Another Thread on Writing Adventures

[aramis]

In CT this is not an issue since characters can do so much unskilled. It was when the game became defined by skills (MT onwards) rather than character activities that the
low term number character suffers.

That entirely depends upon how the ref interprets the skill chapter, and how liberal they are with Level ½ aka Level 0 skills.

Many a CT Ref treated CT as skill driven in exactly the same way as BRP or FASA Trek, and CT characters came out pretty weak outside their specialty. How many? Well, every CT Ref I've ever played under (about 5)...
... all but one were also big on Bk4-7 char gen.

It was affected by the clear skill-driven mechanics of Twilight2000 (1E) and Traveller:2300, as well as the other skill driven games of the early 1980's - Space Opera, RoleMaster/SpaceMaster, Palladium's Mechanoids & Fantasy rules, The Arcanum, Chaosium's RuneQuest & BRP. Since it was contemporary with RQ, and only a couple years older than Palladium, those two had profound impacts on many who came to CT later...

Likewise, the number of CT GMs using terms and/or rank as a testable characteristic is something I never encountered advocacy of before joining COTI... To be fair, my first encounter with skill driven games was Star Frontiers... and, coming to CT, I saw the skills in the same, if fuzzier, light. (SFAD had 6 levels in each skill, with delineated formulae for each major use of the skill as a separate percentile subskill... but they all went up when the primary was raised.)

 

[creativehum]

Much of these issues come down to how a Referees and Players expect an RPG to work.

Classic Traveller came out of the tradition of Original Dungeons & Dragons, where the PCs might do any number of things without the Referee referring to rules or rolling dice for any number of hours. ("Can I sneak up on this guy?" "What do you do?" Player describes what his PC does. "Yousneak up on the guy.") The Players made declarations, the Referee adjudicated.

If the Referee wasn't sure how things should turn out, he would ask for a roll. Sometimes the rules covered what the roll was supposed to be in detail. Other times he would make up the roll and the odds on the spot. This was true in both OD&D and CT. And the rules for the 1977 edition of Traveller are clear on this point in Book 1:

Skills and the Referee: It is impossible for any table of information to cover all aspects of every potential situation, and the above listing is by no means complete in its coverage of the effects of skills. This is where the referee becomes an important part of the game process. The above listing of skills and game effects must necessarily be taken as a guide, and followed, altered, or ignored as the actual situation dictates.

More points on this kind of RPG playing style are found in The Traveller Adventure as well.

Of course, this is only one way of playing RPGs. Another playstyle involves using rules that are comprehensive and, in one way or another, cover anything the PCs might do. In most cases if the PC wants to do something the Player looks down at his character sheet to determine if he can do it all all.

This is not at all how OD&D or CT were built. But within years of CT being published, this style of play and game design took firm root. More importantly, the notions of how to play the games from the first years of the hobby where forgotten... or if they were remembered they were seen as lacking or broken. But they weren't broken. They were simply a different way of playing that were quite functional if you played them in the playstyle they were designed to support.

This paragraph I quoted above was dropped from all later editions of Basic Traveller rules sets (1988, Traveller Book, Starter Traveller. Which is a problem, since that's paragraph nails down such a fundamental approache to how the game was designed to be used and to work in play.

It makes sense that people who first encountered games like RuneQuest, Star Frontiers, and other games published years after CT might stumble across the CT rules and run them with the same logic and playstyle of these later games. But, of course, things would break down.

The notion that a Classic Traveller PC can only perform actions based off the skills on character sheet is a kind of nightmare, of course. And I can't imagine playing the game that way with any sort of pleasure. But I can see how some people who started playing post-1980 might try it that way. And most likely become frustrated and start thinking the with the rules to "fix" them. But, again, that's not how the rules were written to be used.

The skills, for the most part, allow PCs to make certain events easier (a chase in an Air/Raft for example) or to allow the PCs to bypass certain problems with ease if they had certain skills. For example, if ship's engine needs a repair to get back to port, a PC with Engineering might be able to get the job done. But does this mean the PCs must have an Engineer to deal with the problem? No. They could hire someone. (Which might mean stealing money to pay the engineer.) The might make a deal with the local government to troubleshoot in return for a quick repair. They might end up stealing the parts they need rather than trying to repair the broken parts they have.

And all those possible adventures will be built off the PCs doing all sorts of things -- breaking and entering, cajoling, threatening, casing a bank, kidnapping, and more -- that aren't covered in the rules but that the Referee can either adjudicate on the fly or use the "game pieces" already in the game (Throws, Characteristics, Skills, Service Experience) to build rolls as needed, as the quoted paragraph above suggests.

This is where I also run a different path than many other people when writing adventures. In the later Playstyle of RPGs the Referee is usually concerned that the adventure has moments to show off the skills the the PCs have, and makes sure the adventure doens't depend on skills the PCs don't have. But in the playstayle of these original RPGs this isn't a concern. The Referee simply presents problems and obstacles and it is up the Players to come up with a means to get around them or through them. Sometimes they will use a die roll, sometimes they won't. But in no way are the PCs limited by the few words on their character sheet to determine what they can do or can't do.

 

[kilemall]

Oh, I misunderstood, I thought you were pointing out the rules as a correction, and it was confusing. I should have requested clarification before defending my points.

Speaking of in service games, one thing I've always wanted to try is have the players all join a service they like, such as scouts or imperial marines, all agree they're in the same unit, then roll character generation year by year, according lbb 4, 5, 6, or 7. I would write adventures for them according to their yearly assignments in the advanced character generation system. By the end of their careers, they would already know each other, already have bonds of comradeship, and already have a good many adventures under there belts when they muster out (or get kicked out) and start seeking their fortune (or start running from the law).

Advantage of this style of campaign is that you could have one-off sessions with whichever player shows up, they were assigned to the mission while the other characters are 'in training', getting medical treatment, on vacation, etc.

 

[kilemall]

Again, have to disagree here Creativehum, several of those example throws from the original LBBs (and I treat them as examples not must-do) make it quite clear that not having skills had dire consequences- in certain situations.


This is the key difference- the whole CT 'success/competition/task/saving' throw was predicated on 'it depends', a throw that brought into consideration unique situations and referee judgement, rather then rules lawyering.


The other item that puts paid to the idea that there aren't limits to the character is JoAT. That skill exists basically giving a skill-0 for everything- highly implying that there are consequences for NOT having a skill.



The one set of circumstances where throws were highly defined, personal combat and starship combat, IMO came out of the miniatures/wargaming traditions and pointed the way to comprehensive systems that D&D didn't have much of, at least until something like say the AD&D spells. So perhaps the seeds of your discontent were already in the game, it just had not metastasized to the rest of the systems.


Even there, S4 has the Doctor/Bureaucrat/Barbarian exception to the Gun Combat-0 (or Gun Combat-1/2, as you like), and they get negatives in opposition to the general rule of most careers.



Anyway, bottom line, agreed that the original CT was MOSTLY an exercise in judgement and it depends, disagreed that lack of skills was not a defined and intended limit with consequence.

 

[creativehum]

Again, have to disagree here Creativehum, several of those example throws from the original LBBs (and I treat them as examples not must-do) make it quite clear that not having skills had dire consequences- in certain situations.


This is the key difference- the whole CT 'success/competition/task/saving' throw was predicated on 'it depends', a throw that brought into consideration unique situations and referee judgement, rather then rules lawyering.


The other item that puts paid to the idea that there aren't limits to the character is JoAT. That skill exists basically giving a skill-0 for everything- highly implying that there are consequences for NOT having a skill.



The one set of circumstances where throws were highly defined, personal combat and starship combat, IMO came out of the miniatures/wargaming traditions and pointed the way to comprehensive systems that D&D didn't have much of, at least until something like say the AD&D spells. So perhaps the seeds of your discontent were already in the game, it just had not metastasized to the rest of the systems.


Even there, S4 has the Doctor/Bureaucrat/Barbarian exception to the Gun Combat-0 (or Gun Combat-1/2, as you like), and they get negatives in opposition to the general rule of most careers.



Anyway, bottom line, agreed that the original CT was MOSTLY an exercise in judgement and it depends, disagreed that lack of skills was not a defined and intended limit with consequence.

If you are referring to some sort of disagreement from the past where someone (you? I don't remember) took my words and exaggerated them to the point where people were claiming I had said things I hadn't said, I don't know what to say about that. I do remember having to endlessly repeat myself, in the same words, again and again, even as one person kept insisting I was saying what I literally wsan't saying. I hope that doesn't have to happen again here. (It was very frustrating.)

After all, the skill descriptions say often, "If you don't have this skill, here is the fallout..." So of course not having skills often has consequences. There are also limits on the use of 0-skills. And JoaT. I have never said otherwise. Certainly there is nothing in the previous post that would suggest I believe any PC can do anything whether they have a skill or not, or that I believe there are not consequences to not having skills.

The fact is I don't think we are disagreeing about anything I have ever said, but only what some people decided to think I meant. If you take another look at the post above I don't think you'll find any instance where I am saying what (as far as I can tell) you think I am saying.

That said, I might be wrong! If you could provide a concrete example from a situation of play of what you might consider a concrete disagreement that's would be great.

 

[Tiikeri]

Advantage of this style of campaign is that you could have one-off sessions with whichever player shows up, they were assigned to the mission while the other characters are 'in training', getting medical treatment, on vacation, etc.

Yes the inevitable appointments, sick calls, tdy training, mandatory fUn days and other distractors. "So you guys went through he'll on that mission? Well I would've been there with the fgmp, but I had use or lose leave. You know how it is."


Something else it does well is give new players understandable structure while you're introducing them to the setting and the systems. Rather than wandering about peeping like fuzzy yellow chicks, they have a purpose, a goal in a paradigm they understand: military service where they get told where to go and what to do, and they have to be at least slightly responsible. It's like training wheels until they can decently sandbox. Then they can muster out and do what they like.

 

[kilemall]

Creativehum, I believe I was one of your 'miscreants', my argument then was with some phrasing you used that seemed to suggest that characters could do whatever the player could describe without much reference to their stats and skills.


You aren't saying that here as far as I can tell so no need to rehash that one, just with the statement that 'lack of skill should not stop a character from doing whatever'.


In a sense I agree, but I am inclined to 'let them try', just with a -4/-5 DM or the like just like the no Gun Combat skill character careers.

 

[creativehum]

Kilemail, cool.

For what it is worth, by broader, and I think more important point is that even if the PCs do not have a skill at hand (let us say, translating V'runta poetry from the pre-Imperium period) that doesn't mean the adventure stops cold. It simply is more grist for adventure mill. The PCs can't translate the poem that leads to the lost artifact, but someone can. Who? How to reach them? Can they be trusted? Are other people trying to get to that obscure academic before the PCs? And so on?

Whether the skill at hand is pilot or poetry the limit on the skills available in Basic Traveller is a feature, not a bug. It forces the PCs to interact with NPCs (which the rules encourage in many ways) which means more opportunity for trouble and adventure.

As for what the PCs can do... they are trained adults used to dealing with trouble. They can clearly do and try to do many things that go beyond the specific areas of expertise on their character sheets... just like most adults are able to do many things belying their profession. Not other Skills, per se, but an almost infinite number of actions. Thus, the action, "I want to follow that guy to his house" isn't covered under any skill in Basic Traveller. But of course the character could try to do such a thing.

So there are countless actions and rolls that can be made in Basic Traveler that go beyond the list of skllls. That is how the game is meant to be played. The narrow list of skills and all the things a PC can do outside of that list provide a tension in many ways for dealing with opportunities, obstacles, and solutions.

On that note, I built a chart earlier today before I saw your reply:

The third column (about 0-skills) is about the default level 0 skills, not JoT applied in crisis situations, which is its own thing. The default skills are not assumed for any PC, but the rules specifically state those skill are appropriate for handing out skill 0 ratings. It is up the Referee to decide if any or all of the skills should default to 0 for PCs based on any criteria he chooses. If a Referee doens't want the PCs to have default 0 skills, that is of course awesome.

The chart reflects the rules of Book 1 (1977 skills) and reflects how I run the game. Like you, there will be times when I'll be flexible, but at a great penalty or risk. But that's the exception. The chart above is pretty much how I run the game. And has been all along.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Play rules and play style are totally different things.

 

[creativehum]

Play rules and play style are totally different things.

You are wrong.
But as you tend to post in useless, crypto-meaningless brief bursts that never bother to define what you mean but merely make pronouncements, this isn't a subject worth pursuing.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Players ask how a game is played. They end up playing "Mother, May I" style somehow, where players sit around the table asking the Referee what their characters can do. That's a popular play style. Yet play rules don't mention playing that way.

You can talk about the rules as written, the mechanics of a game, what's intended by the writers, what isn't setting, and what is proto all you want. Rarely does a game group read the rules to the game they play unless something needs looking up during actual play. And even then, it is still played as "Mother, May I" by the players.

 

[mike wightman]

That's funny, the most common phrase in the games I run is:
"I am going to..."

 

[kilemall]

Heh, ironic, I would tend much more to 'try with penalty' then flat out say no. The DMs should be skewed to failure with even the routine, but I prefer maintaining player agency to make horrible mistakes over no.

 

[creativehum]

Heh, ironic, I would tend much more to 'try with penalty' then flat out say no. The DMs should be skewed to failure with even the routine, but I prefer maintaining player agency to make horrible mistakes over no.

Honestly, I was hedging my phrasing in that last post, desperate to avoid the go-around from that previous thread. (I re-read it again last night...) I had no desire to be accused again, relentlessly and uselessly, that I was playing the game as if skills and characteristics did not matter and that I would be letting the PCs "do anything" without concern for their skills and characteristics.

Ultimately my rulings would come down to the circumstances at hand, using the RAW as a baseline but open to all sorts of modifications on the fly. But that's me. And you as well, it seems.

 

[creativehum]

Players ask how a game is played. They end up playing "Mother, May I" style somehow, where players sit around the table asking the Referee what their characters can do. That's a popular play style. Yet play rules don't mention playing that way.

You can talk about the rules as written, the mechanics of a game, what's intended by the writers, what isn't setting, and what is proto all you want. Rarely does a game group read the rules to the game they play unless something needs looking up during actual play. And even then, it is still played as "Mother, May I" by the players.

Hi Shawn,

If you are speaking about RPG play in general, I don’t know what to tell you.

When I run a game my players don’t play Mother-May-I. When I play in a game, I don’t play Mother-May-I. Like Mike, most of players spend the game making declarative statements about what they are going to do. Charging into trouble, creating trouble, getting out of trouble, pursuing goals, dealing with the fallout. I play that way as well.

I run games that are open-ended for the Player Characters in terms of choice and action. As a Referee I am constantly surprised and delighted by the choices the player and where the evening’s play goes.

So, if your statement is supposed to be some sort of summation of how people play RPGs, I know such play exists, but it doesn’t exist at my Monday Night Gaming table. And it doesn’t happen at my convention games either. If I have someone who is used to playing in a Mother-May-I style, I have techniques and playstyle that get them out of that mode.

---

If you are speaking to the matter more specifically that some games might end up being Mother-May-I and other might not, and that the rules have no bearing this, you are, as I stated, wrong.

As an extreme example, I’ll point to the game Apocalypse World. In this game, the Referee is makes what is called a Move — which is simply something like, “The gunmen move out from behind the rocky formation pointing their weapons at you,” or “The headman says he’s accept your offer or he’ll hunt down your sister and kill her.” And then, per the rules, the Referee says to the Players, “What do you do?”

Please note: It’s right there, in the rules: “Ask the Players, ‘What do you do?’”

The Players are not asking the Referee what they can do or what they are allowed to do. The Referee must ask the players what they will do. He has no idea what they will say. (Please note: The Referee doesn’t have to literally ask the question every time in every situation, and generally the question is dropped as the players declare actions in response to Referee Moves without any prompting.)

Significantly, the game is written so the the Referee never rolls dice. Only the players roll dice, and only when they have declared what their PCs are doing. Until the the Players declare what their PCs will do… nothing happens. The game pauses and simply hangs there. No dice can be rolled, no other mechanics can be engaged by either the Referee or the players. And so the Referee waits if need be — patiently, happily — for the player to make a statement about what his PC is doing.

(But, again, most players don’t hesitate and the game moves along well. I’m assuming we’re dealing with some of the battered players Shawn has conjured, who have never assumed they could be proactive. We’re being gentle with them in this post, giving them time to realize they can drive their PCs’ actions and drive the evening’s fun with their choices.)

In other words, the rules of Apocalypse World (those I’ve described above, and others I haven’t mentioned yet) directly affect the play style at the table. In fact, the rules were literally designed to affect the particular “switch” of Mother-May-I/Not-Mother-May-I play, literally rendering notion of the Referee having a pre-planned plot and leading the PCs by the nose all but impossible. (The Referee can certainly try to have a pre-planned plot… but he or she will be fighting the rules as written the whole time.)

I’ll add now that games like Sorcerer, Burning Wheel, In a Wicked Age…, Mutant Year Zero, and many RPGs all have mechanics that literally undercut Mother-May-I play and turn the switch definitely to Not-Mother-May-I play.

---

On the other hand, many RPGs (and maybe most?) do not address the switch of Mother-May-I/Not-Mother-May-I play, and so each group will determine whether or not the players are waiting around to be led through the evening’s play or not. That said, each game will have certain tools that can be use to encourage either option of that switch.

For example, Original D&D, B/X D&D or original Traveller; The PCs are incredibly open in the possible actions they can choose to take because the rules are so narrow in proscribing specific actions for the PCs. (In other words, since the rules only cover a limited number of actions by the rules, there are countless actions that the rules don’t cover that are up to the players to conjure and make use of as they will.) I, as the Referee, literally have no idea what choices are actions or ploys the players will have their PCs make. I literally must be surprised throughout the session.

But that is how I see the rules working. That’s my point-of-view and my pleasure. Without doubt other people will use the lack of levers and buttons the players can pull and push to limit what the Players can do with their PCs. I don’t get it… but I’m sure it happens.

---

But the Mother-May-I/Not-Mother-May-I is not the only switch. For example, original Traveller has lots of Random Encounter Tables. On the other hand, the game King Arthur Pendragon has none.

In the first both the players and the Referee soon realize (if they are using the rules) they have no idea where a campaign will end up. A random encounter with some smugglers in session three might be the source of trouble and fun for the next three sessions… or perhaps end up forming the spine of months of play or the entire campaign.

In the second, the game’s structure and purpose would be derailed by random encounters. The game is built upon moving the PC Knights through time, with a nominal structure of one adventure per year. But a session’s adventure is not merely a railroad for the PCs to follow. Instead of events and choices driven by the introduction of random NPCs and beasts, a game of Pendragon/i] is spun off the tracks by the Traits and Passions rolls, which drive the PCs themselves in unexpected ways. Each Pendragon/i]] “adventure” is a series of tests of the PCs’ Traits and Passions to reveal what sort of knight they are. Then the knights’ adventure wraps up, the knights go home, Winter Phase occurs, we find out of the knight married or fathered a child, and the knight ages another year closer to death.

Now, there are countless other rules differences between original Traveller and Pendragon. But looking at the different kind of gameplay that will be produced simply by the difference in having Random Tables or not provides a starting point to see how different the games will be. In one we know that we, as Players, have countless options about how to respond to all sorts of stimulus about where we might go and what we might do. In the other, we quickly realize the play of Pendragon is about focusing on our the internal life of our Knights as we go off on missions and tasks (whether magical or mundane) to find out who we are as characters when we return.

A whole different set of “switches” within each game are being thrown because the concerns of the two games are very different. And each set of rules leads to very different expectations about how the Referee prepares as session, how the players engage with the fictional word, and each other, and how the Referee presents the world and the choices for the PCs.

In other words, even with this simple focus on having Random Encounters or not (which barely touches on the rich set of rules and their implications in both games) we can begin to see how the rules will help determine the playstyle of a session.

 

[aramis]

I get a lot of "may I ...?"
But only when the players don't know the rules.
When they have a grasp on what is covered, it tends to be, "I'm going to..."
When they know the rules but don't think its covered, "I want to...".

 

[creativehum]

I get a lot of "may I ...?"
But only when the players don't know the rules.
When they have a grasp on what is covered, it tends to be, "I'm going to..."
When they know the rules but don't think its covered, "I want to...".

I think that's a given, as people sort out how to get things done with a specific set of mechanics.

I believe that Shawn, given his other posts on this matter, is talking about another matter entirely.

 

[Black Vulmea]

. . [T]he notions of how to play the games from the first years of the hobby where forgotten... or if they were remembered they were seen as lacking or broken. But they weren't broken. They were simply a different way of playing that were quite functional if you played them in the playstyle they were designed to support.

The longer I play roleplaying games, the more I appreciate an almost wholly ad hoc approach to skills.

Original, 'classic' Traveller - specifically the approach in Books 1-3 or TTH - is fairly close to my sweet spot; unfortunately, things would not remain thus.

The notion that a Classic Traveller PC can only perform actions based off the skills on character sheet is a kind of nightmare, of course. And I can't imagine playing the game that way with any sort of pleasure. But I can see how some people who started playing post-1980 might try it that way. And most likely become frustrated and start thinking the with the rules to "fix" them.

Unfortunately Traveller skills proliferated with each successive book and supplement and module in response to this.