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.

[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?

Going back a bit, but the idea that Superman needing to be able to deal with not being able to save someone because doctors do it totally misses that fact that doctors face a huge hurdle in this regard, many throughout their careers. There is a reason doctors have a reputation among nurses for being inhuman: to deal with the stresses, many people leave the profession, and detachment is often an advantage to the job, but a disadvantage personally among doctors.

And in the seventies, we were already commenting on the ridiculousness of Superman's disguise. It was never believable, only when the comics fans reached adulthood and represented a fair share of the market did it become an issue, but that was decades ago. One can suspend disbelief for heat vision, because one has no frame of reference, but glasses and not having a spit curl is not cutting the mustard.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that, like any scenario, a capture one still needs to be fun and interesting.

As for the railroad thing, railroading can go both ways. Players can and do railroad, often to the chagrin of the GM and other players.
 

This is why I see a capture scenario as best used more often a result of former actions than as a result of an idea the GM had.

Although this has got me thinking about making a hero group who are actually prisoners. Maybe former villains. Every scenario begins with them being given a mission and ends with them returning to jail.

It seems there's a few key points:

 

1) Players hate having the GM virtually "run their characters".

2) Capture should be because of player actions, either because the players agree that an "escape scenario" would be fun, or the PCs were "legally" overwhelmed and captured.

3) By "legally", I mean, if a horde of ninja come out of the trees and capture the PCs, there should be a reasonable reason for a horde of ninja to be there, a reasonable chance for the players to realize they're Entering Ninja Horde Territory, a reasonable reason for the ninja to want to capture the PCs, the PCs should be captured through game mechanics, not the GM saying they're captured, and the reasonable expectation that the PCs will soon be able to take action, either to facillitate their escape or enact useful plans inside the prison.

4) Players should have some opportunity to turn the tables on their captor(s).

5) Players want to know that their GM will provide this.

6) Players do not want this to be a frequent occurance; at the least, it's cliche, at the worst, it's bad GM'ing.

 

That about sum it up?

I think so!

I'm getting ready to run a Gamma World campaign (as a break from our normal Champions campaign) and am also doing numbers 1 and 2 above.  It's a lethal world.  Period. 

 

I have also specified beginning everyman skills and characteristic maxima. 

 

I personally like where you're headed with it but, like anything else, it's all about the implementation.

I hadn't thought about the everyman thing, I will definitely give that some thought!

FYI:  Vehicles' STR and Movement powers cost no END in both CC and 6E.

 

And 61 - 12  = 49, not 53.

 

Also, a vehicle comes with 12m Ground Movement and 4m Swimming for free; you can shave off another 2 points by buying off the Swimming.  (A submarine would presumably buy back the Ground Movement.)

 

I actually come out under their 133 points, if applying the -1/2 Limitation on the 4 DEF.

 

 

Name             Size       OCV+    Mass (KB)    STR    DEF     BODY     DEX     OCV    DCV     SPD     Move     MAX      Cost

Motorcycle 2.5x1x1m     +0        200kg (-1)    20        4         11          20          7          7          3      56m x4    672m    133/27

 

So, Size (5 pts), STR (5 pts), DEF (2 pts), DEX (20 pts), OCV (20 pts), DCV (20 pts), SPD (10 pts) Move (49 pts - 2 pts) = 129 pts.  Leaves 4 points for a headlight.

 

Or, if you don't put the Limitation on the 4 DEF, you get Size (5 pts), STR (5 pts), DEF (6 pts), DEX (20 pts), OCV (20 pts), DCV (20 pts), SPD (10 pts) Move (49 pts - 2 pts) = 133pts.

FYI:  Vehicles' STR and Movement powers cost no END in both CC and 6E.

 

And 61 - 12  = 49, not 53.

 

Also, a vehicle comes with 12m Ground Movement and 4m Swimming for free; you can shave off another 2 points by buying off the Swimming.  (A submarine would presumably buy back the Ground Movement.)

 

I actually come out under their 133 points, if applying the -1/2 Limitation on the 4 DEF.

 

 

Name             Size       OCV+    Mass (KB)    STR    DEF     BODY     DEX     OCV    DCV     SPD     Move     MAX      Cost

Motorcycle 2.5x1x1m     +0        200kg (-1)    20        4         11          20          7          7          3      56m x4    672m    133/27

 

So, Size (5 pts), STR (5 pts), DEF (2 pts), DEX (20 pts), OCV (20 pts), DCV (20 pts), SPD (10 pts) Move (49 pts - 2 pts) = 129 pts.  Leaves 4 points for a headlight.

 

Or, if you don't put the Limitation on the 4 DEF, you get Size (5 pts), STR (5 pts), DEF (6 pts), DEX (20 pts), OCV (20 pts), DCV (20 pts), SPD (10 pts) Move (49 pts - 2 pts) = 133pts.

Thanks! I'll try this myself and see what totals I come out with. just to make sure I'm following, though, as you point out, I might want to double check my math!

I admit I have got an irrational aversion to having my character get captured. And yes, it is irrational; I haven't figured out why it's there, but it certainly is there.

 

I reach for character suicide always when capture is about to happen. I need to told, out of character, that's needed to the plot, and the character when freed will be unaltered (no mind control worms put in the ear, no tracker/tracer implants, no secret mind-override conditioning, nothing). Because I have a difficult time understanding why a villain wouldn't kill outright rather than capture ... it's a trope that has never made sense to me. About the only reason I perceive for a villain to perform a capture rather than immediate killing is to manipulate the hero, or those who love him, into doing something for the villain that the villain could not accomplish another way (which, to use other words, is coercing someone on the "good" side into doing called "treason").

 

Probably if I played with a GM who made that happen more than once I'd just stop showing up.

Like all things, I think capturing heroes must make sense for the goals and, perhaps most importantly, for the character of the villains.

I think there are some villains whose character suggests that they would more likely try to kill, not capture the heroes.

As for hidden controls, the rules of the game tend to make it so such long term controls cannot be relied upon, so, in game, the clever villain would not rely upon such an easily alterable plan. If the other characters know they were captured and something done to them, it is exceedingly difficult to put something in place that the other characters cannot undue, like the gadgeteer in the group finding and disabling the chip controlling them.

Likewise, the clever villain will, after one attempt, learn the difficulty of trying to keep supers captive. So captivity is likely one step in a larger plan, possibly merely to keep the heroes out of the way for a brief time. Or, the villain may use proxies to capture and hold the heroes, like fooling the public into seeing them as an enemy and seek to capture them. This latter opens interesting role play opportunities, as the period in which the heroes are being hunted by the public requires them to deal with people they do not want to harm, but must elude or otherwise protect from themselves.

Definitely, there must be an in-story logic to why the villain is seeking to capture the characters, and not kill them. Joker loves Batman, cannot handle a world without him. Trask, in the movies, wants mutant DNA. For some villains, it is in irrational need to get the upper hand that leads them to go the unwise course of trying to hold against their will people with unpredictable powers.

Actually, one example of a capture story, though an unusual one, was in a Superman Annual, I believe Alan Moore wrote it. Wonder Woman and Batman go to the Fortress of Solitude to wish Superman a happy birthday, and they find him unconscious with a symbiotic magical plant lifeform attached to him. The issue deals with them trying to detach it while Superman is imagining a life in which Krypton is never destroyed, and he is an ordinary Kryptonian with a family who is restless, unsatisfied with his life. While this might not play out well in a game as is, it is a useful idea. How do you keep captive someone with staggering powers? Don't let him know he's captive. This way, players could be undergoing an action packed, fun game, in which they have no idea they are actually in a cell under the influence of Kaiser Mayhem's Cerebral Obfuscator, but actually think(and play a game in which) they are fighting off the newest group of super villains. In this, the in-game logic could be that the new super villains, in the real world, are actually cutting into Kaiser Mayhem's territory and business, and he wants the super heroes capable of beating them, and thus, he plots to capture and train the heroes. Yes, the heroes are going to hate Kaiser Mayhem even more, and they will hate him twice as much when they more easily beat the new villain group, The Rule of Fives, because they will remember why they know so much about the group.

I think the aversion to capture of some players does not have to always play out as quitting a game because you don't want to be captured, as long as the players know they do not have to wait to get back at Kaiser Mayhem, that they can also make long term plans to find and capture him, which then, as a GM, I can allow to develop into more sessions in which they get to see their plans come to fruition.

Beating a worthless enemy is nowhere near as fun as beating one who can and has beaten you, no question about it.

I also suspect it would help if the players played sessions in which they were doing danger room training of scenarios that included scenarios in which organized retreat was part of the manuever. Genghis Khan won a tremendous number of battles using feigned retreats.

Thinking about it, the character who has been captured and fears he has had implants put in opens interesting role play opportunities. Where will the player go when he fears revealing the position of those he knows? Who does he know with the know how to remove the implants? How can the players help him/her?

As someone who spars a fair amount, the person who needs to win is much easier to deal with than the person who plays the game and likes it, and this is an easy concept to teach in that sphere, where actual blows land. In a role playing game, it is easier. If I reward playing smart, if I give the players opportunities to retreat, regroup, and mount a counteroffensive, then retreat loses it's negative connotations, and smart play becomes fun, because they know that they have a group of minds to look to, and will often surprise me.

And if they've played with me that long, they know I'm not going to make a game just to capture their characters and turn them into giant mutant prawns. Only players who consistently disrupt the game for their own amusement become the Prawn Pawns of the Shellfish Seven.

Working on a pretty gritty campaign, the same players will also be playing a regular super hero campaign, but I will occasionally alternate between the two when I need a break to work on the next part of one.

Now, I know some here don't like too realistic a game, and especially given the time it takes to make characters in Champions, it can be daunting, so here is what I have planned, as I intend to have death being a real possibility:

1. Players start with three characters, playing one at the outset. Characters will be relatively low point, and I have been working on modifying an excel character sheet and excel skills lists so that they can use them to be fairly modular in their character design, just copying and pasting, with the character sheet designed not to allow them to assign a value above the campaign limits.

2. The game values smart play and good role play. So, if you make enemies that your guy really can't cope with, you will probably die, etc. However, I have the stipulation that, for characters played well, and especially and primarily role played well, if they die, they will be guaranteed a) An awesome death, and a continued presence in the story as street level legends, stories everyone from the neighborhood will know, this sort of thing.

3. Some sessions will actually be combat training, essentially combat sessions, for example, in armor with sticks to emulate swords, with the people not using full strength, tests like climb here and take this while avoiding the "guards", who are actually the people training them. Sometimes, the characters will actually be doing a session in training that they will follow with an identical mission in reality.

Anyway, curious people's thoughts on this...

Isn't there a limitation about the defenses not protecting the passengers that could be applied?

That's an idea!

Damn, still puts me over the points they are saying, the defenses amount to 6 points. Maybe it's assuming a charge, instead of reduced endurance. My model, at the final cost, is still within a couple points of the cost they are saying, but the difference concerns me...

I'm in the okay with it camp, though I would lean towards two scenarios where I could see it being most effective:

1) The characters get themselves captured through their own actions.

or

2) A crafty enemy engineers is, and the capture is preceded by a hunt, the hunt may result in their capture. This Elevates the crafty enemy to actually being crafty, makes the players act dynamically, which is more fun for them, and either they evade capture, or they plot to gain their freedom.

Starting a scenario saying "you're captured" is not ideal, for reasons already stated, but either the players trust me to run a good game, or they don't, I won't avoid certain scenarios that I have good reason to believe we can turn into a good session or sessions, so if they get captured on their own, or if there is a compelling and workable plot for their enemy to capture them in game, without raising the question "if he can do it now, why didn't he do it before", then I don't see a problem, as long as I run a good game. Their prison is another place to meet NPCs, raise clues, another environment to prove their heroism, sometimes with the characters who the villain fears least having been underestimated, and capable of being pivotal in freeing the others.

I think one of the factors with games such as D&D, and my info on that is dated, is that experience was heavily tied to loot in addition to combat. When I used to run games, I did not do this, money has it's own rewards and drawbacks, making it equal experience and the new abilities that come with leveling up only rewards pillaging, so I based all experience on actual actions, combat and non-combat, plus role play.

I would suggest that in many super hero campaigns, it is not that there is an implied morality, but that there is an absence of tests of that morality, different gamestyles, different gamers.

I enjoy a balance. Smart play gets good results, good role play gets good results, little else factors into how I reward players. As they get adjusted to the style, the value of earning the reward replaces the idea that this is all about their character at every moment getting what they want. That said, an adjustment period is good, as I'm not one to run a game solely for player's wish fulfillment, but it takes time for them to get a feel for how I am utterly willing to adjust the story to their actions based on those actions making some sort of sense given what their character knows and who their character is. They help write the story, but there are always elements they don't get to control, just as I don't get to control when they have a stellar idea that utterly changes my plans for the game.

Back to the original video, I liked it, nice and simple, contained a lot of the key issues for a supers game.

Most 'street legal' vehicles have Images (headlights, horn), and while I imagine most GM's give those for free, some might not.

 

However, I'm not a vehicles guy, so won't be much help to you.

The problem is, my cost is already higher than the listed cost, and it doesn't include buying zero endurance.

Relates to a question I put up on the 6th edition forum, but is from Champions complete.

I'm preparing to judge a game, and it's been a long time since I played Champions, so I'm doing a lot of prep-work. One of the things I'm working on is vehicle design. To make sure I'm understanding the rules, I'm back engineering a vehicle from the list in the Champions book, specifically a motorcycle.

From p. 216

Name             Size       OCV+    Mass (KB)    STR    DEF     BODY     DEX     OCV    DCV     SPD     Move     MAX      Cost
Motorcycle 2.5x1x1m     +0        200kg (-1)    20        4         11          20          7          7          3      56m x4    672m    133/27

The problem is, I can't get the active cost to work.

Size is 1 according to this page and page 162, size 1 costs 5 points, and gives a base strength of 15, raise STR to twenty is 5 more points, and the size gives the base BODY of 11. To raise DEX from 10 to 20 is 20 points, to raise OCV and DCV from 3 to 7 is 40 points, to raise speed from 2 to 3 is 10 points, to raise PD and ED from 2 to 4 is 6 more points. STAT TOTAL=86

Add 56 meters of running is 56 points, add the extra multiplier to make x4 non-combat movement is 5 points. POWER TOTAL=61

Now, if I assume that the vehicle gets a base running of 12m like a character, this becomes POWER TOTAL=53, but I suspect this is not the case, otherwise every submarine would technically have a 12m run.

This puts the active cost at either 147, or 139, not the 133 the manual lists.

Furthermore, this does not figure in that powers for a vehicle have to be bought to zero endurance or similar things. So the powers cost is likely higher, since the list does not suggest charges.

What the heck am I missing?

Also, just to confuse me further, I decided to compare with the V-Jet on page 215, and for some reason, the V-Jet has 7 OCV and DCV, but paid 30 for each. Since I'm assuming the starting value is still supposed to be 3, at 5 cp for 1 OCV or DCV, it should be 20. But because I can't get my head wrapped around a simple motorcycle, I'm assuming I'm missing something.

I feel like I'm getting closer to understanding, but that just could be the sign of imminent breakdown...

This is from Champions Complete, which I understand to be based on 6th edition, forgive me if I put this in the wrong forum.

On page 216 there is a list of example vehicles.

Using the motorcycle example, it says its MOVE(defined in the legend as its combat movement and noncombat multiple) is 56 meters and x4.

Next, it says its MAX(defined in the legend as its maximum meters per turn at noncombat velocity) is 672 meters.

1. I understood combat movement to be per phase, so here, 56 meters/phase. With twelve phases to a turn, this would equate to 56x12=672 meters, which is its non-combat movement per turn. Shouldn't this be multiplied by x4(the non-combat multiple)?

2. The non-combat multiple under the movement section says non-combat movement is twice the combat movement, but I cannot find anywhere in the book that explains the cost of a higher multiple (such as the x4 for the example motorcycle) for vehicles. How does this work?

I haven't played Champions for thirty years, and am starting two games, one super, one pulp/heroic, and although I could just assign the powers to equipment, I'm trying to do the process the way players might have to for each game so that I am more familiar with the ins and outs of the system, as at least one player will undoubtedly try to game the system, and I love destroying his dreams...