gaming – Geek Gab

For the Secret Project, I’ve been revisiting core concepts of roleplaying games, and trying to clarify them. Focus their role, clarify their purpose, and hone the description so that it becomes accessible to anyone willing to learn.

Instead of Game Master, Referee, or Judge, I’ve settled on Rules Master, the one person at the table above all others whose job it is to master the rules. Their job is to learn the rules, to apply them correctly, consistently, and fairly, and to know how to adjudicate corner cases and to extend the rules into new areas.

THE ROLE OF A RULES MASTER

The rules are the structural framework for the game. Like the steel girders and concrete pillars that form the skeleton of a building, they hold everything else up, give shape and purpose to the rest of a game, and allow the other components to be put in their proper place and arrangement.

What this means is that the rules are essential, they are the core around which everything else is built and if they’re thoughtlessly changed, the game suffers or even collapses.

Again, the rules of the game can be likened to the string of a kite. Kites only soar because the string keeps them tethered against the wind. The rules of the game keep it tethered to a consistent, predictable environment for play, and allow the rest of the game to soar.

If the Rules Master does not learn the rules, does not correctly apply the rules, or makes hasty and ill-thought-out changes to the rules, the building collapses, and the kite ends up in the mud. That is, the game becomes a weak and miserable parody of itself rather than the grand thing it could have been.

As a Rules Master, it’s your job to learn, apply, and eventually master the rules, and to apply them consistently and fairly in play. As you do this, you will grow in skill and confidence. You will become a role model for other Rules Masters as they seek to found or run their own games.

Stages of Rules Mastery

Apprentice. Learn the rules. Apply them during play. Make judgment calls. Many are wrong, but do the best you can. If you’re wrong, address it, but never allow yourself to be badgered. THE CLEAR INTENT OF THE RULES IS SUPREME. Act as a fair referee. Perfect practice makes perfect.
Journeyman. Continue to learn new rules. Relearn old rules. Correct misapplications of the rules. Improve your ability to adjudicate corner cases. Understand the principles and structures behind the rules so you can extend them into areas not covered by the game. ALWAYS BE IMPROVING. As you do this, you will grow in confidence.
Master. Master the rules. Know all the rules by heart, or know where to find them. PRINTED BOOKS ARE ESSENTIAL. From time to time, reread rules just to refresh your knowledge, to deepen your knowledge, or to discover things you may have overlooked. Understand the principles behind the rules so well, you can extend them into almost any novel situation. When you have achieved this level, you will know you have acquired all the basics for play.

RULE ZERO DOES NOT EXIST IN THIS DOJO.

This post is a game design post, a post about the fit and finish of a game, about those last touches that moves a game from good to great or even superlative. It’s not suggesting a House Rule for people to adopt in their own Mörk Borg game, for reasons I’ll go into a little down the page, but looking at how the designers of the game could have made the Difficulty Rating descriptions (chart right, click to embiggen) work better with the mechanics (also right).

For those who don’t know, Mörk Borg is a dark fantasy TTRPG set in a world that is gonna die, and right soon. Like in a few months to a year.

The planet has been partially eaten, reality is warping, and the prophecies say the sun is going to go out and fire will consume the land. (Also, all kids under 7 years, 7 days will one day in the future die and come back as zombies, which I have to tell you, SO much fun.)

The basic game mechanic is that you roll a d20, add your Attribute (-3 to +3, at the beginning of the game), and compare to the Difficulty Rating to determine success. When I first looked at the DR chart, I immediately glommed onto a few problems, not with the mechanics but with how the mechanics meshed with the descriptions.

DR 6 (“so simple people laugh at you for failing”) means the most genius human in the world has a chance of looking like a buffoon 10% of the time in their area of expertise. This seems incredibly high.

Normal (DR 12) means Average people (+0) fail 55% of the time. Anything you fail at more often than not is not a normal task.

DR 18 (“He didn’t do that. I saw him do that, but he couldn’t have done that.”) for an average bloke, is possible 15% of the time. For a Hapless Harry, -2, it’s still possible 5% of the time, and he’s almost omni-incompetent. And for the elite (+3), it’s possible 30% of the time. None of these match the description of something pretty much impossible.

To make the mechanics match the descriptions, you can either change the descriptions, or change the Difficulty Ratings. I went with adjusting the numbers, because that actually involves both.

Here’s how the numbers need to be changed: The lowest DR needs to be lower. The “Normal” DR needs to be lower. And the highest DR needs to be much higher. Here’s what I came up with:

Difficulty Ratings (DR)

5 – so simple people laugh at you for failing
7 – routine but some chance of failure
9 – pretty simple but not simple enough to not roll
11 – normal
13 – demanding
15 – difficult
17 – really hard
19 – intimidating
21 – formidable
23 – should not be possible

Lower Bottom: I dropped DR 6 by one point and adjusted the two above it appropriately.

Dropping Normal: I also reduced Normal DR by one point, which put it right in line with the others I had already adjusted. I also reduced everything except 18 by one point.

Higher Highest: I raised 18 to 23.

All the above changes I made so that the odds of success matched the descriptions better. (See “The Odds,” below.) However, this did leave a few holes in the chart.

I inserted new benchmarks at DR 13, 19, and 21. I borrowed the names of the new benchmarks from the Cypher System because they fit with the theme Mörk Borg was going for, and Cypher has an excellent naming scheme.

The Odds

These kinds of paragraphs tend to make people’s eyes glaze over, mine included. I don’t know how to present them so that they’re interesting and fun, so just hold on for the ride.

A DR 5 means that the lowest scum (-3) fails those “so simple people laugh at you for failing” tests with a roll of 7 or below, which happens 35% of the time. Meanwhile +0, average people, only fail them 20% of the time, while the elite of the elite (+3) fail 5% of the time.

All of those odds track. I could have gone with DR 4, but I decided that the +3 crowd should at least have a chance of failing this badly (5%), since—as we’ll see later—they’ll also have a 5% chance at succeeding at the “physics is broken” tasks that were DR 18. DR 5 meant all the DRs should be odd, to match.

DR 11 for “normal” means an average person (+0) succeeds 50% of the time. That seems pretty normal, or what other games often call Average.

DR 23 “should not be possible” (aka “Inconceivable!” or “I can’t believe my lying eyes.”) means the most elite human (+3) only succeeds 5% of the time, and nobody else has even a chance. That seems almost impossible to me.

Though, arguably, given that you can increase an attribute to +6, “nearly actually impossible” could be as high as 25, depending on how literally you want to take the description. This would mean there are things in the world that players can’t accomplish until one of them reaches +5 in the appropriate attribute. Especially in Mörk Borg‘s Dark Fantasy dystopia, having things that can’t be touched until close to the very end, or indeed will get left undone, is actually apt.

Design Not House Rule

The DR chart is woven into all the mechanics of the game, so changing it would require altering the entire game, rewriting the rules from scratch. This is a far more ambitious project than it would seem, especially for a game with a… uh… more selective appeal than other Fantasy TTRPG games.

Which is why this is a critique rather than a suggested House Rule. As a House Rule it isn’t useful, as a critique of game design, it can help future designers learn HOW to think in a larger sense than just this one problem.

As a designer, it’s tempting to come up with a solution and skip to playtesting. What is usually needed first is an analysis of the proposed rule or rule change. You should take a moment and logic test your rule: “Does this make sense in the context of the world I’m describing? Is it worth the hassle? (That is, is the work players and GM’s put in to enact the rule worth the game effects it produces?) Is there a simpler way to achieve the same thing?”

This specific adjustment may seem nit-picky, and most players, DM’s, and designers probably couldn’t care less. Still, if you’re going to have descriptions of mechanics, the dice percentages attendant to them should match. “The toughest armor in the galaxy, made of pure neutronium,” shouldn’t be vulnerable to a knife blow, and “nearly physically impossible” shouldn’t be possible for the worst 9% of humanity.

Mörk Borg is absolutely STUFFED with phenomenal color and mood. This is just one case where not only are most of the descriptions lacking in color, but they don’t match the mechanics. Ideally, I’d replace all the descriptions of Normal and above with colorful ones matching the Death Metal aesthetic of the game, but I’m not getting paid enough to do that.

Tag: gaming

The Practice of Becoming a Rules Master

Mörk Borg Mechanic Design: Difficulty Ratings in TTRPGs