This 'blog is due for an overhaul.
I've run this for several years now. I've done okay, but I want to do more and I want to do it far better than I am right now. This requires that I stop doing the posts that I have done, and instead treat this 'blog more like a regular column or other more professional production. I've been off reading some folks' 'blogs and sites who have, in fact done just this and did so on a shoe-string budget (or less, which is where I am right now).
Rebranding, relauching, maybe even migration to another host- all that needs to be considered, decided, and then acted upon. In that time, I will NOT be posting. This 'blog, for now, is in Archive Mode; it will either be closed entirely or relaunched in its new form when I am ready, and that is not going to be anytime soon.
I thank all of you who've been here for this ride; I hope you come back for the next one.
Showing posts with label Intention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intention. Show all posts
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Media Examples of Campaign Models: Guardians of the Galaxy
Like that wide-open cosmic environment? Kreegor, CCW, and all that? Head off to a Redbox and rent Guardians of the Galaxy. That's the best example going of a RIFTS Space Opera campaign as it's usually played. Rag-tag crew, often on the wrong side of the law, and yet able to do what the law fails to do because reasons.
Don't say it's not an example of how the game actually plays. It does, just like D&D's accurately shown in Knights of the Dinner Table. Go see it if you haven't, take notes, and enjoy.
Don't say it's not an example of how the game actually plays. It does, just like D&D's accurately shown in Knights of the Dinner Table. Go see it if you haven't, take notes, and enjoy.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
House Rules: You're Better Off Trusting the GM to Handle the Details
If there is something that many people complain about, it's that the rules of a given game don't reflect how it feels to do something that is a thing in the real world. It can be car chases, knife fights, shootouts, surgery, injury and recovery, whatever- someone, somewhere, is complaining about it (and often online somewhere). They may even have valid points to make, and make them properly. However, what comes next is madness of the Sisyphean sort: an attempt to improve the mechanics to make it work as they think it should.
Stop. You can't even approach it with rules and mechanics without getting so built up that you might as well use it as code in a videogame (which is where the best approximations in gaming are, and we know how short those fall). Going that route is folly, and inefficient.
There is a better alternative. Instead, focus upon two questions: "Did I hit him enough to do the thing?" and "Did the thing do what I want?" This translates into Attack and Effect checks, and Palladium's rules are good enough to handle those two questions. What you want to do, when it comes to the details, is to use that liminal area as the conceptual space where the Game Master applies what he knows of how things really work (or, for unreal stuff, the closest analogues) and makes rulings from there.
So, let's talk about something that happens a lot: a Coalition soldier wants to shoot someone with his laser rifle.
Laser weapons, quite frankly, are not firearms no matter how much they may look like them (or how the rules treat them so). The big differences are a total absence of recoil (because there is no controlled explosion, and the following kinetic reactions, involved) and no projectile involved; the rifleman can point his weapon at the target, press the trigger, and instantaneously damage the target with a micro-second length of laser light so powerful as to flash-fry the target. (Because that's how lasers do damage: they burn the target at the point of impact.) The target gets burned, and suffers the consequences of being burned where the laser hit. (Anything that throws a projectile--firearms, plasma casters, etc.--has some form of travel time; the further the shooter is from the target, the more this matters in practice.)
Much as the "-10 to dodge lasers" rule is hated, it's a valid concept (if a botched execution) for that reason; it's a mechanical attempt to make that fact of "no projectile travel time to target" something that layman players can readily appreciate. I wouldn't be that blunt, but I'd gladly make a similar attempt (probably at the Proficiency and Tool Stat ends; the idea of "burst fire" for lasers is absurd, for starters). Go on, dodge a flashlight; that's what you're claiming to do when you argue against something like that -10 rule.
This also means that a shootout with lasers is a series of flashes (assuming, of course, that the weapons are even in the visible light spectrum), but not a silent series; the power necessary to be viable as weapons is also the power necessary to instantly ionize the atmosphere along the path it travels. This will be a sharp, audible crack not unlike the crack of a whip; to get "suppressed" or "silent", you need to tone the intensity to what real world weaponized lasers are (and do as they do; lase the target, burning it over time, until you burn your way to a kill).
So, in rule terms you still have Attack and Damage rolls. The GM, knowing how lasers function (because he's been reading up on them), rules that without superhuman senses (or outright supernatural ones) you can't dodge or parry a laser attack unless you're able to perceive the attacker's pointing the weapon at you somehow. (See him aim at you, get a sensor warning, etc.)- and then, the best you can do is pro-active/pre-emptive defense due to instantaneous travel time. (If he's on the ball, he'll also reduce the damage within an atmosphere due to bean attenuation, so lasers will have "effective ranges" meaning "distance within which targets burn as intended".) These rulings will account for situational details as required, and better than a massive tome of mechanics and rules can do. This principle applies to other things, like martial arts and dog fights and and hacking contests and so on.
I want you to stop letting the rules master you, and instead you be the master of the rules; they are tools, so treat them as such, to use or not as you see fit.
Stop. You can't even approach it with rules and mechanics without getting so built up that you might as well use it as code in a videogame (which is where the best approximations in gaming are, and we know how short those fall). Going that route is folly, and inefficient.
There is a better alternative. Instead, focus upon two questions: "Did I hit him enough to do the thing?" and "Did the thing do what I want?" This translates into Attack and Effect checks, and Palladium's rules are good enough to handle those two questions. What you want to do, when it comes to the details, is to use that liminal area as the conceptual space where the Game Master applies what he knows of how things really work (or, for unreal stuff, the closest analogues) and makes rulings from there.
So, let's talk about something that happens a lot: a Coalition soldier wants to shoot someone with his laser rifle.
Laser weapons, quite frankly, are not firearms no matter how much they may look like them (or how the rules treat them so). The big differences are a total absence of recoil (because there is no controlled explosion, and the following kinetic reactions, involved) and no projectile involved; the rifleman can point his weapon at the target, press the trigger, and instantaneously damage the target with a micro-second length of laser light so powerful as to flash-fry the target. (Because that's how lasers do damage: they burn the target at the point of impact.) The target gets burned, and suffers the consequences of being burned where the laser hit. (Anything that throws a projectile--firearms, plasma casters, etc.--has some form of travel time; the further the shooter is from the target, the more this matters in practice.)
Much as the "-10 to dodge lasers" rule is hated, it's a valid concept (if a botched execution) for that reason; it's a mechanical attempt to make that fact of "no projectile travel time to target" something that layman players can readily appreciate. I wouldn't be that blunt, but I'd gladly make a similar attempt (probably at the Proficiency and Tool Stat ends; the idea of "burst fire" for lasers is absurd, for starters). Go on, dodge a flashlight; that's what you're claiming to do when you argue against something like that -10 rule.
This also means that a shootout with lasers is a series of flashes (assuming, of course, that the weapons are even in the visible light spectrum), but not a silent series; the power necessary to be viable as weapons is also the power necessary to instantly ionize the atmosphere along the path it travels. This will be a sharp, audible crack not unlike the crack of a whip; to get "suppressed" or "silent", you need to tone the intensity to what real world weaponized lasers are (and do as they do; lase the target, burning it over time, until you burn your way to a kill).
So, in rule terms you still have Attack and Damage rolls. The GM, knowing how lasers function (because he's been reading up on them), rules that without superhuman senses (or outright supernatural ones) you can't dodge or parry a laser attack unless you're able to perceive the attacker's pointing the weapon at you somehow. (See him aim at you, get a sensor warning, etc.)- and then, the best you can do is pro-active/pre-emptive defense due to instantaneous travel time. (If he's on the ball, he'll also reduce the damage within an atmosphere due to bean attenuation, so lasers will have "effective ranges" meaning "distance within which targets burn as intended".) These rulings will account for situational details as required, and better than a massive tome of mechanics and rules can do. This principle applies to other things, like martial arts and dog fights and and hacking contests and so on.
I want you to stop letting the rules master you, and instead you be the master of the rules; they are tools, so treat them as such, to use or not as you see fit.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Putting It Together: The Space Campaign
As I noted previously, campaigns in space require a bit of additional focus to make them sufficient in scope and scale to handle at the table. This is why I'm using Knights of Sidonia as an example. In this case, you have a space-faring campaign centered around a generation ship and the militia tasked with guarding it against the ship's alien opposition. (You want more? Watch the series.)
In RIFTS, this is easily done. One focusing on the solar system can work from Mutants In Orbit (you can do the orbital end of Mobile Suit Gundam and its successors easily) or Scrapers, and elsewhere using the Phase World books (selectively, of course). If you decide to use the Aliens Unlimited sourcebooks for Heroes Unlimited for additional material, you will go far. Yes, you will have to brew your own content, but there is so much archetypical examples to work with that doing it won't be hard.
In RIFTS, this is easily done. One focusing on the solar system can work from Mutants In Orbit (you can do the orbital end of Mobile Suit Gundam and its successors easily) or Scrapers, and elsewhere using the Phase World books (selectively, of course). If you decide to use the Aliens Unlimited sourcebooks for Heroes Unlimited for additional material, you will go far. Yes, you will have to brew your own content, but there is so much archetypical examples to work with that doing it won't be hard.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Putting It Together: The Wild West Campaign
Like last week, I'm embedding a video that popularly displays one way to show folks what RIFTS means. This week, it's the New West, and we're using Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" as the video example. It has martial arts, cowboys, gunslinging, The Frontier, The Code of the West, and anachronistic technology- just like the New West. Just missing obvious super-powers or equal technology. As with last week, I'm asking you to take it in and start to think of how you would make this into a RIFTS campaign at your table.
Nope, no hand-holding. No conversions. Nothing but me serving up the materials. Make your own entertainment.
(As for the anime Knights of Sidonia, next week.)
Nope, no hand-holding. No conversions. Nothing but me serving up the materials. Make your own entertainment.
(As for the anime Knights of Sidonia, next week.)
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Putting It Together: The Vampire Hunting Campaign
As I said last week, RIFTS has plenty of inspiration out there. One of the best, post-RIFTS, is Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.
Vampires, mutants, high-tech, specialized anti-undead techniques and tools, silver-as-anti-vampire, cross-as-universal-repellent, post-apocalypse w/ space travel. This is regarded as a RIFTS movie for very obvious reasons.
Go on, watch the film. Here, or elsewhere, or whatever, just watch it. Now imagine this occurring as a campaign in Vampire territory in North America. You can see clearly how this would work in RIFTS, can't you?
No, no rules or mechanics conversion will be done here; you're on your own, and by now you should be able to handle that task without me holding your hand.
Vampires, mutants, high-tech, specialized anti-undead techniques and tools, silver-as-anti-vampire, cross-as-universal-repellent, post-apocalypse w/ space travel. This is regarded as a RIFTS movie for very obvious reasons.
Go on, watch the film. Here, or elsewhere, or whatever, just watch it. Now imagine this occurring as a campaign in Vampire territory in North America. You can see clearly how this would work in RIFTS, can't you?
No, no rules or mechanics conversion will be done here; you're on your own, and by now you should be able to handle that task without me holding your hand.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Educate Yourself to Better Your Game
Today, we have the Internet. Self-education today is easier than it has every been. Time to talk about making use of this power.
All tabletop RPGs are dependent upon the quality of the individuals playing and running them- especially the quality of those running them. Just as works of fictions are better when the writer expands upon the base of knowledge employed in creating the artifacts of his craft, so it is that the hobbyist plays and runs better when he does that same expansion of knowledge and brings that to the table. We experience, first-hand, just how this manifests when someone who's too used to thinking in terms of manipulating the rules as if they were the controls of a car sits down as your table and begins to say and do things that no one with such training or knowledge would dare conceive.
Like it or not, this is an element of the medium that cannot be removed without killing it; it is as fundamental as breathing, and we see this in the discourse of forums such as The Gaming Den and its insistence upon making the playing of characters (and the running of games) no different in practice than coding and playing a console or PC RPG. What the regulars at that forum demonstrate by their behavior to be a flaw is, in fact, both a great strength and a limiting factor: tabletop RPGs are, quite frankly, limited in their potential only by the ignorance of their users. This is not so with competing RPG media.
So, how to fix this? Encourage one-another to seek out and rectify gaps in one's knowledge base as said stoppages become relevant.
Now, how many of you play characters that use firearms? How many of you have actually used one? I would be willing to suppose that a great many of you believe a number of wrong things regarding firearms--starting with the error that "clip" means "the detachable thing I use to load the gun" (Nope.)--simply because you don't know any better. Well, thanks to this thing you're using to read my blog, you too can rectify this error and many others.
"But my guy's using a laser rifle!"
That's nice. How about learning how the real ones work? Same goes for railguns; we have real ones now, and they are massive. Competent speculative fiction will extrapolate from real technologies or current developments; we can all do this now, and you are not exempt. Those mini-missiles? Been around for millenia in some form or another, starting with Chinese rockets using blackpowder to deliver arrowheads in massed volleys further than the bows of the day could reach.
"But my guy's using (unreal thing)!"
Your guy's fictional magic? Based upon, to some degree or another, real world systems of magic. You need not believe that the real world stuff is true; you just need to grok how it's supposed to work, and why, and that assumes that the magic system isn't actually (following Asimov) just the Sufficiently Advanced Technology sort of "magic" (as, alas, The Force turned out to be).
Your guy is illiterate? How illiterate? Functionally so, or totally so? This matters--something that even Uncle Kevin fails to recognize, and therefore follow through with--a great deal in how someone thinks, interacts with the world, relates to those with greater power, etc.; this is also true for those who are illnumerate.
Your guy knows multiple languages? Great. How similar are they? When and how did he learn these languages? These questions directly affect how your character perceives knowledge; languages are systematic symbol systems meant to make regular certain concepts that a culture needs to pass efficiently between its members, and different languages symbolize both different knowledges as well as use different schemes of symbolism. You likely has no idea that this is what's going on, did you? Linguists do, and they study the hell out of this now in conjunction with other specialists from other fields using an inter-disciplinary approach.
If you, the player, cannot conceive of something that your character would then you CANNOT play him properly. If you, the player, cannot comprehend why your character CANNOT conceive of a given thing, then you CANNOT play him properly. You are robbing yourself, your fellows, and the game of the fullest possible play experience by maintaining willful ignorance of things that rightly affect how your character thinks, feels, and acts. Embrace that challenge, embrace the suck that will come from realizing just how important what you're learning is to your man, and come out better on the other side for it.
Alone in gaming media, and matched by few others, the tabletop role-playing game offers such opportunities for life-long improvement and transformation by those willing and able to step up to the challenge. This is a medium of virtual experience, almost as powerful as life itself (and compensating for that by allowing you to experience things otherwise impossible), so seize that for yourself, and bring your A-game.
All tabletop RPGs are dependent upon the quality of the individuals playing and running them- especially the quality of those running them. Just as works of fictions are better when the writer expands upon the base of knowledge employed in creating the artifacts of his craft, so it is that the hobbyist plays and runs better when he does that same expansion of knowledge and brings that to the table. We experience, first-hand, just how this manifests when someone who's too used to thinking in terms of manipulating the rules as if they were the controls of a car sits down as your table and begins to say and do things that no one with such training or knowledge would dare conceive.
Like it or not, this is an element of the medium that cannot be removed without killing it; it is as fundamental as breathing, and we see this in the discourse of forums such as The Gaming Den and its insistence upon making the playing of characters (and the running of games) no different in practice than coding and playing a console or PC RPG. What the regulars at that forum demonstrate by their behavior to be a flaw is, in fact, both a great strength and a limiting factor: tabletop RPGs are, quite frankly, limited in their potential only by the ignorance of their users. This is not so with competing RPG media.
So, how to fix this? Encourage one-another to seek out and rectify gaps in one's knowledge base as said stoppages become relevant.
Now, how many of you play characters that use firearms? How many of you have actually used one? I would be willing to suppose that a great many of you believe a number of wrong things regarding firearms--starting with the error that "clip" means "the detachable thing I use to load the gun" (Nope.)--simply because you don't know any better. Well, thanks to this thing you're using to read my blog, you too can rectify this error and many others.
"But my guy's using a laser rifle!"
That's nice. How about learning how the real ones work? Same goes for railguns; we have real ones now, and they are massive. Competent speculative fiction will extrapolate from real technologies or current developments; we can all do this now, and you are not exempt. Those mini-missiles? Been around for millenia in some form or another, starting with Chinese rockets using blackpowder to deliver arrowheads in massed volleys further than the bows of the day could reach.
"But my guy's using (unreal thing)!"
Your guy's fictional magic? Based upon, to some degree or another, real world systems of magic. You need not believe that the real world stuff is true; you just need to grok how it's supposed to work, and why, and that assumes that the magic system isn't actually (following Asimov) just the Sufficiently Advanced Technology sort of "magic" (as, alas, The Force turned out to be).
Your guy is illiterate? How illiterate? Functionally so, or totally so? This matters--something that even Uncle Kevin fails to recognize, and therefore follow through with--a great deal in how someone thinks, interacts with the world, relates to those with greater power, etc.; this is also true for those who are illnumerate.
Your guy knows multiple languages? Great. How similar are they? When and how did he learn these languages? These questions directly affect how your character perceives knowledge; languages are systematic symbol systems meant to make regular certain concepts that a culture needs to pass efficiently between its members, and different languages symbolize both different knowledges as well as use different schemes of symbolism. You likely has no idea that this is what's going on, did you? Linguists do, and they study the hell out of this now in conjunction with other specialists from other fields using an inter-disciplinary approach.
If you, the player, cannot conceive of something that your character would then you CANNOT play him properly. If you, the player, cannot comprehend why your character CANNOT conceive of a given thing, then you CANNOT play him properly. You are robbing yourself, your fellows, and the game of the fullest possible play experience by maintaining willful ignorance of things that rightly affect how your character thinks, feels, and acts. Embrace that challenge, embrace the suck that will come from realizing just how important what you're learning is to your man, and come out better on the other side for it.
Alone in gaming media, and matched by few others, the tabletop role-playing game offers such opportunities for life-long improvement and transformation by those willing and able to step up to the challenge. This is a medium of virtual experience, almost as powerful as life itself (and compensating for that by allowing you to experience things otherwise impossible), so seize that for yourself, and bring your A-game.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
This Coalition Worship Has Gone Full Retard
So, today I received the weekly email from Palladium Books updating subscribers on what's out and what's coming. I cannot make this shit up.
QUOTE!
Rifts® Sourcebook – The Coalition States: Heroes of Humanity The events unfolding in World Book 35: Megaverse® in Flames threaten to change the entire landscape of Rifts® Earth, as the demonic minions of Hades and Dyval seek to bring Hell on Earth and turn the planet into a dimensional gateway to Armageddon!
The Coalition States, along with Northern Gun and Lazlo, take the lead in the defense of North America. Heroes of Humanity explores the good and bad in the Coalition’s efforts to save humanity and send this new threat back to the pits of Hell.
What is this I don't even.
But wait, there's more!
Rifts® Secrets of the Coalition States: The Disavowed
“Desperate times require desperate measures. War has nothing to do with morality or justice. It’s all about winning or dying. We cannot bind our hands with high ideals, even our own, or worry about the laws of renegade nations or the rights of alien people. We must fight fire with fire. And you are the match.” – Colonel Lyboc, addressing a Disavowed team.
The Disavowed are so Top Secret that their existence is known only to a handful of the Coalition States’ most elite, top echelon, with Joseph Prosek II the mastermind behind the Disavowed operation, and Colonel Lyboc its shadowy face. Find out who these men and women are. How the Disavowed get away with using magic, traveling to other parts of Rifts Earth and even to other dimensions in pursuit of enemies and strategic information that cannot be had through conventional means. Learn about the secret parameters in which these hard-boiled warriors, secretly hand-picked by Joseph Prosek II, operate, why almost every mission is considered a suicide mission, and why they must forever be the Disavowed.
Full. Retard.
We can stop fapping over these techno-Nazis any time now. They're Nazis. Stop trying to make Good Guys out of them, Uncle Kevin. Yes, I do blame you and not the "co-author" whose manuscript you--if you hold to your pattern, and you usually do--suckered out of the guy and then hacked up to suite your sophomoric sensibilities (which haven't matured since the 1970s). Christ, folks! This is just the sort of crap-tastic content that I spent so many posts trying to clean up and make sensible. Bother.
QUOTE!
Rifts® Sourcebook – The Coalition States: Heroes of Humanity The events unfolding in World Book 35: Megaverse® in Flames threaten to change the entire landscape of Rifts® Earth, as the demonic minions of Hades and Dyval seek to bring Hell on Earth and turn the planet into a dimensional gateway to Armageddon!
The Coalition States, along with Northern Gun and Lazlo, take the lead in the defense of North America. Heroes of Humanity explores the good and bad in the Coalition’s efforts to save humanity and send this new threat back to the pits of Hell.
- New Coalition weapons, armor and war machines.
- The Coalition States: Are they heroes or villains? Or does it depend on whether you are human or not?
- Can the CS fight alongside mages and D-Bees if it means saving the world?
- How is the CS dealing with the Minion War on Earth?
- One plan to battle the Xiticix and who really pays the price.
- Adventure ideas and more.
- Written by Kevin Siembieda, Matthew Clements and other contributors.
- Final page count and cost yet to be determined but probably 96 pages – $16.95 retail – Cat. No. 889.
What is this I don't even.
But wait, there's more!
Rifts® Secrets of the Coalition States: The Disavowed
“Desperate times require desperate measures. War has nothing to do with morality or justice. It’s all about winning or dying. We cannot bind our hands with high ideals, even our own, or worry about the laws of renegade nations or the rights of alien people. We must fight fire with fire. And you are the match.” – Colonel Lyboc, addressing a Disavowed team.
The Disavowed are so Top Secret that their existence is known only to a handful of the Coalition States’ most elite, top echelon, with Joseph Prosek II the mastermind behind the Disavowed operation, and Colonel Lyboc its shadowy face. Find out who these men and women are. How the Disavowed get away with using magic, traveling to other parts of Rifts Earth and even to other dimensions in pursuit of enemies and strategic information that cannot be had through conventional means. Learn about the secret parameters in which these hard-boiled warriors, secretly hand-picked by Joseph Prosek II, operate, why almost every mission is considered a suicide mission, and why they must forever be the Disavowed.
- CS operatives so secret that even the top military and political leaders right up to Emperor Prosek know nothing about them. And if they did know, would they condone their activity or condemn it?
- Are the Disavowed heroes or renegades? Assassins or soldiers? Madmen or super-patriots? Or a little of them all?
- Unsung heroes who keep the CS safe, or thugs and pawns of a shadow agency within the Coalition government?
- What role does the Vanguard play in this group?
- How do they reward their D-Bee “teammates” when the mission is over?
- What happens to the Disavowed when they have seen or learned too much? Adventure ideas galore and so much more.
- Written by Kevin Siembieda and Matthew Clements.
- Final page count and cost yet to be determined, but probably 96 pages – $16.95 retail – Cat. No. 892.
Full. Retard.
We can stop fapping over these techno-Nazis any time now. They're Nazis. Stop trying to make Good Guys out of them, Uncle Kevin. Yes, I do blame you and not the "co-author" whose manuscript you--if you hold to your pattern, and you usually do--suckered out of the guy and then hacked up to suite your sophomoric sensibilities (which haven't matured since the 1970s). Christ, folks! This is just the sort of crap-tastic content that I spent so many posts trying to clean up and make sensible. Bother.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
RIFTS and Your Game: Shaping the Setting as Customization
An easy way for a Game Master to take what is written and make it yours is to curate and shape the setting material to your liking. This is a liminal conceptual space where rules and setting blend, so you might as well think of this as an aspect to making House Rules.
To illustrate the point, I'll go with the Coalition States and its primary socio-economic institution: the Army. The Army is where the Coalition puts the able-bodied men within its reach. By putting all adult men into the Army, it subjects them to a single comprehensive authority with total control over their lives, so we'll do that and remove all civilian life from the Coalition States: the Coalition doesn't have an Army, it IS the Army. The rules effect? All Coalition characters are Male and Military. (With two exceptions, as noted below.) This culls the playable options down to a handful of Occupations (which, really, are military specializations) and exactly one race/sex combination; it also narrows the range of playable spaces down to those specific to military operations- something that an expansionist, manaphobic, xenophobic, racist, sexist, authoritarian, and totalitarian military dictatorship operating in a milieu that justifies its propaganda on an hourly basis would be.
(Exceptions: Dog Boys and Honeypots. The former are still male-only, but male Canine; the latter is where the very few women allowed outside the home operate, both in counter-intelligence and in foreign intelligence. You expected post-apocalyptic Nazis to do otherwise? Learn your history; they would, because in many respects they did.)
Let's get more specific now.
A Coalition man, regardless of his specialization, must complete Basic Training. This includes, since the technology exists, the mandatory implantation of certain cybertechnologies. Ear modifications that act exactly as real-world electronic ear protection headphones, eye modifications that guarantee 20/20 vision as well as instant polarization (making eye glasses/sunglasses pointless), lung modifications to ensure endurance in the field, and a datajack in the base of the neck- all imposed to get any given recruit up to baseline functionality at best possible speed. (Yes, the datajack is that important; it's easier to have a unit jack into a cybernetic network to get trained/briefed/etc. than to talk it out (since all Coalition personnel are totally illiterate, so written stuff is out).
So, rules: instead of a Coalition character having a choice, they get a set package of cybernetics as a standard feature of that Occupation, to be considered part of Basic Training and not Specialization training.
Now, let's do some variation thinking.
Abolish man-sized energy weapons and instead replace them with latter-day (but otherwise conventional) firearms. As our Coalition is based in North America, they will use foreseeable iterations of U.S. Army small arms or rivals thereof. Instead of the M9 (i.e. a Beretta 92 model), we'll grant the Coalition officers a latter-generation Glock 17 or 19. (Pilots or similar personnel will be issues a Glock 26, while Technicians will instead be issued a hypothetical Glock carbine--as a real one does not exist as of this post; other manufacturers do this--chambered for the same handgun cartridge, and thus uses the same magazines; we can base this on the Keltec Sub-2000, the Kriss Vector, or some other real-world model but I think just imagining an up-sized Glock filling out the same profile as the venerable M1 Carbine would do.) This will have some cascading effects, but I think those to be desirable ones that are beneficial to the game experience anyway.
Likewise, the standard rifle will be iterations and variations on the AR-15 platform (currently the M4 variation in the U.S. Army). Maybe the standard cartridge will shift to the now-new .300 Blackout cartridge, instead of the current standard 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge. Upgunned versions chambered for the .308 Winchester cartridge ("AR-10" sorts) may be the standard issue instead, depending upon the commonly-encountered opposition of the Coalition. Specialized operators will still use bolt-action rifles, often chambered for that Winchester cartridge by default; far bigger and more powerful cartridges (such as the .50 BMG) will be employed as required (and yes, for those not paying attention, such rifle platforms exist and have for some time).
The game's "Mega-Damage" conceit, when confined to its original scope of use (i.e. tanks and similar objects), works fine; the vast majority of entities in a RIFTS campaign do not qualify for such a status and therefore should be handled accordingly. (You can achieve much of what is implied by using Mega-Damage by other means, especially for super-natural entities, such as Immunities and Resistances or some other concept that other tabletop RPG engines handle very well.)
The rules effect? To eliminiate needless redundancy in conceptual spaces, as well as conceptual confusion, by keeping the baseline of Coalition campaigns as close to that of "The Army vs. The Monsters" as possible- and thus making buy-in very easy for new and returning players, since the unrealities they need to deal with are confined to a few Gee-Whiz widgets and the inhuman presences that they confront on a regular basis.
There, a set of examples of how you can make the body of RIFTS into the game you want- all at varying degrees of emphasis (rules vs. setting), degrees of player-vs.-GM engagement, degrees of in-play vs. away-from-table engagement, etc. so you can see what I intended to do to achieve the desired effect- and thereby do this sort of thing for yourself. This is one of the many reasons for why being as skilled and as knowledgeable of things beyond gaming matters; you can't do this well, if at all, if you refuse to improve yourselves as individuals.
To illustrate the point, I'll go with the Coalition States and its primary socio-economic institution: the Army. The Army is where the Coalition puts the able-bodied men within its reach. By putting all adult men into the Army, it subjects them to a single comprehensive authority with total control over their lives, so we'll do that and remove all civilian life from the Coalition States: the Coalition doesn't have an Army, it IS the Army. The rules effect? All Coalition characters are Male and Military. (With two exceptions, as noted below.) This culls the playable options down to a handful of Occupations (which, really, are military specializations) and exactly one race/sex combination; it also narrows the range of playable spaces down to those specific to military operations- something that an expansionist, manaphobic, xenophobic, racist, sexist, authoritarian, and totalitarian military dictatorship operating in a milieu that justifies its propaganda on an hourly basis would be.
(Exceptions: Dog Boys and Honeypots. The former are still male-only, but male Canine; the latter is where the very few women allowed outside the home operate, both in counter-intelligence and in foreign intelligence. You expected post-apocalyptic Nazis to do otherwise? Learn your history; they would, because in many respects they did.)
Let's get more specific now.
A Coalition man, regardless of his specialization, must complete Basic Training. This includes, since the technology exists, the mandatory implantation of certain cybertechnologies. Ear modifications that act exactly as real-world electronic ear protection headphones, eye modifications that guarantee 20/20 vision as well as instant polarization (making eye glasses/sunglasses pointless), lung modifications to ensure endurance in the field, and a datajack in the base of the neck- all imposed to get any given recruit up to baseline functionality at best possible speed. (Yes, the datajack is that important; it's easier to have a unit jack into a cybernetic network to get trained/briefed/etc. than to talk it out (since all Coalition personnel are totally illiterate, so written stuff is out).
So, rules: instead of a Coalition character having a choice, they get a set package of cybernetics as a standard feature of that Occupation, to be considered part of Basic Training and not Specialization training.
Now, let's do some variation thinking.
Abolish man-sized energy weapons and instead replace them with latter-day (but otherwise conventional) firearms. As our Coalition is based in North America, they will use foreseeable iterations of U.S. Army small arms or rivals thereof. Instead of the M9 (i.e. a Beretta 92 model), we'll grant the Coalition officers a latter-generation Glock 17 or 19. (Pilots or similar personnel will be issues a Glock 26, while Technicians will instead be issued a hypothetical Glock carbine--as a real one does not exist as of this post; other manufacturers do this--chambered for the same handgun cartridge, and thus uses the same magazines; we can base this on the Keltec Sub-2000, the Kriss Vector, or some other real-world model but I think just imagining an up-sized Glock filling out the same profile as the venerable M1 Carbine would do.) This will have some cascading effects, but I think those to be desirable ones that are beneficial to the game experience anyway.
Likewise, the standard rifle will be iterations and variations on the AR-15 platform (currently the M4 variation in the U.S. Army). Maybe the standard cartridge will shift to the now-new .300 Blackout cartridge, instead of the current standard 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge. Upgunned versions chambered for the .308 Winchester cartridge ("AR-10" sorts) may be the standard issue instead, depending upon the commonly-encountered opposition of the Coalition. Specialized operators will still use bolt-action rifles, often chambered for that Winchester cartridge by default; far bigger and more powerful cartridges (such as the .50 BMG) will be employed as required (and yes, for those not paying attention, such rifle platforms exist and have for some time).
The game's "Mega-Damage" conceit, when confined to its original scope of use (i.e. tanks and similar objects), works fine; the vast majority of entities in a RIFTS campaign do not qualify for such a status and therefore should be handled accordingly. (You can achieve much of what is implied by using Mega-Damage by other means, especially for super-natural entities, such as Immunities and Resistances or some other concept that other tabletop RPG engines handle very well.)
The rules effect? To eliminiate needless redundancy in conceptual spaces, as well as conceptual confusion, by keeping the baseline of Coalition campaigns as close to that of "The Army vs. The Monsters" as possible- and thus making buy-in very easy for new and returning players, since the unrealities they need to deal with are confined to a few Gee-Whiz widgets and the inhuman presences that they confront on a regular basis.
There, a set of examples of how you can make the body of RIFTS into the game you want- all at varying degrees of emphasis (rules vs. setting), degrees of player-vs.-GM engagement, degrees of in-play vs. away-from-table engagement, etc. so you can see what I intended to do to achieve the desired effect- and thereby do this sort of thing for yourself. This is one of the many reasons for why being as skilled and as knowledgeable of things beyond gaming matters; you can't do this well, if at all, if you refuse to improve yourselves as individuals.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
RIFTS and Your Game: Making The Most of Who's At The Table
There are plenty of people who play tabletop RPGs, and what they get out of the experience varies. Lots of online arguing goes on over these differences, but at the table that need not be something that makes the fun go away. This is a hobby with a diverse array of satisfactions to obtain; make use of that for your group's benefit.
Both online and at the table, you will encounter people who play the game for reasons other than why you do so. It is wise to make the most of the matter, and you do this by apportioning some of the necessary work around to those who are interested and competent to do so. Do you have someone who is great at managing the minutia of the rules? Let them be the table's Rules Encylopedia, to consult as required. Got someone into the numbers game? Let them optimize characters to achieve the desired performance, in terms of mechanics, and instruct others in how to use the tools to get those results. You get the idea. Yes, this is very much like managing actual employees at your job; take the opportunity to develop and hone those skills. (And they say that tabletop RPGs impart no useful skills.)
This is also a good opportunity to become familiar with elements of the game that you would otherwise miss, don't properly appreciate, or aren't quite up to speed about. The game itself is a machine, however wonky, and the setting is a thing that operates under principles that mechanics alone cannot account for; I can only address so much at a time, so I would hope that you folks would be willing to do some examination and exploration of your own instead of waiting for me (or another writer) to do it for you. Those other elements attract those people whose perspective differs from yours, so you will soon tie faces to ideas and have opportunities to discuss productively with those people about these things- and in doing, make both of you better and more satisfied participants.
Both online and at the table, you will encounter people who play the game for reasons other than why you do so. It is wise to make the most of the matter, and you do this by apportioning some of the necessary work around to those who are interested and competent to do so. Do you have someone who is great at managing the minutia of the rules? Let them be the table's Rules Encylopedia, to consult as required. Got someone into the numbers game? Let them optimize characters to achieve the desired performance, in terms of mechanics, and instruct others in how to use the tools to get those results. You get the idea. Yes, this is very much like managing actual employees at your job; take the opportunity to develop and hone those skills. (And they say that tabletop RPGs impart no useful skills.)
This is also a good opportunity to become familiar with elements of the game that you would otherwise miss, don't properly appreciate, or aren't quite up to speed about. The game itself is a machine, however wonky, and the setting is a thing that operates under principles that mechanics alone cannot account for; I can only address so much at a time, so I would hope that you folks would be willing to do some examination and exploration of your own instead of waiting for me (or another writer) to do it for you. Those other elements attract those people whose perspective differs from yours, so you will soon tie faces to ideas and have opportunities to discuss productively with those people about these things- and in doing, make both of you better and more satisfied participants.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
House Rules & RIFTS: Managing the Game - Verisimlitude, Pt.3
There is a term, usually seen in online discussions of games such as Dragon Age or World of Warcraft, known as "character progression". This concerns the development of a character's personal might, be it through the acquisition of more or improved powers (whatever they are), or from the refinement of that character's attributes and skills, as a direct result of gameplay. (This is why level-based systems are dominant; they play directly into the long-established preference for character progression as a central element of game design and play.) For the tabletop role-playing game medium, this cannot be ignored (indeed, it began here), but it can be handled.
The way to address verisimilitude with regard to character progression is to require that the character acquire the new or improved power as a reward for successful pursuit of the character's goals. In other words: progression is treasure, not a leveling-up benefit. A magician must either successfully perform spell research, successfully convince someone with the power to teach/imbue/etc. it unto him, or take it as Spoils of War from an enemy magician. A cyborg must find the bionic component and either trade or steal it, and then find someone or some thing to install it. You get the idea. By this means, the GM can constrain progression to a rate he finds acceptable and he controls what powers a character may acquire. (You can't rebuild your Cyborg into a man-sized Transformer if the technology to do so is not available.)
This also applies to more mundane aspects. The GM controls what skills are available to acquire, and what it takes to learn those skills from said sources. It applies to raw attribute development (usually physical) also; such progression methods requires that the character commit to and devote time to a program of training and study (yes, even for physical development) that they may not be able to do for reasons of more pressing matters requiring their attention. (You can't pick up Electrical Engineering if you're a combatant in the middle of an active military campaign, and you'll not be able to master the Way of the Ennervating Fist if you're already consumed training to master the Strike From All Angles Sword Skill.)
In short, you--as the GM--can, and must, establish what the players can do to progress their characters and then to set what the costs for those improvements are at your table. That is not just one ruling, but a small handful of them that all work together to create the desired effect. A reasonable player will not have an issue with this approach.
The way to address verisimilitude with regard to character progression is to require that the character acquire the new or improved power as a reward for successful pursuit of the character's goals. In other words: progression is treasure, not a leveling-up benefit. A magician must either successfully perform spell research, successfully convince someone with the power to teach/imbue/etc. it unto him, or take it as Spoils of War from an enemy magician. A cyborg must find the bionic component and either trade or steal it, and then find someone or some thing to install it. You get the idea. By this means, the GM can constrain progression to a rate he finds acceptable and he controls what powers a character may acquire. (You can't rebuild your Cyborg into a man-sized Transformer if the technology to do so is not available.)
This also applies to more mundane aspects. The GM controls what skills are available to acquire, and what it takes to learn those skills from said sources. It applies to raw attribute development (usually physical) also; such progression methods requires that the character commit to and devote time to a program of training and study (yes, even for physical development) that they may not be able to do for reasons of more pressing matters requiring their attention. (You can't pick up Electrical Engineering if you're a combatant in the middle of an active military campaign, and you'll not be able to master the Way of the Ennervating Fist if you're already consumed training to master the Strike From All Angles Sword Skill.)
In short, you--as the GM--can, and must, establish what the players can do to progress their characters and then to set what the costs for those improvements are at your table. That is not just one ruling, but a small handful of them that all work together to create the desired effect. A reasonable player will not have an issue with this approach.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
House Rules & RIFTS: Managing the Game - Verisimlitude, Pt. 2
Verisimilitude is not limited to inflicting injuries and recovering from them. It includes a lot of things, many of which are not consciously considered in actual play, and (again) it is not strict simulation of the real world (in large part due to things like magic and superpowers) but rather using the real world as default and accommodating unreal things (like giant humanoid robots as viable war machines) as required.
Regarding the unreal, one must think of them as one would the creation of a tool or application. You start with the desired result. Then you work backwards to find the path that best accomplishes that result. This is the essence of competent design in general, especially so in gaming, and as such you should sear that into your memory and remember it always.
So, let's talk house rules and the unreal.
RIFTS has a lot of unreal elements. However, much of what is unreal has a basis in real world esoterica (and, frankly, is much improved when you modify it to better adhere to said sources- something Siembieda is loathe to do) and it is best that you become aware with this esoterica and how these real world unrealities are said to work before you start on the rule-crafting process. Ley-Lines, auspicious days and times, the use of mana to power magic, secret super-technologies, hidden worlds, false histories (in other words, what you usually see on History and H2 these days)- all good stuff to get familiar with when you're getting into messing with the unreal elements of the game.
While I covered playing various forms of unreal characters previously (and thus won't repeat myself here), I did not address becoming some form of unreal character. In practice, this usually means an otherwise ordinary character that is already in play changing into one that is not due to the integration of invasive cybertechnology or bionics such that it would trigger an Occupation change. However, this can also incorporate assumption of superhuman or supernatural power.
So, ruling.
In this case, the rule should be something obvious: "The assumption of sufficient augmentative power--magic, technology, etc.--shall prompt the change of that character's Occupation to conform to their new state of being."
Regarding the unreal, one must think of them as one would the creation of a tool or application. You start with the desired result. Then you work backwards to find the path that best accomplishes that result. This is the essence of competent design in general, especially so in gaming, and as such you should sear that into your memory and remember it always.
So, let's talk house rules and the unreal.
RIFTS has a lot of unreal elements. However, much of what is unreal has a basis in real world esoterica (and, frankly, is much improved when you modify it to better adhere to said sources- something Siembieda is loathe to do) and it is best that you become aware with this esoterica and how these real world unrealities are said to work before you start on the rule-crafting process. Ley-Lines, auspicious days and times, the use of mana to power magic, secret super-technologies, hidden worlds, false histories (in other words, what you usually see on History and H2 these days)- all good stuff to get familiar with when you're getting into messing with the unreal elements of the game.
While I covered playing various forms of unreal characters previously (and thus won't repeat myself here), I did not address becoming some form of unreal character. In practice, this usually means an otherwise ordinary character that is already in play changing into one that is not due to the integration of invasive cybertechnology or bionics such that it would trigger an Occupation change. However, this can also incorporate assumption of superhuman or supernatural power.
So, ruling.
In this case, the rule should be something obvious: "The assumption of sufficient augmentative power--magic, technology, etc.--shall prompt the change of that character's Occupation to conform to their new state of being."
Saturday, November 29, 2014
House Rules & RIFTS: Managing the Game - Verisimlitude, Pt. 1
Verisimlitude is the quality of seeming to conform to the norms of reality. Put simply, it is the quality where a fictional context nonetheless is--barring explicit callouts, such as supernatural power or hypothetical technology--things that happen in that context conform (more or less) to the way they do in the real world. Gravity works as expected, injury and recovery works as expected, computers work as expected, societies work as one expects and so on.
With regards to role-playing games, this is a tricky thing. The first problem is that there is, alas, a wide variation in the knowledge base of the gamer population. Ignorance of basic facts in computer science, ballistics, metallurgy, psychology, and many other arts and sciences with direct and immediate application to the common scenarios and experiences found in RIFTS make expectations of outcomes and consequences differ a lot and as a result what an individual believes is a norm of reality is not necessary what is a norm. While this nescience and ignorance can be remedied--and I urge you to do so--what this means for your table is that maintaining verisimlitude means dealing with a moving target.
The remedy is to fix the target. You fix the target by laying out, in clear and explicit terms, what a player can expect at your table. While that may seem silly in the context of RIFTS, it is not; by establishing a clear and explicit set of expectations you also establish a basis for all of the house rules that you issue which address concerns of verisimlitude, which makes it far more likely that players will accept your rules with no complaints. By showing your logic, you make buy-in easier and therefore avoid needless drama.
So, let's talk about a common issue in verisimlitude: getting hurt.
The game, as most tabletop RPGs do, presumes that a character is Human or something close enough for Human norms to apply. This means that the game assumes that Human norms of physiology and psychology also apply by default, which means that it assumes that what is normal for Humans when they get thrown off cliffs, shot, stabbed, etc. applies to near-Humans as well (with some variances).
First, now that YouTube is a thing, I recommend that you go there and watch as many videos as you can regarding the testing of ballistic armor and contemporary ammunition as you can find- especially those that take the time to explain terminology or link to definitions, as you're likely to be new to the topic and thus not up on the lingo. Then do the same for pre-modern arms and armor testing, videos on injury and recovery, etc. You will benefit in your everyday life, as well as at the table, by acquiring basic familiarity with how the body reacts to injurious force and how it recovers from it. (Yes, you're likely to hear a lot of opinions you may not like; that's the price of your self-education.) This has a point: to inform you as to what the norms of the real world are about the subject, which gives you a foundation for sound rulings thereafter.
Second, take a little time to look over how the Palladium ruleset operates. Think of it as a machine or a program, and you're inspecting how the parts or the code interacts with itself as it operates. You want to create a ruling that doesn't unduly complicate or monkeywrench the machine, so some active engagement with the mathematics (such as it is) of Palladium's game engine goes a long way towards creating a ruling that not only will players not find objectionable but stands up to the rigors of actual play.
Finally, do two series of tests. The first is your "white room" testing that you see often online in gaming forum discussions. These focus on the mathematics and ensure that the mechanics work as intended. The second is actual play testing, which ensures that the rules function in the field (as it were) as intended. Repeat until you achieve the desired results.
So, let's talk injury and recovery.
The basic paradigm is sound. Some injuries merely bruise, and while painful they are not necessarily serious and recovery from them goes quickly compared to those that draw blood or damage bone. This is what S.D.C. is intended to handle, and so long as that premise is kept in mind it will work. Serious injuries are what Hit Points represent. (Compare with Stun and Hits in HERO, or Bashing and Lethal in Exalted.) Massive damage of a nature inherently beyond what the body can handle is a matter of scale, which is where Mega-Damage works as intended. It is only execution that is lacking.
So, let's try a rule: "All kinetic damage stopped by personal armor also inflicts equal damage to the target's S.D.C. score." The intention is for damage sources relying upon kinetic force for its damage--firearms, primarily, in a RIFTS context, and similar weapons such as railguns and explosives relying on concussive force or shrapnel--to be able to injure a target even if it is suitably armored. It produces play results suitably similiar to real life: someone wearing personal armor who gets shot is still likely to be hurt, and even taken out of the fight, but will not only survive the hit but be back in action in days if not hours.
The cost here is that you need to define what weapons or powers are subject to this rule, and then to what degree. You need not do this up front; you can--and if you are in a reasonable group of people, you should--make this decision on the spot as required. Take your knowledge and apply it as you go. The tabletop role-playing game medium cannot work as intended any other way.
With regards to role-playing games, this is a tricky thing. The first problem is that there is, alas, a wide variation in the knowledge base of the gamer population. Ignorance of basic facts in computer science, ballistics, metallurgy, psychology, and many other arts and sciences with direct and immediate application to the common scenarios and experiences found in RIFTS make expectations of outcomes and consequences differ a lot and as a result what an individual believes is a norm of reality is not necessary what is a norm. While this nescience and ignorance can be remedied--and I urge you to do so--what this means for your table is that maintaining verisimlitude means dealing with a moving target.
The remedy is to fix the target. You fix the target by laying out, in clear and explicit terms, what a player can expect at your table. While that may seem silly in the context of RIFTS, it is not; by establishing a clear and explicit set of expectations you also establish a basis for all of the house rules that you issue which address concerns of verisimlitude, which makes it far more likely that players will accept your rules with no complaints. By showing your logic, you make buy-in easier and therefore avoid needless drama.
So, let's talk about a common issue in verisimlitude: getting hurt.
The game, as most tabletop RPGs do, presumes that a character is Human or something close enough for Human norms to apply. This means that the game assumes that Human norms of physiology and psychology also apply by default, which means that it assumes that what is normal for Humans when they get thrown off cliffs, shot, stabbed, etc. applies to near-Humans as well (with some variances).
First, now that YouTube is a thing, I recommend that you go there and watch as many videos as you can regarding the testing of ballistic armor and contemporary ammunition as you can find- especially those that take the time to explain terminology or link to definitions, as you're likely to be new to the topic and thus not up on the lingo. Then do the same for pre-modern arms and armor testing, videos on injury and recovery, etc. You will benefit in your everyday life, as well as at the table, by acquiring basic familiarity with how the body reacts to injurious force and how it recovers from it. (Yes, you're likely to hear a lot of opinions you may not like; that's the price of your self-education.) This has a point: to inform you as to what the norms of the real world are about the subject, which gives you a foundation for sound rulings thereafter.
Second, take a little time to look over how the Palladium ruleset operates. Think of it as a machine or a program, and you're inspecting how the parts or the code interacts with itself as it operates. You want to create a ruling that doesn't unduly complicate or monkeywrench the machine, so some active engagement with the mathematics (such as it is) of Palladium's game engine goes a long way towards creating a ruling that not only will players not find objectionable but stands up to the rigors of actual play.
Finally, do two series of tests. The first is your "white room" testing that you see often online in gaming forum discussions. These focus on the mathematics and ensure that the mechanics work as intended. The second is actual play testing, which ensures that the rules function in the field (as it were) as intended. Repeat until you achieve the desired results.
So, let's talk injury and recovery.
The basic paradigm is sound. Some injuries merely bruise, and while painful they are not necessarily serious and recovery from them goes quickly compared to those that draw blood or damage bone. This is what S.D.C. is intended to handle, and so long as that premise is kept in mind it will work. Serious injuries are what Hit Points represent. (Compare with Stun and Hits in HERO, or Bashing and Lethal in Exalted.) Massive damage of a nature inherently beyond what the body can handle is a matter of scale, which is where Mega-Damage works as intended. It is only execution that is lacking.
So, let's try a rule: "All kinetic damage stopped by personal armor also inflicts equal damage to the target's S.D.C. score." The intention is for damage sources relying upon kinetic force for its damage--firearms, primarily, in a RIFTS context, and similar weapons such as railguns and explosives relying on concussive force or shrapnel--to be able to injure a target even if it is suitably armored. It produces play results suitably similiar to real life: someone wearing personal armor who gets shot is still likely to be hurt, and even taken out of the fight, but will not only survive the hit but be back in action in days if not hours.
The cost here is that you need to define what weapons or powers are subject to this rule, and then to what degree. You need not do this up front; you can--and if you are in a reasonable group of people, you should--make this decision on the spot as required. Take your knowledge and apply it as you go. The tabletop role-playing game medium cannot work as intended any other way.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
House Rules & RIFTS: Managing the Game - Content Curation Pt. 2
The reason for the House Rule in last week's post will become increasingly clear as I go on about the curation process.
This week, we're going to look at what curation in RIFTS means. RIFTS is a game with a lot of sub-settings, much like HERO has its various genre books that sub-divide into major variations of those genres and then go on to address specific iterations and how the tropes and themes work. RIFTS deals with the same concept by marking out space in a given section of the setting and reserving it for that sort of genre or sub-genre. (E.g. "Cosmic Heroes" and "Space Opera" are the realm of the Three Galaxies sub-setting.)
Curation, therefore, must be done first to answer what sort of campaign you want to run. Take all that you own, and cut away every last bit that does not fit what you want. A campaign built around being Coalition Grunts slogging through yet another military campaign has no place for options and content that said Grunts will not encounter. Players should not access anything that doesn't fit that campaign's intention- not species or races, not Occupations, not gear, not powers, nothing at all.
So, the rule: "Players may not access options or content contrary to the campaign's premise."
This is, again, about pairing down all of the massive amount of stuff out there into something that you can easily and readily manage at the table; if you're playing the command crew of a specific starship, then you don't need to allow options to be or use anything else.
This week, we're going to look at what curation in RIFTS means. RIFTS is a game with a lot of sub-settings, much like HERO has its various genre books that sub-divide into major variations of those genres and then go on to address specific iterations and how the tropes and themes work. RIFTS deals with the same concept by marking out space in a given section of the setting and reserving it for that sort of genre or sub-genre. (E.g. "Cosmic Heroes" and "Space Opera" are the realm of the Three Galaxies sub-setting.)
Curation, therefore, must be done first to answer what sort of campaign you want to run. Take all that you own, and cut away every last bit that does not fit what you want. A campaign built around being Coalition Grunts slogging through yet another military campaign has no place for options and content that said Grunts will not encounter. Players should not access anything that doesn't fit that campaign's intention- not species or races, not Occupations, not gear, not powers, nothing at all.
So, the rule: "Players may not access options or content contrary to the campaign's premise."
This is, again, about pairing down all of the massive amount of stuff out there into something that you can easily and readily manage at the table; if you're playing the command crew of a specific starship, then you don't need to allow options to be or use anything else.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
House Rules & RIFTS: Managing the Game - Content Curation Pt. 1
Look, RIFTS is huge. Rifts Earth alone has, what, a dozen sub-settings spread throughout the post-apocalyptic globe? The Lunar Sphere (i.e. Orbit) and the Solar System add a few more, then there's the other dimensions and the cosmic sub-settings. Of all Palladium's games, this one truly is a kitchen-sink play-anything product line. That's a lot of stuff, and without care taken you can end up with an undesireable mess that's no fun.
You need to curate. That means sorting through the stuff and choosing what to allow and what to cut out, with the result of forming a collection of stuff that adheres to a theme or motif which binds the collection together into a greater whole.
In terms of house rules, it's this simple: "Players may not access any content that the Game Master does not own."
No races, no Occupations, no gear, no locations, no powers- not one damned thing can be had unless the Game Master owns the stuff that such a thing comes from. Loaned books and free PDFs do not count; only physical copies count. This makes the curation process easier; the GM only has to work with what he actually has on-hand, and not deal with requests from players to be whatever.
You need to curate. That means sorting through the stuff and choosing what to allow and what to cut out, with the result of forming a collection of stuff that adheres to a theme or motif which binds the collection together into a greater whole.
In terms of house rules, it's this simple: "Players may not access any content that the Game Master does not own."
No races, no Occupations, no gear, no locations, no powers- not one damned thing can be had unless the Game Master owns the stuff that such a thing comes from. Loaned books and free PDFs do not count; only physical copies count. This makes the curation process easier; the GM only has to work with what he actually has on-hand, and not deal with requests from players to be whatever.
Friday, November 7, 2014
House Rules and RIFTS: The Fundamental Rolls - Damage
As with rolling Attributes, rolling for Damage is something that can seriously bog down a game. I recommend doing the same sort of short-cut creation here as you would there; figure out what the averages, and just use that instead of rolling when dealing with insignificant NPCs. Save the rolling of the dice for when it's someone that matters dealing with someone else that matters; "mook rules" are popular for a reason.
The scheme is the same: figure the average of a given roll of the dice, use that as a static number instead, and adjust it if you see a need to show what someone more or less proficient than average would do. The catch here is that you can play with some dice schemes (like 3d4x10) to get a better sense of what the average would be. (e.g. 3d4x10 is better averaged as 6d4x5; 2d4 averages to 5, multipled by 3 is 15, and then by 5 is 75)
If you go so far as to make static numbers of insignificant NPCs' Attack and Defense rolls (which you do by adding 10 to their relevant bonuses, noting the auto-fail for a natural 1 and auto-hit for a natural 20) so that the players do all of the dice-rolling, then you've automated NPCs to the point where you can focus on just the rolls of significant characters (the PCs and those NPCs important enough to merit individual attention) and thereby devote your attention accordingly.
Mull it over. This won't work for all of you, but for some of you this will be a great house rule to adopt. I shift depending on what I want out of the gameplay experience, and so--I advise--should you.
The scheme is the same: figure the average of a given roll of the dice, use that as a static number instead, and adjust it if you see a need to show what someone more or less proficient than average would do. The catch here is that you can play with some dice schemes (like 3d4x10) to get a better sense of what the average would be. (e.g. 3d4x10 is better averaged as 6d4x5; 2d4 averages to 5, multipled by 3 is 15, and then by 5 is 75)
If you go so far as to make static numbers of insignificant NPCs' Attack and Defense rolls (which you do by adding 10 to their relevant bonuses, noting the auto-fail for a natural 1 and auto-hit for a natural 20) so that the players do all of the dice-rolling, then you've automated NPCs to the point where you can focus on just the rolls of significant characters (the PCs and those NPCs important enough to merit individual attention) and thereby devote your attention accordingly.
Mull it over. This won't work for all of you, but for some of you this will be a great house rule to adopt. I shift depending on what I want out of the gameplay experience, and so--I advise--should you.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
House Rules and RIFTS: The Fundamental Rolls - Attributes
RIFTS is still rooted in the traditional tabletop RPG paradigm of yesteryear, and nothing shows this more obvious in the procedure used to generate new characters. Playable races/species, monsters, and so on are often given ranges of possible attribute scores given in the number of six-sided dice (d6) you're expected to roll. This isn't always to the liking of a given user, and it isn't always practical either to roll, so I'll talk about a very common house rule meant to speed this step up.
The idea is to skip rolling. The way to do this is to comprehend some basics about probability. The average roll of two six-sided dice (2d6) is 7; this is also expressed as "7:2", meaning "seven Foo for ever two Bar", and how it works is that the first part give you 4 and the second 3 due to the fact that half of 7 is 3.5 and you round up when you hit X.5.
For Humans (and those statistically indistinguishable from Humans in a given attribute), you roll 3d6; the average is 10.5. As there are eight such attributes in Palladium's games, a wholly average Human will have four attributes at 11 and four at 10. At 2d6, it's 7 across the board; at 4d6 it's 14 across the board; at 5d6 it's half at 18 and half at 17. The pattern extends down (though, in practice, you stop at 1d6) and up (though, for practicality reasons, you rarely pass 6d6) accordingly.
The end result is that you can use these averages as shorthand and create templates. The templates can then be used as-is for NPCs not important enough to merit individual attention, and they can also be used as the base model from which individuation can be applied as needed (and to the degree needed) when you require something notably better or worse than the baseline of a thing. However, there is one more step that some of you should consider: simplifying PC generation through making the process template-driven entirely, cutting out dice roles and other clutter.
This is not out of line. Specific Occupations have requirements, and those requirements favor certain traits; those that don't measure up don't go into that Occupation, or stay in it long if they slip under them. You can simplify the generations of Player-Characters by creating average score templates, merging them with Occupational templates (which is what those published are, really), and then tweaking to suite your taste. (In fact, this is how World of Warcraft does it; the baseline scores are generated by race, modified by class, and then modified further by level and gear- but is it one's race that provides the foundation upon which the rest build upon.)
You can eliminate all chances of a non-viable character by doing this, so I recommend that you consider it for your own usage in your games. I find that what gets people to actually playing the game faster tends to find favor with them, especially new players, so I would not dismiss it out of hand; you can also alter what templates are allowed to suit the specific wants and needs at your table, so this is a very customizable tool. Enjoy.
The idea is to skip rolling. The way to do this is to comprehend some basics about probability. The average roll of two six-sided dice (2d6) is 7; this is also expressed as "7:2", meaning "seven Foo for ever two Bar", and how it works is that the first part give you 4 and the second 3 due to the fact that half of 7 is 3.5 and you round up when you hit X.5.
For Humans (and those statistically indistinguishable from Humans in a given attribute), you roll 3d6; the average is 10.5. As there are eight such attributes in Palladium's games, a wholly average Human will have four attributes at 11 and four at 10. At 2d6, it's 7 across the board; at 4d6 it's 14 across the board; at 5d6 it's half at 18 and half at 17. The pattern extends down (though, in practice, you stop at 1d6) and up (though, for practicality reasons, you rarely pass 6d6) accordingly.
The end result is that you can use these averages as shorthand and create templates. The templates can then be used as-is for NPCs not important enough to merit individual attention, and they can also be used as the base model from which individuation can be applied as needed (and to the degree needed) when you require something notably better or worse than the baseline of a thing. However, there is one more step that some of you should consider: simplifying PC generation through making the process template-driven entirely, cutting out dice roles and other clutter.
This is not out of line. Specific Occupations have requirements, and those requirements favor certain traits; those that don't measure up don't go into that Occupation, or stay in it long if they slip under them. You can simplify the generations of Player-Characters by creating average score templates, merging them with Occupational templates (which is what those published are, really), and then tweaking to suite your taste. (In fact, this is how World of Warcraft does it; the baseline scores are generated by race, modified by class, and then modified further by level and gear- but is it one's race that provides the foundation upon which the rest build upon.)
You can eliminate all chances of a non-viable character by doing this, so I recommend that you consider it for your own usage in your games. I find that what gets people to actually playing the game faster tends to find favor with them, especially new players, so I would not dismiss it out of hand; you can also alter what templates are allowed to suit the specific wants and needs at your table, so this is a very customizable tool. Enjoy.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Common Campaigns in RIFTS: The Exploration Campaign
Five-year missions, expeditions into the unknown, seeking the Northwest Passage- these are stories of exploration and RIFTS has plenty of room for those who seek to make known what is unknown.
The core of a campaign focused upon exploration is that the players assume the roles of individuals who are either trained for exploration, or they are specialists of a different--but necessary--sort assigned to such a task. The specific venue varies widely--overland, oversea, undersea, space, planar, etc.--but the format is the same: a team of explorers forms to investigate what, if anything, lies beyond a given threshold. This can be a mountain range or other significant terrain feature, space itself- you get the idea. Adventures are built around penetrating this threshold and then seeing what is there; making first contact with locals, mapping the territory explored, and preserving this information long enough to report back to their patron(s) so follow-up expeditions can be made with the benefit of that knowledge.
Exploration campaigns, therefore, are mixtures of diplomacy and adventure on a dangerous and unknown frontier. Players should be working with low amounts of information, dealing with material scarcity due to being at the tail end of a long logistical train (so they can't operate at optimal efficiency or effectiveness most of the time; this is "count your rations and arrows" territory), and have to deal with constraints that players in other campaigns either don't have to worry about or never even realize exist. Figuring out how to compensate for these scarcity issues, often by interacting with the locals and learning their methods, is part-and-parcel of a properly-executed exploration campaign.
The other issue with an exploration campaign is that what often follows is either exploitation of natural resources, or population movements into colonial settlements, and either development not only strains extant relations with the locals but--unless reversed--inevitably pushes back the frontier as Civilization (i.e. whom the explorers represent) comes in to fill the void that a frontier represents. You can either end a campaign when this phase of exploration arrives, or you can roll with the punches and take the opportunity to shift the campaign in a different direction; each primary exploration expedition, each first contact situation, each push into the unknown presents an opportunity to find something heretofore unseen and unknown to the players. New mysteries to solve, new cultures to interact with, new lands to investigate- this is the feature that keeps it fresh for years on end. Exploit this feature whenever things start to flag.
Exploration campaigns are best done the old-fashioned way: the sandbox. The GM should decide on the region to explore, and set up initial sets of circumstances (including what Occupations, technologies, etc. are allowed to players), and then let them interact without any concern for narrative logic of any sort- the players will, without fail, fill in all such voids with their own notions and thereby succeed or fail without so much as a word out of the GM's mouth. (And that is the other side to all of this: expeditions fail, often disastrously. If they want to be the Donner Party, let them.)
This is a model where your Men-at-Arms will not be so heavily represented, and your Men-of-Magic/Psychics will be likewise reduced in prominence, in favor of Adventurers and Scholars. You need Wilderness Scouts, first and foremost, and then Scholars and Scientists (including medical experts and technicians) with focuses on field operations (which is done by skill selection and equipment choices; someone that needs a big-city lab is not the sort to send on such things, unless it's based out of something like a starship, and that likely means such an individual will be a NPC). Generalists will be more prized members, speaking of Armsmen and Magicians/Psychics, over specialists and time-limited augmented individuals like Juicers are bad choices- as are those tied to logistical trains (Cyborgs) or already unstable (Crazies). (This, again, is where the magical sorts have an advantage so long as magical power is in sufficient abundance.) Problems are better solved by talking or fixing than by fighting, most of the time, and running is not a bad idea- players cannot presume that whatever they face they can handle.
Exploration campaigns are also easily transitioned into and out of because the core of the campaign's paradigm is inherently unstable, and thus temporary, so you can use an exploration phase as a change-of-pace for another campaign when you see the need for such a thing. If you start as exploration, but the players are not interested anymore, it is not hard to let the frontier shift away from them and let them take up positions in the emerging post-exploration communities that arise in the wake of successful exploration expeditions. When devising what to do with a game of RIFTS, don't count exploration out; even as just a temporary phase, you can really get to the heart of what makes tabletop RPGs special by returning to the origin of the hobby- exploration of the unknown, be it for gold, for glory, or for getting away from where they came from.
The core of a campaign focused upon exploration is that the players assume the roles of individuals who are either trained for exploration, or they are specialists of a different--but necessary--sort assigned to such a task. The specific venue varies widely--overland, oversea, undersea, space, planar, etc.--but the format is the same: a team of explorers forms to investigate what, if anything, lies beyond a given threshold. This can be a mountain range or other significant terrain feature, space itself- you get the idea. Adventures are built around penetrating this threshold and then seeing what is there; making first contact with locals, mapping the territory explored, and preserving this information long enough to report back to their patron(s) so follow-up expeditions can be made with the benefit of that knowledge.
Exploration campaigns, therefore, are mixtures of diplomacy and adventure on a dangerous and unknown frontier. Players should be working with low amounts of information, dealing with material scarcity due to being at the tail end of a long logistical train (so they can't operate at optimal efficiency or effectiveness most of the time; this is "count your rations and arrows" territory), and have to deal with constraints that players in other campaigns either don't have to worry about or never even realize exist. Figuring out how to compensate for these scarcity issues, often by interacting with the locals and learning their methods, is part-and-parcel of a properly-executed exploration campaign.
The other issue with an exploration campaign is that what often follows is either exploitation of natural resources, or population movements into colonial settlements, and either development not only strains extant relations with the locals but--unless reversed--inevitably pushes back the frontier as Civilization (i.e. whom the explorers represent) comes in to fill the void that a frontier represents. You can either end a campaign when this phase of exploration arrives, or you can roll with the punches and take the opportunity to shift the campaign in a different direction; each primary exploration expedition, each first contact situation, each push into the unknown presents an opportunity to find something heretofore unseen and unknown to the players. New mysteries to solve, new cultures to interact with, new lands to investigate- this is the feature that keeps it fresh for years on end. Exploit this feature whenever things start to flag.
Exploration campaigns are best done the old-fashioned way: the sandbox. The GM should decide on the region to explore, and set up initial sets of circumstances (including what Occupations, technologies, etc. are allowed to players), and then let them interact without any concern for narrative logic of any sort- the players will, without fail, fill in all such voids with their own notions and thereby succeed or fail without so much as a word out of the GM's mouth. (And that is the other side to all of this: expeditions fail, often disastrously. If they want to be the Donner Party, let them.)
This is a model where your Men-at-Arms will not be so heavily represented, and your Men-of-Magic/Psychics will be likewise reduced in prominence, in favor of Adventurers and Scholars. You need Wilderness Scouts, first and foremost, and then Scholars and Scientists (including medical experts and technicians) with focuses on field operations (which is done by skill selection and equipment choices; someone that needs a big-city lab is not the sort to send on such things, unless it's based out of something like a starship, and that likely means such an individual will be a NPC). Generalists will be more prized members, speaking of Armsmen and Magicians/Psychics, over specialists and time-limited augmented individuals like Juicers are bad choices- as are those tied to logistical trains (Cyborgs) or already unstable (Crazies). (This, again, is where the magical sorts have an advantage so long as magical power is in sufficient abundance.) Problems are better solved by talking or fixing than by fighting, most of the time, and running is not a bad idea- players cannot presume that whatever they face they can handle.
Exploration campaigns are also easily transitioned into and out of because the core of the campaign's paradigm is inherently unstable, and thus temporary, so you can use an exploration phase as a change-of-pace for another campaign when you see the need for such a thing. If you start as exploration, but the players are not interested anymore, it is not hard to let the frontier shift away from them and let them take up positions in the emerging post-exploration communities that arise in the wake of successful exploration expeditions. When devising what to do with a game of RIFTS, don't count exploration out; even as just a temporary phase, you can really get to the heart of what makes tabletop RPGs special by returning to the origin of the hobby- exploration of the unknown, be it for gold, for glory, or for getting away from where they came from.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Common Campaigns in RIFTS: The Superhero Campaign
RIFTS, being a multi-genre campaign, can support entire genres if (and only if) your group buys into that voluntarily. Superheroes do work well enough, and you need not have Heroes Unlimited to make this work, but some commentary with regards to melding the usual superhero tropes with RIFTS is in order.
I am not talking about someone with superpowers in a colorful costume. That can, and does, cover plenty of Occupations in this game and therefore does not make one a superhero. (Or a supervillain for that matter.) I am talking about taking a campaign that would be normative for something like Champions or Mutants & Masterminds (or, of course, Heroes Unlimited) and using it in the environment of RIFTS. This is all about the tropes and not the numbers or the gameplay options.
A superhero game in RIFTS can handle the same range of power level--from the streets and backwoods of mostly-mundane characters to the cosmic levels of Lensmen and their inspirations (Green Lantern and Nova Corps)--so that is not the issue. The issue is that such a campaign will not be the Comics Code Authority sort of castrated content; this doesn't automatically make it an Iron Age (to use comic culture terminology) setting, but it does mean that you are not making the most of what's available in RIFTS if you sanitize things.
By necessity, you should be using some form of team as your campaign template. The trick is to pick the right team for your table's needs; if you have a group that can reliably fulfill a regular commitment to show up and play for four to six hours a week playing the same characters, then you want to use a group like The Fantastic Four or one of the many Japanese tokukatsu shows (or their animated counterparts, Magical Girls and Martial Boys). For a group with a rotating attendance, you want to use a larger organization where members come and go routinely for this or that reason, such as the Legion of Superheroes or the various Avengers lineups. This also means choosing team templates means choosing gameplay templates; committed single-character groups can better exploit serial drama tropes and premises than looser groups who either lack commitment or play multiple characters, who (in turn) can better exploit episode structures and tropes.
So, that said, here's a list of things you need to do to make it work in RIFTS:
I am not talking about someone with superpowers in a colorful costume. That can, and does, cover plenty of Occupations in this game and therefore does not make one a superhero. (Or a supervillain for that matter.) I am talking about taking a campaign that would be normative for something like Champions or Mutants & Masterminds (or, of course, Heroes Unlimited) and using it in the environment of RIFTS. This is all about the tropes and not the numbers or the gameplay options.
A superhero game in RIFTS can handle the same range of power level--from the streets and backwoods of mostly-mundane characters to the cosmic levels of Lensmen and their inspirations (Green Lantern and Nova Corps)--so that is not the issue. The issue is that such a campaign will not be the Comics Code Authority sort of castrated content; this doesn't automatically make it an Iron Age (to use comic culture terminology) setting, but it does mean that you are not making the most of what's available in RIFTS if you sanitize things.
By necessity, you should be using some form of team as your campaign template. The trick is to pick the right team for your table's needs; if you have a group that can reliably fulfill a regular commitment to show up and play for four to six hours a week playing the same characters, then you want to use a group like The Fantastic Four or one of the many Japanese tokukatsu shows (or their animated counterparts, Magical Girls and Martial Boys). For a group with a rotating attendance, you want to use a larger organization where members come and go routinely for this or that reason, such as the Legion of Superheroes or the various Avengers lineups. This also means choosing team templates means choosing gameplay templates; committed single-character groups can better exploit serial drama tropes and premises than looser groups who either lack commitment or play multiple characters, who (in turn) can better exploit episode structures and tropes.
So, that said, here's a list of things you need to do to make it work in RIFTS:
- Choose a Scope & Scale: On Earth, you're best being a City Defender sort of team, even if it's not strictly a city-centric team. Tolkeen is very good for a Magical Girl/Martial Boy team, using magical armors and powers with a common theme. The Coalition would do a super-elite team in the fashion of Suicide Squad or Doom Patrol, using some varieties of Juicer and Crazy that are otherwise ridiculously powerful but burns them out really fast- faster than what is the norm for Juicers. Smaller cities would work better for smaller groups, or even motivated solo players, but should also range somewhat afield to make up for the small city space.
Out in the Three Galaxies, go cosmic. Characters should have technology or magic equal to that of starships, if not star fleets. They should be concerned about large-scale threats; planet-specific parties should be irrelevant nuisances if they are not on planets of strategic importance, and those that are not irrelevant should make the power but lack the scope of operation for some reason or another in order to prevent "Why are they not major players themselves?"
- Cull Your Corpus: You, the GM, needs to sit down beforehand and sift through everything that is available and cut away everything that does not fit the specific superhero experience that you want. This means both what players can access as well as what the NPCs--friendly, neutral, and hostile alike--can access. By definition, a superhero is an individual whose capacities exceed the norm for his environment; if the standard soldiers or gendarmes are augmented in some fashion then being similarly augmented generally doesn't cut it- the superhero possesses an advantage of quality over the far superior quantity of the NPCs. This means that power differential is both relative and necessary to quality as "super"; Batman is super over most of what he deals with, but ordinary versus what Superman can and does contend with (which is why Batman has to rely on Writer Bias to prevail), so don't think that you can blindly employ what's in the books.
- : Get the players on the same page. You're playing a campaign that doesn't necessarily jive with RIFTS as-presented. Ensure that your players see things your way and agree with that before you start chucking dice. If this means house rules, do it. Square that away now, before any issues arise.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Common Campaigns in RIFTS: The Military Campaign
If the mercenary campaign is the default, then the military campaign is one step removed.
The difference is that a military campaign concerns itself with the formal armed forces of a specific state, and as such character autonomy is constrained. The players do not have control over where they go or what their objectives are when they get there, which makes this a fine option for those players who are not the active sort who prefer to set their own goals or pursue their own ambitions; a military structure is excellent for the passive player who shows up with an attitude of "entertain me". The range of character options are likewise constrained, as the players' characters are all members of the same unit and therefore are going to be variations on a niche instead of a broad range of options cooperating as part of an umbrella organization.
In practice, a military campaign will have these features:
The difference is that a military campaign concerns itself with the formal armed forces of a specific state, and as such character autonomy is constrained. The players do not have control over where they go or what their objectives are when they get there, which makes this a fine option for those players who are not the active sort who prefer to set their own goals or pursue their own ambitions; a military structure is excellent for the passive player who shows up with an attitude of "entertain me". The range of character options are likewise constrained, as the players' characters are all members of the same unit and therefore are going to be variations on a niche instead of a broad range of options cooperating as part of an umbrella organization.
In practice, a military campaign will have these features:
- You are soldiers in an army akin to that of a real-world, First World army: By default that means playing a Coalition, Free Quebec, or New German Republic soldier. Your man is indoctrinated into that state's dogma, trained in their doctrine, forced to specialize into a narrow set of applicable skills, and organized into an equally specialized unit with a specific function to fulfill as part of a larger military operation that your man likely cannot perceive as the flag officers in command can. Your man is part of a hierarchy, with one character in command over the rest of the players' characters, and the range of playable activities is as narrow as your man's area of competency.
- You are playing in a procedural campaign: The sort of unit your man is part of dictates the sort of gameplay activities that you have. Contrary to one infamous example, fighter pilots don't do ground-pounding line infantry actions. Tankers don't do hotshot mechajock action. Line infantry aren't involved in fleet battles unless and until (a) they are marines and (b) boarding actions are a thing- neither of which are common at all. By choosing what sort of military unit you want to play, you also choose what kind of game structure you want to explore. Choose carefully.
- Your campaign is married to the political and economic conflicts of the state: Military forces are used to further a state's political and economic interests. That means that your unit can be, and if applicable will be, deployed to advance or defend those interests. Campaigns that fail this fundamental reality of what militaries are for are also campaigns that fall apart because the bullshit cannot be ignored.
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