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In this series, I’ve been looking into the subject of Game Physics.

Part one examined what a ‘game physics’ is, and what one can be used for.

Part two focused in on one particular application, the generation and validation of House Rules.

In this third part, the subject is the relationship between Game Physics and Plot…

Game Physics as a driver of Plot

If a Game Physics can extend the range of options available to a character – either PC or NPC – then the existence of those options has to expand the storytelling palette on both sides of the GM screen.

Players love knowing that the world their characters inhabit makes sense, even if neither players nor characters fully understand it. (Rhetorical question: how many readers fully understand the world we live in?) Achieving that understanding can be accomplished by memorizing every rule and understanding how they all interact with each other under every possible permutation of conditions, or by understanding the Game Physics that those rules embody.

Because a Game Physics is a simplified and abstracted set of principles that the GM has designed for ease of use when he is busy dealing with the minutia of running the game, it is usually more rational and more easily understood than a rules hodgepodge. If the principle has been established that the Game Physics overrides the rules when necessary, the second choice is clearly the better of the two.

And, because all game physics – just like the physics of the real world – are imperfectly understood, and can be extended by asking the right questions and conducting the appropriate research to answer these questions – there are obvious plot opportunities. NPCs who understand some aspect of the game physics better than most inhabitants of the game world can do things that appear impossible, even miraculous, to those who don’t know what they know. Such plots challenge the players to understand what their enemies know, expanding their own knowledge of the game physics, in search of ways of neutralizing the advantage that those enemies posses.

Some of the very best science fiction takes this as its primary plot. So does some absolute drek, so it is no guarantee of quality, but it’s at least a start. But the same principles apply to any genre.

When I first started my TORG campaign, I deliberately started the campaign a year before the invasion of Earth and the Possibility Wars, simply because these were dramatic developments in the lives of all PCs and I wanted the players to experience them rather than having them occur in some past that was only alluded to in character creation. While I could have chosen any of the settings, the one that appealed most to me was the Fantasy realm of Aysle.

But there was a problem: the world simply didn’t make sense, as described. A flat disc of a world with different topography on each side, much smaller in size than Earth, yet it somehow had something clearly similar to normal gravity. I solved this problem by inventing a new material – I no longer remember the name – and lacing the subterranean earth with it. This material generated increasing gravitational pull as it was heated – but in a non-linear way. Thus, gravity was substantially less on mountaintops, enabling the creatures there to grow larger, and was most intense underground and near volcanoes. In particular, it meant that Dragons naturally sought mountaintops to live on.

This one piece of game physics produced all the attributes of continental drift, mountain formation, earthquakes, and so on. This produced the topography that was observed, which was clearly unbalanced, and produced a tumble like a coin that had been flipped as the sun orbited the world, creating day and night cycles and generating weather and climate. The topography was also clearly unbalanced, producing an oscillating back-and-forth motion as the “penny” tumbled, creating seasons. Uneven heating of land and water meant that things weighed more in summer and less in winter – so the best time to transport heavy loads was in Spring and Autumn, as close to winter as possible before travel became more difficult due to snow and ice.

Most of these effects were specified, or at least implied, in the world description in the official sourcebook, without explanation.

The second principle of the game physics was that life was more mutable in form than is normal for earth. Dwarves were short because they lived underground, closer to the pull of gravity, and that also made them stronger. Elves were taller and slighter because they lived on the slopes of mountains. Should either move into human regions, two or three generations would have seen them assume human proportions and capabilities.

The first major plot arc dealt with the rise of a terrifying Dragon which cause mass panic; infused with Possibility Energy by the conspirators who sought to seize control of the world, this was bigger, stronger, and faster than any Dragon ever before seen, and had abilities that no dragon had ever possessed before. The PCs were tasked with destroying the Draco Necromantus, hunting it down, tracking it to its lair, and killing it. This put them on the periphery of the power struggle for the throne, able to view events from afar, and continually getting caught in the secondary impacts of each political move and counter-move, discovering the organized conspiracy too late; the invasion of Earth was underway by the time they completed their mission, and the government that had sent them on their quest overthrown. At the same time, they were discovering hitherto-unknown abilities of their own, transforming into Storm Knights, giving them the ability to deal with the creature they hunted.

This then enabled them to cross the dimensional boundary and enter the world of the Transformed Earth, discovering that their problems were only a small part of a much larger problem.

Throughout, the Game Physics was entwined in the plot. To reach the capital after the overthrow of Pella Ardinay and invasion of Earth, the PCs traveled by Dwarfish Mass Transit. A State secret that all Dwarves knew, but that was secret from all other races (until this crisis), this consisted of millions of miles of mineshaft with rails, traveled by ore-carts the size of buses. A chunk of Material X (I still can’t remember the name) was attached at one end of the cart beneath a torch; as it grew hot, it shifted “down” from vertical to an angle forward of the front of the cart, permitting it to perpetually roll “downhill” even when gaining in altitude.

The entire subterranean crust of Aysle was honeycombed with these tunnels. It didn’t take long for truly terrifying speeds to be achieved – even a constant acceleration of 1/4 G will get get you there (approx 2.5 m/s/s):

• After 1 second: 2.5m/s.
• 2 sec: 5 m/s.
• 3 sec: 7.5 m/s.
• 60 sec: 180 m/s.
• 5 mins: 750 m/s.
• 30 mins: 4500 m/s.

Multiply by 3.6 to get km/h:

• 1 sec: 9 km/h.
• 2 sec: 18 km/h.
• 3 sec: 27 km/h.
• 60 sec: 648 km/h.
• 5 mins: 2700 km/h.
• 30 mins: 16,200 km/h.

Tracks were graded according to maximum permitted speed: in some slow stretches, the limit was 50 km/h, in the transcontinental express “lanes”, up to 1000 km/h was regarded as “safe”. These were purely arbitrary; nor did I bother calculating the absolute top speed (terminal velocity), but set it at an entirely arbitrary 5000km/h. “Stops” for this subway were located in all Dwarven communities and beneath the major settlements of other races.

Traveling to-and-from the nearest “subway station” was frequently the lengthiest part of any journey, but Dwarves could get troops from A to B faster than anyone who didn’t expend a LOT of arcane energy on apportation magic. “Ship via Dwarf – when it absolutely has to be there in a week or less!”

Of course, the Dwarves kept this a secret, making up tall tales of “running all night” to reach the battlefield, and creating an enduring legend around their endurance in the process!! Everyone on the surface was convinced that the Dwarves were exaggerating their prowess in battle – but no-one was ever willing to call their bluff, because they had the nasty little habit of reaching battlefields in numbers and looking fresh as daisies faster than was possible to even mounted riders!

Plot as a driver of Game Physics

It works in the other direction, too. You can have a plot need and expand your game physics to make some desired plot development plausible and possible. Step by step, inch by inch, this builds depth, uniqueness, and consistency into your game world.

For example, in the Zenith-3 campaign, there was a space-time facing imminent heat-death. Their greatest scientist discovered a way of opening an interdimensional conduit to take advantage of the energy differential between the two, effectively “bleeding off” their excess entropy into other dimensions. The concept was based on Isaac Asimov’s novel The Gods Themselves. There were also elements from two novels by James P. Hogan, The Genesis Machine (not one his best novels, to be honest, but not bad) and The Proteus Operation (definitely one of his more enjoyable efforts!) The basic foundations of the situation already existed in the game physics describing the possible differences between space-times, but the game physics needed to expand to describe this new way of harnessing the differences. This was made immeasurably easier because I had already drawn on “The Gods Themselves” for inspiration in creating the existing game physics.

• Click here to buy The Gods Themselves from Amazon. Limited copies.
• Click here to buy The Genesis Machine from Amazon. Limited copies.
• Click here to buy The Proteus Operation from Amazon. Limited copies.

The Ouroboros Development Cycle

In some campaigns, you can enter a wonderful cycle in which you spot a potential plot deriving from your game physics, development of which further develops the game physics, which leads to the discovery of new potential plots. Like the mythical snake swallowing its own tail, this cycle can be repeated time after time. So long as these plots are interspersed with stories deriving from other sources, especially the history, personalities, and activities of the PCs, they won’t grow stale.

A wonderful example of this takes place periodically within the Stargate SG-1 TV show. Almost every season has at least one episode in which a peculiarity of the way the Gate operates is central to the plot, and in almost every case the knowledge acquired in dealing with the problem later provides the solution to a completely unrelated problem. The Second Gate, the Black Hole episode, the Parallel World episode, the time-travel-to-1969 episode, the Groundhog Day episode, the time Jack gets trapped off-world when the gate is buried by a volcanic eruption, using the gate to explode a star, Sokhor’s attack to get SG1 to hand over the captured and dying Apophis… the list goes on and on (I could name the actual episodes, and put them in sequential order, but I thought these off-the-top-of-my-head snapshot synopses would better connect with the typical reader).

Each of these episodes clearly began development as a “What If…” question. Explaining the “Show Physics” that justifies that particular circumstance expands that physics (plot as the driver), but that in turn expands the show’s Canon, the repertoire of tricks up the sleeves of the Heroes – and the villains – which then drives future episodes, either by creating new conundra for the protagonists to solve, or by furnishing the solutions to such problems – when correctly applied.

Plot as exposition of Game Physics

There is – or should be – nothing in the Game Physics without a reason for its inclusion (One of the best justifications is the plot potential, and another is a definite look-and-feel for the campaign). That justification manifests as potential plotlines.

That means that one of the best times to come up with plot ideas for later use is during the initial development of the game physics itself. I have, for a very long time, been an advocate of keeping an “Ideas File” for plotlines, and this is where at least some of those Ideas come from to populate that file.

The benefits should be self-evident, but I’ll spell them out anyway: Because the Game Physics is increasingly unique to the particular campaign that you are running, these plots derive explicitly from the uniqueness of that campaign, and each such plot further enhances and develops that uniqueness. Verisimilitude and internal consistency are inevitable side-effects!

Possible Plot Manifestations

So, what are the possible Game Physics manifestations of a plot? They come down to four basic models: Need, Desire, Motivation, and Capability.

• Need: The plot needs something to happen, and the GM asks how that occurrence is possible within the Game Physics.
• Desire: A character wants something, and the GM asks how that desire can be satisfied using the Game Physics.
• Motivation: A character needs a motivation to do what the plot requires them to do, and the GM answers that requirement with a consequence of the existing Game Physics or an extension of that Physics.
• Capability: A character needs a particular capability, or needs the capability demanded by the plot to be explained within the Game Physics.

Any of these four plot-related elements can lead to an extension of the Game Physics, and the discovery of that extension by the protagonists is part of the resulting plotline.

Plotlines from Game Physics

The flip side of the coin is the derivation of plotlines from the existing Game Physics. The same four plot elements manifest:

• Need: The GM spots an interesting consequence or peculiarity of the Game Physics and creates a plotline in which that consequence or peculiarity is featured as either problem or solution.
• Desire: The PCs want to achieve something that is inherent in the Game Physics as the players understand it. The plot is about the transition from theory to practical application, and the consequences and side-effects. Challenges will often result from extending the Game Physics, and extensions to the Game Physics will frequently result from the GM’s need to pose challenges for the PCs to solve.
• Motivation: The GM Game Physics makes something possible; the GM creates a character who desires to achieve that something, for whatever reason. The plot revolves around the steps that the character takes to achieve the something, and the PCs interacting with those steps or with the consequences.
• Capability: The GM notices that the Game Physics can be used to give a character a capability not described within the “official” rules. Giving a character that ability forces the PCs to come to terms with the Game Physics as distinct from those “official” rules, establishing the primacy of the Game Physics and spelling out some part of that Physics through practical manifestation.

As feared, I’m out of time and still have a smallish post’s worth to write – so there will be a part four to this series, when I expand the horizons and consider Game Physics and the Campaign.