Character Contacts

Nothing makes a tabletop game come alive like a good NPC. Social interaction is at the core of RPGs, always leading to the trouble that is soon to follow. Having reoccurring, changing characters for players to interact with can boost the overall enjoyment at the table.

Granting players access to such NPCs is difficult without hours of prior gameplay or backstory work. Some games, like Shadowrun, allow the PCs to easily create a few contacts during character creation (if they wish!). This immediately hooks the character into the world, and gives both the GM and the player an NPC to use over the course of the game.

Mechanics can drive gameplay and encourage various behaviors, so having character contacts give mechanical bonuses incentivizes players to introduce them into the game. Heavy role players will take the opportunity to add in extra RP scenes, while more rules-focused players will still inject them into the story the same as most players use their physical equipment.

These contacts are unique to each character, reoccur in the story as they're used, and ground the characters in the world they find themselves in. The character contact idea is definitely something I'll be using in Hostargo.

Unclear Optimization

The inspiration for this post came from an awesome Quora answer to the question:

What is a real solution to the too good to use problem in games, that causes players to hoard the best items and never use them?

The answer linked above is long, but I encourage you to read it if you are familiar with video games. In the following discussion I will attempt to take what I've learned and apply it to tabletop RPGs.

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Spell slots per day are the nostalgic bane of D&D 5e. Playing the game RAW puts players in the same awkward situation every encounter: to use, or not to use, the powerful spells in their arsenal. For a lot of players, that means rarely to never actually using the fun things that they built their character around. This problem has been defined under the Unclear Optimization Anti-Pattern in game design.

Including powerful, limited-use items in a game is not an inherently bad idea. We want to include tools for players to use in the game for overcoming certain challenges. The problem lies with trying to balance the power of these items. The easiest answer, and frankly a game design cop-out, is to make these items single use. This means you're trading the permanent loss of the item for a potentially temporary benefit. But it's unclear, you see, if that trade off is worthwhile, because what if you should have saved that item for an even greater threat in the future? In fact, a player might always expect (rightfully) a harder encounter in the future... therefore never actually using the item!

There are a variety of ways to balance items, like cool-down periods, refresh intervals, or for some other cost like currency at a shop. But these methods just help alleviate the symptoms of the problem, just like daily spell slots. A better solution is to ask: what do these items actually do in the game? They help drive progress forward by providing the players with the tools to succeed, right? So if I spend these resources on progress, what does progress get me?

The answer, hopefully, is more items for which to further drive progress! In this way, D&D's potions and spell scrolls, if they are available for purchase, are actually not a terrible solution. In some ways, it depends if your character actually cares about the amount of money they have. If they do not, this is great. Spend away. If they do, and measure their progress by it (e.g. the character's end-goal is to own a castle), it puts a heavy cost of progress on the item which makes it seem cheep or inefficient.

The best solutions not only drive the game forward, but include the items in the game's reward cycles. We want players to spend resources to make progress, which gains them more resources so they can make more progress. This is where D&D's dungeon loot does a much better job. You use items to progress through the dungeon, but along the way you expect to be gaining resources as well, picking up old spell books and taking the potions off of the dead goblin you just killed.

Spell slots, though, are refreshed at an arbitrary time, often meaning that quite simply, game progress halts every once in a while when the players have decided they need to recharge. The better solution would be to have abilities refresh after progress has been made, much like encounter-level abilities in 4e.

Intentionally avoiding Unclear Optimization can lead to great game mechanics, if you implement a solution that drive's your core gameplay forward. This is different for every game, and even various characters. A warrior type might need to hit things for adrenaline, so they can spend that adrenaline to hit more things! A religious type might need to pray for holy power, so that they can use that holy power to convert people, getting them to pray, which the gods reward with more holy power!

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Now for some personal notes.

This reinforces a lot of mechanics I have in Hostargo, but it also helped me avoid falling into the same trap. I knew, unintentionally, about this anti-pattern, which is why I have most of my ability costs in terms of in-game turns (the tick system). Other, more powerful abilities, also cost resources that are regained after every encounter. I also have single-use items... that are easily refreshed at any group safe house (thanks Left 4 Dead!). But I almost included a "daily" refresh of luck points. Nope! Not anymore. We are now tying that directly to our XP system (since unspent xp = luck), and saying that luck only refreshes after every major plot point, when the players get 5 more XP and the chance to spend it all on new abilities.

In my personal experience with D&D, spell slots per day have been the source of all sorts of problems. We house-rule the crap out of them, as I'm sure a lot of players do, and generally allow for long-term rests in the middle of dangerous areas. The players will go to great lengths to lock themselves away in a safe room, take watch, cast protection spells, etc etc etc. And as a GM I don't want to continually punish them for doing so - throwing random encounters at them each and every time they try to do this. So, might as well beef up the encounter difficulty and let the players actually have fun slinging their spells around, only to long rest a bit later down the road. This ends up being more fun all around, including the fact that spell misses or low damage rolls don't feel nearly as wasted.

Lastly, I now fully realize what bugs me about Cyphers. I know I keep bashing The Cypher System, but I think at this point more people than not have realized that they love Monte Cook's settings more than they like his game mechanics. But I digress. Cyphers are all single-use items, that the game forces a hard carry limit of "3" on, that the players expect to get lots of throughout the course of the game. That's cool, and fits nicely into the reward cycle that we've described as a good solution. The problem is that each cypher is unique. The very thing that sets them apart from D&D's potion and spell-scroll slinging style is exactly the thing that causes Unclear Optimization. Unlike a potion or scroll, which are almost exclusively for combat, Cyphers carry unique abilities that reward player creativity in their use. This seems great, except that now I'm faced with our core problem: even if I get more of these later, what if I really needed this one ability for something later down the road?

A Simple Solution to Unspent XP

TL/DR: Luck = Re-roll a skill check. Once per session (or whenever players can spend XP).

Pondering on the best forms of advancement, I've come to the conclusion that an open store of character abilities and upgrades, that cost varying degrees of XP, is the best way to go. If you keep the numbers small, purchases are simple. If you keep short and interesting prerequisite trees, progression feels good. But, I'm faced with examples of games that have a weird problem: when some players want to save up to buy the good stuff, they are under powered until they do so.

This creates unwieldy swings in character balance. Some games can handle different characters taking front stage, but in a combat-focused game like Hostargo, I'd like everyone on the same page at all times. This creates more of a team focus and less of a rotating rock-star spotlight. Anyone who's played a serious game of Shadowrun knows the frustration of being just 1-2 karma short, and not getting anything fun to show off for the next session.

Monte Cook's Cypher system gives us a solution, and a poor implementation. In the game, you can spend hard-earned XP on skill check re-rolls, allowing for heroic moments where you just really need your character to succeed. The problem? That XP is gone forever. NOPE!

I've been told there's an "optional rule" for keeping XP for advancement even if you've spent it on re-rolls. YES! I'm calling this spending XP as luck. It should absolutely be the default, and it is the simple solution we're looking for. Characters who keep XP from session to session will have a little extra boost when they need it, compared to their comrades who are pulling out their new and shiny stunts. This keeps any character relative to their party, even when they haven't actually "advanced".

As bonus points, XP should be able to be spent as soon as it's earned. This makes for a quick-and-dirty, yet meaningful reward cycle. As characters succeed in story-based objectives, they get a small boost to help them further down the line. Once a session is over, or characters have the opportunity to spend XP (i.e. during a long rest), XP that has been used as luck can be either spent on advancement, or saved to be used again as luck on the character's next bout.