So, I was reading Chgowiz’(Which is pretty much my favorite RPG blog, even though I am a new school gamer mostly) recent post about how “We Don’t Need no Stinkin Rules or Mechanics,” and got to thinking, is there an ideal level of mechanics to keep the world in the hands of the GM and the character’s effect on the world in the hands of the player(i.e. keep the game moving while minimizing metagaming)? Personally, I like rules to the extent that they define the ‘physics’ of the world, making sure things fit within the ranges defined by the setting, keeping the fudging to a minimum, and moving combat along. I like, for instance, that there is a defined level of power for a fireball cast by a level 10 wizard. I like how steel has a different hardness than wood. I like that I can see my skills on my character sheet. These are things that my character should know, providing he is a wizard with a skill set who has chopped down a tree at some point during his life.

I don’t like the rules when they try to control the world. The only balancing rules that I like, at all, are Health(HP) and Magic(MP) point mechanics. I’ve always thought of RP heroes in the Classical perspective, or as the Biblical Nephilim who are derived from them, and these were all exceptionally tough creatures. Here, more than anything, I think it’s a matter of taste. Beyond HP and MP, I hate that arrows are arbitrarily lost in 3.5 D&D. I hate when I don’t understand what to roll in certain situations. I hate having personality mechanics for player characters. I hate when skills checks are rigidly defined in terms of the skill used. Not all the arrows will break, not knowing what to roll slows things down, personality mechanics make for generic personalities, and anybody who has ever taken a Social Psych course will tell you, if you know enough about related fields you can usually fake it.

When I look at this, I see potential. Maybe we could have a minimalistic system, all done in PDF or similar, where each character can get all the info he needs and no more from the GM. Create rules for each skill, school of magic, and only distribute what the character would actually know to the character, plus or minus some common sense rules to move gameplay along. For example, say in my hypothetical game a chronokinecist gets to cast time magic based magic and know about time traveling monsters. The player can have a pamphlet regarding his magical abilities and their effects, the mechanics of skill checks and combat, and low level time based monster descriptions(but not stats!). Ideally this would take no more than 5 or six pages total. The GM would have all available information, and can exercise his own discretion with what parts he reveals to the players.

I have to give an acknowledgement here, to Charles Matheny, who’s homebrew gave me this idea in the first place. I can’t really give him any kind of shout out here, but if you visit Cookies and Cream I’m sure he’d appreciate it. Thanks!

As I sit here, petting my kitten, listening to Dark Side of the Moon, watching The Wizard of Oz, and pondering the nature of love and kindness, it occurs to me that a lot of attention is payed to the conflict in RPG’s, while very little is often paid to negotiation. While I enjoy a good beatdown as much as the average capitalist pig, I think that the peace negotiations process has been undervalued in role playing game source materials. After all, how many times, do guys like me meet Slobodon Milosovic and say, “Man, I understand that you’re upset, but all that genocide was a bitch move. Let’s see if we can’t work something out here twixt you and the Croats. BTW, we’re probably going to kill you for war crimes.” Never, huh? I can’t even think of something appropriate to say here, probably because I don’t watch enough C-SPAN to bullshit that well. Sure, you can just use a skill check, or even a series of skill checks, but then it is just a dice game and there’s no story or any adequate outcome. This is too bad, because mechanics can solve this problem with negotiating peace treaties. The problem with negotiating peace treaties is most of us don’t know, offhand, how much more or less difficult it is to negotiate terms of surrender of various degrees of extravagance. We can take a reasonable guess and maybe get close, but can’t really say one way or another.

But your character might. So here’s a homeopathic remedy for the peace-negotiation RP blues, that ought to be flexible and supplementable enough to work for any GM’s educated guesses.

The Nnaccs(Nnaccs is Not a Character but a Country System)

Country stats in the Nnaccs include the four baselines Territorialness, Nationalism, Economic Commitment, and Diplomatic Prowess, and Flexibility, a universal stat that affects the four baselines. Baselines represent the country’s emphasis on this aspect of its national identity, and how much it is willing to sacrifice on that point without a check. These scores range from 0-30(Either choose as GM, or as a party if the characters are the rulers, or roll 5d6) and take a great deal of difficulty to change. Flexibility represents the country’s willingness to alter its stance based on current factors, like losses in the war, public unrest, or the death of a leader. Flexibility ranges from 0 to -20 and can be chosen from the following rubric.

After describing each country in this way, a peace treaty is drawn up by the country with the higher flexibility score, tagging each term with whichever baseline stat most effects it. The terms are rated from 1-5 on severity, and the severity is then added to the baseline stat, and for each term there is a roll of -1×1d6, minus flexibility. The total is subtracted from the baseline stat + term severity, and if the result is less than 0, the term is accepted without argument. If the result is greater than 0, the negotiation process begins, where each team role plays the concessions and tradeoffs that can be agreed upon, and the roll is made again based on the new severity, minus 1.

So, peace negotiation mechanics work in this order

1. Describe the countries in terms of its baseline stats and compute flexibility.

2. The country with the higher flexibility designs a peace treaty, and the GM rates the terms on severity and the baseline stat they rely on.

3. Add the baseline stat and the severity, subtract flexibility and subtract 1d6.

4. If the result of #3 is less than 0, the term is automatically accepted.

5. If the result of #3 is greater than 0, the term is negotiated in role-play.

6. Repeat steps #3 and #4 or #5 with the new severity and a -1 modifier.

I’m a very creative person, but I find that I oftentimes need a schema with which to create certain parts of the whole. Sometimes my posts here get very formulaic because of that, and I have a folder for tried-and-true MLA, APA, and Chicago style papers that I look back on to see what works and what doesn’t. Since I’ve been writing research papers, quite literally, for longer than I can remember, it’s more a matter of rhythm than composition at this point. It’s not laziness, It’s just a desire to be consistently good. As a student, this works for me. As a Game Designer, I’ve also created several schema’s, charts, and graphs to help with world-building and system creation, and I’d like to share the one I’ve been most consumed with recently, what I call a faction map.

It comes in three parts, arranged chronologically by the order they take in development.

1: Faction List: Factions here are arranged like a taxonomy(like people are Eukarya Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primates Hominidae Homo Sapiens Sapiens). The categories can take many shapes, but I usually start with natural/supernatural as my Domains and work down based on their purpose in the world itself. When you are performing this step you should think about several things:

1. The name of the organization. Not the most impotant thing, but sometimes you can think of an evocative name and make later steps easier.
2. One to three Major NPC’s who contribute to the organization’s goals and, if it has them, recruitment standards. The basic idea here is to figure out what kind of people would be attracted to the organization, and what it’s preferred Modus Operandi consists of.
3. Goals. What is the reason that the organization exists? Is it political, fraternal, social, racial, or some combination? Does it keep it’s existence secret(And how well?) Where does it exert it’s influence? This should be concise, no more than 5 or six sentences because when the world takes shape later the organization might need to change.

Look at that! That could be a short taxonomy in and of itself.

2: Social Chart: Here, every faction is given it’s own row within a 5 column chart to record the attributes of

• Exclusivity: How difficult it is to become a card carrying member of this organization, and how difficult it is to advance in the organization.
• Fanaticism: How tolerant the organization is of deviations of it’s members, and how open to change the organization is based on new data and ideas.
• Secretivity: Is it a secret society? A society with secrets? Do the members know who eachother are? Is it a loose association that allows members to coma and go as they please or is a pine box the only way out?
• Alliances: Who does the organization regularly recieve support from or give support to, and how strong is the alliance?
• Enmities: Who does the organization oppose? Does it combat them economically, politically, or physically? Is the damage reparable?

When I make this chart, I use verbal descriptions supplemented by a set of two numbers, one representing a baseline degree, and one representing the difficulty involved in changing that baseline. Ex: The organization is non-exclusive to great degree, and will allow anyone who can pay the dues and has no criminal record to be a member. Recent troubles in leadership threaten to change the open-door policy, however. Exclusivity Baseline(1-10) 2, Exclusivity change difficulty(1-5) 2.

3: Faction Mapping: Creating a faction map shoud be easy, given the first two steps. Basically, you should place the organizational headquarters of each faction on a map of your game world andd draw a connection between them and the factions that they communicate with. Place limits on where the factions can easily interact in certain ways, and find ways to break the rules. If they seem easily implementable in your setting, implement them. If they don’t, don’t. The communication requirements of political factions is a decent way of guaging how much money they should control, what business interests they should have(if any) and generally help to pull together the methods and attributes you’ve already created.

Pretty cool, huh? Makes things a lot easier if your like me and think in categories.