Physical Representations for Complex Tasks Part 2: Time

I created two tools to provide something physical for your tabletop RPG scenes and I realized that they can be used for any system to help you run your games. So I wanted to talk about how you can do just that. Furthermore I will go into how you can use the mechanics, to help inspire your creativity to liven up complex tasks or add complications to encounters and scenes.

The first mechanic, named boards, track the progress of a complex task with cards being added or disappearing from the spread of cards. You can read more about it here from my first post about this topic.

The second mechanic I use to encapsulate a scene is a countdown clock with cards. This system is much simpler than boards. 

1. First an amount of time is set and everyone at the table is informed. 

2. Each round of actions lasts 1 minute and each player will say what their character is doing during that round.  The Dealer/GM will set the real time between each card pull and can pull a card whenever they feel an appropriate amount of time has been given to respond.  

3. When the Dealer feels it is time to pull a card, draw one card and reduce the time remaining depending on the suit:

   1. Diamonds or clubs, 1 minute passes, or 1 round

   2. Hearts or the Black Joker, 2 minutes pass, or 2 rounds

   3.  Spades or Red Joker, no time passes, or 0 rounds.

4. When all the time runs out, the scene is done and the danger presents itself. The players now have a new problem to deal with.

Here is an example of how this works in a game:

Emily, Jace, and Tasha sneak into a noble's house and just make it to the bedroom when they hear the front door open.  The Dealer decides a reasonable time until the action occurs and states it to the group.  The Dealer does not always need to state what will occur exactly, only that something will occur.  This builds tension as the clock ticks down.

In this case the Dealer decides 4 minutes.  Emily searches the desk for the documents they need while Jace goes to check the hallway to see how much time they have left.  Tasha also begins her search starting with the bed, chest, and bedside tables.  The Dealer feels like these actions would take about a minute and draws a card: it’s hearts, meaning the group took 2 minutes and now only 2 minutes remain.  Tasha abandons her search and starts unlocking the window.  Emily finds the documents and begins copying the signature. Jace returns and pockets some jewelry. The Dealer draws again, this time clubs, 1 minute left.  Emily finishes her forging job and applies the noble house’s seal to complete the look.  Jace starts tossing the room to make it look like a regular burglary.  Tasha doesn't decide what to do in time and the Dealer draws again: spades, the team got lucky.  They all make a bolt through the window and begin the climb down.  The dealer draws the final card, clubs, and therefore the timer ends.  The noble enters the room, and the event is complete.

Now this system can be used for a variety of different time scales to match whatever your players are doing.  Here are a few example situations:

The wraith that has been plaguing the nearby town has an effigy somewhere in the nearby forest, the effigy is only visible in twilight or at night but the wraith appears every night. The players begin their search during sunset, and night begins 2 hours after.  Set each round to be about 30 minutes as they choose what to do to either search or prepare for the coming wraith.

The boat the heroes are on is heading straight for a whirlpool.  They just started escorting the few passengers onto a helicopter to escape.  They have 3 minutes and each round is 30 seconds.

The large stone doors of the temple are beginning to close at a cinematically slow pace.  The players have 30 seconds to reach the doors and dodge past all of the skeletal guards.  Each round is 6 seconds.

Health is not the only resource the players should lose. What are some other tools you use to build tension in a scene or encounter? Let me know in the comments or on reddit or @C22system. If you like what I am doing let me know and follow me @c22system or join my discord for C22(https://discord.gg/gAJpjZXuYq)

Physical Representations for Complex tasks Part 1: Boards

I created two tools to provide something physical for your tabletop RPG scenes and I realized that they can be used for any system to help you run your games. So I wanted to talk about how you can do just that. Furthermore I will go into how you can use the mechanics, to help inspire your creativity to liven up complex tasks or add complications to encounters and scenes.

The first mechanic I made, I named a board. If you have played Blades in the Dark, it works very similarly to clocks, but with a bit more depth. If you have not, do not worry.

A board represents a complex task, something that requires more than two Skill Checks to be completed. A board is constructed by first drawing 3 or more cards from the Dealer’s Event Deck, or a standard deck of playing cards for other systems, and placing them in a row. The Players start from the left and progress to their goal on the right.  The goal should be marked somehow, be it with a different card a bottle or your favorite figure.  This goal may shift, or remain stationary, it depends on the type of task being performed.

A character will perform Skill Checks to progress along the board. With each success, they place their successful card, or some other marker on the furthest open spot on the left side of the board.  If they fail a check, they place their card, or marker, face down on the furthest open slot on the right side of the board, preventing the character from reaching that level of success for this task.

When the character places a card on the goal spot or the last open spot, the complex task is completed, and the results are described.

Here is an example of a board in use within my system.

The Dealer sets up an small but difficult board of 4 in length with the goal card on the third slot.  This requires the Players to have 3 successes before two failures.  Emily starts by using Investigation – Mechanical Working and gets a 6 on the check, and she successfully identifies the trigger device. Next, she uses a Tinker Disable Device Check to try to cut the wire and gets a 5.  Her hand slips and she cuts the wrong wire. The bomb remains ticking but doesn’t explode. Her crew member Jake attempts to calm her down with a Persuasion Clam check to help her succeed.  Jake succeeds with an 8. Her other crewmate Chelsea attempts to repair the wire with Tinker Repair Skill, but she fails with a 3.  The wire touches part of the circuit board, triggering the explosion.  Their professor comes in the room an announces how they would all be dead had this not been a simulation. Better luck next time, Emily and team.

Using the cards to inspire your players

Since the board is a physical thing that can be touched and manipulated, it gives a reference to the Player’s actions. By marking which card your Skill Check was, you can see how you contributed, or did not, to the team’s efforts. Finally, it also allows the whole table to see what it would take to complete a task, it makes the goal visible, clear, and tangible.

I often use boards for preparation or to complete a scene. Lets say the party is setting up an ambush. I set out a board of 4 cards, with no goal, and ask the party to offer up Skills they would use to complete the task. This inspires the Players to offer the Skill checks and explain their reasoning, rather than me asking for a set of Skills. This has two effects, it allows the Players to be more involved in creating the world and the story since they decide what their ambush looks like, both narratively and mechanically. Secondly, it draws on the creativity of the table rather than just the GM.

To resolve the scene, take each Skill Check contributed as one of the cards for the board. You do not need to indicate whether each individual check was a pass or fail at this time, you will take the collection of all Skill Checks and their results and create a whole unique resolution based on the inputs of the players. In this way you can pull from the Player’s creativity to make the resolution description that much more unique.

Using the cards to inspire yourself

You’ve done 5 scenes already this session and you are running out of creative steam. Let the cards help.

Instead of having the cards face down, just representing spaces to be filled, you can play the cards face up and use the suits as a basis for your check. Here are some examples of how each suit can inspire you.

Diamonds is Power. Think about how mental or physical power can either cause or solve the problem. Maybe there is a rusted sewer grate blocking the way. The players could either use physical strength to rip the weakened gate apart or instead they use their mental power to devise a way to accelerate the rust, targeting the weak points so it falls off.

Spades is Flexibility. Think about how mental or physical flexibility can either cause or solve the problem. Perhaps a country has closed its borders due to worsening relations with the neighboring country. The players could use mental flexibility to talk and falsify a story to get past border patrol, or maybe they can use their physical flexibility to slip through less secure sections of the border.

Hearts is Resilience. Think about how mental or physical resilience can either cause or solve the problem. Perhaps the party is moving through a spider infested cave to clear it out. The walls are thick with spikes dripping with poisons but they use their physical resilience to endure any of the small scrapes they experience. Conversely, their mental resilience allows them keep their wits and not be afraid of the dangers that jump out of the dark.

Clubs is social. Think about how social presence or social charisma can either cause or solve the problem. Perhaps the party is investigating the testimonies of some street urchins when a gang comes up to mug the party. The party not being well armed, uses their social presence to appear tougher than they are and intimidate the gang off, or using their social charisma, they make friends with the gang to see why they are robbing people in the first place.

This is just one way you can use cards to spice up your tabletop games. In the next post, I will talk about how to use cards to make a countdown clock to drive tension in a scene.

Try these out and see how it enhances your game. Let me know how it went in your sessions if you do. Finally, if you find an improvement at your table, tell me about it! I would love to know more ways to enhance my gaming.

As always, thanks for reading and if you like what I am writing about, follow me on Twitter @c22system or join my discord for C22. If you want me to talk about a particular design topic let me know!

Zones vs Grids and what that means for the game

Recently, I have wanted to add support for zones in my core rules as I have found they work better for Freelancer’s Guide than hexes do. Hexes are great for the steampunk/fantasy settings I use for testing, and hexes were what the game was originally made for, but zones perform better is certain types of encounters. Zones have their place; grids have their place. Now let’s talk about what that place is.

The difference between Zones and Grids comes down to granularity in the rules. Just so we are all clear with what I mean by granularity, it is the level of detail that the rules cover. You might be thinking, why wouldn’t you want to the rpg system to be detailed enough to cover any situation. Detail comes at a price. The more details you have, the more you need to think about, the more you need to process, and the longer the game takes. Putting it another way, there is a reason we do not roleplay every moment in a game, we skip the boring parts; we abstract out what we do not need.  There is a place for both and their have their strengths, so I want to talk about why I originally went with hexes for the core system, and after I’ll take about why zones work best for Freelancer’s Guide.

Hexes are tactical. I went with hexes in the core game because of the tactical aspects they bring to combat. The smaller steps in movement, and how well they work with maneuvers makes for some complex and engaging combat to play (check out Missfortunate Morning for a prime example).  The steampunk/fantasy setting works well for this because combat last 2 to 4 rounds so while each round and choice has weight, there is still enough time for tactics to be employed.

When I started playtesting Freelancer’s Guide, I would draw up hexes when we started an encounter so we could easily represent the movement.  While hexes were fine, they made the encounters feel too slow. I think is because of two parts. Because guns and longer range are involved in Freelancer’s guide, a lot of the encounters are about managing objectives over larger distances and also because the fights were faster and deadly, see guns again doing player health in damage by default.

When I switched to zones, the encounters became faster and more interesting because the players were deciding less, where will I step, and more, can I solve this problem and also help shoot the enemies, or do I only get to complete the objective.  Zones are less granular than hexes, therefore fewer micro decisions, therefore less time needs to be spent. That time spent is fine when the choices are meaningful and tactical, but since the combat would last 1-2 rounds, tactics were more in the setup of the fight or the pathing of the chase, than the mid fight tactics. So I am moving Freelancer’s Guide to a profit focused living to hexes and it will be better for it.

That does not mean the hexes are gone from the core system. No, I think they still add value to the system but I am making minor adjustments to the wording to accommodate both methods. They both have their place in the system and when applied correctly, make an encounter that much more exciting.  So, highlighting what this situations are, hexes are still going to be the default for combat with melee weapons and premodern adventures.  Zones come into play for encounters on larger scales in distance, for longer time periods between rounds, and modern and up settings.  The system can adapt to either with every 6m of movement being the ability to move one zone, and a few maneuvers and ranges explained slight differently, it will be a relatively simple transition that I think will make the system better.

In your games when do you like to use Zones, when do you like to use Grids?

Let me know what you think by commenting here or following me on twitter  @c22system or join my discord (https://discord.gg/gAJpjZXuYq)

I need more stakes to justify guns

So this will be a bit more loose than other blog posts as it will be mostly some thoughts I am having about the current state of C22’s magic system and the upcoming Steampunk world I am making.

So when a friend and I first started making our steampunk world, we made these things called projectors. Cartridge based guns that will fire out magic in a concentrated attack. Magic was suppose to be difficult to harness and control so this was the leyman’s access to it. This was all fine when this was a Savage worlds homebrew.

Now the world I have made and the mechanics for C22 do not mesh. That is the problem. First we need to understand how magic works so we can understand why it makes the world not work.

In the current version of C22, magic and powers are just like any other skill check. You spend some time, you see if you got the right element and you can create even the smallest amount of magic. The only cost is your time and a card draw. Sometimes, in tense situations, you dont get the element you want so you cant cast the spell you want, but you can still cast a spell. Lets say you draw a hearts and a clubs but you needed a diamond card to cast your lightning magic. in tense situations, tough luck, no lightning. Out of combat it is a little bit different, you can always wait long enough to get the element you wanted.

So out of combat, magic doesnt really have a cost. The time is negligible and you can mitigate the unexpectedness by waiting. Now lets look at what I wanted for the technology of the world. I have steamtech and then the more recently developed cartridge based magic tech that is supposed to be the reliable form of magic casting. aka firing the blast of magic out of a gun. Why would magic be developed to be reliable if casting magic is already reliable out of combat and most people can do it without a cost? These questions made me need to rethink how magic will work, mechanically, in the Steampunk setting I am hoping to build.

I have a few options I can look at to make this work: I can gatekeep magic, I can make you spend a resource, or I can add stakes if you fail.

A similar solution is to gatekeep magic. Only certain people can even learn magic (Which is currently partially true, you need to know a style first), but this has a few problems in my mind. For player characters, why would you ever use a projector if you can just cast the magic yourself if it is easy to put skills in to.

I can make you spend a resource to cast magic, like vancian magic and spell slots or savage worlds and power points. Looking at C22 as it is right now, I can make magic cost health, which represents stressing the character with magic, but this has the problem of being able to be healed off with recovery actions, making the cost almost trivial at times. Now if I decide to do cards as a cost then that could have interesting ramifications. It doesnt directly contribute to the magic user’s health and immediate death, it just makes them slightly more susecptible to damage as it lowers their ability to soak damage. Also these cards only come back from resting, tying rest to recovery for magic users. Finally, it has the added benefit of gatekeeping magic slightly as what makes player characters unique is their ability to soak damage and keep fighting. This isn’t perfect as it makes magic have a finite number of casts between rests, which might not be the direction I want to take magic yet.

The adding stakes if you fail would also explain this as magic is both risky and dangerous, causing either a loss of cards, health, or inflicting a status on a failure would create an interesting balance and press your luck style of gameplay. This would also stop many people from getting or using it as it could result in serious injury if used incorrectly, thus making the use of projects an easy and reliable creation.

Right now I am most interested in having failed checks for magic and powers to require a card to be soaked. i think this would the most interesting of the combinations in my opinion. It might make magic take too long to recover from between heavy uses, as you can only recover 10 cards each long rest, so ill need to watch that.

Do you think there is a different approach I am missing? Something you do or have seen done to make magic have a cost?

What are ways you've added stakes to your homebrew items in your sessions that worked well? What have you done that hasn't worked well? Let me know in the comments below. As always if you like this type of content and want to see more of it, let me know either here or on Twitter (@c22system) or on my discord found on the home page of this site.