Causal Influence Diagrams and KS: City underworld, etc.

[TheDarkness]

[NOTE: This thread has quickly turned into me discussing how I'm using Causal Influence Diagrams for my campaign, so feel free to look, I hope you find the ideas useful!]

 

In regards to causal influence diagrams, this came from another thread(which I can't now find), here is a link to the article about them in gaming:

 

http://www.projectrho.com/rpg/cidiagram.html

 

So, I'm huge on roleplay over hey, it's a villain, let's charge in and attack even when we have reason to know that won't go well.

 

Towards that end, I'm designing a campaign now, and have fallen in love with the CID as a way of making skills relevant.

 

For example, one character is a sort of gadgeteer. I have talked with the player, and he has agreed to make a CID for his characters ray gun. That way, when it gets damaged, and he needs to fix it, based on what is happening, he may have to guess what is wrong, or what part of the diagram needs to be bypassed.

 

Likewise, when he makes a new item, he will have to come up with the components and where on the item's CID it is, and roll to invent EACH PART. I will track the rolls and be the only one who really knows the difficulty, and there will be a range where the roll is not a success by a small amount, but the item will work a few times, but the player may not know which part is at issue except that function A isn't working and that means it's either part 2, 5, or 6 that could be the reason. This creates actual decision making in skill rolls, and adds suspense and color.

 

Anyway, I'm working on this for a character who has knowledge of the city's crime and police scene. This has proven to be a nice way to get a deeper understanding of the city itself. Suddenly, I need to know that, if the player's contact has information, it might come from one of three sources,and who those sources are. When the player is confronted with a trusted contact who gives them information that the character knows is false, this could reveal clues in and of itself.

 

Anyway, curious your thoughts on this?

[BlueCloud2k2]

Oohhh... me like

[sinanju]

I listen to a lot of RPPR (Role-Playing Public Radio), a podcast of a group playing a variety of games*. One of the things I've noticed (and they've commented on it in the non-role-playing podcasts as well) is that the GM almost always gives the players a choice of actions in a given situation. I mean, explicitly. And they're mutually exclusive, each with benefits and drawbacks, so that if you try one the other option is off the table. You can't try one, then fall back on the other.

 

So the players have to make a decision that means something. Try to infiltrate the crime ring and learn the secret du jour (and risk discovery and possible torture or death, if the other PCs can't rescue you or don't even know you're in trouble--cause you can't communicate with them)...or go in guns blazing, overpower the bad guys and hope the guy who knows the secrets doesn't a) escape in the melee (and now knows you're after him) or gets killed in the firefight, in which case the secret dies with him.

 

It's a fairly simple technique. It means player choices matter. Some approaches are easier than others, but you aren't going to have all the details, so you don't always know which. And it means once you've chosen a path, you're committed.

 

It sounds like the causal influence diagram approach is another way of doing essentially the same thing. Even without a causal influence chart, the GM could tell the players, "Okay, the Flux Capacitor is out. You can either do a wild (random) hyperjump, quite possibly into a worse position--or you can keep fighting the alien warships for X turns while the engineer swaps out the damaged unit for another and then make a controlled escape. But you can't do both. Once the engineer yanks out the damaged device, there's no hyperjumping anywhere until he gets the new one installed."

 

So the players have to choose between immediate escape (and at best a delay in their mission, and at worst another life-threatening obstacle) or risking defeat/death in combat, but also still having the possibility of defeating the enemy and reaping the rewards thereof. But the key is: it's one or the other.

 

 

 

 

*But never Champions. They're intimidated by Champions. "Learn Champions, or go to Law School...hmmm."

[TheDarkness]

I listen to a lot of RPPR (Role-Playing Public Radio), a podcast of a group playing a variety of games*. One of the things I've noticed (and they've commented on it in the non-role-playing podcasts as well) is that the GM almost always gives the players a choice of actions in a given situation. I mean, explicitly. And they're mutually exclusive, each with benefits and drawbacks, so that if you try one the other option is off the table. You can't try one, then fall back on the other.

 

So the players have to make a decision that means something. Try to infiltrate the crime ring and learn the secret du jour (and risk discovery and possible torture or death, if the other PCs can't rescue you or don't even know you're in trouble--cause you can't communicate with them)...or go in guns blazing, overpower the bad guys and hope the guy who knows the secrets doesn't a) escape in the melee (and now knows you're after him) or gets killed in the firefight, in which case the secret dies with him.

 

It's a fairly simple technique. It means player choices matter. Some approaches are easier than others, but you aren't going to have all the details, so you don't always know which. And it means once you've chosen a path, you're committed.

 

It sounds like the causal influence diagram approach is another way of doing essentially the same thing. Even without a causal influence chart, the GM could tell the players, "Okay, the Flux Capacitor is out. You can either do a wild (random) hyperjump, quite possibly into a worse position--or you can keep fighting the alien warships for X turns while the engineer swaps out the damaged unit for another and then make a controlled escape. But you can't do both. Once the engineer yanks out the damaged device, there's no hyperjumping anywhere until he gets the new one installed."

 

So the players have to choose between immediate escape (and at best a delay in their mission, and at worst another life-threatening obstacle) or risking defeat/death in combat, but also still having the possibility of defeating the enemy and reaping the rewards thereof. But the key is: it's one or the other.

 

 

 

 

*But never Champions. They're intimidated by Champions. "Learn Champions, or go to Law School...hmmm."

I'm always hesitant to define players' options in most cases. First is because it starts to feel like a choose your adventure book, which required inflexibility precisely because there is no GM to adjudicate options he or she is given. Second is because some players, given two options, become blind to others, and other players resent it as a form of railroading.

 

If players are fairly new to my game, and are about to do something mind numbingly dumb, I may say, "hey, you just pissed off the crimelord who has much more powerful supers in his employ than you. Are you sure walking in broad daylight the same route you always do is even a safe option at this point?" Otherwise, I try to encourage them to explore options, and sometimes have NPCs to play devil's advocate in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their ideas.

 

The way I see the CID working in the light drive case, they try to escape. The FTL drive does not engage. Suddenly, the character piloting has to do some fast flying, the gunner some fast shooting, but they are buying time for the character who manages the engines to find what is wrong. If the drive is well established, he may normally have sensors that tell which point it fails at, but if, in this case, they have failed(because of damage or that they are new tech, and one of them actually failed it's roll by one, so that the device worked d6 times before failing, for example), then the engineer may choose to find this first, which may be simple enough, or may know, from the CID, that the kind of failure could only happen if a certain part had failed, or if the drive itself was inoperable.

 

The engineer lacks time, so decides to fix the sensor later, and now works to replace the essential part, if he has a replacement, or repair it.

 

The dogfight is still going on, everyone is suddenly counting on the one individual who normally barely gets a roll in for this skill. She is suddenly the center of the action over the combat oriented characters. Maybe repair is out of the question. Then she has to rig it all and take a blind stab in the dark. Without the part, maybe more than just the FTL is down, maybe the guidance is down, too, and with the CID, she knows it, she can see that the downed part has more than one function depending on it. Will she dare to take the fastest route, route power directly to the FTL and take a blind jump? Can her teammates buy her enough time to bring both back online? Or is the drive itself inoperable? Once she does her repairs, only throwing the switch will tell...

 

Or what if the symptom, lack of power to the FTL, could be caused by three components higher up on the CID than that part? Which part? If she has replacements for all parts, she chooses one. FTL still down, the pilot is taking evasive actions and the gunner has done some damage to the nearest ship, but reinforcements have just arrived. She replaces another. FTL still down. The ship takes another hit, guns are taken out. The pilot does a desperate maneuver, manages to wrench the ship out from the most immediate danger, but incoming ships are closing fast. The engineer replaces the final part, hoping that the FTL drives themselves are not out of commission, which would leave only surrender. She calls for the pilot to prepare to jump.

 

OR, what if the FTL and the guidance system only share one common connection on the CID, and both are down. Then the character, the only one other than the GM to have the CID, knows it, and fixes it quickly.

 

Or what if there are four components going to the FTL, and two are shared by the guidance system, and the guidance system is still up, so the player knows it is one of two parts.

 

"Keep evading guys, let's hope this first one does the trick, and don't worry, I know the gun ports just went offline, I'll fix them once we get out of this, assuming we don't materialize in the heart of a star."

 

The gunner looks back. "Did she say star?"

 

With the CID, one decision not only may close others, but may effect more than one other is the part I really like.

 

Burning this contact, will our detective weaken ties to other contacts that are in that CID? And potentially gain others who were not on friendly terms with that one contact?

 

This is the aspect I like most. Each option is predicated by one or more results, and is dependent on one or more conditions. It gives a combat like urgency to non-combat skills. But for general decision making, it might be too unwieldy, so I would be loathe to give players options in most cases, as I don't want to have to make CIDs for every decision, but rather use them to make the skills that we all think would be cool to have, but which tend to be too simplistic in game play to actually add as much fun as combat. Rolling to fix the drive as a simple skill roll lacks the tactile sense of action as the options above, it is one roll, or arbitrarily split into multiple rolls with little rationale the players can wrap their minds around. Here, there are actual decisions to be made beyond "I use my engineering skill to do this."

 

I'm thinking out loud here, mostly, I agree with some of what you say, but as I said, I'm very hesitant to give players lists of options most of the time. I like the chaos players sometimes add to the game.

[TheDarkness]

I'm going to post some examples of my thinking on this, to illustrate why I think this could be used as a very effective tool for game play and campaign design.

 

One of the other advantages I see in using CIDs is that, like Champions, CIDs allow for a great diversity even for what are, in effect, objects with pretty much the same properties. So, two ray guns that both do 6d6 blasts could have entirely different CIDs.

 

One could be simply, a power source, a refraction crystal, and an emitter array, each thing leading from one line to the next.

 

The judge decides that the highest difficulty entry is the refraction crystal. In the prototype, this will be the most likely roll to fail. It will be most difficult for an enemy to obtain and copy. But, since each step is one after the other, and since there are only three parts, the repair process won't be too difficult.

 

However, the raygun, perhaps an early staple of the evil mastermind Kaiser Mayhem, is the same in power (6d6 blast) as those he now gives his henchmen.

 

However, because he does not want anyone to get their hand on the technology for the Mayhen refraction crystal from his original raygun, which he has since used on many darker and more powerful items, and since his henchmen are often expendable, their rayguns are designed with two opposing charged cells, a feedback loop processor that connects the two, and a series of four crystal arrays, all items that are not particularly high difficulty to produce(easy inventor rolls). Because this gun has seven parts compared to Kaiser Mayhem's original three part one, it is much less viable for field repairs, though the parts could be cannibalized for other items, and the technology, if copied, is not as big a threat as if they had access to the parts from his original gun.

 

Same power, entirely different CID, no identical parts.

 

To take our FTL scenario, let's take a ship with essentially the same powers/abilities, with a pilot, a copilot, a gunner, and an engineer, and FTL travel. Only this ship is a living thing. In this case, the 'engineer' is literally a ship's doctor, specializing in alien biology designed for ships. The ship is in danger, as before, the FTL is out. The doctor, using his skill as a doctor, is working on finding and replacing the damaged or diseased tissue, and rooting out the issues preventing the FTL from working. The CIDs could be visually identical to the ones for the previous ship, but the spaces are named things like "telepathic hyperlobe"(guidance system), "flight reflex gate" (FTL), etc, separating the parts with a plasma scalpel and connecting new ones with regenerative grafts. All the earlier scenarios I described could be applied in exactly the same way.

 

Only, in this case, the skill rolls are off of medical skills. An actual engineer would be useless in this scenario.

[TheDarkness]

So now, and this is more of me thinking out loud and running through this for my own game, I want to get back to knowledge skill of a city's criminal underworld. It could also be used this way toward the city's government, police force, whatever knowledge skill, and there is an interesting thing that comes up when I look at this, which I'll get to in a bit.

 

So, the player has a knowledge skill of his city's underworld. Now, in designing the CID for this knowledge skill, we have some entries:

 

Boss Salieri is the last mob boss standing, even in the advent of supers. Not known to have powers, but under his CID there are a number or known supers that work for him. His main source of revenue appears to be drugs, and he is the most powerful of the underworld figures.

 

The Irishman, real name unknown, a brick backed by possible family members, also supers, and a significant number of thugs, deals in muscle and protection rackets.

 

Di Long, AKA The Earth Dragon, AKA The Dog, real name unknown, runs the Chinese tongs. Information on them is scarce, Di Long himself is known to have earth related powers, but because the numbers and disposition of the tong members seems to shift dramatically without warning, this CID has gaps in the info. The tongs' main sources of revenue include human trafficking and heroin.

 

The Outfitters, possible leader: Victoria Iblis, no known powers. No other members known. The Outfitters deal in powered items, generally mid range, always requiring support and repair over time, and they deal with all the above groups.

 

So the CID would have entries that range from "heroin", "bricks", "Di Long", "Boss Salieri", etc, with lines showing connections.

 

However, some entries will be blank. They are unknowns, except that they are known to exist. For example, while Boss Salieri has three supers that will be well known, there will be an empty entry that connects to previously known members of the other groups with the exception of The Outfitters, said members having previously disappeared, some supers, some supers with significant power that it is not likely Salieri's known supers could have taken out without signs of a major fight. Yet all opposed Salieri at the times of their disappearances.

 

There will be blanks for Di Long's gang and for The Outfitters.

 

These blanks will naturally be of interest to players. They will be aware, from early on, that to mess with Boss Salieri too openly would mean possibly facing a super that can defeat highly powered supers without even leaving a sign.

 

Players will naturally want to fill in these blanks, and so they will have avenues in which they can take initiative, saying, "Hey, we really want to scope out Boss Salieri, can we do a game of that sometime?"

 

This is the point I noted before. Sometimes, it seems to me that the blank spots in the CIDs can be almost more useful than what is known.

 

Now a bit more on that, and how that can play out. I'll go back to the gadgeteering angle for my next thought.

[TheDarkness]

On the game play angle of missing info in CIDs(forgive the length, and the typos):

 

Our heroes, the Known Unknowns, receive an anonymous tip as to the location of one of Kaiser Mayhem's hidden bases, and the information, which they deem reliable, includes the fact that the villain and criminal mastermind is known to be at the base. The heroes mount an assault and appear to catch the villain's forces by surprise. Kaiser Mayhem retreats deep into the base, closely pursued by the characters, into a chamber containing an open teleportation gate. They follow the Teutonic terror through the portal a scant ten minutes after Kaiser himself passed through.

 

After they pass through, they find themselves inside the walls of another fortress in the bitter cold of Northeastern Russia. Too late, they realize they have been tricked. They are in the fortress home of the Siberian Legion, a veritable army of Russian super villains led by the supers known in the West as Aegis and Katherine the Great.

 

The heroes are not immediately spotted. Knowing that the Legion holds a special hate for the Kaiser, they realize there must be some plot at work here.

 

Too soon, a group of Legion members spot them, and the fight is on. As more Legionnaires pour out of the fort, the groups short range teleporter moves them inside the massive compounds main buildings. The heroes gadgeteer, Tesla X, is able to use his sensors to track Kaiser Mayhem's position due to the unusual readings given off by the villain's infamous powered armor.

 

They move to follow, periodically fending off attacks from members of the Siberian Legion that manage to find them before they can teleport further.

 

Suddenly, the Tesla X's sensors cease to pick up any trace of Kaiser Mayhem.

 

The Known Unknowns are now in a long, wide hall, with a set of massive iron doors ahead of them, behind which is the last known location of Kaiser Mayhem, and behind them, the quickly massing numbers of the Siberian Legion, including Katherine and Aegis. With no escape route, the group moves forward before Aegis can get in range and trap them in his powerful force shields.

 

Reaching the iron doors, Slag, the Known Unknown's resident ferrokinetic, forms an opening through the doors and then seals it behind them, forming the pair of doors into one great iron wall.

 

They find themselves in a large, round room, with a platform in the middle, surrounded by machinery. Smoke rises from one side of the machinery.

 

Tesla X and the group's leader, Valence the Unbound, step closer to the machinery.

 

"No." Valence shakes his head.

 

"What?" Slag asks.

 

"It's a teleporter of some sort. There's only one reason they would bury it this deep."

 

Aegis' power source.

 

The group had become aware that Aegis' power seemed to be drastically different at times, sometimes strong enough to stop even the most powerful of heroes, sometimes barely enough to stop an ordinary man. Valence had developed a theory, based on information provided by a number of different former foes of the Russian, that Aegis' power required a power source to charge up. Under ordinary circumstances, his shields were impressive, but at his most powerful, his shields utilized far more power than the Russian could find under ordinary circumstances.

 

Valence had done the math, and the required power was beyond anything he had seen before.

 

"Mayhem figured it out. He's after the source."

 

Three times, the room was filled with a great booming sound from something massive striking the iron wall. the stone around the wall shook dust free with each shake.

 

"Katherine's knocking," Slag commented, looking at Tesla X and Valence.

 

Tesla gestured at the smoking machine, sabotaged by Kaiser Mayhem after teleporting himself wherever the gate led.

 

"Only one way forward, unless we want to let him have the source."

 

Valence nodded, and the two began examining the damage.

 

"All right Known Unknowns," Slag spoke up for the nine members not attending to the teleporter to hear, "We hold them at the door until the bookworms get that thing going, no matter how long. Form in three groups. Group two, once that wall gives, use constant teleports behind their position and back to harry them. Groups one and two, force Aegis to shield his people, we do not want him trapping us."

 

Under the next onslaught from Katherine the Great, the iron wall began to bend and crack, and great chunks of rock broke free all around it.

 

 

 

So here, we have a gadget invented by someone else, with one part of it sabotaged. The characters have, in effect, an SID with lines connecting boxes, but those boxes have no descriptions, they are unknown blanks. Valence the Unbound and Tesla X must work together to 1) Using their scientific skills, determine what the components are, especially the destroyed or damaged component, 2) Figure out if the damaged component can be fixed, and if not, 3) Rig a replacement(possibly using Slag to shape it on the fly), and, if there is time, 4) See if they can determine where they will be going when it is fixed, as, if not, the only way to find out where they are will be finding and getting that information out of Kaiser Mayhem...

[sinanju]

I'm always hesitant to define players' options in most cases. First is because it starts to feel like a choose your adventure book, which required inflexibility precisely because there is no GM to adjudicate options he or she is given. Second is because some players, given two options, become blind to others, and other players resent it as a form of railroading.

 

It doesn't have be railroading. You can let the players consider their options and come up with alternatives. Then, as GM, you assess the alternatives and present them with the drawbacks and advantages (as their characters understand them) of each. But, again, the key point is that it's a CHOICE. There is no option to try A then resort to B when A fails. Once you choose option A, option B is no longer viable. At best, you can abandon A and go with Option C, which will be considerably harder and riskier than B would have been.

 

That's how you give players a real sense that their decisions matter. They choose a course of action knowing that if they try it and fail, any other option will be more difficult and uncertain and dangerous. So they have to really consider whether to try (for instance) the safer, less rewarding option or go for the big risk/big reward choice...with the understanding that it may well fail, leaving them worse off than if they hadn't tried it.

[TheDarkness]

It doesn't have be railroading. You can let the players consider their options and come up with alternatives. Then, as GM, you assess the alternatives and present them with the drawbacks and advantages (as their characters understand them) of each. But, again, the key point is that it's a CHOICE. There is no option to try A then resort to B when A fails. Once you choose option A, option B is no longer viable. At best, you can abandon A and go with Option C, which will be considerably harder and riskier than B would have been.

 

That's how you give players a real sense that their decisions matter. They choose a course of action knowing that if they try it and fail, any other option will be more difficult and uncertain and dangerous. So they have to really consider whether to try (for instance) the safer, less rewarding option or go for the big risk/big reward choice...with the understanding that it may well fail, leaving them worse off than if they hadn't tried it.

I especially agree with the emphasis on options closing due to choices made.

 

I tend to take a slower route to the same end goal. by starting the game with simpler scenarios in which repercussions are not necessarily too dire, the players can experience the repercussions first hand, and later, when the stakes are higher, remember what happened before and make decisions based on that knowledge. Thus, I often never have to make the suggestions, because, in earlier scenario, I've let them see what sort of thing happens.

 

So, when the game has repercussions (as opposed to endless catering to infantile wish fulfillment, in which the only goal is a high powered game unbalanced in favor of the heroes, and during which, because there is not real chance of repercussions, the dynamic energy of the game is, at best, muted), I place a value on giving the players time to become accustomed to this, the players then naturally begin to account for them, and soon anticipate them, solve them, or make choices knowing other choices are closed off, and I hopefully can watch and enjoy(or curse if I totally left an important villain in a position that is bad, and the heroes realized it before me).

 

I am super cautious about telling people their courses of action, because I really think it does blind many people to other options. I think that, if they are in the habit of looking for options, they will often find the most likely options that are there, including ones I never saw.

 

 

As an example, albeit a very literal one, I am working on a scenario (Dark Champions)in which a lone individual, trained in the Katori tradition of Japanese swordsmanship, is being trained for a mission. It will be his first mission, and will involve infiltrating a building and rescuing an individual.

 

The scenario before this one, his superiors in the ryu will have set up an alley and building similar to the target one, and used their people and allies within the city to make sure no unfriendly eyes come upon the scene.

 

The masked avenger, in the previous scenario to that, will have been training with armor on against his instructors and classmates in single combat and multiple attacker scenarios using boken(wooden swords) and not using full strength.

 

However, to give an idea of how combat plays out, the character will be using 1d6 non-killing for their attack, but reading the dice simultaneously as though they were killing, the actual sword damage. Thus, the player gets to track when, in an actual combat, they would have been unconscious or dead, while still continuing the drill. This especially comes into play in the multiple attacker scenario.

 

Now, in scenario two, the alley is sealed off, and the player is doing the simulation of the actual mission. Tries one approach, fails. Tries another, succeeds with mixed success. Tries a third, similar to the second, fails. Changes approaches, succeeds. Repeat, again succeeds. Losses involve being seen trying to scale all the way to the fifth floor, or to the third floor(50% success rate, let's say), usually able to make it to the second floor before those on the street spot him and he is forced to enter through a second floor window, in those scenarios he sometimes makes it past the guards in the hall. The player decides to drop his armor, climbs to the second floor, leaves his sword in an empty room in the second floor, climbs back down, goes in through the front door, asks for a girl, follows her up to the second floor, pulls her into the room with his sword, restrains her, takes his sword, and goes up to the fifth floor. This route succeeds pretty well.

 

The next scenario, he is instructed to go to the brothel at the bottom of the actual building. He is instructed to ask for a young redhead, and to pick one out who will be wearing a blue dress and have her hair braided to the left. He is not given a weapon or armor, and is told that the young woman is also to be extracted from the building on his exit. The hero is a bit concerned to be walking in through the front door, unarmed.

 

When he does reach the room of the mysterious red headed girl, she then leads him up a stairwell to the third floor and to a service closet, His sword and armor is hidden behind some large boxes.

 

He is in the building, with a mole, already at a point in which he was losing in many of the drills, and his enemies do not know he is there.

 

He begins to don his armor.

[TheDarkness]

Notes for a CID for KS:Supers in my superheroic campaign. (The underworld in the above CID was also for this world, the katana wielding masked avenger example was for my Dark Champions campaign, just to keep things straight)

 

The Bloc: Officially sanctioned heroes. Headquarters around the world, U.S. headquarters in Arizona at a combination compound/prison for supers. Largest supers group. In U.S., includes numerous strike teams, such as Dali(a mentallist and brother of the leader of the Bloc), The Spartan(a highly skilled normal armed with a special shield, spear, helmet, and gladius, full powers unknown), and Sunrise(a brick, full powers and background unknown) in the Northern States Region. Finds unlicensed supers and either sanctions, or imprisons them.

 

The Wardens, part of The Bloc, rotating roster that mans The Pen, a prison for supers. Information on The Pen limited, opened two years prior. roster of The Wardens changes on a shifting schedule to disrupt ability to develop escape plans.

 

Kaiser Mayhem, scientific genius, criminal mastermind, real identity unknown, first appeared in Berlin in an attempt to abduct scientist Freidrich Gurt(see The Unfortunate Prisoner), attempt foiled by German supers. At the time, had high energy weapons and shield generators. Subsequent appearances have him in various incarnations of his Mayhem Armour, modular powered armor that enables him to project energy, shields, apparent immunity to mental attacks, and is designed with numerous redundancies that allow him to redesign the suit on the fly to mimic powers and technologies he faces in the field. He has consistently avoided capture, and has occupied numerous bases over the subsequent five years to his first appearance. Although able to take on most heroes in single combat, tends to create diversions and stealthily pursue his goals. Utilizes both powered and unpowered allies and henchmen at will. Hunted by The Known Unknowns, The Bloc, and The Siberian Legion.

 

The Outfitters, an American group, only one known contact, see Underworld: The Outfitters CID notes for info.

 

The Siberian Legion, originally incarcerated Russian super villains kept in a mass facility in Siberia who succeeded in taking over the prison and claiming it and the surrounding two hundred miles as their base. Fiercely loyal to their leaders, Aegis and Katherine the Great for freeing them. Generally isolationist, brutally puts down incursions into their territory. Aegis is able to create force projections of staggering power, Katherine the Great is a brick with powers of density increase and growth. The two are considered implacable foes by their enemies, so much so that The Bloc has declared their territory, The Siberian Void(so named after a warning from Katherine) a no-fly zone for all normals and supers. There is some evidence that, in the last years, some supers seeking to escape bloc-controlled regions are attempting to join the Legion.

 

The Avatar, Hindu-American hero, powers too numerous to mention, famous for her strength, flight, and resistance to most attacks. The Avatar and her followers turned villain in The Conflagration of Hudson Bay; in the ensuing fight, The Avatar died in combat with The Bloc, her followers either joined The Bloc or were imprisoned.

 

The African Nations- high technology, no-fly zone. The Dark Wall, a complex system of missiles, shields, high energy weapons, and power draining technologies secretly put in place from 2004-5 by the scientific genius Msimangu and two twin matter shapers(real identities unknown), prevents or punishes all unauthorized attempts into the continent. The African Nations are ruled by The Powers Consul, a collection of the supers in the continent. The interior, under the continued development of Msimangu and his allies, is now alternating pockets of pristine natural land and future tech African City States. Supers in The African Nations are thought to be most numerous in the tribes living in the pristine pockets, with notable presence in the African City States, though a large number in both areas work together in a well organized mutual support system facilitated by those with long range sensory and teleport abilities in order to maintain peace and stability in the region.

 

The RMCR- the renmin chaoren or 'the people's super heroes', the RMCR is the official hero organization of the PRC in China. Nearly equal in size to the worldwide Bloc, they are organized into various Provincial Teams, Autonomous Region Teams, and the Beijing Team. As per the Bloc-Sino Compromise of 2010, they represent The Bloc in China, while maintaining near autonomy from the rest of The Bloc worldwide. They are led by the Standing Committee, with each individual team led by a three person committee comprised of a party representative, a representative from the local government, and one non-combat super with abilities that can assist in strategy, organization, and/or political awareness.

 

Nezha's Immortals- China's largest unregistered hero group. Led by Nezha, Li JIngjing, a woman from Guilin with powers between a brick and a long range teleporter, the Immortals are considered criminals by the central government, but it is a publicly known 'secret' that the central provinces and some other regions are more than tolerant of their actions. Nezha is the group's only member whose identity is known. All the Immortals wear full face masks, and there is strong reason to believe that some members of The RMCR are also members of Nezha's Immortals. They are currently believed to be residing in Henan.

 

The Known Unknowns- a popular unregistered hero group centered alternately in Southern Canada or the Northern half of the U.S. Led by Valence, the Unbound, a hero able to absorb and emit radiation in all forms, while the leader in the field is Slag, Adam Prost, a ferrokinetic and former Canadian sniper. The group is officially considered criminals, but nearly half of the U.S. populace and a clear seventy percent of the Canadian populace approves of their actions. They have twice thwarted Kaiser Mayhem's attempts to abduct The Unfortunate Prisoner, and actively pursue the German criminal, being present during seven of the last ten confrontations with him, compared to The Bloc's two times. The latter of these two times, in which Bloc members focused on trying to capture both the Known Unknowns and Kaiser Mayhem led to a PR loss for The Bloc and the escape of Kaiser Mayhem with important technology found at the site of The Conflagration of Hudson Bay. Their membership usually stands between eight to fifteen members. Their current gadgetteer is known as Tesla X, full abilities and technology unknown.

 

The Unfortunate Prisoner- Freidrich Gurt, considered one of the greatest theoretical physicists alive. Targeted for capture nine times by Kaiser Mayhem, as well as several other supers, Gurt approached the Bloc to establish a special cell in The Pen. The cell, which was designed by Gurt with some input in planning by a number of other super geniuses, has thus far proven impenetrable, and is likewise thought to be inescapable. In the three years he has resided in this cell, there has been no single attempt to abduct him that lead beyond the first layer of defenses. Gurt himself coined the term 'the unfortunate prisoner' in a famous web interview. On occasion, Gurt has left the cell in order to act as a consultant to various groups, and, in that capacity, has made visits to the major bases of the worldwide Bloc, the Beijing base of the RMCR, and has even, under the protest of the Bloc, consulted with the Known Unknowns at one of their own hidden bases. According to international law, Gurt is in the class of expert or super considered highly sensitive, and so no mentalist is allowed in his presence, as are Msimangu, all Wardens, key leaders within the Bloc, and various leaders of industry and state.

[TheDarkness]

This thread is quickly turning into notes for my campaign using notes for CID's as the focus, so I'll put a note toward that end in the first post, hope no one minds.

 

As I actually put together the actual CID charts, I'll post them so people can see what I'm doing, in case they're useful to anyone else.

[Ninja-Bear]

I've seen something like this for a hyperdrive in a sci-fi game. I think that it is a useful tool.

[TheDarkness]

I've seen something like this for a hyperdrive in a sci-fi game. I think that it is a useful tool.

What I'm finding, for me, is that for gadgets, it opens up a lot of in-game opportunities and suspense for gadgeteers, and for knowledge skills, it not only might give the people with the skills a real sense of knowing more, but forces me to flesh out the world in a way that draws out connections between people I might not have thought of otherwise.

[Ninja-Bear]

What I'm finding, for me, is that for gadgets, it opens up a lot of in-game opportunities and suspense for gadgeteers, and for knowledge skills, it not only might give the people with the skills a real sense of knowing more, but forces me to flesh out the world in a way that draws out connections between people I might not have thought of otherwise.

That to me is the main point. If something helps you and pkayers enjoy the game then almeans use it! : )

[Christopher]

[NOTE: This thread has quickly turned into me discussing how I'm using Causal Influence Diagrams for my campaign, so feel free to look, I hope you find the ideas useful!]

 

In regards to causal influence diagrams, this came from another thread(which I can't now find), here is a link to the article about them in gaming:

 

http://www.projectrho.com/rpg/cidiagram.html

Could have been this old thread of mine, point 5:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/87378-translating-characters-from-fiction-and-the-secret-of-having-fun-in-roleplaying/?do=findComment&comment=2312223

But I never formulated it as well as you did, especially not with real life examples.

 

It doesn't have be railroading. You can let the players consider their options and come up with alternatives. Then, as GM, you assess the alternatives and present them with the drawbacks and advantages (as their characters understand them) of each. But, again, the key point is that it's a CHOICE. There is no option to try A then resort to B when A fails. Once you choose option A, option B is no longer viable. At best, you can abandon A and go with Option C, which will be considerably harder and riskier than B would have been.

 

That's how you give players a real sense that their decisions matter. They choose a course of action knowing that if they try it and fail, any other option will be more difficult and uncertain and dangerous. So they have to really consider whether to try (for instance) the safer, less rewarding option or go for the big risk/big reward choice...with the understanding that it may well fail, leaving them worse off than if they hadn't tried it.

Choice is the important part and what seperates this from Railroading.

A Railroad leads from A, via B, C, D to E.

A CID instead would have A branch out into 2-3 options (instead of and three options for C and D as well. E in turn will change (slightly to heavily) based on wich path was choosen. The big issue here is - there will be a lot of unchoosen paths. So you end up developing ideas that may never actually see the light of day.

 

I often find the unlimited choices overwhelming. It can be nice to have a few options to choose from, knowing that the choice will mater end. More then having unlimited choices, with no or no clear effect on what will happen.

Having written that, it does strike me as an issue of Hero Character design. Indeed it is very common to use certain guidelines when developing a character: You make a Gadgeteer, Blaster, Brick, Mentalist, Mage, ...

The character class or archetype is the very first step in the CID that is Roleplaying. Even if that step is just choosing a premade Character from a set of Demo Characters*

 

 

*Note: Always have more Demo Characters then intended players. That means there will always be at least some choice and you might have room for one more player.

[Ninja-Bear]

Chrostopher I agree with your definition of railroading.

[TheDarkness]

Could have been this old thread of mine, point 5:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/87378-translating-characters-from-fiction-and-the-secret-of-having-fun-in-roleplaying/?do=findComment&comment=2312223

But I never formulated it as well as you did, especially not with real life examples.

 

Choice is the important part and what seperates this from Railroading.

A Railroad leads from A, via B, C, D to E.

A CID instead would have A branch out into 2-3 options (instead of and three options for C and D as well. E in turn will change (slightly to heavily) based on wich path was choosen. The big issue here is - there will be a lot of unchoosen paths. So you end up developing ideas that may never actually see the light of day.

 

I often find the unlimited choices overwhelming. It can be nice to have a few options to choose from, knowing that the choice will mater end. More then having unlimited choices, with no or no clear effect on what will happen.

Having written that, it does strike me as an issue of Hero Character design. Indeed it is very common to use certain guidelines when developing a character: You make a Gadgeteer, Blaster, Brick, Mentalist, Mage, ...

The character class or archetype is the very first step in the CID that is Roleplaying. Even if that step is just choosing a premade Character from a set of Demo Characters*

 

 

*Note: Always have more Demo Characters then intended players. That means there will always be at least some choice and you might have room for one more player.

Totally agree on the railroading thing. I also think as the players realize just how far the GM is willing to go to let their decisions count, especially the good ones that they know totally mess up the GM's plans, they will occasionally be quite willing to oblige the occasional direction from the GM that leads to an interesting place while not sacrificing the players conceptions of their characters.

 

As for the difficulty of CID complexity, I think you are spot on there. It is a nice tool to flesh out a number of elements, and can give the gm who values being able to deal with unseen circumstances without railroading an added tool that gives them flexibility and gives the world depth, even if all the elements don't come into play. It definitely requires more front end work, but I feel it will save work after by making consequences and options much clearer for all. And it doesn't pigeonhole the players or the GM into preconceptions, but gives a format for individualization of lots of aspects.

 

And yes, that was the thread I found it in, definitely a good find for me, I really needed a tool like this.

 

Right now, I'm thinking it may have good applications for complications. What does the CID of a dependent look like? The rare substance that can hurt the flying brick probably doesn't come from only one source or location, or maybe it does, where does it come from, how is it obtained, how is it synthesized?

 

My latest thinking on the earlier CID examples, especially the KS: Area underworld(or supers, whatever) is that there will be times where the GM isn't even filling in the added spaces, the player with the skill and the CID is adding in details and links in the chains, for example, after realizing that this contact is stuck working for someone who is a contact for an underworld boss, they must take into account that their own contact may be receiving bad information where it relates to that boss. As the player learns this, they can simply add it on. As GM, I could see it as necessary to occasionally check the the CID charts players have for their skills, as they might end up having more info on them than the GM personally remembers. Or natural errors and assumptions that could spark ideas for future scenarios or subplots.

[Vondy]

I listen to a lot of RPPR (Role-Playing Public Radio), a podcast of a group playing a variety of games*. One of the things I've noticed (and they've commented on it in the non-role-playing podcasts as well) is that the GM almost always gives the players a choice of actions in a given situation. I mean, explicitly. And they're mutually exclusive, each with benefits and drawbacks, so that if you try one the other option is off the table. You can't try one, then fall back on the other.

 

 

That's true. But, as a gamer who has been railroaded into being the designated game-master for 20+ years now, I will say that a lot of players don't advance their own agendas or ideas. I strongly prefer players, and groups, that are willing to ask questions, insert their own presumed details, or make assertions about how a scenario will play out. I also like characters that have agendas that inform future plots. Those games are more dynamic, there is more give and take, and we're actually collaborating as I push the plot forward (though, sometimes they are pushing the plot forward with the impression that I'm some kind of super-genius mastermind who foresaw their perfect game. Ha!). With may players, especially inexperienced ones, you lay out an open-ended situation, or a scenario with multiple possible avenues to pursue, and they don't do anything. You end up having to prompt them with potential courses of action. When I do this, I'm 100% open to their proposing a completely different solution than the quick ideas I threw out, but they usually just go with "multiple choice." While some game-masters are rail-road engineers, often the situation you describe is created by the players.

[TheDarkness]

That's true. But, as a gamer who has been railroaded into being the designated game-master for 20+ years now, I will say that a lot of players don't advance their own agendas or ideas. I strongly prefer players, and groups, that are willing to ask questions, insert their own presumed details, or make assertions about how a scenario will play out. I also like characters that have agendas that inform future plots. Those games are more dynamic, there is more give and take, and we're actually collaborating as I push the plot forward (though, sometimes they are pushing the plot forward with the impression that I'm some kind of super-genius mastermind who foresaw their perfect game. Ha!). With may players, especially inexperienced ones, you lay out an open-ended situation, or a scenario with multiple possible avenues to pursue, and they don't do anything. You end up having to prompt them with potential courses of action. When I do this, I'm 100% open to their proposing a completely different solution than the quick ideas I threw out, but they usually just go with "multiple choice." While some game-masters are rail-road engineers, often the situation you describe is created by the players.

No, you must be mistaken. Players never create problems. You know this by the way they say "I'm roleplaying my character," just after doing something that their complications just don't explain.

 

It would be interesting to actually remake the character they think they made for them. The thief who steals from the group, but only when in a room with good lighting and lots of mirrors while other characters are actually able to see him from every angle is really just a kleptomaniac who can backstab. The overconfident character who simply charges into battle even when there is no chance is clearly suicidal. The character who always has to wander off, obviously they are actually autistic. I'm sorry, you cannot fight this round. You are not wearing your Tuesday shirt. It is bothering you too much to even consider fighting. You must find your Tuesday shirt.

[sinanju]

As for the difficulty of CID complexity, I think you are spot on there. It is a nice tool to flesh out a number of elements, and can give the gm who values being able to deal with unseen circumstances without railroading an added tool that gives them flexibility and gives the world depth, even if all the elements don't come into play. It definitely requires more front end work, but I feel it will save work after by making consequences and options much clearer for all. And it doesn't pigeonhole the players or the GM into preconceptions, but gives a format for individualization of lots of aspects.

 

An alternative to a complete causal influence diagram that is less work (and which I've used) is plotting in the Who-What-When-Where-How-Why style. When I did that, I always included a paragraph or two for myself about how the villains' plans would go in the absence of interference, and how he/they would respond to interference.

 

For instance: 

 

Who: Damien

What: Making People Vulnerable to Possession By His Dark God

When: It started three weeks ago, with the opening of...

Where: Damien's Deep Pit BBQ

How: By feeding people "soylent" BBQ (bbq with human flesh in it)

Why: His dark god can invade the dreams of those who eat human flesh, even unknowingly; from there, dark god can influence them to crave more (though they don't know its origin). Once a person has voluntarily consumed it, he can completely possess them, even using them as vessels in combat. When enough people (and especially enough people in positions of power) are under the demon's sway, he will control the city and his cult will open the door to his return to the mortal realm...

 

If opposed, Damien will play the victim, calling for help from the police and the authorities (especially individual cops, media folk or politicians who are under his control, or at least his influence). If that fails, he'll send people (simple hired thugs, then agents) to bribe or threaten potential troublemakers, or beat them, or (finally) to kill them. (Bodies get "recycled" as a two-fer.) In the last ditch, the dark god/demon itself will send agents to attack his enemies, and will jump from cultist to cultist using its powers to destroy the enemy. If routed, the demon will send as many agents as possible fleeing the city for distant parts, to go to ground and start the cycle over again elsewhere.

 

It's not a full causal diagram, but it gives me plenty of options for how the bad guys will react to whatever the players end up doing. (And if they end up doing nothing, the plot succeeds and I work on the next plot, where the bad guys are preparing to open a portal to hell....)

[TheDarkness]

I totally see what you're saying. At this stage, and for the same reasons, I'm using CIDs more for world building than for plot. For plot, there are so many variables, a CID would be unwieldy, but the existing CIDs can help, by way of knowing, well doing this would suddenly involve this other person, who players may or may not want to get involved in what's going on.

 

It also works well for the game I'm getting ready to run. The characters are in a city that, if you are aware of the ins and outs of the city, you have an advantage over outsiders who may not know the balance of power and 'gentlemen's agreements' in place between the major players to maintain that balance of power.

 

However, it is also a city fiercely proud of their incredibly spicy, but still wonderfully flavorful barbecue. Meatphistopholes would do best to stay away! If he doesn't want to end up burnt ends...