Zoning Out

Instead of giving wide-ranging player advice for Prismatic Wasteland's blogwagon, I want to focus on one specific - um, sorry, what were we talking about?

You're reading a book and suddenly find that you need to reread the last paragraph, or the whole page. For a moment you were there, casting your eyes across the words, but nothing was sinking in. This isn't particularly disruptive while reading, but the same experience at a TTRPG table can be more problematic. Suddenly all eyes turn to you, you know you're expected to do something significant, but you actually have no idea what is currently going on in the game. In a tactics-heavy game, maybe you can look down at a battle map, get a reasonable sense of the state of play, and jump back in. In theatre of the mind play, the description of the scene is ephemeral and you zoned out during it. What do you do?

Calvin and Hobbies by Bill Waterson

Option 1: Fake it

Take your best guess. When you were last paying attention, the party was negotiating with the village mayor to borrow his hot air balloon. You know the group - these things always take time. Of course that's still going on.

"I get tired of all this chatter. I pull out my dagger, 'Listen bub, we're taking your balloon whether you like it or not.'"

Now you wait and see whether that works, or are you about to be told that you are already in the balloon floating over snowy mountain peaks.

Option 2: Minimize it

What is the smallest possible input you could give at this moment? What's the in-game equivalent of nodding and throwing it back to the other players?

"Hmm... I'm not sure what's best here. What do you guys think?"

Now you hope that the question was not "Hey, does anyone have some rope?"

Option 3: Own it

Zoning out isn't ideal, but it is also perfectly normal and can happen to anyone. Maybe it's due to random thoughts popping up, but it can just as easily be enthusiasm for the game (thinking back on some snippet of lore or planning for an upcoming encounter) that causes you to lose the thread. Even so, it may be hard for the GM and other players not to roll their eyes when you zone out. It seems like you're not paying attention and you're not interested. Options 1 and 2 can deepen that view. You didn't know what was going on, and you seem happy to continue like that, bluffing your way through.

So I say own it. Tell the group you missed something but you want to get back up to speed. That's engagement, which is what we're always chasing.

"Oh, I actually missed some details here. Can we do a quick summary to get me back into it?"

Unless this is happening every time the spotlight moves to you, a reasonable group ought to have patience for it.

Directed attention

I don't think there's any way to completely remove those moments of wandering attention, but I'll wrap up with a few suggestions for active engagement.

• Acting is reacting - when the spotlight is on another player, but your PC is present, consider what you can offer in the scene. This isn't making it all about you, it's about making sure their PC isn't passing through their big moments alone.
• Build the world - maybe you're playing a game where anyone can add details to the world, which is a great way to engage rather than spectate. But even if the GM is the only one painting those details, you can still contribute with questions. "Can we still see the town we left in the morning?", "Are there any other tracks on the road?", "Is there much wildlife here?" When you're reading a book, the author may have been in a distant country, they may have been writing in another century, their words may have been translated through multiple languages. These may be obstacles between the author describing the world and the reader interpreting it. TTRPGs are a live conversation, and are far easier to engage with actively.
• Check the game - Are you playing a game that facilitates everyone being engaged? Is it very turn-based, at the expense of the group experience? Do you find it boring? Maybe you zone out because this isn't the right game for you. Maybe you should offer to run a game for the group, to get a different experience and perspective. (Is this "player advice" post a stealth "become a GM" post? Apparently so.)

Rollenspielgedankenexperiment

When describing his theory of gravity, Einstein considered the thought experiment of a man inside an elevator. If the elevator is falling freely, the man seems to be weightless and his pocket change floats beside him. The man can't tell if his elevator is floating in outer space or falling down a shaft on Earth. Similarly, if he feels the sensation of gravity, he can't tell if the elevator is sitting on the Earth's surface, or if the elevator is in outer space being pushed with constant acceleration.

Let's apply this to tabletop RPGs!

A party loot a dungeon, stealing the priceless Termite Sceptre. The miners' guild had hired them to retrieve the sceptre, but the greedy party keep it for themselves and run away. The GM announces that the senior quartermaster of the guild is the sister of a renowned tracker, and now that tracker is in pursuit of the party.

Like the man in the elevator, the players can't see the origin of the forces applied to them. Behind the GM screen, there may be reams of paper, elaborate biographies and interconnected family trees. The tracker may have been an already prepared character, ready to drop into the campaign at this perfect moment, or the GM may have improvised them on the spot.

Also like the man in the elevator, the players may be hard at work trying to determine which case applies to them. And they have more information to work with than Einstein's unfortunate captive.

1. They can just ask. It would simplify physics greatly if we could just shout questions about fundamental forces into the cosmos and get a response back. For ttrpgs, the players can (and often do) ask "Did you just make that up?"
2. They can look for patterns. If every time they break an agreement, they are immediately told about a renowned tracker, fearsome bounty hunter, or relentless constable hot on their trail, they could reasonably conclude that this is just a habit that the GM has.
3. They can question the consistency. It's reasonable to think that a carefully planned setting, with clockwork components, will operate logically. A world driven by improv may be more likely to have loose ends, twists, or reversals of fortune that beggar belief.

When we talk about low prep, I think we often have the goal of creating something that feels indistinguishable from high prep. To continue the analogy, we want to put the players in an elevator in outer space, apply a gentle acceleration from a cobbled-together engine, and make them think that outside their opaque box there is a whole world working its gravity on them. This may sound deceptive, as though I'm suggesting that the GM tricks the players. But I think there's another layer to this, where the analogy gets more complicated.

There's a really fun experience that sometimes comes with running a game, where the session ends and the players are thinking "That was cool - I wonder did the GM plan that, or was it improvised?" and the GM is thinking "Wow, that was cool. How did that happen?"

I think that the players' elevator, sitting on a world built by an exhaustively prepared GM, or being pushed through space by an engine built by a seat-of-the-pants GM, is enclosed inside another bigger elevator. One big enough to hold the GM and their world or their engine. And that outer elevator is experiencing forces too. What's causing those forces? Is it an intricate game system tuned precisely to tilt the balance at particular moments? Is it hundreds of pages of lore that implant their subtle tones in the reader? Is it pages and pages of random tables covering every conceivable situation? Is it something from another game, half-remembered at just the right moment? Is it the group just getting in sync with each other? Is it an appointment in 15 minutes, and something big better happen to end this session?

I've read and listened to commentary from people who've been playing RPGs far longer than I have. From time to time there will be a note of "I've seen it all before." This dungeon has X, this system has Y, these players have the wild idea to play a party made up entirely of Z - and this very experienced player has a story from 35 years ago where that exact situation already happened. And it was fun. But they don't feel the need to do it again. The more time you spend inside the elevator, the more you feel like you know exactly what's happening outside of it, and what's about to happen next.

I don't think my conclusion is "Don't try to understand your fun, because maybe it will not be fun anymore." One of the reasons ttrpgs are special is that they have generative elements. There is something in every game, at every table, that is generating something new and unexpected. It can happen that, after awhile, whatever is being generated no longer seems new and unexpected. Then it may be time for a shift. But there are so many shifts possible - the combination of the game system, setting, players, play environment are extremely complex and it's hard to see and know how all of those parts will interact. It is hard to play without being inside some kind of moving box, wondering who or what is pushing you around. And if you eventually understand how that box works, you can swap it for another. 

The many rolls of Mythras

I'm not sure how much I have to say on this topic, but prompted by Seraphim Seraphina's Write More Short Blog Posts here I am.

For the past few years I have not rolled to hit. I have just rolled for damage. This evening I played in a game of Mythras. We rolled to hit. We contested those rolls with parries. We used the contest results to choose special effects. We rolled saves to avoid the special effects. We rolled for damage location. Only then did we roll damage. And sometimes we rolled to endure the damage.

We call this simulationist because maybe hitting and maybe not and maybe parrying and maybe not and maybe specially affecting and maybe not and where you hit and how hard you hit and maybe enduring and maybe not are all parts of a real fight. Real fights are also fast, and this is not particularly fast.

Wrapping all this up in one roll captures the flash of action, the impact that can't be undone. Unfurling it into components lays out the brutal effects in detail. They're both powerful and dramatic in their own ways.

We had an interesting conversation afterwards. The rules light games we usually play are clearly faster. But there's something to be said for slowing down, zooming in, and having the system generate the texture that we're used to narrating with less scaffolding.

I don't have a conclusion here except that I'm grateful for the diversity of experiences that the hobby provides (yes, I know I've just given examples of diversity in characters bashing each other with clubs - but like I said, this is a short blog post).

Presenting mysteries like Uketsu

I recently read Strange Buildings by Uketsu. I'm used to mystery stories that writers try to embed in a realistic setting. They'll add some drama around the mystery - a family traumatised by loss, an investigator losing everything because of their single-mindedness, mismatched partners struggling to work together. Uketsu instead seems to say, "If you're here for mystery, I'll give you 11 case files, each with multiple questions, and with overarching connections." The heightened reality where all of these questions exist is game-like. How could all these weird things be going on? Well, we're here to solve mysteries so we have a stack of them.

As a GM, I'm wondering what I can take away from this book. This is what I'm come up with.

1. The GM can also be a note taker.

2. List the unanswered questions. 

3. NPCs have their own theories. 

4. Have multiple mysteries. 

5. Leave room for a second interpretation.

The GM can also be a note taker

Uketsu includes diagrams in his mysteries. He repeats them and highlights different aspects. When the investigator is trying to work out the order of events, he often uses little boxes with flow diagrams like this:

At first glance this may seem like spoon feeding information to the reader, but I think of it more as an invitation to try to solve the puzzle. The mystery is tough enough without scattering the key elements across multiple paragraphs.

In an RPG, the facts are spread across conversation. Details are easily missed. Many players make notes and share them. Here I'm suggesting the GM writes or draws simple snippets at the table. For my group, I think that would quickly become a shared note, with the GM and players all adding to it.

The important information is shared in conversation, but so is a lot of flavour and chit chat. Writing a quick shared note highlights the importance of information. Character names. Where they were at certain times. Known grievances between them.

Solving the mystery isn't just collecting puzzle pieces. That's just step one and, crucially, if investigators don't get that right it's hard to progress. So why not make it collaborative?

List the unanswered questions

This is pretty basic, but - what is the mystery?

Uketsu states the questions clearly. If there's any ambiguity about it that will be a big stumbling block. I usually play RPGs where players choose their own goals. Stating the central questions of a mystery is more about saying "This is what is unknown here" rather than "This is your objective here".

NPCs have their own theories

Uketsu's supporting characters frequently have their own explanations for events, even as they ask an investigator for help. That seems very natural. If they're invested in the solution they should already be trying to work it out. It's also a secondary source of information: What biases and grudges are exposed by their theories?

Have multiple mysteries

Consider a party of PCs trying to cross a river and finding the ferryman murdered. If they're inclined to investigate, the obvious question is "Who killed the ferryman?" Taking a lesson from Uketsu, I'd try to add further questions:

"Why is there a sign next to the crossing STRICTLY NO CATS ON BOARD?"

"Who painted the exquisite portrait of the ferryman hanging in his cabin?"

"Why did he choose this place for the crossing, when there is a narrower section of the river nearby?"

These individual mysteries may be related to the murder or they may be independent. If related, they help break the challenge up into increments. If unrelated, they still may have some reward, or may just be red herrings. Misdirection may sound like a frustration in an RPG, but for investigative play the decision making is focused on which leads to pursue in what order. As long as the cul-de-sacs aren't too time-consuming, they allow for variation in outcomes. If all leads are successes, where are the meaningful choices?

The other benefit of adding additional questions is that there is no guarantee that the players will solve everything. If they solve part of a mystery, it gives them some sense of achievement.

Leave room for a second interpretation

This might be the trickiest lesson to pull into a game. I'm thinking here about investigations that are closed, the solution seeming to fit all the evidence, and then a small doubt is raised - Is there something more?

A classic version of this is where the killer is identified, but then it is revealed that the accused is covering for someone else, taking the fall on their behalf. It is sometimes a darker twist to the events, something even worse than was initially revealed. This extra element can be the icing on the cake of a mystery.

Running RPG mysteries, we tend to worry "Will the players be able to solve this?" Building a mystery with (at least) two valid solutions and expecting them to find both seems like a stretch. But I think a better question is not "Will they solve it?" but rather "Will this be a good experience in play?" which may be closely linked to "Will this feel fair?" It feels fair if you had all the required pieces, and you understand now how they fit together in a logical way. It feels unfair if clues were never revealed, or if the solution is overly elaborate such that you would never have arrived at it.

I think there's probably more RPG tips to glean from Strange Buildings than I have done here. (I haven't even discussed the maps, of which there are many.) But with Uketsu's work it seems fitting to leave some loose ends to follow.

Being online

Among Cats and Books' Death of a Hobby (and the linked posts at the end of it) prompted me to think about my own relationship with creativity and being online.

I first built a website to share my writing in the 90's. Since then, I've had a bunch of different projects ‐ fiction, essays, poetry, videos, podcasts, games, comics. Shared in different ways, not linked to each other (mostly). In most cases, I didn't sign the work or identify myself. In some cases I had numbers to look at, and could see how many people looked at the work. In other cases, I didn't have that.

I'm proud of most of the stuff I made. Much of it isn't online anymore, but I have my own copies backed up. I sometimes feel a pang of regret that I don't have all this gathered together, showcasing everything, with my name on top inside a <blink> tag. And sometimes I am relieved that I chose not to do that.

I've been on and off social media sporadically. Again, sometimes with my full name published and other times without.

I'm a private person. I also like to make things and share them. There's a strange tension there.

Also, and this is one of the hard parts of social media, a part of me gets too caught up in engagement numbers. I try not to pay attention to that. I have used (and really liked) a browser plugin that hid all those numbers on social media. Everything was just "a thing someone said", rather than "a thing someone said with 10,000 up-blorps and 2,000 re-blorps". But ultimately, I think blogging and other slowly produced work suit me better.

I have been active on Discord to varying degrees. The best outcome of that has been making genuine friends who I have played games with and collaborated with, one of whom I met recently and others I'll hopefully be meeting later this year. Though most of my activity on Discord has been chatting to strangers who I may never interact with again, often taking part in a recurring conversation about an aspect of a game. Sure, there's a blog post somewhere that says most of whatever needs to be said on the topic of the recurring conversation but (a) it is not particularly easy to find blog posts and (2) people want to connect - they want to feel like they talked it over rather than just read it. I get that.

Years ago, I was involved in a meditation group. I attended twice a week for a long time, and it was really good for me. One interesting aspect of that time, was that once I became a regular attendee, I began to see patterns in how other people attended. Some people would come to meditation (a valuable and worthy past time which is also frustrating and boring) in need of a tool to deal with an immediate problem. A quick fix. They might attend only once, and often with intense enthusiasm before and after the session. And then they'd be gone.

If you hang around an RPG Discord long enough, you also see people coming and going, extremely excited about games and their plans to play. Maybe talking about play (rather than contending with organising a group, scheduling, risking sessions that may disappoint) is the quick fix solution to wanting to play. I've certainty spent time and energy talking about play, prompted by wanting to play.

I think the Internet is too quick for some things. Some experiences are naturally slow, and don't really fit the acceleration that the Internet applies to all things.

This post is in danger of sounding like advice. I don't mean it to. I sometimes struggle with being online, and knowing how much to engage. I'm working these things out for myself and I wish the best to anyone else trying to navigate this stuff.

✌️❤️🎲

Regicide and the travel campaign

As mentioned in the last Smiling Fox episode, I've been travelling this summer. The trip has been amazing but we're here to talk about games 🎲🎲

I got into Regicide shortly before leaving, playing a few games solo and a few 2-player games. I was instantly impressed with how the standard 52-card deck could be used for this type of game. I grew up on card games with rules like "the 5 of hearts is the best card, unless someone has played a club" where there is little or no mnemonic support for players. And yet the royals present some obvious characters, and the suits (numbering only four, and with fairly evocative designs) can be easily associated to memorable concepts. Regicide takes this idea and runs with it beautifully - the rules are a little tricky at first, but the familiar designs of the cards support learning and remembering them. And even without a strong narrative element, the feeling of defeating the Jacks and then seeing the Queens deployed hits the mark just right. Also worth mentioning - the scoring in Regicide is straightforward to track, but there's also a companion app that offloads the arithmetic and is very well designed.

My wife and I are traveling together, and it has been such a nice addition, having a coop game along with us that we can easily break out and play. On top of that, we haven't won a single game. (This is a good thing!) Each game of Regicide is separate. There's no campaign play (though that might be a cool hack), and yet it is so natural to want to beat this thing before we end the trip. Even between games, we'll be walking around an unfamiliar town discussing when is best to play hearts, the only suit without an immediate payoff. I'll be on the lookout in future for other games which are (1) coop, (2) quick to play a full game, (3) tough to beat.

On the roleplaying front, I've been playing a solo game of Midnight of the Century on the trip too. It's been a nice change of pace to play a modern setting (I am old enough to not think of the 1990s as ancient history). I'll write a post about that when my investigator catches the killer (or falls prey to them...)

I should have an episode of Luck Roll out soon after I get back. It is recorded and mostly edited. Looking forward to getting back to Knotte and co.

Keeping it real

The Cairn principles for wardens says:

"NPCs don’t want to die. Infuse their own self-interest and will to live into every personality."

I saw two movies this summer that connect with this idea. The first was Mortal Kombat 2, which I really enjoyed. The second was Masters of the Universe, which I did not. Both transplant people from our familiar reality into far-fetched fantasy worlds. Both make attempts at comedy to keep the tone light. I thought MK2 was successful and that MotU fell flat.

In RPG terms, most of the NPCs in Mortal Kombat 2 are committed to their reality. They believe in the premises and the stakes that they are experiencing. There are a small number of characters who serve as comic relief - but to me, they read as people who are part of the world and who make jokes within it. So there are people who shoot off wisecracks, but there are also people who are wholly devoted to their principles and take them seriously. For me, that works. There can even be something quite authentic about a jester in the midst of a great threat.

Masters of the Universe on the other hand, seemed more like the RPG where any or all of the NPCs can make a fart joke whenever the GM wants to make a fart joke. It seemed like there was no character on screen who was fully committed to their reality. In that case, it ceases to mimic any reality and is just a CG backdrop.

When running an RPG, you don't have $200 million to fall back on to make an outlandish world feel substantial. One of the best tools you have is the attitude of the NPCs. Ideally, something in the game should be meaningful to the players: protecting someone or something, ending an injustice, pulling off a heist, just keeping each other alive. You may not know at the start of a game what that meaningful thing may be (maybe it's best not to know at the outset), but it's far less likely that the players will find meaning in a world if the NPCs don't believe in anything.