Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

In a recent post I remarked that in judging the elegance of a game “it is important to understand the design differences forced upon a game by its [designer's] choice of scope and granularity.”  Chris Warren has similarly concluded that when he attempts to make his game designs elegant, he’s “actually trying to make the game as un-complex as possible… for the amount… of emergence” that he’s trying to foster.  He defines emergence as being patterns that occur during play “that are not directly defined by the rules of the system.”

Under this measure, Conway’s Game of Life does very well.  Chess has many more than its fair share of openings, combinations, and killer tactics for a game with such few rules.  But interactive fiction’s hardwired emphasis on one-shot puzzles cause it to come up short here.  Computer Role Playing Games might, as a class, fair a bit better if the design is good enough: their model world construction might develop an emergent ecology of sorts in the course of play.  But the Role Playing Games from which the CRPGs originally sprang are an entirely different can of worms.

Role Playing Games seem to be so dominated by the requirements of an adaptive and coherent narrative that most rules tend to get thrown out the window in the heat of the game.  Take Traveller as an example: it didn’t take long for players to realize that excessive space combat lead to a depressing amount of character generation.  Sophisticated modern referees such as Karl Gallagher nearly eschew combat altogether– ultra-violence is reserved for orcs in other settings.  The throws that I require in the course of the game are mostly improvised according to each situation.  In terms of hard and fast rules that actually get used, I’d say that about 90% of them come from the character and world generation.  But those rules are only used to prepare for play.  What gets used during a game is probably only a page or two of charts and core rules.

I wish that modern play-tests for RPGs were more like… well… play-tests.  What usually happens is that the rules get tinkered with, proofread, checked for various flame war inducing factors, and so forth.  You rarely hear about, “when I ran a session with this new rule-set, this is what happened.”  You certainly don’t see transcripts of actual sessions!

I wish there were similar tools for RPG testing like what we have for software development.  I’d like to give a new game to five or ten different groups to play with for a few sessions… and I’d like to not only have a full transcript of the games, but I’d like to have each group’s rulebook automatically highlighted for each rules section that actually got used.  I’d especially like to have sections that were flatly contradicted or house-ruled highlighted in red.  That would give the designers some real information to work with, but I’m not sure that many designers care.  Sometimes I wonder if we’ve really come that far since the seventies.

But back to Warren’s remarks….  How can RPG rules be designed to maximize elegance and emergence?  Are there any good examples of this?  I mostly play the old stuff, so I wonder if I’m missing out on any major improvements….

We got together last night for the second installment of our Spinward Marches: 1111 campaign.  Last time we had travelled from Bowman to Flexos.  The players had helped a Darrian merchant out of a little scrape and so were offered positions helping to crew his far trader.  On Flexos, a small adventure seed spun out of control as the players ventured into the unknown.  Tensions ran high as they were sure they were all going to die for nearly every moment.

Going into the second session, I was perhaps a bit overconfident: things had gone well the first time mainly because I was lucky.  I made several mistakes this time around– or at the very least, several sub-optimal choices.  The overall narrative was forwarded somewhat, I learned a few things, and we did have our moments, so it wasn’t a total loss by any stretch.  A weekly Traveller game session is actually pretty demanding, though.

I have a lot of conflicting goals as a referee.  I want the players to have significant choices and I want the narrative to remain coherent.  I want every stat on the character sheets and world listings to impact the game.  I want failure to have real consequences… and yet I don’t want to ruin an adventure just because of a die roll.  I want to emphasize travel across many star systems as the backdrop, but I also want each world to be individualized and recognizable.  I want to balance all of these factors, but I also want everything to flow naturally with a sense of inevitability.  I want to run a good game, but I want the players to be able to take center stage.

Walston and Datrillion were very similar worlds.  The players had two brief stops on both of them and I even got them mixed up myself during the heat of the game.  I need to have a better cheat sheet next time….  One thing that threw me was that a bit part I had planned for Walston was thrown when the medic failed the roll to revive an NPC from Low Berth.  If Doc had only been Medic-2….

Another thing that hampered the session was that I was using Kenneth Bearden’s T4 task system with CT generated characters.  It was all rigged up for people with skill levels between 2 and 5 or so, I think.  Using it with the CT characters left the 2d6 “Average” task rolls too easy and the 3d6 “Difficult” task rolls too hard.  After a valiant effort, I gradually slipped back into roll-your-attribute-or-less on two dice with healthy modifers based on the situation.  I really have to come up with a better system for the next time.  What I really want is to have several possible outcomes with a single roll and  I want to avoid using multiple die rolls to determine a contest or to figure out how long it takes to accomplish something.

Another thing that seemed to drag was that the players would get to a world and then they wouldn’t really know what to do.  On Walston, my planned adventure seed just didn’t seem to fit the narrative when we got there.  On Datrillion, I felt like I set up the seed too overtly.  On both worlds I wanted to show several of the world details instead of just reciting the facts, but I just didn’t seem to pull this off.

Next time, I want to have some sort of play aid that shows a few options for them when they arrive.  This might be somewhat like the map of the town from Ultima I.  The players can decide to go to the bar, find out about tours, look for odd jobs, etc.  The options should vary from world to world, of course, and I should have some NPC’s or scenes worked out the communicate something of the culture of the world.  I want to try to use the old rumor technique to allow the players to investigate what interests them so that I don’t always have to bonk them over the head with an obvious crisis or cliché.

Let’s see what we can come up with for next time….

HERO fans are now set to get their own official rendition of the classic Traveller sci-fi setting, though the “launch” has left a few fans a bit confused.  The “core book” containing the HERO stats of Traveller equipment, classes, ships, etc. is in fact not out yet, though it may turn up this summer.  The official setting for Traveller HERO will be 1248, so the two core 1248 books are currently being listed as part of the launch even though the books are systemless– but the line will not be restricted to 1248 mileux alone.  The two new items for the launch consist of Michael Taylor’s previously released Golden Age starship books converted to HERO stats with bonus computer files for tinkering with them with existing HERO software.

Unsurprisingly, there is a bit of grousing among the faithful, but I don’t really see this as a troubling issue.  I have no idea how big a following the HERO system has, but it can’t be a bad thing for Avenger Enterprises to have at least one modernized rpg system on their plate– especially now that they can’t do T20 anymore.  As long as Avenger puts out two versions of each of their PDF’s (one with Classic Traveller stats and one with HERO stats) things won’t really change that much.  1248 would have existed with or without HERO, and Avenger’s products have tended towards being fairly system agnostic anyway.

While the announcement of the new launch will trigger much rejoicing only among a small slice of an already small slice of Traveller fans, the celebration sale of 20% off should have at least somewhat broader appeal.  If you’ve been putting off purchasing Golden Age Spinward Marches PDFs, or if you’ve wanted to see what 1248 was all about, now’s your chance to see why so many referees are praising Avenger’s products.  The sale lasts until this Friday, so don’t wait too late!

Devin Parker has posted about getting fed up with GURPS Vehicles in his recent attempt to design a space ship for his GURPS Firefly campaign.  He struggles on with it because he’s “sure that all of this data will be useful down the line,” but I just can’t see it.  Ship combat in science fiction falls into just a handful of archetypes– and most of the ship combat systems don’t come close to addressing them.  As far as your actual campaign is concerned, once you’ve got your deck plan, you’re done.  Everything else is driven by the demands of the narrative.

Think about it.  The dramatic action is always focused on a few key heroes.  If the characters are hopelessly outgunned, straight up tactical ship combat will not be the solution: everything will hinge on a clever trick or deus ex machina.  Characters will feverishly work to buy time as crewmen die and systems explode.  The really tough opponents will require the heroic sacrifice of the “fan favorite”– or at least a new non player-character that was introduced for the purpose.

Ship Combat, like any other in-game crisis, will be tailored to the assets and abilities of the heroes.  Rarely will they face a threat that does not require them to all work together.  Individual failure should be possible, but it should also be possible for the team to compensate in some cases.  In the case of a major failure, there might be still one last opportunity to save the innocent, but the players will pay a heavy price and the campaign will necessitate a new tone and direction.  Survivors should be shown the consequences of their decisions in later adventures and should be given an opportunity to set things right only if they weren’t flagrantly reckless or foolhardy.  Players that achieve a reputation for being complete morons should be forced to choose between a life outside of the primary society or perhaps a spot on a suicide squad instead.

But referees will never simply eliminate a group of players just because of a single lucky roll in a tactical ship combat system.  That’s crazy.  Narratives simply do not work that way.  Oh and the repairs and revenues are the same: The players are always going to be struggling from one job to the next– and even if they make it big, they’ll soon have to use their gains to overcome the next obstacle.  If the players are all big-time agents, then they won’t have to track expenses at all.  Do you think money was ever an issue for James Bond??

Players’ abilities will be the focus in any action.  The ship is generally hardwired into the setting and just determines the tone and style of the events.  The players’ choices and sacrifices will have to matter… and at the same time, the plot will have to be adaptable to a great many outcomes.  This is an art, not a science, and hence these techniques are not amenable to hard and fast tactical rule systems.  This makes the stats and figures in your ship designs largely irrelevant to a real game.

Matt Barton has written up a comprehensive account of the development of Computer Role Playing Games.  Autoduel stands firmly in the Golden Age and is noted there for being one of the first “open ended” games.  The only other game like that at the time would have been Firebird’s Elite, which was a sort of computerized Traveller.  (Thanks to The Vintage Gamer for bringing parts I and II of the series to my attention.)

I saw a demo of Ultima I while in elementary school and was blown away.  I played pirated copies of Ultima II and III until the disks wore out.  When I finally could spend money on these things I was sorely disappointed.  A copy of Amber Star refused to run on my Atari ST… and my version of Temple of Apshai Trilogy would crash randomly.  I got completely stuck very early on in a later “martian” themed Ultima game written for the IBM.  I played a free text game on the ST called Hack compulsively and thought a graphical over the counter version would be even better… but the one I payed money for just plain stunk.

The idea of CRPG’s has always fascinated me, but I’ve honestly never really had that good of an experience with them.

I ran a Traveller game last night set in District 268 in the year 1111.  This gritty no-man’s-land is the perfect locale for pulse pounding pulpy adventure, so I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble getting the players into sticky situations.

We had one new player and one that had played some during the early eighties.  The old timer brought his character with him: an old army guy with lots of combat skills and a useless title.  (He also had original copies of the hardback Traveller Book and some classic Supplements.  Cool!) 

The new guy was forced to roll up a new one from scratch with no idea of the other guy’s skills, which was vaguely amusing: he couldn’t attempt to cover contrasting abilities in order to round out the team!  In rolling up attributes, he rolled a 2 for endurance.  This is one of those cases where getting killed in character generation is a good thing.  He went into the Scout Service and after his second term rolled another 2 for reenlistment.  Heh heh.  No death for you!

I noticed that the original classic Traveller skills are all either combat, vehicle, management, or shipboard-professional.  These do not cover thief/spy/investigation type skills in much resolution.  In practice, and especially given the narrativistic approach I was using, I ended up calling for a lot of “attribute checks” during the game based on off-the-cuff characterizations of a character’s career and background.  Skills only became relevant in a couple of instances– and if I thought a plan was particularly good, or if it was role played well, then I wouldn’t ask for a roll at all.  One technique I noticed emerging was skill rolls being called for even when a task was mostly certain in order to give one character or another the chance to make a decision.  I didn’t have anyone hogging the game or anything, but it seemed to me to effectively break things up and keep things moving.

I opened the game in the Bowman system at a grungy spacer-bar.  Much grungier than the one on your keyboard….  (Sorry.)  We actually had to spend about ten or fifteen minutes covering the core premises of the Traveller setting: jump drive, the Imperium, multiple human races, surrounding alien empires, the 5th Frontier War, outlawed psi, restricted robotics, no weird tech, no near-c rocks….  There was ample opportunity to geek out here.  After that we spent another ten minutes or so doing armchair theorizations about what the Bowman system was really like based on its Universal World Profile.

The guy that had played Traveller before actually got really into this, throwing lots of facts around.  I was worried at first that I’d have trouble with a player that knows more than me, but in most cases I could work everything he said into my plans with only minimal corrections/nudges.  We’re all grown up enough to separate characters’ opinions from facts, so I really don’t see this as a problem: in fact, I want to encourage my players to help create background and setting specific “color” as much as possible.

The opening vignette was a simple TV-show style opener.  The characters meet a Darrian merchant and try to convince him to hire them to help crew his ship.  He brushes them off… and one of the PC’s notice some goons trailing him as he leaves.  The players follow and intervene in an awkward scene being played out in a back ally.  They rescue the Darrian, dispatch the thugs, and quickly find themselves on the ship heading out system.  Not quite as elegant as Joss Whedon, buy hey– might as well start with a bang.

As the characters traveled to Flexos, we engaged in another round of setting description.  As we picked apart the UWP, I was surprised at just how much the players wanted to know.  Just about everything: climate, flora, fauna, politics, and even history.  The information from the Flexos System Guide was essential, but I also found myself throwing out bits of things I’d remembered from Alien Races II and III.  I did feel a bit compelled as an armchair sci-fi story teller to “show it not tell it.”  But on the other hand, the players did not seem to see a fifteen minute discussion of all of this background as being ‘just’ for setting things up.  The questions and answers and theories all seemed to be as much a part of playing the game as rolling dice in combat or role playing an exchange.

My players went crazy when they saw the map, though.  (It really is beautifully done.)  They asked about locations of things I’d mentioned in passing and made plan for exploring an area as I gradually introduced an adventure seed taken from the Flexos book.  It surprised me.  I had no location maps or skill check data or anything, but just one little specific fact pulled from the System Guide could give the players 5 minutes or more of time spent discussing, planning, and worrying.  All of the facts that I needed were very concise and easily transferred to a game situation.  My role as a referee was simply to synthesize the facts as I knew them with the actions of the players.  Of course, I did have to improvise a lot of details– and the players would obsess over these things the most!– but it was easy to do so with the setting and background so clearly laid out.

There is easily enough material in the Flexos book to keep my players busy for several game sessions.  I can keep them there for an entire campaign or introduce something new every time they pass through.  For years I’ve stressed out about the daunting task of taking up the reigns of a Traveller campaign, but material such as that in the Avenger System Guides and Cluster Books really make it easy.  Most importantly, I think these materials demonstrate a best practice for fleshing out an area in Traveller– that way as I begin working on my own material I have a very practical model to work by. 

The recent podcast on The Vintage Gamer includes a very healthy interview with Greg Costikyan, the Maverick Award winning designer of such notable games as Paranoia and Toon.  While the discussion ranges from topics on the 70’s wargame market to modern indie computer games, the podcast still contains a healthy dose of material of interest to folks that are obsessed with classic eighties era games.

Aspiring game designers will want to hear this– Costikyan says that most professional game designers burn out within five years.  If you’re going to college, don’t major in some goofy program geared totally towards games, but go ahead and do Computer Science or Graphic Arts instead so that you can use your industry experience to get your foot in the door for what will likely become your real career.

CAR WARS fans will note the cameo appearance of podcaster Jimmy Anderson, but don’t forget to check out the links section: Van Verth includes a reference to this Costikyan article that describes how TSR almost single handedly put an end to the wargaming hobby.  The article includes a concise history of War Games and of Strategy & Tactics magazine in particular.  And according to SPI’s feedback, 90+% of all wargamers played alone.  Just based on the number of CAR WARS and Traveller players that appear not to have a gaming group, this shouldn’t have shocked me like it did… but I’m surprised.  I’ve long despised “game designs” that target, not people that play games, but people that play with games… but evidently that has pretty much been where the market was all along.

Costikyan also comments in the article on the fact that computer games do not “match paper games for sophistication, depth, and accuracy.”  Hopefully his new Manifesto Games company can do something to address that.

One thing I could quite parse from the podcast was Costikyan’s opinion of the atrocious looking Paranoia XP.  I think Jim Van Verth was expecting him to slam it, but it might be that he actually was pleased with it: the author was from a preapproved list of people he had complete confidence in.  But there was one edition that he completely hated… I think it might have been the one before XP, though.  Not being a Paranoia expert, I may have completely botched this exchange, so if anyone can clear this up, please let me know.

At any rate, it sounds like the definitive version of Paranoia to pick up is the second edition.  According to the podcast, the first was probably overly complex and still “finding its voice.”

The Vintage Gamer continues to be a good resource for solid material on game design history and analysis.  It can really open your eyes to classics you might have missed.

Are you a Munchkin afficionado?

Wil Wheaton is.  While Ogre didn’t make his off the cuff list of “will always play” games, he has mentioned it before in an interview.  (Oh, and his fans did make the photoshopped cigar magazine covers that he asked for, too.  Heh heh.)

I just can’t get the hang of the game– probably because I end up playing it just with two players.  The fun of Munchkin comes from the mind games that emerge in the group dynamic– who will merit the smiting of the “whoop cards?”  With two players, that dynamic is gone because there’s only one place for the hurt to fall.

The thing I can’t stand about it is how everyone has, just as in Chez Geek, all of these randomly powered cards in front of them.  Not only do they interact in weird ways, but unless you’ve memorized the abilities, it’s very difficult to “read” the current situation.  This makes it a pain to plan any coherent tactics….

Anyways, its pretty cool to see that CAR WARS is still high up on Wheaton’s list.  I knew he played it way back, but I didn’t know it was something that he’d still play.

In Ogre, you put your Heavy Tanks out front and your Missile Tanks and Infantry form the second line of defense.  But if you’re playing the 1983 Challenger: Ultra Modern miniatures rules double blind, this is not a good idea.  In this game you should have a line of infanty on the first line in order to alert you to the enemy’s approach.  You should concentrate your mobile units in a second line– preferably somewhere that your opponent is unlikely to shoot with artillery fire.  Finally, you should have a reserve just in case your opponent if feinting.

Here’s my infantry and APC’s whooping it up after taking out some Ruskie scout cars:

My boys quit laughing right about the time the rest of the party showed up.  The APC’s were quickly destroyed and the infantry remained dug into their fox holes.  I annoyed the Ruskies with artillery fire and accidently hit some of my men once, too:

I had to do something about my men!  I sent my tanks to respond and split them up a bit in order to avoid having them disabled all together by enemy artillery.  I moved at full speed to get there ASAP, but couldn’t fire as a result of that.  (I was still learning the rules!)  Then… because of the lack of a full first-line infantry screen… we unexpectedly ran into the main Russian element!  The smoking hulks in the picture below are all that remained of my platoon of tanks:

Now the Ruskies were free to roll on through and cover Bergkohn with as much fire as they liked.  The rest of my forced were ill-placed to respond… and heavily outnumbered. 

A fog of war can have a huge impact on tactics….  Panic is bad news– and playing a game with another game’s tactics is, obviously, not a winning strategy.

A secret cache of files over on the BITS site has granted me much enlightenment in regards to T4 ship design and combat.  (Thanks to Hans Rancke-Madsen for pointing these out to me.)  Not all of my questions are answered, but there is a glimmer of hope that I can succeed in making this thing work!

It looks like the sandcaster you buy in T4 is a single sandcaster in a small turret with a “rating” of one.  It appears that each one requires its own gunner.  (It’s still not clear whether or not a single gunner can fire several of these at a single laser or missile swarm without penalties.)  The power plants in the core T4 rulebook did not seem to vary much, but the QSDS 1.5 PDF from BITS addressess this problem.  On the other hand, the new hull definition for the 400 dton needle style airframe has a Maximum G of 3– which forces me to cut the maneuver drive back on my patrol cruiser design.  I also don’t have an official design for the small craft, so I just use the Classic Traveller designs for now.

The MayDay 4.1 PDF from BITS contains valuable rules for converting the abstract system to a hex based approach.  It also includes a new version of the sensor rules, but appears to require the T4 edition of Fuel Fire Fusion & Steel.  Oh well… we’ll take what we can get at this point.  It looks like we’re more or less at the everything but sensor rules and missile munitions now.

For my Patrol Cruiser design, I added in an additional small laser battery for point defense.  I also added several extra MFD’s to allow the gunners to control two full waves of missiles.  I couldn’t stand to just shoot 8 missiles… wait for a hit… then shoot another 8 4 turns later.  This way, the cruiser can get 20 missiles on the map at once.  Viva la barbette!  There’s not a lot of cargo space after that, so things are pretty tight on this ship, but it should be a pretty fun ship to play in a fight.

War Patrol Cruiser (QSDS 1.5)
Tons: 400
Volume: 376.2 m^3 ?
Cost: 364.48 MCr
Crew: 32
Cargo: 8
Std Controls: Std Mil (Bridge) 
TL: 12
3 Jump Drive (6 Std/Pc Fuel)
3 Maneuver (Thrust Plate, 22 Mw)
8 Size
680 Power Plant (3x 200Mw, 4x 20Mw)
A10 P4 J10 Sensors

2x Laser Battery(2) 4/3-2-0-0           
1x Laser Battery (1) 4/2-0-0-0 
2 Battery Missile Barb 5 (4)
3 Sandcasters (30×3 Cans)
Ext. Grapple (30 dton Ship’s Boat)     
10 Armor, 12 Structure

Crew Detail: 2 Engineers, 1 Electronics, 2 Maneuver, 11 Gunners, 3 Screens,
2 AuxCraft Crew, 8 Troops/Marines, 4 Command, 1 Steward, 1 Medical

Software: Predict 2 (x3), Gunner (x11), Evade-4, Anti-Hijack, Library (+33.4 MCr)

(Cost includes an additional MCr 16 for Ship’s Boat.)

***

Some remaining minor questions:

“Missile launchers do not have to be crewed when operating as part of a missile battery under the control of a Master Fire Director, but if assigned, a crewmember may launch missiles under local control from the weapon mount.”

Question: If a crewmember is launching missiles from the battery, how many can he control?

Guess: None.  Only unguided missiles can be launched without the benefits of a Master Fire Director.

***

“USD Bonus - The USD bonus for missile batteries using this equipment.”

Question: The QSDS 1.5 rules on bits introduce a “USD Bonus” in regards to Master Fire Directors.  Is this the same thing as the number of missiles that it can control or is it some new bonus for to-hit rolls?

Guess: Uh… just use it as the number of missiles it can control.

***

Question: Does carrying a small craft on an external grapple increase the amount of fuel it takes to make a jump?

Guess: Uh… no?

***

Question: Does Predict software improve to-hit rolls using Missiles or Sand?

Guess: Uh… no.  (According to robject.)

***

[Note: I'm not sure at this point why I continue to fiddle with such an outdated system riddled with errors and ommissions that Traveller players have long since abandoned, but here we go anyway.  I guess I partly want to be able to judge the rumored T5 edition from the standpoint of what Marc was trying to accomplish with the T4 ruleset.  Also, there are some neat features in it for those of us that haven't gotten around to buying every single edition of the game.]

Update:  Here’s the spreadsheet detailing my Patrol Cruiser design.