dead’ when no other response appears possible, in hopes of blunting or abating the attack sufficiently to create an opportunity for flight or counter-attack – though there has been surprisingly little research into this area of psychology; everything to date has focused on the physiology of the phenomenon.

Why freeze mentally? i couldn’t find an answer, so here’s my personal semi-educated best-guess: we freeze mentally so that we don’t disrupt the physical freeze, either with emotional reactions (whimpering, shivering, screaming) or through other autonomic responses and reflexes. Our every mental capability is focused on processing the threat in as close to real-time as we can manage.

Other aspects of the phenomenon include tunnel vision, which I’ll discuss a little later, and a retreat to an earlier state of mental development, which implies an ordered hierarchy of processes, and that higher-order processes consume more mental capacity than lower-order ones – so that there is a survival benefit in shutting off higher-order processes while preserving lower-level ones at least preserves some intellectual capacity.

That’s why people in such situations will tend to retreat to a more elemental, more child-like state. Hiding, frozen in fear, people can find themselves sucking on a thumb, or retreating into the childlike delusion of “If I can’t see you, you can’t see me” – and screwing their eyes tightly shut to implement this ‘defense’.

So there are good psychological reasons for someone not seeing something that should be blatantly obvious.

What’s more, the human mind deceives us all – constantly.

Three Blind Spots

There are three blind spots in human perceptions – one in each eye, and one that originates in the brain that subtracts the nose from our awareness when it should be clearly visible each time we look toward our feet.

And yet, we’re never aware of any gaps in our perceptions. According to Wikipedia, “Some process in our brains interpolates the blind spot based on surrounding detail and information from the other eye, so we do not normally perceive the blind spot.” And that “some process” is about as definitive and detailed an explanation as can be provided.

We don’t notice the blind spot because our brains wallpaper over them with a best guess as to what should be there – one that may only have a nodding acquaintance with what is really there.

To The Left and To The Right Of Me

But these are as nothing compared to the biggest blind spot of all – the one that’s behind us, wrapping around our heads. Put something there, and you will never know it’s there (absent some other sensory clue, of course).

This diagram shows just how large that blind spot is – and a whole lot more. Let’s start at the back of it and work forward, and then around to the sides.

The first thing to note is that the normal range of movement of the head is 30 degrees to each side. Yes, you can usually force your head around a little further than that, to 40 or even maybe 45 degrees, but doing so can and will eventually strain neck muscles and tear tendons. We tend to subconsciously alleviate that risk by rotating our shoulders in the direction indicated, so that the head doesn’t have to turn as far. That can actually give another 60 degrees in rotation – throw in the neck’s thirty degrees, and you can look directly to the left and right.

Even then, as this very quick overlay shows, there is still a 30 degree blind spot – and you can’t turn your shoulders while moving forward at any speed, or it throws off your balance. In practice, unless proceeding with caution, the larger diagram is the correct one.

And, of course, you can still only turn your head in one direction at a time – if you are looking to your right, you can’t see to your left, and vice-versa. If you happen to visually Zig when you should Zag, you can still miss something important.

Next, we have the line of sight, which is straight ahead when viewed from the top of the head. Note also the focal point of the lines – the ones to the left point to the left eye socket, the ones to the right to the right eye socket; they don’t quite line up perfectly.

Thirty degrees to either side of the line of sight is the “limit of symbol recognition”. Research has shown that outside this central cone, we don’t bring our full cognitive capabilities to bear on what we see – which means that we either don’t recognize an abstract symbol, like words or letters of the alphabet, or road signs, or that such recognition is significantly slowed in priority. Another of our mental shortcuts is thus revealed: outside that cone, our mental processes are aimed only at recognizing what that cone should be directed next.

The next important number is 62 degrees to either side of the line of sight. That defines the range of binocular vision – the area within which both eyes can see the target. That’s important because our brains use that information to determine how far away something is. When the target is moving, you need that determination in order to target where it will be when your attack reaches that distance. I’ve seen estimates for the increase in difficulty of hitting a target moving at an angle without binocular vision that vary from 30% to 60% – I don’t know what the right number is, but whatever it is, it’s an important factor.

Beyond that line is a slim 13 degrees, which represents peripheral vision, i.e. the visual arc covered by one eye but not both – not without turning the head. That’s a total of 75 degrees to either side of the line of sight, and that’s what you can see without turning your neck and torso.

Up and Down

But that’s all fairly well known. You can figure out most of it just by putting an imaginary protractor around your head and estimating what you can see, and paying attention to the position of your muscles. You get rather more surprises when you look at the vertical range of vision.

Unlike the previous image, I didn’t incorporate the rotation of the head in the visual range – it made the image too confusing. Once again, let’s start at the back and then work forwards. The first thing that you should note is that it is not symmetrical in the same way in the way that the horizontal arc is. The head can point up about 25 degrees, but can tilt forwards 40 degrees. The other noteworthy observation included is that the line of sight is horizontal when standing, and 15 degrees downward when sitting – that’s a natural consequence of the human skeletal structure and muscularity. When moving forward at speed, the natural tendency is also to look downwards, but the amount varies somewhat, and was too complex to illustrate.

You can see the same thing on the front part of the diagram. But it’s worth noting that this 15 degree difference in line of sight doesn’t alter the angles shown, only their relative measurement. There are three distinct zones of vision depicted – a lower visual field, an arc of optimum vertical rotation of the eye, and an upper visual field. The region of optimum eye rotation runs from a standing line of sight downwards 30 degrees and upwards 25 degrees. This is as much a function of the physiology of the face as anything else – the cheeks form a relatively shallow and flat surface which doesn’t obscure downward vision greatly, but the brows jut out from the eyes (to protect the eyes with bone), and that obscures the upper field somewhat. If you’re sitting, your line of sight depresses downwards 15 degrees, the lower boundary of the optimum eye rotation arc becomes 15 degrees (=30-15), while the upper becomes 40 degrees (=25+15). This is a slight oversimplification because it assumes that the eyes are doing all the ‘work’ of adjusting the line of sight, when it’s more naturally due to neck rotation, but that’s a necessary evil, I’m afraid.

The lower visual field extends beyond the 30 degree position a full 40 degrees, giving a total arc from the standing line of sight of 70 degrees. Once again, this area functions in the same way as the peripheral vision of the horizontal arc – the priority of the brain in processing visual information is selecting targets for examination after shifting the line of sight.

The upper visual field bears the same limitation, but it only doubles the 25 degree arc from the line of sight to 50 degrees. So we are naturally more aware of things at our feet than we are of things overhead. But notice the top ten degrees of that fifty-degree arc: one of the surprises that I came across in researching this article is that our brains ignore all but the most rudimentary color information in that range, and that the fact of this is actually hidden from our awareness by our brains. Unless there is a significant difference in lightness or darkness, our vision gets progressively more desaturated and black-and-white as we approach the upper limit of the range – with color information “inferred” from lower in the arc. Of course, you can see the color information clearly by looking up at it – but not otherwise.

Ultimately then, 25 degrees up and 30 degrees down, 62 degrees to the left, and 62 to the right – that’s what we can see clearly. Our awareness extends peripherally outward further in all four directions, but that’s all subject to “degraded” processing standards aimed more at getting our attention – and, if there’s a transitory phenomenon to observe, that might not be enough. We can extend the visual field somewhat by turning our head or our body – but that’s only moving the visual field, not enlarging it. For every square degree so gained, we lost one from the other side of the field.

An exercise in Geometry

All this becomes a lot more useful when we consider the phenomenon of a character looking at focus of attention, and ask what else they can or can’t see. The horizontal doesn’t change much from the basic picture given above – point the “eye line” toward the object and consider a horizontal plane of a little more than the hemisphere (maximum) and a little less than 1/3 of that for full processing of visual information.

Outside of that 1/3, a sixty degree arc, all we know, and all we should get from a failed spot check, is that there is something to be aware of in that direction, according to a very simple (and somewhat inaccurate) standard of judgment. We don’t know what it is. And if it’s color-based information, we may not even be aware of it if the vertical angle is close to the limit – we need some contrast differentiation or motion to attract our attention.

But vertically, things get a lot more interesting, because these angles dictate whether or not something is within our field of view at all, or in what is (effectively) a blind spot. This is an exercise in simple geometry.

Let me start by admitting that if you try to measure these out, it won’t look like the example. I’ll discuss the problem a little later, and simply admit that I compromised reality to be properly illustrative in creating this diagram.

The upper part of the diagram defines the angle of the eye line, aka the line of sight. It is based on two numbers and a pair of triangles. The first number is h, the elevation of the eyes relative to the horizontal plane of the focus of attention.

That last part is a necessary complication: if the terrain is sloping upward toward the focus of attention, or it’s above ground level, it makes h smaller. The whole point is to create right-angled triangles which are susceptible to simple analysis and not the far more complicated arrangements that can result!

But the simplest situation is the one depicted – level terrain, and a focus of attention on the ground some distance away. That ‘distance away’ is also from the eyes, which is important, too – when moving, it’s normal for our point of balance to be forwarded. Walking and running are ‘controlled falls’ that are interrupted by the arrival of the other foot reaching the front of its stride, and that means that the head (and therefore the eyes) advance in the direction of the travel – how far forward of the center of gravity depends on the speed with which we are moving, and it’s something that we subconsciously process when we look at a picture, especially one that’s side-on.

Artists often think of such matters as the “center-line” of the body, which dodges all sorts of tricky questions, because then they can talk about the angle of the center-line to the horizontal. As a general rule, 0-5 degrees is about right for indicating walking, 5-10 degrees for jogging, 10-15 degrees is normal used for running, and anything more indicates a sprint. 30 degrees is a fairly extreme and exaggerated angle in art.

It should be noted that artists normally exaggerate their depictions to make the motion clear to those observing the art. The reality is less than that indicated, probably 1/2 the angle shown. The only time I’ve seen angles approaching 30 degrees in real life is when a runner is stretching for the line, deliberately extending themselves toward the tape.

It should also be noted that comic-book artists exaggerate motion even more, probably doubling the angles listed, because it makes the angle and pose more dramatic.

I suggest that under most circumstances, and assuming humanoid physiology, all this is unnecessary complication. Use the character’s height and the distance from the feet to the focus of attention. If the focus is an enemy combatant, trained fighters will watch the back or shoulders of the (potential) enemy, anyone else will focus on the eyes or the weapon-in-hand if there is one, and both will talk about assessing “intent”.

So subtract the enemy’s height from h, or subtract the character’s height from the enemy’s if the enemy is taller. Visualize the geometry of the situation in your head.

Once you know the eye line, you can calculate C, D, E, F, and G, as shown in the lower part of the diagram. 70-30-25-50 are the numbers you need to remember.

• 70° down from the eye-line is the lower limit of vision. Outside this, the character is effectively blind.
• 30° down from the eye-line is where visual processing takes over from mere “awareness”.
• 25° above the eye line is the upper limit of the visual-processing arc. If this is below the horizontal, unless the terrain is sloping down away from the character in exactly the right way, the character will not be more than aware of the horizon of the area.
• 50° degrees above the eye line is the upper limit of vision. Where this line intersects the ceiling will demark the limits of awareness of what is ‘overhead’.
• “C” is the distance from the character to the point of intersection between the floor and the 70°-down line. If anything happens within that area, the character won’t see it. If there’s anything he should have seen before it entered that area because of the character’s forward motion, they have missed their chance to spot it.
• “D” is the area ahead of the character in which they will be aware of the floor. If there’s something to see, they may become aware of the fact – but not of what it is unless the character takes their eyes off the focus of attention.
• “E” is the distance between the 30° line and the focus of attention. Normally defined by exclusion – you don’t normally need to calculate it.
• “F” gets a little trickier. It’s the distance along the ground, or up the wall, or along the ceiling, from the focus of attention to the 25°-up line.
• “G” is, similarly, the distance to the edge of the upper visual field. Outside of this area, the character is, once again, effectively blind – unless they shift their focus of attention.

So, in the example depicted, if the dashed line a little beyond the focus of attention is a wall, then F will be part-way up it, and the rest of it and some of the ceiling will be in the area defined by G. And notice how the top of the area is “grayed out” as a reminder.

The observant may comment that the 70° line looks a little shallow, relative to the eye line, and they would be correct – the actual 70° line is vertically down from the focal point, with the real C extending backwards to infinity from the feet of the character. (Told you I’d explain how I had to compromise the illustration).

Of course, actually calculating things – especially when it comes to more complex situations – requires some rules, so here they are:

These, of course, are basic trigonometry – which uses symbols like alpha, beta, and theta, because the ancient Greeks first worked out the principles of basic trigonometry (and we’ve been using them ever since).

The basic resemblance between the diagram illustrating the rules and the one given earlier should be fairly obvious!

Math? No Way!

At this point, I contemplated giving away a spreadsheet that calculated the numbers, regardless of the input values. It proved to be a lot more complicated than I expected. I thought about a worked example – but the possible permutations are so varied that I thought it might do more harm than good, especially since I wasn’t going to recommend it as a technique, anyway.

I’m including it only so that readers have the principles and techniques at their fingertips – so that they can do things the more precise (and more difficult) way if it becomes necessary.

An Array Of Examples

So, instead, here’s a set of graphical examples. Pay close attention to where the line of sight intercepts the floor, wall, or ceiling, and the effect that this has on the “blind regions” and the areas of “attention only”.

A practical method

I mentioned in the section above that I had a more practical alternative than a whole bunch of trigonometry calculations. This is a 7-step process that, with appropriate modifications for the dimensions of the room and/or the landscape, shows exactly what can be seen – and it needs nothing more than a pencil, ruler, scrap paper, and a sharp eye.

The process is in seven steps, and rather than breaking them up into separate illustrations (with discussion in between, I thought it better to illustrate the whole process in one larger image.

1. Step one is to lay out the basic dimensions. In this case, to make the process easier to follow, I’ve decided the floor is level, and the focus of interest is about 10 hexes or squares away (5′ each). I’ve also assumed that the basic character is 5’6″ tall, which sets their eyes a nice, neat 5′ above the floor.
2. Step two is to draw in the eye line at right angles to the character height marker, and the eye-line between the eye-line origin point and the target. I then guesstimate the angle that is formed – in this case, I get about 7 degrees. Some tricks: 1/3 of a 90 degree angle is 30 degrees, and 1/3 of that is 10 degrees, and half of that is 5 degrees. I make these estimates purely by eye – our assumptions are fuzzy enough that they can swallow a huge degree of error and still be usable. Once I have that, a simple calculation, 90-angle estimated, gives me the angle inside the triangle – in this example, 83°.
3. Step 3 is even simpler. Subtract 70° from the angle inside – the results tell you roughly what the angle to the edge of the lower visual range is. 83°-70°=13°, so I do the 1/3 trick to get 30 degrees, then halve the angle, and pick a result just a little less – from the vertical, it should be noted. If all I need is the lower blind spot, I’m done! But if I need the full picture, it’s on to the next step.
4. Step 4 happens in the same way, but this time I’m subtracting 30° from the eye-line angle – 83°, in this example. That gives me 43°, so I estimate a 43° angle (a shade closer than 45°) and draw another line. This defines the lower area of “poor vision”, and also – by definition – the lower part of the “good vision” area.
5. With the part below the eye-line done, it’s time in Step 5 to work out the upper boundaries. I start by adding 25° to the eye-line angle (83°), and note that the result of 108° is more than 90° which is the horizontal. So I subtract the 90° and get a smaller angle (usually much easier to work with) of 18° above the horizontal. Because I don’t want to use up more paper than I need, I’ll also roughly draw in the ceiling – in this case, about 15′ high (which is quite a high ceiling, 12′ is probably more typical – but it also happens to be about the height of the ceiling in the room in which I was doing all this, and that helps me visualize it in my head).
6. In step 6, I’ll drop a vertical line from the point where the ceiling and the 18° line intersect. That’s because my quick and dirty scale is at the bottom of the diagram, and it tells me that from four tiles ahead of the character, he has a good view of the ceiling, and therefore any wall in between the two will also be within that visual arc.
7. Step 7 starts with another calculation – the angle of the previous calculation plus another 25° degrees. In this case, we get 43° above the horizon, which is a cinch to visually estimate and draw in. That’s the boundary of the upper area of poor vision, and also identifies the area in which the character has no visual capability at all. Hey presto! It’s all done – and customized to the layout with which you have to deal. I’m good at sketching – I could do this quickly and easily even without a ruler, just with pencil and paper!

Well, almost. Using this technique, you can work out where the part of an enemy is that the character is looking (height above floor); but you need to know one or two things more before you can adjust floors for climbs and descents. Humans have no problem leaning forward, relative to the ground – but have a great aversion to leaning backwards. If the floor slopes up, the character will usually lean into it, so you have to adjust your initial vertical line appropriately; if the floor slopes down, the character will stay vertical with respect to gravity. Either way, draw in the floor and mark off the distances along that line. Once you know those tricks you can deal with the most complicated surfaces.

If only every character was 5’6″, that would be the end of it. To correct for character height, we simply need to work out the multiplier and do a new set of marks along our scale. The multiplier is the character’s height in inches divided by 66, which is 5’6″ in inches.

Let’s say that I’m dealing with a 4′ tall Dwarf. That’s 48 inches, divided by 66, or 0.727. The only thing that you have to worry about is whether or not to multiply or divide by the multiplier. If the character is shorter than your reference height, simply imagine the results if the focal point were lower; if taller, if it were higher. That should be all you need to tell you which way each measurement gets scaled.

So, if the upper zone of good vision previously started 4 squares away, for the dwarf, it will start further away – so I divide 4 by 0.727, and get 5.5. Or, I can simply take my rough sketch and (preferably in a different color) draw in a set of lines parallel to the old ones at the different focal point.

Here’s the last image from the example above, with such an adjustment shown:

As you can see, with the focal point lower, the boundaries below the eye-line intersect the “floor” sooner, so they are all shorter, but the angles have further to propagate upwards, so those are longer. It’s as though the standard character had his eye-line angled a little bit lower.

A taller character would experience the opposite effects – a smaller upper blind spot, and a larger lower one.

Cone Of Vision

So, our vision is actually a cone projecting forward, perhaps at an angle, with a notch out of the bottom and a couple of holes.

When someone’s fight-or-flight response is engaged, it’s not uncommon for the zone of processing to narrow, producing tunnel vision; however, there have been no experiments that I could find concerning the scale of this narrowing, save those on astronauts undergoing G-stress training, and I have a suspicion that the two effects are not analogous.

I am forced to pluck some numbers that “sound about right” out of thin air. I would be greatly surprised if the narrowing of an angle relative to the eye-line was by less than 1/3 or more than 2/3, on both axes. I also suspect that the “awareness” zone does not narrow by as much as the focal arc; so my rules of thumb are that narrowing may reduce the arc of “good vision” by 2/3, and the arc of “bad vision” by 1/3.

These numbers would represent a considerable diversion of significant mental capacities and their focus on the object of concern. The “blind areas” would grow considerably as a result, producing the “tunnel” effect for which the phenomenon is named. I’m not sure that anything less would result in that effect.

But these zones and blind spots are not the only limitation on perception that needs to be considered.

Technicolor Presumptions

Color differences, even substantial ones, are seriously muted by similarities in saturation level, and amplified by increases in contrast. A number of optical illusions have been generated to explore this effect. What’s more, adjacent colors can affect our perceptions of a color far more strongly than most people anticipate.

All of which means that color difference alone may not be enough to make something noticeable.

Focal Plane

Have you ever noticed how, if you are looking at a distant object, your awareness of things much closer to you is diminished, and vice-versa – even if they are within the cone of optimum sight? We live in a three-dimensional world, and the third dimension is just as important as any other in this context.

We have, in other words, a limited focal plane, but one that we can adjust.

Middle-distance focus means that both close and distant perceptions are compromised.

The focus of inattention

Focusing on some specific visual processing, such as counting the number of passes of a basketball, can leave people completely unaware of a man in a gorilla suit wandering through the shot. Don’t believe me?

It’s called the Selective Attention Test and here’s a YouTube video (1:22) to a demonstration. Don’t cheat – make sure to follow the instructions!

And here’s another (1:43).

The simple fact is that about half the population will completely miss the gorilla if they aren’t forewarned of it’s presence – and those who are distracted by watching for the gorilla will usually fail to count the number of passes correctly, or notice something else, like the curtains in video 2 changing color, or a player in black leaving the court.

It happens through another set of shortcuts in our mental wiring – by designating the counting task as of primary importance, the brain throws away unrelated visual information. You’re focusing on the players in white and how often they pass the ball, and doing your best to ignore the players in black – and completely miss the gorilla (also in black), provided that he doesn’t interrupt the path of the ball on which you are focused.

Optical Illusions

There are all sorts of optical illusions, and they all stem from the shortcuts that our brains use. There are also a number of contradictions involved in them, which is both maddening and fascinating to the psychologists who investigate the phenomena.

We’re accustomed to colors fading as they get closer to the horizon; if a mountain is faded in a picture, we consider it to be more distant than one where that’s not the case. But a somewhat-fuzzy black spot is interpreted by our brains as a hole in an object that’s much closer. So, which signifies distance to our brains: lighter or darker?

The answer: both, depending on the circumstances. Our depth perception is easily fooled.

Foreshortening and Perspective

Artists have been taking advantage of this fact for centuries to fool us into interpreting an image as possessing depth. The first known picture to make use of linear perspective was created by the Florentine architect Fillipo Brunelleshi (1377-1446). Painted in 1415, it depicted the Baptistery in Florence from the front gate of the unfinished cathedral.

The principles are fairly simple – small equals distant.

In picture 1, a couple of lines are angled toward a point, so the top of the picture seems farther away than the bottom. There’s also more white space at the bottom of the picture than the top, which reinforces the subconscious impression, because the brain assumes that the two areas are actually equal in size – so the bottom must be closer because it’s bigger. But there’s a square there which the mind finds confusing – it doesn’t have a matching context, and so the brain rebels against the illusion.

Picture 2 is worse, because a square of identical size has been added near the top of the picture. Suddenly, the lines look more like a mountain than lines on the ground. What little context the brain was manufacturing has been totally destroyed.

Picture 3 adds some horizontal lines, progressively getting closer together, in between the angled lines. Suddenly, the brain has a whole lot of new context, so much so that it assumes that the squares must conform to the overwhelming “reality” that has been created. The lines are now railroad tracks, and the box near the bottom of the image must be quite a bit smaller than the one at the back.

Picture 4 adds a horizon line that runs behind the upper box, reinforcing the “reality” being created.

Picture 5 adds a little color, some additional shapes, and fades the “distant” objects. Suddenly, the squares are box-shaped structures of some kind – one very small, perhaps six inches to a side, and one that’s more like 24′ to a side. What’s more, the mind tends to move it on the page until its scale appears to match that indicated by the tracks as making sense; the mind is now actively manufacturing supporting evidence for the illusion.

This example is hopelessly simple, very deliberately so. Because I cheated and didn’t actually define the vanishing point, then draw guide-lines from it, the “boxes” appear to be on slightly different axes of rotation to the railroad. This is a flaw that ever-so-slightly disrupts the sense that the boxes are anchored to the ground – so I added a shadow to both – but didn’t define a light-source, so these don’t look quite right either.

Nevertheless, it’s enough to convey the basic message: The brain associates details of texture, and strong contrasts, with closeness, and uses that association to decide how big the box is, and how big it appears to be, and to assign depth to the image.

Forced Perspective

Perspective mimics the way we see straight lines in real life – the sides of buildings, for example. As a general rule, the brain assumes that two lines running toward a vanishing point are parallel, and uses this assumption to estimate how far away the distant point is. Forced perspective distorts reality to manipulate the impression of distance created by this assumption. The Potemkin Stairs in Odessa appear to have far greater depth than their 142 meter depth because the stairs are wider at the bottom than at the top. There is a gallery in Rome, designed and constructed in 1632, that appears to be around four times its actual depth of 28 feet – the floor slopes up, the roof slopes down, the walls slope in, and the columns get progressively narrower.

It works in the other direction, too – the American Adventures pavilion in Epcot uses forced perspective to make a five-story building appear to be only two-and-a-half stories tall.

Forced perspective was introduced by German filmmakers in the silent movie era, and went out-of-style until resurrected for Citizen Kane by Orson Welles. Subsequent movies employed miniature sets, notably sci-fi movies such as the Incredible Shrinking Man and Attack Of The 50-foot Woman. In a lot of cases, the use of miniatures was obvious because the blur of the object or the lighting would not be quite right.

• Blur: Objects at the same distance should have identical sharpness. Fuzziness, also known as blur, should increase in accordance with the depth that the object supposedly possesses. This frequently requires the use of special lenses or optical effects. Quite often, the miniatures would look right, but their shadows would not, and would not fade in a natural manner. These technical issues could all be overcome with sufficient skill and expense, but low-budget sci-fi and horror movies rarely had the required budgets to get these effects right – the two movies cited are notable for getting it right.
• Objects that are more distant require the square of the distance ratio in greater lighting to achieve the same level of brightness on film – get the values wrong, and the miniature won’t look like it belongs, and (once again), the shadows cast as a result can be especially problematic.

But if you get it right, reality can appear to bend to your filmic will.

Some Final Observations

There are so many ways in which we can fail to observe something in the real world that by now it probably seems miraculous that we can see at all. There is always ample justification for a character failing to spot something, regardless of what their ranks in the appropriate skill appear to suggest. GMs can take a step toward reality by judicious use of penalty modifiers and the deliberate placement of things that the PCs would prefer to notice.

We couldn’t function without the processing shortcuts that our brains utilize to focus on the elements of a scene that appear to really matter – but those same shortcuts mean that we never really see anything other than an artificially-constructed mental simulation of the world around us. It’s just that we’re programmed not to notice, and reality usually doesn’t rub our noses in it.

Remember these principles when you are deciding whether or not a “spot” check is justified or required, and what modifier or DC is appropriate (depending on your game system), and what a success or failure should really mean. Don’t let a high “spot” score intimidate you, but don’t neglect to give a character who has one the benefits that they deserve, either. This article has given you the tools that you need to assert the simulation of reality within your game, but it’s like forced perspective: get it right, and the illusion can be persuasive; get it wrong, in any number of ways, and it can feel more false that it really is.

And remember, too, the effects on perceptive capabilities that result from being surprised, or in fear for your life.

Don’t be afraid to use these tricks intelligently, either. I once had a villain create a long tunnel seemingly running to his lair through a mountain range; periodically, windows would show it to be a vast city. In actuality, it was a lot smaller than it seemed, and the tunnel led to a fake that was full of deathtraps; only afterwards was it discovered that the “city” the PCs saw as they traveled were actually miniatures and paintings.

On another occasion, I convinced the players that their characters were shrinking as they approached a villain’s lair because the corridor, bricks, and fittings, all grew larger and larger. On that occasion, the PCs completely consumed their daily compliment of spells attempting to reverse the effect, without success, and eventually decided it was too risky to proceed.

The way the brain processes its perceptions were a fundamental inspiration to the way illusions worked in my Shards Of Divinity campaign, and have repeatedly been relevant to the perceptions of the world as seen by a telepath in my Zenith-3 campaign.

This article has provided the keys to the kingdom of Spot. What you do with them is up to you!

Pocket dimensions have been an important element of my superhero campaign for decades. Over that span of time, the understanding of their origins and properties have evolved in richness and complexity.

Pocket dimensions were also much-sought-after magic items in my Fumanor campaigns, in the form of Bags Of Holding. And so I applied the conceptual dynamics from my superhero campaign, and gave them a fantasy “twist,” and all was well. The logical extension of that thinking led to a new view of the relationship between the Elemental Planes and the Prime Material Plane.

This in turn led to the creations of the various micro-planes of Zhin Tahn, an Ilithid scientist exploring this very facet of the universe in partnership with another Ilithid who seeded the resulting pocket dimensions with new life-forms of his own creation – some derived from existing species, some entirely original, all in his quest to understand life itself.

The time came when the two had a falling out – the next stage of Zhin Tahn’s experiment was to merge the quasi-stable micro-planes into a stable alternate material plane, but that would kill many if not all the life forms that inhabited these realms. To make a much longer story short, the two killed each other, leaving their mutual creations to fend for themselves until the PCs discovered them.

The “fire” micro-plane was featured at Campaign Mastery fairly early on, when I adapted the adventure created for the location into a standalone adventure – too big for one post at the time, it was split into three posts which collectively form the The Flói Af Loft & The Ryk Bolti series.

But – to the best of my memory – I’ve never actually explored the conceptual cosmology that led to that creation. That’s an omission whose correction is long-overdue – and so, here we are.

This illustration incorporates clouds-1835815, an image by Pexels from Pixabay. Click the image to see it full-sized in a new tab.

Creation by Nature

This depicts three important phenomena and three fundamental concepts – that’s a lot for one image, so it might be a little confusing at first. Nevertheless, it’s the right starting point.

Let’s start with the so-called “Real World”. This is a plane of existence that shares a common natural law. There is a dimensional boundary (in blue) that separates this plane of existence from the Interdimensional “void” – actually a misnomer, because it isn’t empty. The natural law of the void is a super-law or over-law of which the parameters that define the “Real World” are only one of many possibilities. Since it is not the only possible such solution, it should come as no surprise that there are other possible “Real Worlds” floating through the Interdimensional “Void”.

Energy from without can strike the boundary and reflect off it, in the process exerting pressure on the boundary. The n-dimensional space that comprises the “Real World” thus becomes momentarily smaller. Energy from within can also strike and reflect off the boundary, causing a brief protrusion, and causing the n-dimensional space to become momentarily larger. There is an inherent uncertainty as to the true size or position of anything because of this constant “quivering” of space-time, which is known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty or the Planck Limit.

It can thus be shown that the more energy contained within a dimension, the larger it is, and the larger it is, the greater the likelihood of the boundary impacting with an energetic particle or wave at any given moment – there is an inherent resistance to growth that tends to force space-times to collapse into coherent structures.

Importantly, the boundary has an inherent elasticity. It will rebound from a deflection induced by an energy strike..

The effect on the energies concerned may or may not be detectable, depending on the form of the energy and on whether or not the dimensional boundary that was struck was expanding or shrinking at the instant of reflection. The near-certainty is that it will be one or the other. If the direction of motion accords with the direction of the energy, a little energy will be lost to the barrier when the energy is reflected; if the two conflict, the reflected energy will gain in energy. The energy-state of anything – be it radiation or electron-shells – is thus also knowable only within certain limits of accuracy.

Interesting things start happening when the energy density increases, however. Such impacts may be great enough that the dimensional boundary’s elasticity is overcome – it cannot deform enough, quickly enough, to prevent the energy passing from without to within in a momentary fracturing of the boundary. Once within the “real world”, it is just as subject to the natural laws that define that space-time as any other energetic phenomenon.

There is also a minute concussive effect that results from the dimensional boundary attempting to yield before it is overcome; this concussive effect ripples through the surrounding space-time and any matter contained within at that point. These concussive ripples can be detected, with the right equipment and conditions.

Of course, the same is also true of any energy of sufficient density that impacts the dimensional boundary from within. The larger the space-time, the more certain it is to be experiencing a simultaneous inflow and outflow of high-energy particles and waves at any given moment. Because the mechanisms of these are the same, the net average energy content remains fixed for the space-time being considered, but events within the “void” can cause local and temporary increases or decreases.

But there is also an intermediate outcome, and that’s the one that we are actually most interested in. If the incoming energy is just short of rupturing the space-time boundary, the rebound can be so strong that it carries a piece of the local space-time with it – a pocket world that contains a small piece of the “Real World”, plus the energy that caused the phenomenon in the first place – a pocket world.

If the energy of rebound is too great, the pocket world will become detached from the parent world, becoming a rogue micro-plane, sometimes called a planar seed for reasons that will become clear later.

When that is not the case, the pocket world remains embedded in the boundary that surrounds the main world. Now, natural laws function in a manner akin to gravity within the Void in that like attracts like; the natural tendency is for the pocket world to rejoin the source space-time and reintegrate itself. Opposing that tendency is the energy that was absorbed in the creation of the pocket world, which will make it just different enough that this reintegration will be delayed.

These pocket dimensions are naturally occurring, and tend to be microscopic in size, foam bubbles throughout existence. But there are ways of coalescing many of them into a larger construct – integrating multiple micro-worlds with each other. Because they have all derived from the one “real world”, they are fundamentally compatible with each other, which facilitates this coalescing.

It must also be noted that pocket worlds have thinner dimensional boundaries than major worlds, and thus have a lower threshold of escape. There is therefore an innate tendency for smaller micro-worlds to “leak” their extra energy, causing collapse back into the original reality.

It follows that worlds of less than a minimum size have a finite lifetime that is proportional to a function of their size and energy density. Perpetuating a pocket world is possible, but requires the constant infusion of energy to replace that which has leaked, a situation which is unlikely to occur through chance but which can be readily facilitated through artificial means.

These are the properties of Bags Of Holding, Portable Holes, and the equivalent; they are larger on the inside than on the outside, because the “inside” is actually a pocket world. They have a finite life that has been artificially extended by the “creation” process, and if you put more into them than you take out, that extension can be continued almost indefinitely. Depending on the age of the Bag, however, every removal from within risks taking it over the threshold and causing collapse.

At the same time, putting too much into such a bag at once increases the local energy density within the bag, increasing the likelihood of energy tunneling its way out of the bag spontaneously. Put 100 coins into a bag and you will almost certainly be able to pull all 100 coins back out; put 10,000 coins into a bag and you might only get 9.998 back.

It should be noted that magical energy counts in this regard as well – your wand may have had 50 charges going in, but only 49 coming out.

This illustration incorporates the-fjord-483189, Image by woong hoe from Pixabay. Click the image to see it full-sized in a new tab.

Creation By Intrusion

In the preceding section, I mentioned the possibility of micro-worlds being “blown off” a reality. These are attracted to the largest such micro-world that is nearby and traveling in a similar direction relative to the source space-time, creating a “foam” of micro-planes. When one “leaks” some of its’ energy, the micro-plane collapses into the only available space-time – the neighboring micro-world. This effectively lowers the energy density of the combined plane slightly, but reinforces the dimensional boundaries, which are now a two-ply layer (effectively). Multiply this process by tens of thousands of occurrences, and you can yield the apparently-spontaneous creation of a quasi-stable pocket world. This may be the size of a shoe-box or large enough to contain a city – though smaller is more probable. The median size will be about that of a room.

Eventually, inevitably, this pocket world will collide with another space-time. The more alike the two are, the more compatible with each other they are, the more they will attract each other, and hence the more likely this is to occur. It can be theorized that some are so unlike as to exert a repelling force upon each other, and equally validly theorized that there are only degrees of attractive force. No-one knows for certain.

Travelers within the void, by virtue of needing to carry a little of their native reality around them in order to keep them alive, are – by definition – pocket worlds, it should be noted.

The diagram that accompanies this section depicts what happens when the two realities intersect. The upper part describes the situation at the point of impact – note the deformation of the dimensional boundary of the “Real World” that results. The elasticity of the latter tends to absorb any directionality of the impact – note the change of direction in the arrow within the pocket world in the second panel.

The two dimensional boundaries coalesce once stability has been achieved. And that’s when interesting phenomena begin to take place.

One of the two worlds will almost certainly have a higher energy density than the other. That means that there will be a continual leakage from one into the other. This passage feeds enough energy into the remnants of the dimensional boundary that still separates the two to keep them from total collapse – at least for a while. (It’s hard to see in a small-sized image, but it’s there, I assure you!)

Their natural laws may be reasonably compatible, but are unlikely to be a precise match. The one with the lower total energy – almost certainly the pocket world – will thus find it’s internal natural law shifting toward that of the larger universe to which it has become attached. There will be a counterbalancing mingling in the other direction, but there is so much of the larger space-time that the effect is relatively diffuse; nevertheless, if you look closely at the “real world” in the two panels, you will notice a small shift in the direction of the pocket world.

When the energy densities match, the flow can no longer sustain the thin boundaries keeping them apart, and the pocket world will collapse into, and integrate with, the new “real world”. But this can take years or even centuries.

In the case of interdimensional travelers, this is akin to a process of “acclimatization” to the new natural laws before they are fully hostage to them.

One of the more spectacular applications of this process permits a room or area to be “invoked” from another plane. The wafer-thin boundary between the resulting pocket room is intentionally fed energy, slowing the flow of natural law across the barrier. The resulting space can literally be in two places at the same time – a room that is actually part of the elemental plane of Fire, or Hades, or someplace even more exotic.

Something of the sort is done on a smaller scale when magic mirrors permit communications across planar boundaries, or when scrying through crystal ball or reflective surface. Hence the strangeness of the points-of-view from which such scenes are often perceived.

This illustration incorporates castle-973157, Image by Jonathan Sautter from Pixabay. Click the image to see it full-sized in a new tab.

Creation By Extrusion

It is clear that those with sufficient expertise and capability can take a part of their “Real World” and project it outward from that space-time, as depicted in the diagram – creating a space that is larger within that it seems – thought that is the least-significant of the potentials of such acts. Because there is certain to be a leakage of the energy used to achieve this extrusion, the pocket world inevitably has a higher energy density than the base space-time, which ensures that it is self-sustaining (for a time) and quasi-stable for decades if not millennia.

Because this act of separation of one part of a space-time from its primary existence is being performed deliberately, there are a number of parameters of natural law that can be varied. In particular, a resonance may be created with a different space-time or even a different protrusion from the same base space-time, linking the two and permitting easy passage from one to the other. The less adept the architect, the more limitations and restrictions that will define the connection – it may only function at certain times of day, certain days of the month, or after certain conditions have been met. These do not have to make sense from an objective perspective – they are accidental in nature.

For example, one could create a room in which time passed more slowly, permitting days of work to be achieved within hours – or in which time passed more quickly, permitting an occupant to survive long past their allotted span of days.

Such acts of creation tend to be extremely complex, and many result in failure. Even when successful, there are usually unwanted complications in the form of Anarchy Foam. Fractures in reality, these can be considered emergent micro-worlds – refer to the inset in the diagram – containing the “discarded possibilities” that have not been adequately controlled during the extrusion process. Prone to collapse without warning, these have been known to inflict drastic-but-temporary changes to local natural laws – some of the consequences of which last longer than the causative triggers.

Everyone in the vicinity may be transfigured into some other life-form – even if that life-form had not previously existed. Magic may run wild, or be snuffed out like a candle. The air may become toxic, or a swamp transformed into a garden. Temperatures may change wildly – igniting forest fires, causing unexpected flash flooding, or plunging a desert into the heart of an arctic snowstorm. Mountains may rise – or fall.

Since most beings dislike these consequences, they oppose the creation of reality extrusions – if given a choice. But the benefits of rapid transit from place to place, even plane to plane, are too useful; those with the capacity will keep using it, or trying to.

It is also worth observing that some applications of Creation By Intrusion are also acts of Creation By Extrusion from another plane of existence.

Unstable Meta-pockets

Some planes of existence are simpler and more elemental in their structures and natural laws. It is possible to create a pocket reality that both mimics those planes and have the potential to combine with others to form a completely stable new reality, an Alternate Material Plane.

However, the potential for unity comes at a price: the pocket realities that result are inherently incomplete (you need somewhere for the natural laws deriving from the other pocket realities to hold onto during the integration process), and this makes them more unstable. This instability can cause them to “mutate” in undesirable ways, or explode, or implode, or simply collapse into a torrent of energy.

Applied correctly, this can bombard an existing reality with enough energy to split it in two – at least in theory.

Greater Collisions

There were two great planes that were going to pass quite close to one another in the interdimensional “void”. A resident of one migrated to the other for reasons too complicated to go into at the moment. That personage created a pocket world by extrusion and resonated it with her native world, continually feeding the pocket sufficient energy that there was virtually no leakage of natural law across the boundary; the resulting “room” was effectively a set of chambers from their native world.

At the time, it was not appreciated that like attracts like when natural laws are concerned; the resulting chambers exerted a slight but definitive influence on the trajectory through the “Void” of her native space-time, locking the two major realities into a collision course.

And that is how Ragnarok came about in my superhero campaign. The two realities collided and merged, releasing enough energy to destroy both – but that energy was captured and expended in a reordering of the newly combined reality. There were all sorts of beings – some friendly, most not – who wanted to take command of that reordering. Other realities that had been linked to one of the two, such as the Asgardian Nexus of Planes, were thrown adrift in unpredictable ways. The oceans heaved, nations were destroyed, and new ones erupted. Life forms that had not previously existed in one of the realities took possession of real estate int he combined world – substantial effort was expended in ensuring that as many survived as possible, emerging into an environment that was satisfactory for their needs, and even transfiguring some to ensure such suitability.

The game universe survived – was even, superficially, almost unchanged in some respects – but the instant you look beneath the surface, the more different things became.

The repercussions of these events are still being discovered by the players, 14 years (real time) after the fact. Every time they think they have a handle on things, I pull another one out of my hat – where it has quite obviously been lurking, undiscovered, for all that time. What’s more, the collision was discovered and found to be inevitable more than 5 years before it actually happened – and there was a naturally quite intensive effort to learn what that would mean, in advance.

The Power Of Deep Pockets

And that’s the real power of having a deep understanding of some aspect of your game reality – pocket dimensions, in this case – you can find applications of the theory that are trivial, but add depth to the way things work, and you can find applications that are quite astonishing in the scope of their impact.

It facilitates big ideas – while anchoring those ideas in a small-scale conceptual framework of plausibility. They permit effects that are not understood by others but that are simply “Cool” – leaving the deep thought in back of those manifestations to be discovered the hard way at the moment most satisfactory for the delivery of entertainment.

And, on top of that, it’s always fun in and of itself to discover how the world works!

What if you held a Blog Carnival and no-one came? Until quite late in the most recent carnival, that’s what I thought I might be faced with.

In the wash-up, only one person besides me proved willing to take the challenge.

To be fair, that’s not a total surprise; I knew it was a difficult one when I posed it. It was, after all, filling a slot in the carnival that no-one else was putting their hand up to post – Campaign Mastery’s “real” hosting will come later in the year. But still, that’s a little disappointing.

Perhaps some people didn’t see how what they did when they knew half (or less) as much as they do now could be relevant. But that was the whole point of the challenge – to turn their legacy content into something fresh and relevant.

It is equally likely that some people were worried that showing how good they weren’t, way back when, would be embarrassing. But you have to remember that other GMs are out there right now with less experience than you had at the time. I never forget that some of these look at my work now and judge themselves against that standard, no matter how often they get told not to. But potential embarrassment is still a valid reason to have participated.

And there may well have been people who didn’t want to mess with the integrity of their memories..That’s a good reason, too.

For that matter, how many of us have records going back that far? Nineteen years or more, in my case, more or less in others. Even if you do, these take time and effort to dig out. You could think of this as article prep time – and it’s an observable fact that blog carnival subjects that don’t require such prep attract more responses. So the topic had that going against it, as well.

I’m sure that some people started, despite these motivations not to, only to discover (as I did) that it’s a lot harder than you think to revise past material. The past tends to sprout tendrils of memory, and it’s hard to know where to stop. And those tendrils and past impressions are in constant conflict throughout the updating process. In a way, it’s easier to update something that’s still active within your campaign, because the continuity of past history both restricts the solutions set to something more manageable and gives you multiple starting points.

When you put all of this together, it’s not surprising that there weren’t very many entries, and there’s no blame to be attached for that.

Hopefully numbers will return to normal for the next carnival. And if that’s the case, then all of the above becomes relevant material to the consideration of future carnival topics by GMs putting their hand up. But there will nevertheless be difficult topics from time to time.

About The RPG Blog Alliance

After all, the membership of the RPG Blog Alliance is much larger than the list of those willing to host blog carnivals. That’s a good thing; it means that if a particular subject doesn’t produce any excitement in the GM, there’s scope for someone else to pick up the slack. Nevertheless, a number of blogs that were regular contributors to the carnival seem to have gone quiet lately, as happens from time to time.

That’s why the current ambitions to revitalize the RPG Blog Alliance by Scot over at Of Dice And Dragons are so important. We need to encourage new people to start blogging, we need to encourage new members to become part of the RPGBA, and we need to encourage others to take part in the Blog Carnival.

The RPG B A’s Identity: a sidebar

The problem now faced by the RPG Blog Alliance is an acute version of the one that’s it has struggled with from day one: when you ask “What’s it for?” no-one can give you a clear and succinct answer. It was a loose coalition of websites gathered together because it seemed like a good idea at the time – I think – that has struggled to find a clear identity and succinct mission, ever since.

As a consequence, no-one’s ever been quite sure of how best to support it. So, I’m starting something with this post – you may have noticed the graphic at the top. If you have something to say on the subject, some idea to contribute, use that graphic – and post a link to the article at the RPGBA site. Make it a nexus of discussion about the RPG Blog Alliance itself – no matter how self-referential that might make it.

So, here’s my vision of the answer: The RPGBA should be a resource available to RPG Bloggers and those who read them. Or listen to them; I think Podcasts have a definite place somewhere in the RPGBA.

Readers/Listeners first: There should be some sort of curated list of the most recent blog posts by participating members. The greatest problem any blog writer faces is letting those who might be interested know that there’s something of potential interest to them out there; the RPGBA should be one of the channels by which this expanse is bridged.

For Bloggers: There should be a list of bloggers who are confident enough in their skills and free time that they can be called on for an emergency fill-in guest post at, say, 24 hours notice. There should be a member’s forum where questions about blogging platforms and plug-ins and infrastructure can be raised and discussed. There should be discussions of taxonomy optimization and other aspects of blogging that are irrelevant of genre or approach to gaming or blog subject matter. There should be sites that are good for free clip art to accompany blog posts. I’d like to see a regular exchange for guest posting, too. The Blog Carnival is part of this side of things as well – a stimulant and conversation starter.

Which takes me back to where I was before I interrupted myself…

There should never be difficulty in filling a slot – rather, people should be lining up to host.

Because with such an active membership, participation rates will also rise.

Carnival Roundup

Which brings me back to the Carnival just concluded. There were two submissions:

• From Campaign Mastery, He Once Was Elves took the Elves, and especially the Elven Prince, from my first AD&D campaign, from way back in 1981, and took a good look at the inadequacies that I wouldn’t tolerate these days – and then reinvented the Prince and his racial profile into an NPC for a modern campaign, named Fenton Cole. The process eliminated those inadequacies and produced a memorable NPC that I wouldn’t hesitate to introduce to any of my contemporary campaigns.
• From Brent Jans, The Renaissance Gamer, comes Argent of Zeif, a reworking of his favorite PC from around the same time, and who he is looking forward to reintroducing as a character in one of his current campaigns.

By now, the Carnival has moved to Codex Anathema, where the subject is The Art Of Customization. It’s a tantalizing subject by Gonz. There’s customizing of rules, customizing of adventures, customizing of plots, customizing of NPCs… and there is the potential for articles about the processes, and the results, and even the motivations. That’s a lot of scope for participation…

For a larger version that I haven’t cropped, click the image. To support the Kickstarter campaign, click .

This article started with an invitation to write a review of RPGSmith. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that is, all will be clear by article’s end. After an introduction, and a summary of what the product was, the co-founder who made the offer threw in a provocative statement:

“I would like to note that we feel this is much more than a single purpose niche app for gamers, this could be a game changer for how games are played both at the physical table and virtually.”

Now, I normally tune out hyperbole without even being consciously aware of it, or react to it with extreme cynicism. When a TV advert for some food supplement uses weasel hype such as “[product x] may help treat [condition y]”, my initial (and often verbal) reaction is “…but it might not.” Now, I understand why the pharmaceuticals and supplements industries have to be careful about the promises that they make – there simply isn’t room in a 30- or 60-second advert to ring their pronouncements with all the protections and disclaimers that our excessively-litigious modern society demands, and it would hardly make for a positive message, in any event. With any advertising, you can never forget that it’s primary purpose is to get you to buy something, whether that something is a new product, or an existing product, a message, or an attitude – in general, to do something that will benefit the people paying for the advert.

But most RPG writers and GMs have as developed a sense of nuance and cynicism as I do. It comes from the deeper understanding in human nature we have to have to portray the greedy and opportunistic and criminal. They tend to eschew the overblown statement. That makes the excerpted statement singular – either the tip of an unwelcome trend of hyper in RPG advertising, or an announcement of something in which the writer has a genuine belief as a potential (and quite literal) game-changer.

First Impressions

Let me be frank – I had trouble seeing what justified the excitement and the hype; and I was fully prepared to write an article deploring the new depths of hyperbole to which the industry had sunk. If the hype was really unjustified, that’s what you’d be reading about in this article. It was an interesting product, but a game-changer? Maybe in a few small respects, but nothing fundamental. I wasn’t even sure that the convenience that the product offered would be commensurate with the inconvenience of setting it up for use.

At this point, I wasn’t even completely clear on what the product was, what it did. And I have deliberately refrained from describing it so that you’ll be feeling the same way about now, unless you have some prior knowledge.

So I decided to check out the product’s website in search of answers. I soon found enough to intrigue me, but noted that there were several cogent questions that didn’t have answers in the material supplied. I responded with those questions, and David – the co-founder who had reached out to me in the first place – was good enough to put quite a bit of effort into answering them.

As I did my research and due diligence, and the answers to my hard questions started to sink in, the potential for what this product could be, and what the creators intend it to be, started to open my eyes. I’m still not ready to drink the kool-aid, but I’m ready to ask what flavors it comes in.

I have to be explicitly clear – this is not a review of what the product currently is, or even what it could be in the reasonably near future. I am going to assume, for the purposes of this article, that all of the features that the designers want to implement are available, and as easy to use as they sound, and a few that possibly aren’t even on the horizon. This is a review of the potential of RPGSmith, unsullied by real-world compromises – at least until closer to the tail end of the article – about what impact it could potentially have, five or ten years from now.

What is RPGSmith?

The first thing that came to mind when I heard the name were memories of a piece of software from maybe twenty years ago that I never found the time to master, Tablesmith (I did get as far as installing the architecture needed on my old Windows 98 machine, but that’s about it). That’s a program used primarily to generate random tables for RPGs. It has a healthy, even near-fanatical user base out there, happily generating content for each other to use – and pushing the development of the software.

It’s an association that got in the way, at least in the beginning, because it’s not correct. Not yet, anyway.

RPGSmith is a virtual character sheet, when you get right down to it. If you start with that understanding as your bedrock, you’ll avoid much of the fog that I had to fight my way through before gaining understanding.

But it’s a character sheet unlike any that you’ve ever seen before.

Each page is referred to as a Dashboard – and yes, you can have multiple dashboards for a single character. The content of a Dashboard consists of tiles, which display various things like stats, modifiers, spells, and so on. The interface to the dashboard is web-based, so the whole thing functions like an interactive website. There’s a die roller, and of course (being software) it can do all your calculations for you.

The results certainly look very pretty, as the screenshot at the start of this article shows. You can click on the cropped version for a larger image (or click – opens in a new tab).

But it’s not what you’d call game-changing at first glance.

All images provided by RPGSmith. I’ve enlarged most of them slightly.

The Funding Model

What’s more, it’s not a free service. It’s free to players, but not to GMs, and without GMs, it will never be more than a virtual character sheet – with some nice customizability features, and the ability for one person to copy another’s design as a template (and then customize it for their own character).

If there’s one thing that I dislike about the whole thing, it’s this. When the plan for RPGSmith was for nothing more than a virtual character sheet, this makes a reasonable amount of sense; but the evolution of the product is toward a campaign-centric model, and without the GM, there is no campaign.

At the same time, I understand the designers’ problem; they’ve put a lot of time and effort and money into RPGSmith, and not only deserve the opportunity to recoup that investment, but to make a reasonable profit. Making the current version free for players establishes a user-base, and players outnumber GMs at almost every RPG table you can point at. What’s more, the GM usually pays for the supplements and tools used by the group. I have 160-200 immediately to hand (not counting general references and resources), another 400 or so a few steps away, and probably 250 or so beyond those that are actually packed away. Not to mention thousands of supplements downloaded from RPGNow and other online sources.

But now, things are moving in a different (and more exciting) direction. And moving fast – the current version only launched back in December 2018. They’ve barely ticked over the three-month mark – not enough time to really build that player-based foundation, or to get the word out.

And it’s not all that expensive. $50 a year – roughly the same as a core rule-book plus p&h – once a year, which also adds multiple players. And discounts for longer-term commitments to the platform. If you can afford it, for a limited time only, there is also a lifetime subscription.

But, if I were to seriously contemplate making this the central interface to one of my campaigns, I suspect that I would first persuade my players, and then ask that they pay a share toward obtaining the service for all to use – just as we all used to kick in to hire the gaming space our club used, but GMs were often subsidized by the players – because without the GM, there was no game. It only came to A$1 or $2 a week – and at that rate, would have cost more than doing likewise for RPGSmith.

Let’s do the math: assume 4 players and 1 GM paying equally, once a week, for 40 weeks a year – that’s 5x40x$X. You need $50 a year. So $X = $50/200 = US$0.25 a week, each. If you only play once a month, that’s about US$1 a game session.

The first purchase would need to be made up-front – US$10 each would cover it. Most people could cover that – at the current exchange rates, that’s about what it costs per head to get a takeaway lunch. You might need to give people a week or two’s notice out of politeness. After that, everything that you collect goes toward paying the next renewal.

If the GM is to get a free ride on the player’s contributions, we’re talking $0.30 instead of $0.25 a week, and $12.50 instead of $10 for the up-front subscription.

I’m not recommending that anyone arrange things this way – that’s up to individual groups. What I want to demonstrate is the viability of this approach, which in turn shows that there will be other practical solutions.

The History Of RPGSmith

This is not RPGSmith’s first time at the rodeo. Back in December 2015, they launched a Kickstarter to obtain funding for their anticipated development costs, and had to pull the plug when it became clear that they weren’t going to achieve their funding goals.

A lot of soul-searching went into analyzing the reasons for the failure at the time, and those involved in this initial version of the project came to the conclusions (1) that without a functioning prototype, there was little confidence that the product would be delivered; and (2) that people really hated subscription pricing models.

They’ve addressed (2) by reducing the fees dramatically, to the point where it’s a relative pittance. But problem (1) is probably the more serious. David (yes, the same guy who reached out to me) began to refine the specs and commissioned bits of code off his own dime – in fact, off quite a few dimes, and more than a few dollars as well. This time around, they have a demonstrable product, and what they want to fund are enhancements.

There was probably some justification to the hesitance of backers at the time; in his blog post on the subject, David admits that he has personally invested a great deal more than the original fundraising effort was supposed to raise. This was a question that I raised with him, because it wasn’t resolved by that blog post:

Q: The page (I think it’s a blog post) announcing your campaign raises one important question that it then fails to answer. You state that you have actually invested more in code than your original fundraising effort would have raised. Did the excess go on bangs and whistles that weren’t part of the spec that you were fundraising for, or were people right to be suspicious that you wouldn’t be able to deliver? How have you modified your planned fundraising this time around to take those lessons into account?

A: “There were a couple of reasons as to the amount of money spent thus far. In part you are correct that the scope of our most recent development effort is much larger than the original, this expansion was done to better compete with other tools that have come into the marketplace since that initial Kickstarter.

“The other reason is that the original Kickstarter funding amount (and this one too) was never meant to fully fund the whole effort, just to supplement our existing capital.

“A separate reason for the Kickstarter was to test the waters to see if there was a market for this application. At the time we correlated the lack of backers to a lack of interest. We’ve since learned that without having a good Proof of Concept in place, people are very weary to hop on board or believe we can deliver. This time we have a very functional and useful tool already built that would give backers a better idea of what to expect.

“That particular blog post comment was meant to convey that we are committed as we have a lot invested in this effort and not intended to instill a lack of confidence. Perhaps a rewording is in order?”


Actually, I think he was a little shocked that someone could read this interpretation into what he had written. It’s a lesson that most bloggers learn the hard way!

I raise it here as others may have the same impression. The fact is that David was effectively commissioning code for his own use in the form of enhanced functionality, as implied by my question, having falsely correlated the lack of backing with a lack of interest. What that Kickstarter would have delivered would have been a far simpler and less functional application than the one that now exists – though it may well have evolved over time to the current spec, anyway.



All images from RPGSmith.

The Fundraiser

Which brings me to the that’s now underway. This is essential to unlocking the vision of the potential future that I foresee for RPGSmith; it’s designed to link and integrate PCs into a campaign view, with additional functionality for running a game with RPGSmith as a hub.

When you look at the RPGSmith features page, everything that’s on the left-hand side in plain orange boxes is functionality that’s already in the product; everything on the right hand side with the pretty pictures is what the Kickstarter is to fund.

Let’s run through them quickly:

– A high-level “GM’s Campaign View”
– Chat functionality with the option of showing die rolls
– Icon-based display of buffs and effects impacting a character
– create or import tables useful/central to the campaign
– monster generation
– configurable group-view screen with information from multiple characters
– Build and track NPCs
– Collections of Loot which can be distributed to the players when recovered
– Currency and ways for characters to spend their money
– Combat manager
– Inter-character trading of items
– Ability to group specific items like particular shops into towns and cities
– GM can control what the players can see of other players characters
– …and what they can see of the opposition

The Implications Of Success

Aside from a justifiable sense of vindication, and becoming a poster-boy for perseverance, success in the fundraiser is only the beginning for RPGSmith – if everything plays out the way it could. In particular, it will bring the concurrent benefits of a large subscriber base, putting further enhancement on the road-map.

There are a number of carrots for people to sign up – mostly in the form of discounted initial subscriptions. If you want to try the product out for yourself and find out whether it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread for your campaign, this is your chance to do so on the cheap!

Doing so will help fund enhancements that are likely to make it even more useful to you, so it’s not only a win-win for the people behind RPGSmith, it’s a win-win for you too.

The Setbacks Of Failure

The Kickstarter doesn’t really talk about what will happen if this fundraising goes the same way as the last one. It would obviously be a setback, but not necessarily a fatal one.

The difference is that there is a functional product and service there already; David and his gaming group can simply sit back and grow the subscriber base through reviews like this one for a year or two, spreading the word, before launching another attempt.

Or, they could give up on the idea of RPGSmith as a commercial operation and take the whole thing open-source. That wouldn’t be ideal, as they have “Skin In The Game” as David puts it – they have funded getting the project this far themselves, money that will be lost if they take this route. So there would no doubt be considerable angst about the decision.

Or perhaps they could walk through door number three, and sell their IP to someone like Roll20, recouping those costs – but losing control of the project.

Ultimately, the failure of this particular campaign will not be the end of RPGSmith, in my opinion. David and Co have come this far with the project, despite the fundraising failure of 2015; I can’t see them folding up their tents now, whatever happens.

So it’s just a VTT without the TT?

Not really, it’s much more than that. But to see why, you need to stop and think about what a character sheet actually is.

When we start out as players, we think of the character sheet as a collection of numbers that describe our character. When we become better players, we find ways of reading more deeply into those numbers, and start adding additional information that isn’t mere stats.

When you become a GM, you start thinking of character sheets in a broader sense; they are the focal points of your campaign, the most tangible expression of that campaign. That thought often leads us to create bespoke character sheets, in particular to reflect house rules.

Both these perspectives are correct, but limited in their comprehension. It’s only when you start thinking as a Game Designer that the real truth comes out. Character sheets are the player’s primary interface between character and rules system, as filtered through the lens of the campaign.

In and of itself, that doesn’t seem to mean very much at first glance; but it makes a massive difference when you look a little deeper. For example, if you have two different versions of a character sheet, both downloaded from somewhere like RPGNow (where there are dozens of them for a popular game system like D&D), trying to decide which one is better yields different criteria and different standards when viewed through each of these different perspectives on what a character sheet is.

As players, you start with the superficial – the better character sheet design “presents the stats clearly and in an organized manner” – proceed into characterization – “prompts characterization input and presents the results in a way that can be quickly assimilated for play”. As GMs, you think about the way the design “reflects your particular campaign”, “enhances and delivers the flavor and atmosphere of the campaign to the players”, “gets them in the right mood or frame of mind”, and “accommodates your house rules” as they inevitably accumulate. But as game designers, the best character sheet design is the one that “optimizes the interaction between, and accessibility of, the rules to the players.” This design has more space for skills than you want, but the alternative doesn’t have enough? This design makes you look up a table in the rule-book, the other one has a space for you to write the relevant information directly onto the character sheet?

Suddenly, the criteria for which design is best have become at least somewhat objective.

Now, factor in that every character is different. If you’re running a mage, you want your spell list to be easy to access. For any character class without spellcasting abilities, space dedicated to that is a complete waste – and is doubly-counterproductive, because something else useful could be in that space.

But all these character sheets have one property in common: they are static, fixed, unchanging.

You can choose between RPGSmith’s own clip art gallery, upload an image of your own, or even search for an online image – one way or another, you should be able to find the perfect representation of your character.

Dynamic Character Sheets I

RPGSmith is different. It’s Dynamic, and that has four major impacts.

The first is that it means that the Barbarian and the Mage no longer have to compromise optimum character sheet designs to accommodate each other. You can start from a common template and customize the layout as necessary.

Dynamic Character Sheets II

The second is that it means that the sheet content can be dynamic, changing as the in-game circumstance changes – more like a computer-game character interface. Complicated tables and calculations can be carried out but hidden from view, displaying only the part that you really care about – the result.

The same character can have a completely different presentation by day, and by night, for example – reflecting the character’s specific abilities that are available to them at the time – if that’s deemed desirable. By keeping track of the damage the character takes, the system can automatically tell you that you’re stunned, or unconscious, or dying, or delirious, or whatever, AND to automatically apply whatever modifiers result from those conditions.

Dynamic Character Sheets III

As implied by the previous paragraph, the template can be updated to incorporate house rules. If, in your campaign, you want characters to lose half their movement when they’ve lost half their hit points, you can make that happen – without being an uber-coder.

Dynamic Character Sheets IV

Right now, the templates are fixed – you copy a character from someone else and it gives you a blank version, but with all the behind-the-scenes functionality intact. I anticipate the capability of crafting “modules” that automatically check the master sheet for updates to that functionality each time the “character sheet” is loaded. That’s one function that’s not even on the development horizon at the moment, but I see it as inevitable since it means that you don’t have to reenter the whole character each time.

Modules and Master Developers

Even though you don’t have to be gifted at computer coding to implement house rules within RPGSmith, it’s inevitable that some people will be better at it than others. A logical consequence of the “module” development I describe above is that those people will flourish – a better mousetrap, i.e. a more communicative way of reflecting a particular condition can be listed by its creator and added to character sheets by others, copying that specific piece of code into their own master templates, from whence it is automatically applied to player’s character sheets. The individual GM can even ‘tailor’ a “module” to suit their specific needs.

Simplified Rules Sets

Contemplate the impact on an RPG that has been designed to function with RPGSmith. Nine-tenths of the game mechanics (okay, that might be a slight exaggeration) can be incorporated directly into the character sheets for the game; the principles have to be explained within the rules, but not the mechanics themselves. That not only kills min-maxing, or at least maims it, but it severely shrinks the size of those rule-books – and that means that they can cost a lot less in overheads to produce, lowering the price without compromising profitability to the game designer.

Since the designers have to put the design hard-yards in anyway, they can still produce an “offline edition” with all the mechanics and tables intact if they want to – but it might cost $60 instead of $20. The price differences would be profound, would reset the standards in fact – and that would be reflected in the sales.

Mix-and-match rules

What’s more, if you liked the way one game – let’s call it “Cranks and Shafts” – handles its auto-fire rules, since these would be in a module like any other rules segment, you could import those rules directly into the basic “Space Elephants” rules that are to be used within your campaign. You might need to tweak them a little, but half the work would already be done – and instructions within the module would guide you.

The RPG Campaign Distribution Channel Of Tomorrow: A Hypothetical Scenario

Let’s turn on the crystal ball and focus on what setting up an RPG campaign ten years from now might look like. You buy the basic rule-book – “Space Elephants” – for a relative pittance, something comparable to the price of an electronic edition from RPGNow (refer Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 1 of 2 and Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 2 of 2 for a comparison of the considerations that go into the respective pricing).

That gives the GM a set of rules, a set of principles that those rules embody, a basic adventure, and a list of RPGSmith modules, plus a suggested layout. Those modules come with a bunch of nice pieces of eye candy, a “Space Elephants” logo, and half the game rules coded into them, with up-to-the-heartbeat errata and corrections.

The GM reads the material he’s been given (well, okay, he skims it) and gets an idea for a campaign. He logs onto his RPGSmith account and grabs the modules, available as an official bundle – one click, and he’s got them all. He then spends an hour or so arranging them according to the recommended layout (and tinkering with it a bit) and looking over the eye candy – some of which was also in the rule-book, some of which is new to him. Once he has a character template, he makes some notes about the campaign background and the first few adventures in the DM’s module, in particular deciding how many players he can accommodate.

He spends a little more time customizing some of the built-in rules with house rules that he thinks will enhance the unique aspects of the campaign that he has in mind, making notes as he goes, then writes up a campaign blurb with a link to the character template he’s put together.

To identify his specific Space Elephants campaign, he gives it the name “The Ivory Nebula”, and using that as his headline, he posts a notice of a new campaign open for 6 players for 3-6 months of weekly play on a noticeboard reserved for the purpose, adding a number of tags to the bottom that describe the campaign. He also indicates that two specific past players of his should be explicitly invited to the campaign. While he waits for the system to do its thing, he creates a short player briefing with more information on the proposed campaign and the sort of characters that would be suitable.

Those two players, and a number of others who have indicated an interest in the tags, are emailed notification of the campaign opening. Before too long, the GM notices downloads of his template and player briefing, and in a day or two, he has his six players, and expressions of interest from three more. They get automatically placed on a waiting list to join if someone else drops out – a list from which they can opt out at any time.

The GM has one player from Lima, Peru, one from France, one from England, one from the US, and his two former players, one of which now lives in New Zealand, the other still living close by in the same small town somewhere in the US.

Each of them has generated a character, submitted it to the GM, and customized the layout of their character sheets to suit their character’s capabilities and their personal needs. A time sync is set by the GM to tell everyone when the first session will commence (date and time) in their local vicinity…

Whoa – That could change everything!

There isn’t much about the RPG industry that isn’t being fundamentally altered in the above scenario. GMs are no longer restricted by geography – though language would remain a stumbling block. The way games are created and physically distributed is fundamentally changed, and the way games are consumed and administered are radically transformed. And yet, the fundamentals remain the same, comfortingly familiar.

Some of it is functional within VTTs now – but not all of it. Some of it is functional within RPGSmith now – but not all of it. And the two have only a partial overlap. Even if the Kickstarter is successful, and the current list of planned features is implemented, that will still not be enough for the above to become a reality; that would take more enhancement to RPGSmith (some of it on the agenda, some not currently). And then you would need time for the market impacts to influence the industry.

And there would be knock-on effects. Some games would have “Official” distributions through RPGSmith, others might have only amateur “unofficial” packs. Licensing and copyright would have to evolve slightly, though the OGL has shown the way forwards in that respect. Every game that is played using a particular “system” could be designated a play-test by the publishers – if they get reports that eight out of ten GMs have replaced the Psi rules with something else (or just removed them altogether), that’s a fair hint that there’s a problem in that area of the rules. If someone reports strange results from the enhanced healing rules, an errata can be noted and an update released “live” in minutes, hours, or days for all users who want it.

Game rules would evolve a lot more quickly, and probably be released in far more preliminary form. Game development would become more interactive – and there would be little-to-no chance of developers ignoring the feedback they were getting, the way WOTC has admitted they did with 4e D&D play-testing.

The Impact of Real-World Compromises

Okay, that’s the rose-colored glasses view of the future. The reality is that not all these changes are sure of getting through – some are, so far as I know, not even on the development horizon at the current time. Some are, though, and some are logical extrapolations of what RPGSmith either can do now, or will (hopefully) be able to do in the near future.

So this forecast is a case of what the maximum possible impact might be. Let’s take a step back and look more closely at how much of this is plausibly in the pipeline, by quoting some more of the questions I had for David and the answers that he supplied.

Q: Can a blank character sheet be saved as a template and then used as a foundation by other players, or does each have to be customized from scratch?

A: “A default dashboard, or ‘template blank character sheet’ if you prefer, is defined and associated with a given Rule Set level. This is true for all Rule Sets whether created from scratch, added from RPGSmith’s ‘Core’ Rule Sets, or imported from another user’s RPGSmith account.

“You can also create multiple dashboard configurations, hundreds in fact, on the same Rule Set. Each time you create a character and select a Rule Set for the character to be created in, the defined dashboard associated with that Rule Set is duplicated as used at the starting layout for that character.”

So the core functionality is there, it’s only the distribution mechanisms and the integrated RPG publishing/development that is needed – plus the GM/Campaign focus that they are currently trying to implement.
 

Q: Can graphics be uploaded or are you restricted to those provided by the site?

A: “Yes, graphics can be uploaded, or selected from our stock images, or even searched and imported from the web without ever having to exit the interface. This same image interface is used throughout the tool any time you want to insert or change an image. RPGSmith is built with the intent to allow you to customize anything, replace all the images in the provided pre-created ‘core’ rule sets if you like.”

A dedicated zip interface is all that’s needed to “bundle” things, in that case, enabling a consistent base look-and-feel for particular rules sets. That’s an important element in the publishing part of the process that I’ve described.
 

Q: Your website keeps saying things like “nothing else will let you do what RPGSmith lets you do” but I’m still not entirely clear on what the differences are. Lots of hype, not many specifics. Can you provide a couple of examples of unique functionality? What are the features that set RPGSmith apart?

A: “Prior to the launch of the Kickstarter, I would direct you to the features page on our website, the ‘Coming Soon’ section would serve as the current best source of things to come from the Kickstarter and the planned stretch goals. This section on the site isn’t heavy in the details by design.

“For better or worse we’re trying preserve the newness and excitement for a lot of these boons when we launch the Kickstarter. As we just launched the player version this month, we thought it would be better not to showcase the future features we have in store as most people are just discovering the current feature set. We didn’t want someone to feel misinformed if they go into the existing player version and not find what they thought was already included.

“With the significant amount of features in the current released version, we’re challenged enough conveying all of what the app does in a succinct and digestible size. Adding adding a bunch of other features not yet in place we fear would cause confusion.

“To answer your question as to specific examples of the unique features coming:

In-Game Random Shop Creation: “RPGSmith will have what we refer to as the ‘randomization engine’ that will be applied to a number of different features. The ‘RE’ allows a GM to pre-configure a range of criteria into a template that can deployed later with random results in the specified range. Using in-game shops as an example, a GM could create a shop template named ‘Small Apothecary’, in this template he can specify the shop will have:

– 10-20 Items tagged with the word ‘potion’ and the rarity set to ‘common’;
– 5-10 items with the tag of ‘potion’ and the rarity set to ‘uncommon’;
– 1 item tagged with a ‘potion’ tag and the rarity set to ‘rare’.

“Then when the GM is ready to deploy a ‘Small Apothecary’ they click a button, provide a name for this specific shop, and the randomization engine pulls matching criteria from the Rule Set items list generating the inventory for that shop. The GM can also configure a markup/markdown value which modifies the cost of all items in the shop, or this can be randomized as well. The GM can at any time overwrite any of the random elements if they choose, from the markup value to the inventory itself, both at a shop wide or individual item level.

“Once the GM marks this shop as ‘open’ to the Players they can then interact with shops without the GMs further direct involvement. The GM makes the shop available to the players and they can go and purchase, or even sell items (if the item is something the shop would purchase, also GM configured) to the shop and have the currency exchange, inventory updates all seamlessly handled by RPGSmith. The GM can still Role Play the shop owner, and raise or lower costs accordingly if the group ticks the owner off for example. This would streamline a lot bookkeeping, and consequently allow the group to get through more content, and improve the immersion. If this is been done elsewhere, I’ve never heard of it.”

And buying items automatically adds them to your inventory, updating encumbrance, etc.

Monsters: “Also using the randomization engine, the GM can configure a monster template and provide some similar logic. A ‘goblin’ template can be created to deploy a Goblin with:
– 2d4+2 Hit Points,
– AND have a 30% chance of carrying a short-bow;
– OR 25% chance of carrying a short-sword;
– OR 45% change of a dagger;
– AND carry between 1 cp and 2GP.

“Then the GM can deploy 15 goblins and get a unique result for each one. This has been kind of done somewhat with other apps but not to the extent of what we’re planning.”



All images provided by RPGSmith.

Combat Tracking: “The combat tracker is another one that perhaps no individual feature is unique, but I have never seen the total incorporation of all the features pulled off to the extent we have designed. [It has] features like:
– Monster insertion from templates, again utilizing the ‘randomization engine’;
– Assigning color coded teams to easily track sides;
– GM controlled visibility of combatants allows the GM to show or hide turn order of other combatants to the players;
– The execution of monster attacks, spells, all linked directly to the dice rolls or to more details;
– Configuring general initiative settings such as Shadowrun style, re-roll init each round, or group initiative;
– The tracking of round metrics such as in-game time (configurable), real time, round counters, etc;
– Placing traps, effects, or buffs on a round or game time counter that can auto expire or auto activate, or both.

“All of this can be pre-configured and saved as a template to allow the GM to prep in advance.

Encumbrance: “The current player version has what I believe to be a unique feature with regards to container weight reduction and how that effects your inventory weight.”

In other words, if you can fit something into a portable hole or whatever and you designate that as where it is being kept (as a player or GM), it automatically adjusts the encumbrance of the character accordingly.

“Combine that with a ‘condition’ character stat to track encumbrance and you’ve got a pretty nice way to automatically see if you’re carrying too much, based upon a variable derived from a character stat, typically ‘Strength’. All of this is can be created by the user through the interface. This isn’t something we’ve coded behind the scenes, we’ve instead built it through the interface to ensure any user can do the same and tweak the formula.”

You can definitely see the beginnings of what I’ve described. But what about what David foresees?

Q: Your email talks about large-scale impacts on RPGs without suggesting what the impacts that you foresee actually are. What’s your vision of the RPG future?

A: “I envision more automation, more features, and better interfaces to facilitate those. When I GM I strive to achieve as much immersion as I can for the players. Having to pause to look up stats or flip through a book/website to find the details of a spell has been a source of frustration in the past. We’ve built RPGSmith to allow the user to store and retrieve the information they need quickly.

“This is evidenced by the dashboard interface and allowing a user to create tiles linked directly to dice rolls, or spell details, or counters to track numeric values, or simple and rich text, all of which are stored, color coded, shaped, and sized in a method that makes perfect since to the end user, because that’s how they set it up.

“I touch on this in the intro video somewhat; many of the tools in the market place are nice, but single purposed. Or they’re are robust, but the interface is too complex. The good and bad thing about RPGSmith is that it looks simple. That’s bad in that at a glance people may not feel it’s feature rich, but if they take the time to peel the onion a bit, they would see it’s well structured to suit both games like Fate with not many built in stats or records, to Pathfinder which has over 2500 spells alone.

“Perhaps I’m delusional, or overly biased because I’ve poured so much into this project, but I truly believe – given the proper exposure and support – this could really simplify and speed up the non-fun aspects of gaming for people by expanding the tool belt both the players and the GM have at their disposal.”

And perhaps our respective visions aren’t that far apart, at that.

Speaking of ‘more automation’, there’s another feature that I’d like to put on David’s radar: auto-compilation of narrative session summaries.

Let’s say that the GM’s adventure notes contain the following:

“One goblin on guard, smoking a saram – a type of curving tobacco pipe that goblins use.

Actually, this ‘guard’ is an illusion. At the start of each shift, the goblin Sargent casts Invisibility on a pair of guards who position themselves 15 feet to either side of the pre-programmed illusion.”

When the players reach the appropriate point, the GM selects the “One Goblin on guard” line to copy it into his chat session with the players, annotating it as necessary. He ticks a box beside the resulting paragraph in his chat feed to indicate that it is to be made part of the synopsis.

Each of the players then describes what they are doing about the guard. The GM takes these actions on board and describes what happens – ticking first a player response and then his own comments, so that they will appear in the synopsis in that order.

This feature, in other words, lets you select part or all of a line of text in the chat feed and incorporate it into a synopsis of the day’s play, which you can then download and further edit in a word processor if you want. It skips over the irrelevant details and focuses only on the parts of play that will be relevant next week, next month, or next year.

The Inevitable Coming Of Rivals

If you build a better mousetrap, someone will copy it, change a small feature, and start selling it. Or make it out of something cheaper and start selling it for less than yours cost.

If RPGSmith is successful to anything like the extent that it could be, it will indeed be a game-changer, and the various purveyors of VTT services will undoubtedly try to imitate it.

If that happens, I don’t think they will find it all that easy to catch up. RPGSmith would have two huge advantages over any rivals: First, the amount of development that’s already gone in will put them years ahead of the development curve; and second, the ease of customizability is not something that can be superficially slapped on top of an existing interface, it has to be baked deeply into the operational code, or it will be prone to breaking down.

I’m sure that they’ll try, though.

That brings me to the last two questions I posed to David:

Q: There are already a number of online RPG mechanisms out there, like Roll20. Your character sheet seems more graphic than my perception of theirs, and the customization of rules and characters is a definite plus that I’m not sure they offer. Do you hope to lure campaigns over from those platforms, and if so, what is the bait you intend to use? If not, can you foresee some mechanism of integrating the two technologies?

A: “There are a couple of different factors that come into play with this question.

“The gaming style of the group will play a significant factor I think. If you have a more ‘theater of the mind’ game where the GM trusts the player with their roles and upkeep of their stats, RPGSmith is already a great solution even without the GM tools. The style of game that Chris Perkins runs with the Waffle crew come to mind as one that would be well suited.

“Other groups are very tactical in their game and rely heavily on a Virtual Table Top. We do have aspirations to build a VTT, that will be one of our higher stretch goals but honestly we don’t anticipate being able to unlock it with this particular Kickstarter. We do see groups using RPGSmith in conjunction with other VTT solutions which works well due to the fact that RPGSmith is built responsively, meaning it will function with any screen size and orientation. Since you also have the ability to build your dashboard and position tiles where you like, it can fit whatever screen real estate you provide.

“Another attractive quality that I feel has been overlooked by other solutions is the inclusion of independent game designers. There are a ton of game designers out there that put out high quality products, but maybe too small to have a ready integration into these other applications. We’ve already reached out to and are working with a number of these to create Core Rule Sets (pre-configured games) which their customers can add to their RPGSmith account and gain instant access to game content. It’s a great boon to not only be able to provide your customers with a PDF or physical book of their creation, but now they can provide a no-cost method to get their content to the consumer through a gaming application.”

Given the confidence that I have that RPGSmith will continue along this path even if the Kickstarter fails, this answer gives a lot of confidence in that vision of the future…

Q: I can foresee some major impacts on RPGs – liberation from the limitations of geography being one. A campaign could be truly global with players from all over the world. The biggest hurdle to these impacts – and the reason none of the existing platforms have managed to have this level of impact – is the difficulty of finding and recruiting interested players. Do you have any plans for addressing this situation with RPGSmith, or are GMs still required to do the heavy lifting of finding and attracting players? Will there be a campaign marketplace of some kind, in other words?

A: “To me the very core of this industry is connecting people of similar interest to have fun in a collaborative shared experience. We’re all about facilitating this.

“Yes, we will have a marketplace, not only to provide a method for people to share their content (Dashboard creations, Art, Rule Sets, Item/Spell packs, etc.) so that others can enhance their gaming experience, but also to facilitate players and GMs looking to join a group that fits their schedule and interest.

“Speaking personally, this is my hobby, of which I’m passionate. For me the most rewarding thing I could get out of this is providing a set of tools that would make running a game easier and less stressful on the GM, allow players to quickly understand their character in a method that makes sense to them, and ultimately improve upon the immersion, realism, and fun for all playing.”

The gap from now to tomorrow

The first hurdle is the immediate one – the success or failure of the funding campaign. To date, the campaign has raised a little over 6.8% of their target. And most of the backer tiers are relatively low cost, meaning that they will need to sell a lot of them (or have a lot of add-ons from different backers) to reach their target. With 20 days to go as I write, that’s a tall order – but entirely doable if people find out about the project and see its potential.

Most of what I’ve forecast seems inevitable to me, under the circumstances. Even the failure of this particular fundraising campaign, should it occur, will probably not be fatal to RPGSmith. But it would be a delay, and could well force further compromises with reality into existence.

If you want the best possible future for RPGs, you have to at least think about .

This started off as a simple idea for a quick little article. It grew…..

How rulers gain their offices should be reflected in the society around them.

Think about that for a moment.

How rulers gain their offices should also be reflected in the personality and capabilities of the ruler, either at the time of selection, or at some subsequent point in time.

Spend a moment reflecting on that, too.

The gulf between the theory and the practical reality can be huge, and that complicates utilizing those two basic principles in an RPG. Those three thoughts are the subjects of this series of articles (which started out as just one short article). But first, a little context… (You can skip everything that’s indented if you aren’t into politics – though I recommend that you read it).

Appointments with the voting booth

2019 is the year that decides the shape of 2020, far more-so than usual. In less than 100 days, if the announced schedule is maintained, we will have a Federal Election here in Australia, and the deeply unpopular Coalition government will almost certainly be consigned to the history books.

Before that happens, there’s a State Election, which has just taken place. The opinion polls were forecasting a much closer contest for this one, but all the by-elections in recent times had seen unprecedented swings against the Coalition State government, which has been enveloped in scandals and controversy, has a record of poor decision-making and worse explanation of those decisions, and has also been beset by inconstancy of leadership over the last few years.

On the other hand, the current opposition leader is relatively new, has just been the target of some vicious mudslinging, and is what feels like the tenth such leader in five years (though I know, intellectually, that this is a vast exaggeration). Furthermore, the Australian electorate has shown a definite predilection for voting the opposite way in State elections than their intent in Federal ones. So it was considered possible that it could be quite tight, or quite surprising.

Well, the returns are in and the State government – which has shown no competence at leadership – has nevertheless been returned to office for another four years. In the last week, the opposition shot themselves in the foot quite badly, and in a contest this close, that was enough. What’s more, one of the most obnoxiously right-wing politicians in Australian History has been elected to the upper house where his divisive rancor will once again contaminate good order and the process of governing.

A Confusion Of Brexits

Over in the mother country, it’s now 17 days until a hard Brexit that many don’t want. Or maybe it’s 3, or maybe 58 – that confusion is emblematic of the entire Brexit mess. The whole Brexit story is one of self-delusion and wishful thinking – the promise of Brexit was ‘if we quit the European Union, we can transform the country into the land of milk and honey’, but it should have been, ‘If we quit, and have everything go our way in the divorce, we may be able to transform the country into the land of milk and honey’.

And this seductively over-optimistic view was enough to sway just enough people into voting ‘yes’. Unsurprisingly, the EU negotiators were unwilling to cater to British fantasies, and the deal that was eventually struck favored the economically dominant partnership, in particular in relation to Ireland, which actually voted to leave Great Britain in preference to leaving the E.U.

And, because it was not the promised yellow brick road to the land of milk and honey, the deal was rejected, even though it was probably the best deal that was ever going to be struck. Equally unsurprisingly, the EU negotiators were no more willing to indulge the British the second time around. A deal agreement had, after all, been reached in good faith, only for the Brits to throw it back in the E.U.’s face. And then it was rejected again. And a slightly-modified version was then rejected a third time.

Much of this angst is because rejecting the deal suited the petty domestic political aspirations of factions within the British Parliament. But not all of it.

Political Junkies Rejoice

That will be coming to a head at around the same time as those two elections. And by the time they are done, we will be mid-year, and the primaries for the US nominations will be getting seriously underway, the Mueller investigation has just submitted its report but we have yet to see the fallout embodied in the 20-odd sealed indictments still lurking in the shadows, not to mention the many congressional investigations launched by the House Democrats. On top of that, we only have BarrÆs summary by which to judge the findings of the Mueller Inquiry. If that summation is accurate, why wonÆt he release the full report? By not doing so, he only fuels speculation that his summary is more spin than a top.

By the middle of the year, opinion polls will be everywhere and The Siege of Trump will have begun, one way or another û he is too divisive a figure for that not to happen, he is almost certain to face a looming primary challenge from within his own party in the course of the year. I expect him to win that challenge – but potentially at the expense of a further slippage of his approval rating, potentially a fatal one in 2020 given how slim his margins were in 2016.

For anyone with any interest in politics whatsoever, 2019 will be a year to watch, and speculate. Never will there have been so much hot air by so many pundits of so little actual meaning. But a few things will have been decided in the course of the year – so much of that hot air will be about what the results actually mean for the future.

Economic Downturn Ahead

All the major economic indicators bar one or two are pointing toward a global slowdown at the moment. It’s into that context that political events have to be analyzed.

Trump’s Tariff War is having a stultifying effect on the US economy at exactly the same time as middle-income householders are filing their tax returns and the true cost of the Republican Tax Costs are biting. On top of that, there are potential market jitters about the election, and the longer-term effects of the government shutdown earlier this year – which is estimated to have cost the US Economy about 14% of it’s growth, though a little more than 2/3 of that will eventually be recovered, provided that there isn’t another one in the near future. So the US market is already prone for a Recession, and would normally be looking to Europe for some “Stability”.

If they do, they won’t like what they find. Whatever the Brexit outcome, it is sure to be a shock to the global financial markets. That in itself might be enough to trigger a short period of global recession, never mind with all the US economic factors piled on.

That leaves only the Asia-Pacific markets, which are dominated by China, who have already signaled an intentional slowing of their economy. You see, China don’t want to displace the US as the dominant world currency; it brings with it too many pressures and influences from outside their borders, and they prefer to keep strict control over their internal economy.

Wherever people look, then, they will find stories of economic doom and gloom. That will spell opportunities for those whose economies are still strong. During the GFC, Australia’s current opposition party (then government) ensured that the country came through it without even a period of recession – though growth did slow. Admittedly, we had a mining boom under way at the time, and that has since come to an end. But that could well factor into what is already shaping to be a landslide in the Federal Election here – just to bring the whole discussion full-circle.

The Social Impact Of Bad Times

Two opposing themes always manifest in times of economic strife. No, three.

The first is an upswing in lightweight, overtly optimistic, music and entertainment; people like to escape their problems and look ahead to better times. This often means good times for comedies and sci-fi and RPGs.

The second is an upswing in angry, rebellious music and entertainments. Heavy Metal, Punk, Grunge, these genres all have their roots in times of economic distress. Darker tones in movies also do well in such times, because there’s something viscerally satisfying about shouting and rebelling against a society that has seemingly failed people. This can also be a time when RPGs do well, though they often grow grimmer and more violent in tone.

And the third is that those sentiments often express themselves in changes of government, should the opportunity permit. The next general elections aren’t due in England until 2022, and Australia will have just had its election. That leaves Japan, Canada, and a number of European elections in later 2019, and the US Primaries, New Zealand, South Korea, and a great many Eastern European and African elections in 2020.

Depending on how deeply any downturn is felt, and in particular how the US copes under Trump, it might be all over by the date of the US Federal Elections in late 2020 (in which case Trump could well walk it in on his newly-minted economic credentials, and perhaps deservedly so) or they might be the first Depression elections since 1932 which gave America FDR and The New Deal.

The times in which you live always impact your personal life. Always. And any impacts on your personal life tend to find some form of political expression. And that brings me back to the theme of this series.

Past Art

This is hardly the first article on the selection of leaders here at Campaign Mastery.

• Pulling That Lever: The Selection Of Leaders In RPG Societies

was directly about the subject.

• City Government Power Bases was a series by Johnn, each part of which dealt with a different basis of power for a particular government. One of these days, I intend to enlarge that series – I have a list of twelve more to add to the eight that Johnn wrote about, and a 22nd part to tie the whole series back together – and maybe a 23rd on how to use it.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series covers Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, and Races, amongst other topics.

That’s good, because I don’t want this article to be about the selection of leaders or even government types. Instead, I want to focus on the consequences as they should manifest in the lives of ordinary people – which usually includes the PCs, and certainly includes the majority of the NPCs with whom they will interact. And that gives you some sense of how important this is, and why this article – which I started drafting more than a year ago – is probably long-overdue!

Five Accession Methods

To start with, I’ve boiled all the detail that I don’t really want to talk about in this article down into five very broad categories, which form the title of the series: Appointment, Inheritance, Victory, Desperation, and Need.

Every government achieves it’s position of authority through one of these five methods, perhaps two.

Nor do I want to get bogged down (this time) in societal structures (as happened the last time I attempted to write an article on this subject). That also means a great deal of generality in the treatment of effects on citizens.

Each of the five accession methods will be given its own article. After a brief examination of the significance of the accession method, the Impacts on citizenry of a government which achieved its position will be examined under 14 sub-headings.

Because of the generalization involved, these examinations are also fairly brief; there will be room within each subtopic for a GM to customize the analysis to fit his own world and the societies within it. These are just starting points.

So, let’s get started with the first of the five: Appointment.

Appointment

Someone – who, rightly or wrongly, believes they have the authority to do so – has appointed someone to be the head of a government. They have chosen those rulers from the pool of available candidates for a reason – one that may now be out-of-date, or might be still current, or might even be potentially imminent. That reason may or may not be known to the public, who might or might not agree with it if they knew the specifics. The public also might or might not know who the people making the choice are.

Social Impact

All of those potential unknowns need to be answered by the GM, and they have a cumulatively profound effect on the psychology of the common people within the society. This is a society which is profoundly aspirational – either a commoner can aspire to qualify for the pool of candidates, the next time an appointment needs to be made, or can aspire to qualify to the ranks of those who choose.

This provides a stabilizing outlet that can quell anger and discontent – for a while – if there is cause for these emotions. However, they tend to build up over time until they discharge explosively unless relief is given of some sort.

Ironically, the social mobility implied often makes the societies that appoint such governance more aware of class distinctions and less tolerant of them.

Social Expectation

Aspirational societies tend, broadly, to be optimistic, glass-half-full. There is an expectation that the rulers will have the best interests of the society as a whole at heart, and provided that the public feel that expectation is being met, they will be largely content.

Who Chooses?

There are two possible models – appointment by popular acclaim / election, and appointment by some elite or representative group, who may or may not themselves be elected.

The first is what Americans have – a system of electing a head of state and two houses of government. Their choices are made from a pool of potential candidates that are winnowed out through primaries in some cases and open to anyone put up by the party leadership as a potential representative in others. What’s more, while no other options can be seriously contemplated from outside the pool of two (plus running mates) for the Presidency, others can and sometimes do throw their hats into the ring without major party support in the lesser contests.

The second is what we have in Australia. The citizens elect a party, whose leader as chosen by the party in advance is then appointed to the position of Prime Minister. There are two specific situations that need to be understood: Majority and Minority government. Majority means that the party chosen has enough members elected from the different voting regions that they can rule outright in the lower house, where the laws are written. Minority means that they don’t, but have been able to reach an agreement with the “cross-bench” – independents and representatives of minor parties – that results in them having an effective majority. This can mean that the major party with the lower total number of elected representatives gets to form government if they are more capable of reaching such an agreement.

British governments – and those of most of Western Europe for that matter – are almost always of the “Minority government” variety.

It’s also possible that no-one knows who chooses the leader, that we’re talking about some secret council or something. If that’s the case, there will usually be some overt display of some other mode of appointment or even a different mode of accession.

In more ancient times, it was not uncommon for some sort of Council to rule on the eligibility of heirs and claimants to the throne.

Who Chooses Who Chooses?

In most major modern governments, that means that it’s the power-brokers who put potential leaders into positions to be elected that really make the selections. At best, some of the voters get to select from a short list, a process often named “pre-selection”.

These are the people who get to select what “menu items” the people who choose the leaders get to pick from. That’s considerable authority, as was shown in a Yes Prime Minister episode in which he has to appoint a new Archbishop from amongst the candidates selected by the Anglican Church. One of the candidates is extremely mainstream and would perpetuate the system that put him in place; the other is a clearly unsuitable maverick. When magicians do this sort of thing, it’s called a “Magician’s Force”: “Pick a Card,” they say, offering a selection of two. If the mark picks the one the Magician doesn’t want, he tells them that this is the card that has been “spared” by their choice, sets it aside, and performs his trick with the card that he wanted all along.

Quite often, the people who are selected to choose who chooses are selected to perpetuate established forms and norms, continue established and accepted policies and political ideologies. Where those traditions are under challenge, this can maintain the status quo, but if they are not, selecting an ‘enthusiastic believer’ can result in policies being pushed farther than is reasonable, inciting a corrective backlash.

There are two types of politicians who lack the patience to play the long game: the very young and the very old. The Young want to fix everything that’s “wrong” right now and worry about unintended consequences later, while the Old keenly feel the shadow of death at their shoulder and want to complete the task they have set themselves to burn their names indelibly into history; they are worried about their “legacies” and how they will be remembered.

Knowing who was choosing when the last set of choices were up for consideration is often the key to understanding the real forces and trends of history.

For example, if you read the comments above and in the next section regarding leadership and elections, you might get the impression that our system in Australia is quite stable. A glance at our recent political history will swiftly erase that impression.

In 2007, Kevin Rudd was elected for the Labor Party. In 2010, the Labor Party dumped him as leader and his former Deputy, Julia Gillard, became our first Female Prime Minister in what was widely viewed as a coup; surprisingly, he did not resign his position as the elected Member for Griffith, as was traditional. Two and a half months later, their party was successful in winning a second term at the Federal Elections despite popular anger over this change of leadership, much it deriving from surprise and an inability to explain to the public why it had taken place. Three years later, the party were facing defeat at the 2013 elections according to popularity polling; they chose to dump Gillard as leader, who promptly resigned (upholding the tradition), and reinstate Rudd. Less than three months after that, the Party were defeated at the Federal Election and this time, Rudd resigned. It was suspected that throughout his time out of the leadership, he had been destabilizing the government that he had once led.

In his place was elected Tony Abbott of the Liberal-National Party coalition. Abbott quickly made a huge number of extremely unpopular decisions that led to his government losing 30 popularity polls in a row, something that was unprecedented in Australian politics. Three days short of his second anniversary as Prime Minister, he was dumped as leader by the Liberal Party, and replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, who Abbott himself had rolled for leadership of the party while they were in opposition. Like Rudd, Abbott did not resign and was very obvious in his attempts to destabilize the Turnbull government, both directly and indirectly. Nine months later, Turnbull won a narrow electoral victory despite his government not being much more popular than Abbott’s had been. Turnbull’s first elected term was beset by leadership speculation as the government lost opinion poll after opinion poll and endured scandal after scandal, and almost three years later, he faced a new leadership challenge. Although he won that challenge, it was by such a small margin that it was clear to most observers that his government was living on borrowed time.

A week later, the inevitable took place, but Turnbull had spent the intervening time ensuring that those who wielded the knives would not succeed him, instead bringing his Treasurer, Scott Morrison, to the preeminent role. Morrison barely registered an uptick in the popularity polls, and the coalition has continued to lurch from unpopularity to unpopularity, losing by-elections by record margins that astonished everyone. Later this year, as I noted earlier, he will face the electorate’s judgment, and it is widely expected that his party will experience a crushing defeat, bringing a new Prime Minister to power.

But even if that doesn’t happen, count them up: Rudd x2, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison – six Prime Ministers in 12 years, when they are supposed to be good for 6 (or more!) years apiece, based on prior electoral patterns. None of them have managed to go a full electoral term from election to election in that period of time. If I look six Prime Ministers further back, I find myself looking at the elections of December 1971, a full 36 years prior – and the last time Australia saw such a period of political instability.

So here’s the key point: in only one of the cases listed did the former Prime Minister resign after losing an election, the tradition in Australia. That’s one in six. All the rest were appointed by the elected members of their respective parties. Two of the six did go on to win elections, but were then ousted before their elected terms were complete.

To many Australians, it feels like our right to choose our leadership has been usurped by politicians making back-room deals and more than a few have “had a gut-full” of it. Hence the record run of unpopularity numbers I mentioned several times in this sidebar. If you want to understand Australian Politics over the last 12 years, it’s not enough to look at who the leader is – you have to look at who chose the choices.

Duration Of Appointment

How long will the selectee hold the position to which he has been elevated? The usual answers are a span of years (with or without some flexibility), or for life.

Those appointed in Olden Times were more frequently appointed for life – though the appointment itself could profoundly alter the span of that life, both through overwork and hostile measures by enemies of the individual or of the state. When someone’s death is the only way out of what is seen as an intolerable situation, someone’s going to try and kill someone else.

Having a regular turnover of leaders – or just a reaffirmation of popularity – can avoid the need for assassinations. It won’t stop them, but it will reduce the number of attempts – unless the process has been thoroughly corrupted, which is what happens in dictatorships and banana republics.

That’s why the US has Midterms for part of Congress while another part of Congress shares the electoral “bill” with a Presidential Election.

In Australia, things are a little more flexible and complicated. There is a fixed limit to the term of a government – so long and no more – and, it is normally held, a fixed minimum before you will inflame the public with an unnecessary election. As a rough rule of thumb, these are four and three years, respectively. Within that window, it’s the prerogative of the government – within certain constraints – to choose the election date that suits them. There are exceptions – if the government has the same piece of proposed legislation rejected by the Senate twice, they gain a “trigger” for a “double dissolution” – the complete dissolving of both chambers of government and fresh elections for both; and if a government ever loses a vote of no confidence or has a “supply” bill blocked in the lower house, the government is immediately dissolved and the opposition is asked if they can form a government that is actually capable of running the country. If they say ‘yes’, they are told to do it; if they say ‘no’, fresh elections are immediately called, and a caretaker government installed. Quite obviously, both these forms of failure become more likely in the event of a Minority government, so these are often considered less stable than Majority governments.

The other major difference here is that there are minimum terms for Senators. Normally, only half the Senate is up for election at any one time; double dissolusions change that, and so do the dates of the next election to be called. If it’s past a certain threshold, the Senators whose terms are running out have their replacements (if they aren’t re-elected) elected at the same time; if not, these have to be elected separately, at what is considered great inconvenience to the public..

Practical Impracticalities

There are always things that a government can’t or won’t do, for political reasons, even if they are the practical solution to the problems that face them. Politically, they are impractical to implement. At the same time, there are measures that a government will put in place for political reasons, even if they are not a practical solution to the problems that face them, or will even generate fresh problems for subsequent governments to deal with.

Both are examples of Practical Impracticalities.

With appointed leaders, its the leadership that generally gets to decide what’s practical and what isn’t. Quite often, there is a grain of truth in even the most partisan and ridiculous of these policies, but oppositions rarely acknowledge what the current government is trying to achieve with its regulations or lack thereof.

For example, take Environmental Protection policy in the US. It’s entirely possible that the Republicans are right when they claim that the levels of regulation demanded by prior administrations had built up to the point where it was impractical for business to meet their obligations under the system. So, they found a simple solution to the problem: cut out what regulations they could get away with, and cut enforcement of regulations they didn’t think the public would accept being cut. This is pruning your garden with a chainsaw. A better, but far less ideologically practical, solution would have been to simplify the regulations enormously to make them no less comprehensive but less stifling for business to achieve – “The Department of the Environment will produce a government standard hereafter referred to as the US Environmental Standard XYZ, and update it regularly as scientific discoveries warrant. Any excess of pollutants beyond the levels deemed safe in US Environmental Standard XYZ will be deemed excessive and the perpetrators of such excesses will be subject to the following measures…” This rolls a bucket list of specific regulations into one broader one. Instead of 50 or 100 places that businesses need to look to find out what their obligations are, this puts it all into one. But, while this may be a practical compromise between Environmental Protection and Business, it would not have been ideologically practical to implement. Instead, the red tape has been cut at the price of weakening protection. It will be left to some subsequent government to enact legislation that will restore a measure of protection – hopefully in a practical way so that all the gains (and there are clearly benefits to business) are not lost. But that might mean conceding that the Republicans had a point – not something that Democrats usually find politically expedient, either. Protecting the environment is a good thing, but so is cutting Red Tape. The trick is to find a way to do both at the same time.

Whenever a government is appointed, the political stance they hold in terms of what they deem practical and what they deem impractical is also, effectively, appointed. If those choosing the pool of candidates are wise, or partisan, these will be amongst the selection criteria applied – the qualities deemed desirable in a candidate – and so those who are appointed by those making the choices will, at the very least, value those qualities. Should the perception of balance be desirable, it can always be achieved by putting forward a contrasting candidate who also possesses some personal quality or flaw that will make them completely unacceptable at the final hurdle.

Vested Interests

Whenever you have the power to make appointments of substance, you will be expected to take advice on the choices. That opens the door to appointed representatives of various factions, groups, and lobbies. These are then known as Vested Interests.

In theory, you can balance the biases of one against the opposing biases of another, but in practice, one group of related interests will more greatly accord with the partisan perspectives of an individual or collection of like-minded individuals, and will receive a more cordial and fruitful reception as a result. Those with competing interests will naturally seek out those on the opposition side of the political ledger, expecting (not unreasonably) to find them more receptive to their proposals. It only takes a small point of preference or distinction, and eventually positions on every issue can be divided along partisan lines.



A year and a half ago, I pointed out in Influences, Styles, Trends, and Oscillations that any ‘push’ to one side of a balance point produces an inevitable reaction, a counter-force that first drags the pendulum back toward the balance point and then overshoots it.

But real life is more complicated than that. Trends can persist longer than expected, can be stronger than expected, can occur in fits and starts instead of smoothly, can be delayed, there can be a bias to one side or the other, or all of the above at once to varying degrees. Statistically, over time, everything except possibly a bias will even out.

Vested Interests provide a bias. They also try to amplify change when it is in the direction they favor, and minimize it when it is not. And accelerate change when they amplify it, and delay or obstruct it when they don’t.

The Role Of Wealth

Wealth buys leverage and influence. More importantly, it provides the leisure time to manipulate situations. It also provides the educational opportunities that frequently make the wealthy suitable candidates for selection.

In theory, it can be argued, this is beneficial to society as a whole; the wealthy are more resistant to vested interests because their needs are already met. In practice, the wealthy will always favor policies that first, protect their wealth, and second, grow their wealth. That’s because wealth is a form of power, and if someone else has more, that someone can strip you of your own wealth – it might come at great cost, but it can always be done. Jealousies and Rivalries abound in such worlds, and greed beyond reasonable needs is the norm.

Wealth, and altruistic influences, have very little relationship to each other.

Wealth is, in fact, inherently conservative, and thus wealth acts as a bias within the system towards conservatism. The great fear amongst the wealthy of the neuvoux rich is that the latter may have opinions rooted in their more commonplace origins that run counter to the vested interests of the old-world wealthy. It’s a fear that has been amply justified at times. However, it’s also true that such experiences may make the wealthy even more fearful of losing their current prosperity, making them even more archly-conservative.

Selection by appointment is always a complex of competing interests, and the wealthy are the focal points of those interests, at times pulling society in one direction, and at times pushing it in another.

Special Interests

There always needs to be a careful distinction made between vested interests and special interests. The latter are felt but not shared by those with power and authority, while the former have a direct impact on them. Quite often, the two are in conflict, but special interests are treated as a necessary exception to the general rule. For example, the wealthy and conservative nevertheless are frequent donors to charity.

It doesn’t matter whether or not they receive some benefit from doing so. It is nevertheless acting contrary to their general philosophy.

Any special interest can be viewed as being accorded a disproportionate influence in the minds of the individual, and those factors will also find expression in those they appoint in equal measure. You don’t have to have wealth to be inherently conservative in nature; you don’t have to be poor to be fundamentally progressive in attitude. The cliches may be more prevalent, and therefore represent another form of bias within the system, but they are not absolutes.

Moreover, in an appointment oriented system, failures of an appointee to protect a special interest are rarely held principally as a failure on the part of the appointee, but rather a failure on the part of those doing the appointing. “He or She is doing their best, but they should never have been put in this position in the first place” would be a common form of criticism.

Cabinets and Capabilities

The term “cabinet” is one that can mean different things in different political systems. In the broadest definition, members of a Cabinet are afforded a defined specialty and function as a focal point for the perspective of that specialty when it comes to administration and policy. This function requires no great expertise; the cabinet are nothing more than a communications channel for others.

But cabinet functions rarely stay so confined. It usually starts when an administration has a particular agenda and a plan for achieving it; the cabinet are expected to issue instructions to their areas of specialty and manage their part in the “great plan”. Once this is established, there is added value to selecting individuals of some achievement or knowledge of their portfolio.

Such individuals usually have their own opinions on how their portfolio should be managed, and expect to play a more hands-on role. They will expect to contribute to policy as it affects their portfolio. Initially, they will just advise; but before long, they will be creating and implementing policy in any area that they are not overridden. They become powers behind the throne.

When it comes to cabinets, there are always three considerations: Who’s eligible, who’s in charge of the appointments, and how much authority will be delegated to the cabinet member. These factors vary more from political system to political system than a lot of people realize.

In the US, the cabinet is appointed by the President, and can be anyone he likes. They are often treated as supplementary sources of expertise, as a result. It’s also traditional for the members of the cabinet to furnish signed and undated letters of resignation that the president can exercise at any time, and for the cabinet to resign just prior to an election so that the President is spared the ignominy of having to fire them.

In Australia and the UK, the cabinet is comprised of senior members of the governing political party. The specialty element of the appointment is separated, and performed by Ministers, who are often also members of the cabinet. The cabinet thus has less direct power, but often greater indirect power, and is more ideologically driven. In particular, the likelihood of expertise within their policy area is far smaller.

Who Gets Chosen?

All of these considerations influence the primary function of the choosers – selecting who gets chosen. Depending on the political system and the nature of the appointment, the choice may have immediate effect, or might be the subject of some other mechanism such as ratification, election, or voting, either by the general public, by the political party/faction, by a select group within the political party/faction, or by a specific individual. There may or may not be an expectation that the appointment will be accepted, regardless of the individual’s desire to serve. The appointment may or may not be seen as doing someone a favor, incurring an obligation of gratitude.

There is often a compromise between the people those doing the choosing would like to choose and those who can be successful at getting through these processes. Those with a longer view often seek to manipulate the process towards candidates of the general type of which they would approve rather than direct intercession in any specific case. As a general rule, the more direct the appointment, the less the need to compromise.

There are those who would argue that the need to compromise is an asset to the system, ensuring that broad general acceptability is served; there are those who would argue with equal vehemence that the compromise ensures that mediocrity becomes a key selection criterion, to the detriment of the system as a whole.

The View From The Street

Quite often, the ordinary person has no idea of the merits of an individual or the criterion by which they were chosen. Many will be ignorant of who is doing the appointing, and hence where the ultimate authority lies within their system of government. Only when divisive or controversial appointments are considered do they become aware of the process, if at all.

This can have a huge impact on identity politics. It is common in Australia for advertising to expressly target votes for or against an individual leader as though they were the sum total of their political party. In reality, most of the public has absolutely no say on who these leaders are; they are presented as fait accompli to the electorate, who have little or no idea how they got to that position.

At best, the voters in the electorate of the nominal party leader may veto the choice by rejecting him as a candidate, even should his party win government. Beyond that, the voters select a short list from amongst those nominated for consideration by the parties, and that short list then chooses the party leader.

There are three separate considerations at play: perceptions of competence, perceptions of character, and perceptions of affiliation, which carry with it perceptions of policy. In general, only perceptions of character are usually fatal to one’s electoral chances, though occasionally someone will be denied for reasons of abject incompetence even thought they are considered ‘a good bloke’. More often than not, a failure of competence is perceived as a failure of character, i.e. a failure to seek out and implement good advice.

Unpopular Decisions

From time to time, unpopular choices will make their way through the system, and this is more likely to happen with direct appointments. These sometimes happen because competence is valued more highly than popularity, or because of ideology, or as a quid-pro-quo, or even to make someone ineligible for a more sensitive position. Unless the people doing the choosing are well known to the public, and the criteria that they have applied are clearly explained, the popular perception will almost always be one of ideological bias as the basis of appointment, rightly or wrongly, and even when those conditions are met, some will blame ideology anyway.

There is almost always a backlash of some kind to an unpopular appointment. With persistence and competence, sometimes an initially unpopular appointment can acquire public respect and even approval; but one misstep and opposition will once again rise.

You Say You Want A Revolution

if an appointment is sufficiently unpopular, you may get a revolution, or demands for one. Because the appointment mechanism is generally shadowy and indirect, the target is often misplaced, confusing a symptom for the cause – or, in this case, the appointee when it’s the appointers who should be taken to task. Indeed, clever selectors can sometimes cause such occurrences with the view of dissipating built up anger before it becomes so widespread as to impact on them. Appoint an unpopular figure, wait until protests become widespread, then remove the unpopular figure from office, giving the people the illusion that they have accomplished something, when in reality, the status remains very much quo.

The Game Practicalities

Whenever you have a system of government by appointees, it becomes essential for consistency and imparting of the right social ‘bias’ on the game world that you understand the characters of those who do the choosing. That then shapes the choices that they make, which are ultimately what the players, their characters, and the majority of the public see and judge.

The influence of who gets to choose will permeate the game. That can be a good thing for the GM, if controlled and chosen carefully, or it can be a confused mishmash – or, worse still, a train-wreck.

Decide who will get to choose. Decide on the criteria they will employ. Decide on what negotiations and compromises have to be made. Use all of that to create the people appointed. Then feed in the public’s expectations and reactions.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that Appointment is a dynamic process, responsive not only to the perceived needs of the moment, but the anticipated needs of the future – both of which are often swamped in consideration by the needs of the recent past, even if they no longer apply.

And that’s the essential road-map to governance by appointment.

In part two, governance by those who inherit the position. The dynamics are completely different…

Last week, in Into Each Plot, A Little Chaos Must Fall, I discussed the inevitability of chaos in adventures, the cumulative effect of three compounding sources of randomness: Player Decisions (unscripted player-plot interactions), Die Rolls (unscripted character-plot interactions), and GM Thought Bubbles (unscripted GM-plot interactions). In essence, if the last quarter or so of what happens when you actually play an adventure with your group is predictable, you’re doing something wrong!

Along the way, I discussed a couple of important concepts. The classification of adventure elements into eight orderly layers – three from campaign planning, one representing the accumulated experience of the players of events from the campaign-planning layers in previous adventures, two from adventure planning, and two that break down all of the above into individual scenes.

This is on my mind a lot at the moment, because the current adventure in my Zenith-3 campaign is about to come to an end. Act I connected this adventure with previous ones, dealt with a lot of consequences from those past adventures, and with developments in the personal lives of the PCs. It also introduced a number of new developments and problems, some arising out of those consequences. Act II was about the PCs beginning to wrestle these new problems to the ground and reacting to the events of Act I, and deliberately set the stage for Act III, which was the story of the “Pagani Perps”, and how they connected to an ongoing plotline, the “Figure In Black”, which is the focus of Act IV, which is what has to be completed for play this Saturday.

I also wrote about the adventure’s content and how I constructed it, with a multitude of excerpts from the adventure itself, in In The Beginning… Not! – drafting plots from the middle, which is more concerned with the writing process than the playing process, and which employed a three-act structure to describe it.

And that, right there, is illustrative of the chaos effect on plotlines: what was planned as a three-act adventure became a four-act adventure, one game session per act! Certainly, any adventure design beyond any broad outlines for Act IV that I had undertaken at the start of the adventure would have been completely out of date and would need to be 90% rewritten from scratch before it could be played.

But the subject of today’s article are the three sources of randomness and how I handle them, in campaign design, adventure creation, and at the game table. This can be as much as half the job of actually GMing, of telling – no, discovering – an interesting and engaging collaborative story with your players. So it’s a subject of no small importance.

Come with me, as I show you how to add a little order to the Chaos – just enough to put it to work on behalf of the campaign.

Implementing Player Decisions

Player Decisions, which almost always seem like a good idea at the time, are simultaneously some of the greatest sources of predictable chaos and the second-greatest single source of spontaneous anarchy that can befall any plotline.

The ‘predictable chaos’ part of that equation can be managed by anticipating, even deliberately incorporating, decisions by one or more players, and including parts of the adventure that can only be accessed in that particular form and at that particular time as a consequence of one or more player decisions – adventure branch points.

In the article linked to in the caption, I made passing mention of “unplanned plot outcomes”. But these are inevitably going to occur from time to time; whenever a decision is required, no matter how many of the possible choices you think you have anticipated, there’s a chance of an unexpected response. The anticipation is an attempt to manage the risk of this occurring.

But players can interrupt at any moment with a decision, whether you’ve anticipated one or not. That’s the ‘spontaneous anarchy’ part of the story.

How you react to player decisions is the heart and soul of your GMing style. As such, it can be a very slippery subject to discuss, full of exceptions and general statements; many GMs don’t even think about it consciously, let alone analyze the question.

Obviously, if you’ve anticipated a player decision and planned how you will respond to the most likely choices, which is what I try to do in my adventure design, the problem is pre-solved. Players rarely see the angst and difficulty involved, the bullets you’ve sweated in wresting a coherent and satisfying plot out of some of these turns of events, simply because they took the most obvious path; but it’s never an entirely wasted exercise to anticipate and prep for some of these less-likely choices, because it’s still good practice at devising plot threads and twists. For more on this aspect of adventure design, and this subject in general, see Ask The GMs: Giving Players The Power To Choose Their Own Adventures.

So, the focus of attention has to be on the unexpected decision, or the unexpected choice at a decision point. Johnn was the first to address this situation here at Campaign Mastery in Say Yes, but Get There Quick. My response tends to be rooted in a quick analysis of the decision that classifies the decision into one of six categories: Good choices, missed opportunities, misinterpretations, failures of memory, bad choices, and out with the pixies.

1. Good Choices

Good choices are choices that make sense in light of what the character knows. There are two sub-types: those that would still make sense if the character knew everything, and those that would not.

Good choice despite what the player doesn’t know

In the case of the first sub-type, my response is to let the character set about implementing their decision, essentially improvising the rest of the adventure based on what I had planned. The choice made might involve greater difficulties than the path I had identified, or it might avoid some of the complications that I had planned to use as setbacks along the way; so be it. Of greater concern to me at that point in time is how this impacts on the even distribution of spotlight time – some setbacks exist for no other reason than to give a player some spotlight time in overcoming the problem, so short-cutting the problem-solving process in this way creates an obvious imbalance. The other major concern is what the NPCs (especially the villains) know at each point and how their decisions (pre-baked into the adventure) would change as a result. I will frequently try to use this question to generate a solution to the spotlight time problem, if I can think of a way to do so.

The third consideration is “how much of what they don’t know do I need the players to discover en route to implementing this solution, and how do I get that information into their hands?” This is usually looking beyond the scope of this one adventure to the bigger campaign-level picture. On more than one occasion, I’ve put an adventure in place to achieve some campaign-level objective only to have the players solve the immediate problem without ever going near the campaign-level objective; when that happens, I have two choices, and usually have to make a snap judgment between them: either to insert a new adventure into the campaign plan to do what this adventure was supposed to do, or to revise the campaign plan to take into account the failure to meet that objective. Unless it’s something that is absolutely crucial to the campaign, I’ll pick the second choice.

As a general rule of thumb, success should follow a clever choice. It won’t happen very often, so let the player(s) have their moment of glory with good grace.

It should be noted that this is a very different reaction to the one I had under these circumstances when I was just starting out as a GM. Back then, as soon as a player understood the plotline well enough to short-cut the adventure, it would immediately be replaced with something that only happened to look like what had already taken place to this point in play. This had the advantage of making sure there was always plenty of play for the group, but the problem of discouraging clever choices resulting in dispirited players and half-baked plodding from start of play to finish. Why should players make an effort when they will succeed eventually anyway, no matter how faulty their planning?

Although the change in philosophy had occurred some time previously, the first time my players became aware of it was in Magneto’s Maze (described in My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton Moment) when, after a clever move by one of my players (and after a minute of jaw-dropped shock), I regathered my thoughts (pretending to still be shocked to buy thinking time) and let the player succeed even though it short-cutted the entire adventure. I noticed something very important at the time – that even though it (obviously) short-changed the other players at the table of their spotlight time, they derived almost as much satisfaction from vicarious participation in the clever players’ action. These days, I’m quite comfortable in simply telling the player “brilliant move, and not one that I expected – give me a couple of minutes to adjust”). It doesn’t happen often – maybe once in every ten or fifteen years – but I actually consider it a compliment to my ability to craft a coherent game world and rational narrative within that world – and to my players’ belief in my ability to improv, no matter what they throw at me.

Good choice unless you know everything

Things get more “interesting” when the player makes a choice that makes sense at the time, but is a mistake in light of the bigger picture because of things the character is not aware of. Obviously, the result is a plan that is doomed to eventual failure, but not for any reason that the player can currently anticipate. The player will do “A” and expect result “B” – and instead, get result “Q”. This constitutes a first hint that something else is going on that they have not taken into account.

My first mental question when this occurs is “How far can I let this progress before it becomes too late to solve the original problem?”. The second question is, “What happens to the campaign if the original problem isn’t solved?”. If the answer to this question is, “it’s catastrophic”, then it becomes clear that I can’t let the player’s choice continue beyond the point at which it becomes too late to solve the original problem; but, 95% of the time, it won’t be anywhere near that disastrous to the campaign, which gives me permission to let the players fail, if things get that far.

There is, of course, absolutely no guarantee that things will get that far. Every action that the players undertake, every result “Q” that results instead of a “B”, is a hint to them that they have made a mistake and need to rethink what they are doing. In effect, every action in pursuit of their erroneous choice creates a branch point in the resulting adventure that will bring the players back to the original adventure – possibly with more time pressure.

This is still clever play on the part of the player – the choice made was a correct one on the basis of what their character knows – and that needs to be acknowledged by the GM and rewarded. Hints as to the bigger picture that the GM didn’t intend to reveal until later in the campaign are that reward, and they can have long-term consequences for the campaign plan – and that’s something that I have to take into account, moving forward. That happened in the later stages of the previous Zenith-3 campaign, when the entropy drain into Karma’s space-time was discovered (briefly described under “Idea #18 – It’s Electrifying: Portals Are A Planar Battery” in Feel The Burn: Portals to Celestial Morphology Pt 4 of 4. This discovery took place almost a real-time year before I was ready with the plotline of “Dekhay and Ruin” – and turned the investigation of the phenomenon into an ongoing subplot before I was ready for it. The simplest solution was for the entirely-reasonable investigation to yield no positive results for ‘long enough’ (about 6 months, real-time), then to dribble out hints and clues as to what was going on over a further period of time (another 6 months, real-time). In game time, it was a three- or four- week time-span from discovery to resolution, as I remember it, but the pacing was dictated by the speed of plot. It just so happened that it took about a year for other plotlines that could not be delayed to be resolved, clearing the decks for me to have enough time to write the adventure in question.

In effect, then, the plan of action on the GM’s part when the player makes a choice that is only reasonable if you are ignorant of what the character doesn’t know, is to let them proceed while dropping hints through unexpected outcomes that there’s more to the story than the PC has taken into account, and to continue until the critical point (if there is one) is reached, or the players take the hint.

There’s more information on this subject to be found in Domino Theory: The Perils and Practicalities.

Ultimately, I view this eventuality as a failure on my part as GM – I’ve built something up to a greater immediacy of imminent threat than I should have, haven’t communicated something effectively enough, or have failed to anticipate this possibility in my planning.

2. Missed Opportunities

The proposed choice might be reasonable but miss an opportunity that I expected the players to take advantage of, often because the decision is being taken prematurely, or because the players think that the opportunity entails too much risk. Once again, the default choice is to let the players proceed, but I will be on the lookout for an opportunity to raise the possible missed opportunity with the characters through an NPC or a die roll if and when it becomes reasonable for them to recognize it. Depending on when that opportunity arises, it may or may not be too late to change course, or the player may respond that they “have thought of this option, but…” – in which case, that’s their choice and I’ll deal with any campaign repercussions after the day’s play.

3. Misinterpretations

More serious mistakes are made when the players misinterpret the situation and hence make a poor decision on the basis of this misinterpretation. The theoretically-best solution, and the one that I employed in my gaming for a very long time, is to let the players proceed with their choice and let them discover the mistake the hard way. The problem is that this opens the door to Confirmation Bias – where the players fail to recognize that they have made a mistake until the situation threatens to derail the entire campaign. I discussed this situation extensively in “I know what’s happening!” – Confirmation Bias and RPGs, in which I identified 9 possible responses to the problem and analyzed them, including the five “do nothing about it” options. These days, as a result of that analysis, my first thought is to analyze the proposal in terms of accepting or rejecting option #6, “The Players Are Right” – usually rejecting it, but not always – and my second choice is usually option #7, “Correct the error Immediately,” perhaps in combination with #8, “Die Roll Saviors”. The reason is that if you don’t take corrective action immediately, players tend to lock their misinterpretation in stone, where it will cause future decisions to be made incorrectly as well. I’ve even been accused of ‘reinventing history’ by correctly reciting campaign history without the misinterpretation!

4. Failures Of Memory

Which brings me to variant four – a decision made in a particular way because there’s something the player has clearly forgotten to take into account. When this happens, I immediately give the player a roll to “remember” the missing information – with big bonuses toward success if it’s something the character is unlikely to forget – and if they succeed, I remind the player of what they have forgotten (but that the character has not) before accepting the decision as final. It’s also necessary to give the player room to re-orient their thinking – how much depends on the player; sometimes, that’s best achieved by taking a short break from play, sometimes you can bring forward a scene involving some other player’s character, sometimes you can simply proceed with play. Learning how mentally-agile a player is (and it does vary over time and with experience) and hence how much mental space they need to make such re-orientation, is one of the most critical aspects of getting to know a player.

Special note should also be made of any differences between how flexible the player thinks they are, vs how flexible they really are. You need to accommodate the latter while appearing to accommodate the former, which can sometimes be difficult – the trick is to fill the gap with something non-distracting. Obviously meaningless in-character side-chatter between another PC and an NPC is often the best choice, or having another PC focus on some element of the environment (flavor narrative that tells the other players more about the environment) while the decision-maker is trying to grasp the revised problem and formulate an alternative course of action.

Unfortunately, with some players, by the time they have finished reorienting their understanding of the situation, mild Confirmation Bias has set in, and the only solution they can think of is the one that has just been ruled out – “I don’t know what to do” is the result.

This is a more delicate situation than it may initially appear. If you simply lead the player through the logic that leads to a correct solution, the player will – at worst – think that you are running a plot-train, and – at best – feel that you have taken control of their character out of their hands, causing frustration and dissatisfaction on the part of the player. Neither is all that desirable.

I have to admit that I’m still looking for the best solution to this problem. At the moment, I’m leaning toward a mix of die rolls and involving other PCs or NPCs – in particular someone who can say, “explain the whole problem to me again, from the top,” and who can then put their metaphoric finger on the mental block that’s impacting the player in the spotlight. Solve that, or correct the flawed assumption, and the player in question is usually capable of evolving the correct solution on their own.

It’s unfortunate but inevitable that sometimes, this takes what should have been a snap decision and draws it out to five, ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes of game time. And, meanwhile, the other players are twiddling their thumbs or getting into side conversations (or worse yet, thinking up mischief for their characters to engage in). In truth, players are usually aware that the game has ground to a halt while they try and figure a way out of their problem, and this is likely to add to their frustration.

Again, different players will react to such lulls in different ways. Learning those reactions, identifying which ones are harmful to the game, and finding ways of preventing those reactions before they occur, is another essential part of the GM learning his players’ styles and personalities. This might make the choice of which PC to invoke as a sounding board obvious to the GM – he then just has to find a way to invoke that choice at the gaming table. This is an aspect of the GMing art that I freely confess I’m still learning, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

5. Bad Choices

Some choices are just bad, or silly. For example, there was a time when Stephen Tunnicliff was feeling particularly put-upon. One of his more outrageous schemes (to monopolize the Brazilian coffee crop) had collapsed, flaws in some of his patented technology had emerged unexpectedly, another PC had just dumped on him for re-exposing the game world to a threat that the PCs had only barely survived the first time around through a series of selfish and foolish decisions (a combination of manipulation by the threat in question and an entirely reasonable desire on the PC’s part), and a third PC had just contrived to steal control of his PCs company from him. The response was Stephen at his worst – in the heat of anger he petulantly decided to accept an invitation to appear on the Johnny Carson show and reveal the other PCs secret identities.

When he calmed down, and I explained an aspect of the game rules that he had overlooked (his character had paid character points for the company – if it got taken away from him, either he got the points back or I as GM would arrange for him to either get his company or an equivalent replacement back), he realized the enormity of what he had done. Fortunately, from the moment the PC had made the first foolish decision (the one that led to re-engaging the old enemy, over a year earlier in real-time), I had been planning a solution for when it all inevitably hit the fan, and when he announced his Bad Choice, I had time to conceive of a solution. First, UNTIL had perceived that the character might do something foolish when the stock market manipulations were discovered, and had intervened to cause “technical problems” during the key moments of the broadcast, protecting the other PCs; second, I implemented the plotline that I had been preparing for this (general) eventuality: after the broadcast, thinking that he’d at least gotten some payback, the character had gotten himself drunk (not an easy thing to do with his Constitution, he needed Asgardian Mead to make it happen). In Act I of the consequent adventure, the drunken PC was attacked and killed. In Act II, the character awoke, thinking it was a year earlier, and discovered himself to be in a stasis chamber that he had designed (in game session 7, several years earlier) as a last-ditch life-preserver. He discovered that the power supply had been interrupted as collateral damage from the destruction of his factory about 2 weeks earlier, but that the team had dealt with the threat responsible, and had announced that the character had seemingly been killed. Eventually, the backup energy storage had become exhausted, and the wake-up process had been automatically implemented. He also found that he had vague memories of being struck on the back of the head with enough force to render him unconscious and no memory of being placed in the stasis chamber. Teleporting to the team headquarters, he greatly astonished them by still being alive, and was equally-greatly astonished to discover all the things that “he” had done in the last year. It was subsequently discovered that his research in developing cloned replacements for any team member killed in action – at the heart of a plotline a year earlier – had gone badly awry when his personality-duplication process created an Evil Clone…

That’s how to handle an outright bad choice – immediately begin preparing contingency plans for when the train-wreck can no longer be denied, then give the player in question enough rope. The assumption is that when the player sees how disastrously wrong his choices went, he will avoid making the same mistakes a second time.

And, to be fair to him and his memory, that’s exactly what Stephen did. In fact, he ended up having a lot of fun resolving the various situations his “clone” had gotten him into, some of which turned into pivotal building blocks later in the campaign.

Let me be clear about it – it takes a lot of confidence in the players on the GMs part, and a lot of trust in the GM on the players’ parts, to implement this technique. Early in a campaign with new players, I would be far more likely to treat this as a “Misinterpretation” situation and – if necessary – be far more heavy-handed in putting a stop to things before they went too far. The events described coincided with the campaigns’ tenth anniversary – part of the reason why I had brought so many things to a head at once for the character – so I had the experience in dealing with the players that was needed, and the result was a memorable adventure for all concerned.

6. Out With The Pixies

Some decisions go beyond bad, to the epicly stupid. An example that came up on Quora recently demonstrates what I’m talking about: the poster wanted advice on how to handle a Paladin demanding a DEX check to pluck the eye from a sleeping PC and replace it with the Eye Of Vecna without the prospective victim noticing.

I don’t know about you, but my first reaction on being confronted with such monumental idiocy is to gape and wonder “where do I start?”

To qualify for this status, the decision in question has to be catastrophic for the campaign. So I would start by explaining that this is too much for a simple DEX check – removing the eye would require an attack, and that succeed or fail, it was practically certain to wake the other PC, negating any hope of the character not noticing – in other words, taking the starting point of the proposed plan of action and demonstrating the first major flaw in the proposal as a hint to drop the idea. I would also ask him to think about how he would feel if someone else were to do this to his PC.

If the player persists, deciding to drug his victim for example, I ask where he’s getting the drug in question and pointing out that the PC being targeted has a change at spotting the unwanted seasoning. But I also note that he is the type who won’t take a hint. That’s when I start piling consequences onto the character – even planning such an action is an alignment breach, and would attract attention and penalties from greater powers, who will take an increasingly hard line in telling him “don’t do it”. And if the player, stubbornly, persists, all sorts of creatures who want the magic item in question would start turning up to try and claim it, until one succeeds. If that then means that the Paladin in question acquired a personal quest to recapture the Eye, that’s fine – the campaign is back on track, with a new ongoing plot thread for the GM to play with.

And if the Paladin managed to hold onto the eye despite all this, and persisted in going through with his plan, I would let him attack the PC, let the other PCs wake up in time to prevent the removal of the victim’s eye, and let justice take its course – then thank the Paladin’s player for participating, see you later. Because keeping him in the campaign would do more damage to the campaign than letting him go. I would, however, be quite willing and even eager to talk about what happened and why with the player.

Most players won’t let things get that far. They will take a hint, and discover why it’s a monumentally stupid thing to do, and learn from it.

It’s worth making another point: I will generally not kill a PC unless they are doing something monumentally stupid. “The bathwater’s too cold.” “I throw the toaster into the water to heat it up”. Alarm bells ring…

Random Sources Of Chaos

The second source of randomness is the outcome of die rolls. These always entail the risk of an unlikely result, even if that risk is an unlikely eventuality. If there is no risk of failure, the GM should think about why he’s requiring a die roll at all instead of simply telling the player, “you have enough skill in [whatever] that you succeed automatically”. So die rolls should always be meaningful. See The Nimble Mind: Making Skills Matter in RPGs for more on that subject.

In fact, I always bear in mind the reasons for requiring a die roll when one comes up. These might be “the risk of failure” or “the potential for an improbable success” or simply injecting chance into the adventure so that the players feel the risk of failure.

How you interpret a die roll is always a function of the motivation for requesting a die roll, shaping the course of events thereafter. But that’s only the beginning of the story. Die rolls can be classified into four situations, depending on the outcome relative to expectations.

Expected Successes

When you expect a character to succeed, success simple permits the adventure to continue along it’s expected course. Of course, there’s no need to make it sound as easy as it was; there can be a wide gulf between an objective evaluation of the chances of success and the actual chance put in place by the GMs.

The Adventurer’s Club and Zenith-3 campaigns have very different philosophies on this point, deriving from system mechanics in the ultimate analysis – which is interesting since they both derive from a common system, albeit from different generations of that system.

In the Adventurer’s Club, my co-GM and I are always careful to assess any task in terms of how likely a character of the skill level of the PC should be in attempting the task in question, then applying modifiers to the die roll accordingly. A character of skill 14/- (i.e. 14 or less on 3d6) should be able to attempt tasks that a less-skilled character wouldn’t even think of, with an expectation of success. Even if we don’t make this clear to the players (and we usually don’t), the accumulated psychological impact of successes and failures influences the thought patterns of the player when he’s “in character”, to the point that it becomes possible to reverse-engineer the modifiers and gain an insight into our thinking when the difficulty was assigned. Part of that thinking is whether or not success or failure will hinder the course of the adventure beyond any tolerable level – in other words, do we want the character to succeed for plot reasons?

In the Zenith-3 campaign, the skills are defined in terms of how difficult it is for a character of given standing to succeed, the standings being unskilled/amateur, hobbyist, employable, professional, expert, and genius. Where a character falls within this spectrum is defined by their skill level in the subject. A skill of -35% or less is unskilled/amateur, -34 to -15% is hobbyist, -14% to 15% is enough for the character to earn an average wage or better using the skill, 15% to 60% are various shades of professional, 61%-100% is an expert, and 101%-150% is a genius. Modifiers to the chance (not the die roll) range from -75% to +75% – but the typical modifier for an easy task is +25%, so the system is weighted toward positive modifiers. However, some players have had trouble wrapping their heads around skill values of less than zero being “adequate”, so a planned revision adds 25% to the scores and loses the positive bias in the modifiers. The difference is that individual skill levels don’t have to get taken into account during adventure creation; instead, I decide on the minimum level of expertise required and how difficult it would be for the base someone of that expertise.

Expected successes are easy to deal with. But you always need to be prepared for the unlikely failure.

Unexpected Failures

An unexpected failure should always have an effect on the plotline. That effect could be immediate or it could be delayed, but eventually, the failure will send the adventure down a different path. Planning for this usually amounts to two things – identifying the plot consequences of the failure and finding an alternative mechanism of achieving whatever a success would have done, i.e. recovering from the failure. The failure could be a momentary aberration or hesitation, or it could be a serious misstep with protracted effects. I always assess the consequences of a failure first in campaign terms, second in adventure terms, and finally, in immediate terms:

• • Campaign terms: will the failure lead to a catastrophic problem within the campaign? If so, at what point will it become too late to correct the problem? How can I plausibly let the PCs recover from the failure at or before this point? What is the optimum point, in campaign plausibility terms, for that recovery to take place, allowing for someone to perceive the failure, decide to take corrective action, plan that action, put that plan into motion, and have the PCs become aware of that intervention – all preferably while avoiding a dues-ex-machina?
  • Adventure terms: the list is almost identical to the campaign list, with one notable difference: if it won’t be toxic to the campaign, I’m perfectly prepared for the PCs to have a partial success or even a failure in any given adventure, if that’s warranted – and can be made sufficiently entertaining along the way. That said, such failures are often radioactive to the campaign, or unlikely to be enough fun – and that means that recovery has to take place within this adventure, or a sequel adventure at the latest. The other elements of recovery planning have already been assessed under the ‘campaign’ heading, it’s just a question of timing.
  • Immediate terms: this is hard to describe generally, because it’s so dependent on what it was that the PC was attempting. But failure generally comes in three flavors: qualified success (a GM’s cheat), failure with the potential for an (eventual) second bite at the cherry and some short-term discomfort or trauma, and abject failure with no hope for redemption without active measures.

The great thing about unexpected failures is that the other players are usually aware of the failure, and of the course events were expected to take; after a moment of enjoying the suffering of their fellow-player, they become active co-conspirators to any attempt by the GM to get things back on track. In fact, if the GM doesn’t act quickly enough to instigate a correction, they may take matters into their own hands. That’s all fine, too – the important thing is that the campaign or adventure recovers from the failure, not how it happens.

Expected Failures

Improbable chances of success are a part of life when undertaking challenging things. A lot of adventure planning lies in identifying places where the PCs are unlikely to succeed in direct action and creating a route around that expected failure. A GM has two responsibilities when it comes to expected failures: making sure that the character is not permanently impaired by the failure (or worse yet, killed) – after all, the GMs put him in this position – and making sure that the campaign and the adventure are not permanently impaired by the failure, as described above.

Beyond that, they should convey a sense of “Okay, you’ve tried the obvious and it hasn’t worked – what’s next?”

As with expected success, achieving the expected outcome isn’t a huge problem if you’ve planned properly.

Unexpected Successes

The unexpected success is whole different story. It can shortcut the entire adventure if you let it stand, or even radically reshape the campaign. If a PC in the adventurer’s club campaign decided to assassinate Hitler, and we were foolish enough as GMs to let them make the attempt on a single die roll, no matter how improbable a success might be, by definition there has to be a chance of success – and that must be planned for.

A more realistic example: so you’ve set things up so that a rare plant is needed to heal someone, and the PC with the medical skill wants to make a medicine roll to come up with an alternative treatment. You’ve decided to allow the roll because of the near-certainty of failure, which will then propel the PCs into the main adventure. You announce that the character will need to roll an 18 on 3d6, twice, in order to come up with such a treatment (even though that’s not in the rules – a clear signal that the GMs don’t want you to succeed!) Despite the odds, you make the first roll – a one-in-216 chance – and then gather the dice for the second attempt. Now the GM is nervous – the odds are vastly in his favor, but where lightning has struck once, it can strike again (in contradiction to the old adage). And indeed, once again, the player rolls an 18 – something that will happen only once in 46,656 attempts, according to the odds. The player rejoices, the other players raise eyebrows and exchange high-fives (or their equivalent) with the successful player, and all eyes turn to the GM….

There are a lot of ways out of this bind.

• • The most obvious is a success that the player chooses to ignore because of the in-game ramifications – an alternative treatment that involves the amputation of all four limbs and an 85% chance of the patient’s death, for example. After all, he also knows how improbable his success was. This is the conditional success.
  • An alternative is the flawed success – “You remember perfectly exactly what you read, word for word. However, as you recall the words, you find a serious error in the statements, one that destroys your trust in the information.”
  • A third technique is the costly success, in which the success sets the feel on a path to inevitable success but reveals that the price of following that path is too high.
  • A fourth technique is the illusory success, in which the character appears to succeed but in reality achieves only a partial success – like assassinating Hitler’s body double.

There are others, but they are all variations on the theme of undermining the success to the point of it actually being a failure.

At the same time, it has to be remembered that the character has pulled off a miraculous success, and needs to be rewarded for that in plot terms.

Let’s take that “more realistic example” cited earlier. A success despite the odds might result in the character being completely convinced that there is no other course other than retrieving the rare plant, but knowing a way of eliminating contaminants from the plant so that the side-effects that would normally result from the treatment will not do so in this case. What’s more, a paper describing this refinement to the process – after the fact – will earn the character a tidy sum and be a genuine advance in medical knowledge, bringing with it civic honors and recognition.

It’s entirely reasonable to anticipate a medicine check under the circumstances. For the sake of the adventure, it’s a roll that the GM has designed to fail – but there’s always an outside chance of success (or there’s no point in having the character roll), and that means that the GM has to plan accordingly. It doesn’t have to be extensive – the couple of lines given above are a reasonable example – but you need to be ready with an answer.

Unexpected Die Checks

In fact, the only time when a GM can justify being caught short by an unexpected outcome on a die check is when the GM wasn’t anticipating a die check at all.

This is frequently the result of a player announcing an unanticipated course of action (see earlier in this article) and the GM insisting on a die check to see whether or not the action is successful (regardless of whether or not it will have the desired effect). Sometimes it’s the result of the GM forgetting a character capability, and sometimes it’s a consequence of the player applying an ability in a way that the GM hasn’t thought of “I cast Blade Barrier down the purple worm’s throat – what happens?” (an actual example from the latter days of the Fumanor: The Last Deity II campaign).



It’s at times like this that I fall back on the hierarchy pyramid, last shown in The Language Of Magic: A Sense of Wonder for the Feb 2019 Blog Carnival – again, in an entirely different context – that was first proposed in Blat! Zot! Pow! The Rules Of Genre In RPGs (Jan 2011) and re-examined in The Blind Enforcer: The Reflex Application Of Rules (April 2014).

* What do the official rules say (if anything) about any similar situation?
* What do the house rules say (if anything) about any similar situation?
* What seems the most “realistic” given the base assumptions of the campaign world?
* What seems the most appropriate interpretation given the genre of the game?
* What is the interpretation that works best in terms of the adventure plot?
* What is the interpretation that works best in terms of the health of the campaign?
* Are there any practicality considerations that should be taken into account?
* What is the interpretation that will produce the maximum fun?

Remember that any subsequent answer overrules one that’s already in place – the house rules trump the official rules, “realism” trumps the house rules when they are inadequate, genre trumps “realism”, plot needs trump Genre, campaign needs trump the needs of any one plot, practicality of implementation trumps everything else, and fun trumps all.

Beyond that basic principle, the usual considerations apply.

Readers should also find Narratives Of Skill: How To ‘Improv’ Outcome Descriptions In Advance to be useful information in this context.

The Purest Anarchy

It has been said that no adventure survives contact with the players. It has also been said that the GM is just a special category of player.

Given that players are the source of two of the most omnipresent kinds of randomness, the truth of the first statement seems amply demonstrated. This section is proof that – at least in the context of the first statement – the second statement is also true.

GMs go off-script regularly. And repeatedly. Usually for what seems like good reasons at the time. Some of the time, the reasons are, in fact, valid! More often than not, though, they are either a very bad idea, or an idea that won’t be properly executed because the GM hasn’t prepped properly for it.

One of the most frequent causes of offense is the misplaced explanation. Something is said or done in the adventure that isn’t explained at the time, and a player interrupts the GM with a question. He frantically checks through the surrounding text, only to find no explanation. So he makes one up on the spot. A page or two – or perhaps, a paragraph or two – later, the explanation around which this part of the adventure has been built surfaces, and contradicts the explanation the GM has already given. And suddenly, he’s in trouble, and his adventure is in a state of anarchy – whether it’s obvious on the surface, or not.

The next most frequent source of GM-induced anarchy is the flash of inspiration. The GM is part way through the adventure when he suddenly has a blinding insight into how he can make everything more dramatic, more exciting, more interesting, more fun! And, without properly thinking through the ramifications, he changes course abruptly, throwing away whatever is contradicted by the rest of the prepared adventure if not the whole thing entirely. This, of course, is just asking for trouble.

Studies have shown that rushing increases the rate of human error eleven-fold. I’ll say that again: decisions made in haste are eleven times as likely to be flawed or otherwise poor decisions. Now, GMs are used to making quick decisions under time pressure – but so are the military commanders and pilots that were the subjects of those studies. Amongst those not so trained, the rate can be even higher – as much as twenty-five times as high according to some sources, due to the stress involved alone (Reliability and Maintainability and Risk, by Dr David J. Smith, 7th edition, Appendix 6). What’s more, after 1 minute in an ongoing emergency situation, the error rate rises to ninety times the base, showing the effect of panic. The first task in any such circumstance is to get control of the situation so that the error rate of subsequent decisions is reduced to the high-stress value or better, a significant improvement! But Douglas Adams said it best, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: Don’t Panic! (the link is to an omnibus edition including all five books in the series).

I tend to classify these spur-of-the-moment brain-bubbles on a scale with eight divisions, though it’s important to note that you can only correctly classify them after the fact unless someone points your idiocy out at the time – I’ll offer an example or two of that as we travel. The eight divisions are:

1. Second-Skin Decisions
2. Wallpaper Decisions
3. Enhancing Decisions
4. Neutral Decisions
5. Decisions Of Inconsistency
6. Obstructing Decisions
7. Derailing Decisions
8. Catastrophic Decisions

Second-Skin Decisions

Minimalist prep often means that you have to invent characterization details on the spur of the moment to give an NPC color. Those are second-skin decisions, and they tend to be relatively harmless – noteworthy only when they fail for some reason.

Cliches will leap to mind at such times, but must be spurned lest your characterization be cringe-worthy; but, at the same time, you can’t make the character too unusual or you’ll distract from the substance that they are present to provide within your adventure. But avoid either of those extremes and you’ll usually be fine with such decisions – and the worst that will usually happen is that the character will be a disposable throwaway, personality-wise.

But sometimes you’ll forget that the character has already appeared in the game – “Greetings, Mon Ami! And ‘ow can I assist you today?” “Wait a minute, didn’t you have a Scottish accent last time we met you?” Whoops. On rare occasions, you can (literally) make the error a throwaway piece of characterization: (Texan accent) “Why, Ah surely did, pardner! Jest gettin’ in some practice for this-here radio play ah’m doin’ next week.” (No accent) “So, what can I do for you?”

Suddenly, the nobody is a voice actor with a gift for accents. Characterization, done.

This trick won’t work all the time – if the error is of a more factual nature, you may be in trouble. But it’s one to keep in your back pocket for the times when it is useful.

When it won’t work, my number-one solution is to admit that the player raising the question has got me – a minor mistake that can be easily overlooked and isn’t too disruptive of play, but that humanizes me as a GM, making more serious errors more forgivable – if they don’t happen too often.

Wallpaper Decisions

Every campaign has a look-and-feel built into its subtext that the players absorb almost subconsciously. All it takes is the GM deliberately varying his vision of various staples and fixtures, especially of architecture and social behavior, in his own mind – that will then ‘wash into’ and color his descriptive language, and the behavior of the NPCs, and that will be absorbed almost subconsciously by the players.

“Like every village you’ve ever seen within this woe-begotten kingdom, the streets are crudely cobbled and dirty, the roofs are soot-stained and low, rising abruptly to a peak above the chimney, the walls are plastered in faded colors, and the locals who aren’t dirty are covered in grime and filth. You’re sure that they bathe religiously at least once a decade. A serving-woman with greasy hair beneath her off-white cotton cap made of scrap linen tosses kitchen garbage and a pot of a soup with something green floating in it into the street, where it lies in a steaming puddle before slinking away.”

Wallpaper decisions are spur-of-the-moment “enhancements” and “refinements” to this look-and-feel. Sometimes, that’s exactly what they are, making the game world richer for their incorporation; sometimes, they simply perpetuate the established flavor; and sometimes, they will conflict with it – and make no mistake, there’s a big difference between contrasting with the established flavor and conflicting with it.

A contrast is self-justifying by the difference between specificity and generalization. Not all places, even in such a run-down setting, will be uniformly dank and dingy; some will be better, and some worse; it’s all relative to the baseline. A conflict is a contrast so striking that such a justification would ring hollow; to make it plausible in this context, it needs to be justified in some equally-exceptional way. When you do so, it transforms an Inconsistency in the game-world’s characterization into a deepening and enriching addendum.

The only way you can tell that this justification has been successful is when the players accept it and begin to construct a generalized statement about the exceptions that demonstrates that the exception has been integrated into their world-view.

For example, I might describe a typical inn one way (hessian lining totting away under the floorboards to capture spilled ale creating a perpetual odor of stale socks throughout the common areas) and one particular inn as being spotlessly clean, immaculately presented, with timbers fitted to near-perfect tolerances and rich tapestries upon the oaken walls. Especially if the exterior doesn’t look all that exceptional, this contrast is so strong that it simply doesn’t belong in this setting. So, it needs an extraordinary justification – at the time, if possible. “It’s run by an Elf, a refugee from the Silverwatch Reaches.” If the player’s response is, “Okay, from now on we’re only staying at Elvish Inns if we have any choice in the matter,” and in the next village they visit, they ask “Is there an Elvish Inn here?”, then they have bought the justification and integrated into their world-view of the campaign. If their response is “it makes a nice change, but are they charging arm-and-a-leg prices?” then they haven’t really bought into the justification, and the world-view has been muddied just a bit by the exception.

Such are the rewards – and potential penalties – of making wallpaper decisions on the run.

Enhancing Decisions

Reinventing campaign history, game-world relationships (especially political or economic ones), pseudo-scientific principles, campaign metaphysics, villain motivations, and the like on the fly are all “Enhancing Decisions” when everything works perfectly. And something far less attractive when it doesn’t.

We all have to do this from time to time. We’re confronted with a hitherto-undiscovered plot hole and have to wallpaper over the cracks right now before they can derail play. We create something spontaneously to fill a particular need or desire (“The Imperial Capital of Korea”) and then have to make sense of it.

When it works, it makes you look brilliant. When it works really well, maybe you even are brilliant. When it doesn’t, though, it can be catastrophic to verisimilitude for months or even years to come. The most dreaded phrase a player can ever tell a GM when he isn’t courting it is “I just don’t buy it”.

Dealing with such problems can be a complex problem, and is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, let me refer you to my (still unfinished) series, The Elephant In The Gray Room, which addresses such problems in escalating order of seriousness.

Neutral Decisions

These are theoretically possible – I think. I’ve never seen one. Decisions that aren’t designed to address a deficiency of character, plot, prep, system, or setting, or to improve one or more of these things? Talk about your black cats at midnight in coal cellars that aren’t actually there – good luck in finding one.

Actually, let me take all that back – there is one situation that I can think of that could qualify. It’s when you identify a plot hole before you get to that part of the adventure, and so drop in a replacement or supplementary explanation for whatever is going on that avoids the hole; your goal is not to ‘improve’ anything, it is to substitute something for an equivalent of equal value (by all standards that can be applied) that has some sort of logical or inherent problem.

Decisions Of Inconsistency

Once you pass below the “neutral decisions” limbo bar, you’re into problem territory. It doesn’t matter what your motive was in indulging the moment of madness, it has created more problems than it has solved, and it’s only a question of severity.

The least cataclysmic outcomes are decisions that produce an inconsistency in a character or a character’s behavior beyond that which can be explained through rational means. A character can’t be generous one week and greedy the next; a civil war can’t be won by one side one week and by the other the week after – unless a mutable history is part of your game setting, of course! – and so on.

At the very least, there needs to be an explanation, and that’s where you find the decisions that fall within this category (if the consequences are more severe, like unraveling a character’s motivation for a particular action, you may need to take stronger steps). Such explanations can be delivered more or less as an aside to a subsequent conversation being role-played. “Leonora’s been giving everyone a hard time this last week, her husband left and took the kids and it’s really soured her outlook on life. I hope she gets back to her old self again soon.” The sooner you insert such an aside, the better and the more plausible it is; if it’s part of the same adventure or even the same day’s play, that’s ideal. But, before you can drop-in such a narrative point, you need to identify the need for it – and that requires recognizing the inconsistency or having it pointed out to you.

And if it’s too late, the affected adventure has come to an end and a new one started, in which the inconsistent character has no role? Well, you can either alter the plot by inserting a subplot that has not purpose other than patching the inconsistency, or you can choose to wait until a logical opportunity presents itself within the campaign. Remember to take the logical passage of time into account if you choose the latter course – “Hi there, good to see you again. I’m sorry if I was a bit of a pill last time – a family crisis and I’m afraid I took it out on everyone. All good, now!”

That’s not to say that you can’t employ a more powerful solution from one of the categories below – just remember the information I gave on error rates earlier, and plan it carefully! Maybe Lenore was being mind-controlled….

Obstructing Decisions

An obstructing decision is one that makes sense in the context of the Adventure but imposes a road block on a subsequent part of the campaign, usually by preventing or inhibiting some consequence at the campaign scale. At the very least, this requires a subplot to alter the situation in-game such that the consequence is “back”.

That becomes a lot more problematic if the players correctly identified that consequence as an outcome of the situation if they didn’t intervene and deliberately chose actions to avoid the outcome that the GM desired but that they did not. In such cases, a single subplot probably won’t be enough, you’ll need to implement a more significant solution. You will need to construct a circumstance, or more probably a chain of circumstances, which convinces the players that the outcome you want is inevitable and that at best they have delayed that inevitability, and that’s beyond the scope of an obstructing decision.

Derailing Decisions

Slightly more serious are decisions that you realize after the fact will derail the adventure you’re currently playing. That’s for two reasons: first, the players will almost certainly react immediately to the flawed brain-bubble’s content, entrenching it within the campaign; and second, because you don’t have time for leisurely reflection and planning, you have to make a decision on what to do right now.

Of course, this isn’t the worst-case situation, even within this category; worse by far is when the players react to the moment of madness by calling you out. Why? Because (a) this engages your natural defenses; and (b) because you are more prone to either entrench the mistake within your own thinking because of (a), or to invent something else on the spot to resolve the problem. 90% of the time, either response will only make things worse. This is where those error rates really come into effect.

Okay, so there’s a big difference between a real emergency and a plot-execution error in a roleplaying game. For most players and GMs, their emotional involvement will still be high enough that reactions will be similar, if not quite as intense. Pilots and racing-car drivers train in simulators to prepare themselves for emergency situations, checklists are used because snap judgments in a crisis are suspect, and more checklists are employed because we tend to skip over important things in routine situations, and so on. Fire departments and police train all the time to make better decisions in emergency situations, and the military invented all this training. The GM may be in a lower-stress environment, with less of significance riding on his decisions, but all his training has to be acquired on-the-job. So I think it’s justifiable to use the same 11-fold factor for all those situations.

That means that as soon as you become aware of the problem, you have to stop play and call a five- or ten-minute break. This takes the urgency and stress out of the situation and gives you some time to think. Go somewhere where you can’t hear the players, who will probably commence a side-discussion if your group is like mine, and think.

Priority #1 is to protect the campaign. Priority #2 is to salvage the adventure if you can. Note that protecting the campaign doesn’t necessarily mean slavishly following the master plan that existed before the mistake; by throwing part of that plan away, or substantially reinventing it, you may be able to mitigate the effects of the mistake. Protecting the campaign might mean embracing the mistake, making it canon, even if that means completely revising the rest of the adventure and a future part of the campaign.

The first thing you need to do is therefore to analyze the consequences of the problem that you’ve created. Only then can you begin to assess potential solutions. I’ve examined such solutions in detail in The Elephant In The Gray Room, Pt 3 of 5: Significant Repairs and, to a lesser extent, The Elephant In The Gray Room, Pt 4 of 5: Major Structural Repairs.

Catastrophic Decisions

Some spur-of-the-moment decisions are just catastrophic, or (hopefully only) potentially so. The more serious the problem, the more justified you are in employing radical solutions to fix the problem; that’s the whole premise behind the “Elephant In The Gray Room” series.

When you become aware that you have just inflicted a potentially mortal would upon your campaign, the first step is to get it on life support. That might mean shutting it down for a few weeks, or it might mean inserting a number of standalone adventures of no campaign significance. If you’ve got any ideas, this is a great time to drop in some adventures that create plot seeds for a sequel campaign!

The next step is to perform triage on the campaign. That can be as drastic as completely throwing away the master plan that you’ve been using and completely revising the remainder of it, or it can be less severe – if you are lucky.

I like to develop, and have on standby, “cataclysm plans” that are designed to completely reinvent a campaign, as an outcome preferable to destroying it completely. A friend and fellow GM with whom I used to correspond sporadically about 20 years ago encountered a problem of this magnitude, dropping an arcane device into his game world that would have corrected the one vulnerability of his major villain and leaving that villain unstoppable. When he realized his situation, he asked me for help. As I recall, we had about six weeks before he had to pull the pin on whatever solution we came up with.

I told him to go and invent a new campaign with the same PCs and a variant on the current villain, and to presume that half-way through it, the PCs had all been exposed to some sort of mind leech that wiped their memories. I would create and send him the outline of an adventure which would transform campaign A into campaign B. In Act 1 of the resulting adventure, I destroyed the game world completely; in Act 2, I justified the survival of the PCs; in Act 3, they discovered who had destroyed the universe, how, and why; in Act 4, they were confronted with hobsons’ choice: re-knit the tangled skeins of reality together in a slightly different and unpredictable manner, or unleash the universe-killer on other worlds. Predictably, they would choose the first option. In Act 5, they would implement their choice while dodging the opposition – an entity they couldn’t hope to defeat directly, but who they could “undo” indirectly. The whole thing was rooted in a couple of throwaway lines in the campaign background that he had provided for the first campaign, which everyone (including him) had assumed was a mixture of poetic license and references to one particular being, the God Of Evil. I simply decided that they were all wrong, and that they really referred to a long-forgotten threat that was about to stage a big comeback.

And so it was that the characters in question found themselves in a new game world, with some superficial resemblance to the old one (same maps) with no idea of who anyone was, or who their characters now were, or what they had done in the past (but perfect memories of a past world that no longer existed). Campaign B resumed as though they had been playing it all along, with the players scrambling to work out who was who and what was going on. And thought it was all part of the plan from day 1 because of the tight integration with the old campaign’s background! Only when the campaign wrapped up did the GM reveal the true story to them.

That’s the scale of surgery that might be needed to navigate your way through the problem you’ve just inflicted on yourself. Or you might be able to get away with inserting a new adventure, or a new layer of plot, to solve the problem.

Catastrophic problems have catastrophic consequences and sometimes require catastrophic solutions.

This article is all about how you cope with, and control, the causes of randomness within an adventure, and the inevitable chaos that results. By far the most dangerous – by virtue of being unplanned and unplannable – are “brilliant ideas” and “moments of inspiration” on the part of the GM, especially because these are likely to be relevant to the situation at hand and implemented without sufficient thought and care, on the spur of the moment.

These moments of madness can be positive and beneficial to the campaign and the adventure, and when that’s the case, all is well. But each carries the inevitable risk of the other side of the coin – and the coin itself is weighted by virtue of haste. You are eleven times more likely to get these decisions wrong than to get them right.

The obvious solution is to decide that you aren’t going to implement any of these brain waves. That solution not only contradicts human nature, it risks making the campaign a sterile place that can’t react to unexpected choices by the players, or worse, that denies the players agency within the campaign. So buckle up and prepare to ride the whirlwind; chaos in your RPG is going to be with you for a while.

I received a very kind offer of free sample merchandise at www.paperlesspost.com to try out their products and processes and review them for Campaign Mastery. I had hoped to find things that I could re-task – a virtual parchment to use for maps and scrolls, and so on. Unfortunately, their products seem to be too mainstream for that sort of application (bet that’s the first time they’ve had that complaint!), geared more for creating custom virtual invitations and the like, so I declined the offer. But I wanted to say a public thank-you in this footnote, and put the service on readers’ radars in case it’s of more value to you.

A Narrative Evolution Of Reality

I construct very detailed plotlines for most of my campaigns. There are:

• Primary Campaign-Level Plotlines that permanently shape or reshape the context within which all the individual adventures take place. Usually consist of tent-pole Events and paradigm shifts within adventures, and are often describable as the outcome of a string of adventures, and some adventures are all about the primary campaign-level plotline. Ultimately, these are the campaign, at least as the GM will later summarize it, everything else is window dressing and interaction and filler. Some or all primary campaign-level plotlines will not resolve until the end of the campaign. Lots of the rest of the campaign does nothing but build up to these moments.
• Lesser Campaign-Level Plotlines that are designed to play out in the form of subplots and situations within multiple adventures that, if placed back-to-back in a narrative format, would tell a single story. These are often turning points for characters and the triggers for primary campaign-level plot developments. These often have a more personal, single-PC focus, though some can affect the whole party.
• Minor Campaign-Level Subplots that are more restricted in immediate scope, more transitory, and generally less significant in the short term, but which are capable of a longer-term impact that is significant, played out a little at a time over multiple adventures. These may be character turning points, but are generally more akin to experiences that deliver the character, a little sadder, wiser, more battered and bruised, but otherwise unchanged, out the other side. Sometimes described in a derogatory way as “color encounters”, these are more about the PC displaying personality as it is than about changing that personality.
• Campaign-Level Contextual Flows that define the relationships between adventures in any way not explicitly deriving from a Primary Campaign-level plotline. For example, adventure #7 might introduce a villain, adventure #9 might provide more information about that villain but that is not its primary focus, and adventure #14 is about a crisis precipitated by that villain. Adventure #10 might foreshadow that crisis with no apparent connection to the villain that will ultimately be responsible for it. In the other adventures, the villain is simply a presence lurking in the background with no involvement deriving from the GM’s plans – the villain might still be dragged into a plotline by the players!
• Adventure-Level Plotlines are the units which, in total, comprise the campaign. While the campaign plan might call for a lot of random stuff to “just happen” as set-up for other campaign events in the future, that isn’t particularly satisfying; adding a plotline that can be taken to a resolution provides a framing device which can contain everything else. Adventures consist of acts and acts consist of scenes and encounters and narrative and decision points.
• Adventure-Level Subplots are vignettes within an adventure that are unrelated to the plot of the adventure, or have an indirect relationship at best, but which define context for the immediate status of one or more PCs during the commencement of a more significant phase within the adventure or act. These vignettes may be wholly self-contained scenes, or may join together to form a broader narrative that is nevertheless resolved by the end of the adventure or act.
• Significant Scenes and Encounters are scenes or encounters that relate to higher-order plot structures – they advance an adventure plotline or a campaign-level plot or subplot. These are the “important moments” within an adventure, though they may not appear all that important at the time.
• Passing Scenes and Encounters are scenes or encounters that do NOT relate directly to higher-order plot structures. As such, they advance minor campaign-level plotlines, adventure-level subplots, or provide campaign-level contextual flow.

Connecting Threads

On top of all that, there are connecting threads that bind all of this together. The most obvious are the ongoing personal histories of each of the PCs, but there are also ongoing threads connecting the histories of significant NPCs and sometimes progressive changes to social, technological, political, economic, military, medical, or scientific developments, or natural (and sometimes unnatural) phenomena.

Schematic Of An Adventure’s Contents

Now, I’m not suggesting that every adventure will contain something from every one of this multitude of layers. But most will have most of them, and the absence of something is almost always for a plot reason – catapulting the players directly into an action sequence for pacing purposes, for example.

Adventure Planning

I track layers one and two in a master plan, which is incredibly complicated to explain – I’ve gone into it in detail on a couple of occasions here at campaign mastery. That master plan also contains incomplete and brief hints as to the content of layers 3 and 6 for individual adventures – this might be the name of an adversary or encounter, for example. They use a code to connect to a very long list of adventure developments synopsized into a single line, which in turn point to a more substantial treatment that is used as a guideline. The synopsis is gospel, because it describes how this piece of the campaign-level plot ties into the others to tell a broader story (broader than any one adventure); the more substantial treatment (which was used to generate the synopsis in the first place) can be varied to better fit into the adventure or to tell a more interesting/exciting/thrilling story.

I have multiple sources that are used to derive the layer 6 content – player wishes, some random tables that I put together, the thematic content of the adventure, logical developments following other recent events that are not otherwise catered for, and inspiration during the writing process.

Sometimes, to protect the integrity of the adventure, campaign-level material that was not originally intended for this adventure has to be brought forward – that happened with the whole “rogue behemoth” plot sequence a few adventures ago, because Behemoth was the logical solution to a plot hole that I hadn’t anticipated. Which meant finding out what he had been up to lately…

In a nutshell, I have a broad outline and a number of “mandatory” drop-in scenes to “seed” into the adventure.

Detailed Planning

Converting that into an adventure means outlining the adventure in successive iterations – acts, then scenes, then scene content – encounters and locations and narrative and so on, generating props and reference materials, etc.

At each point, I’m looking at nothing more than a bullet point and a few words – a line or less. This is a work order, nothing is finished.

Adventure Writing

When I start running a new adventure, I generally have two sessions worth of material written. In between each game session, I try to write another full session’s worth of material, but don’t stress if I come up short, or if the players get through more material in a given game session than I expected. As a result, by about midway in a four-plus game-session adventure, I have only half a game-session in reserve, or less; and from the end of session three of a five-session adventure, each day’s play consumes all of the prepared material and sometimes a little more.

This might seem like I am not allocating enough prep time to the campaign, but that’s not the case. You see, the start of adventures tend to be relatively fixed, but as the adventure proceeds, player decisions and choices tend to accumulate and can steer an adventure in entirely unexpected directions.

Allocating my game prep in this way not only makes my adventures more responsive to players choices and actions, it gives me more time to get ahead of the curve on the next adventure.

As a general rule of thumb, using 12-point type, players in my Zenith-3 campaign will generally get through about 14 pages of material per game session. With two more players in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, less one serving as co-GM, we generally only get through 7-10 pages of 12-point material. Though there are times in both campaigns where 1 line can consume a significant fraction of a game session – “combat ensues”, for example!

In Actual Play

So, it’s the big day. It’s time to put into practice all the planning, and implement the plotline that you have crafted. And you know I never stray from the prepared material, no matter what, right? Where did that hollow echo suddenly come from?

Of course I diverge from that material. Players – pardon me, characters – make decisions. Dice get rolled. Some character interactions are so much fun that they get extemporaneously expanded; others are not as entertaining as expected and get curtailed. Players indulge in conspiracy theories and misunderstandings and poor assumptions, and make decisions based on these failings.

Actual play is an anarchic compilation of personal interactions at the game table that superficially resembles what was planned to some degree. Some of that prep will be incorporated verbatim, some of it will be modified on the fly, and some content will be created out of whole cloth.

That might sound like justification for doing no prep at all – simply operating off that list of bullet points, or even less. And that’s exactly how I run the Zener Gate campaign – it’s 99% improv. But I’ve found that the results are often superficial, and hold your campaign hostage to how “good” you are on the day. Doing more substantial prep incorporates depth, gives time to polish narrative and descriptions, gives me multiple opportunities to be on top of my game, and gives me solid material on which to base whatever actually comes out of my mouth on the game day.

To pluck an example from D&D/Pathfinder, my synopsis might say something like “Tavern, reeks of Elvishness, four sullen solitary patrons, barman.” The next line goes on to talk about the barman and how the players can advance the plot by interacting with him – in no greater detail. Now, it’s an old maxim that’s as true of RPGs as it is fiction writing, “show, don’t tell” – which means, in this case, writing a description of the place in such a way, and with appropriate content, that the players might synopsize the description as “The place reeks of Elvishness” – I don’t want to have to employ the phrase, I want to demonstrate that it’s true. I don’t know about you, but coming up with such a description is something that is better done in advance and in careful detail and not off-the-cuff.

So prep is still important; I simply use it as something other than railroad tracks.

Three Sources Of Randomness

The anarchy that I described earlier is an amalgam of three sources of chaos and the consequences of their manifestations at the game table.

• Player Decisions can be thought of as unscripted player-plot interactions.
• Die Rolls can be thought of as unscripted character-plot interactions.
• GM Thought Bubbles are metaphysical chaos manifesting at a macroscopic scale – the equivalent of a butterfly flapping it’s wings somewhere.

One or two instances of such chaos can easily be accommodated. But as they accumulate, the effects multiply, becoming more and more unpredictable:

Combating that chaos is the reason I try to stay “just ahead” of the players in the campaign, instead of miles in front. In effect, I’m rewriting the rest of the adventure to take into account the accumulated chaos and anarchy – and in the process, neutralizing it.

But this article isn’t so much about what I do after the fact; it’s about how I handle that chaos at the game table and what specific prep I do to anticipate it.

Which is a subject that I’ll be addressing in Part 2, “Into All Chaos, A Little Order Must Fall”, next week!