TooManySecrets
2010-12-14, 06:34 PM
CRITICAL EVENT GAMING
IMPETUS
Dungeons & Dragons started out as a modification of historical wargaming and, in many respects, the RPGs that have followed haven't completely thrown off the roots of strict rules, competition, and a focus on combat. RPGs have been used to simulate other things, but they usually run into the problem of overly-complicated rules that often do more damage than good. Freeform RPGs throw out the concept of rules entirely, but they often run into the problem that there's no fair way to mediate conflict resolution.
What I call Critical Event Gaming is not the first of it's kind. Most of the inspiration comes from Chris Engle's Matrix Gaming Rules, who gave permission in his 1992 essay "Campaign in a Day: A Matrix Game" for anyone to use and modify his rules as they see fit.
CONCEPT
The main concept of Critical Event Gaming is the critical events. Critical events are events that, when resolved, will have a major effect on the campaign. Critical events vary from campaign to campaign. It's part of the Game Master's job to decide what is and isn't a critical event. For example the result of a battle between two nations, whether a group of scientists can develop new technology in time to stop invading aliens, or whether a magic ritual is powerful enough to contain a demon lord are all events that are (probably) critical events.
When a critical event is reached, a player (or, rarely, the GM) makes an argument for a particular set of actions and results related to the critical event. Other players can then either add additional arguments or add support.
WHAT'S AN ARGUMENT?
It's easiest to explain with an example. Let's say that the critical event is that a number of players are trying to stop a demon lord from being summoned by the evil Lord Marcus and have developed a ritual to contain it. One of the players makes this argument:
The ritual is cast before the demon lord is summoned, and it is successful in stopping the summoning.
1. The wizards working on it are experienced in such rituals
2. Lord Marcus has not attempted a summoning of such magnitude before
3. The wizards have used the sword Androlam, which was used to kill another demon lord, in the ritual
The first sentence is broken up into two parts: action and result. In this case, the action is "The ritual is cast before the demon lord is summoned" while the result is "it is successful in stopping the summoning". The numbered list are the 3 supporting reasons. Each argument should have 3 supporting reasons.
Any player can make additional arguments, whether or not their characters are involved. Additional arguments take the form of:
Yes, ... and ... add additional result(s)
Yes, ... but ... changes the result(s)
No, actually ... denies the action(s) and the result(s)
Continuing our example, another player, who's character is Lord Marcus, makes the following argument:
No, actually the ritual is not cast in time and the demon lord is summoned.
1. The wizards have only had a few days to work on the ritual and are very stressed
2. Lord Marcus is sacrificing prisoners of war to hasten the summoning
3. Lord Marcus is getting support from his own group of wizards
Another player, who's character is on the other side of the world and doesn't even know what Lord Marcus is up to, makes the following argument:
Yes, but the ritual only weakens the demon lord instead of stopping the summoning.
1. The wizards have only had a few days to work on the ritual and are very stressed
2. The demon lord is one of the most powerful of his kind
3. The planar barriers are very weak right now
Finally, another player makes this argument:
Yes, and Lord Marcus is hurt in the backlash of the failed summoning.
1. The demon lord is very powerful, so the failure will cause backlash
2. Lord Marcus is sacrificing safety for speed
3. [FACT] Failed summons sometimes result in backlash
(We'll get into what [FACT] means later)
Players don't have to make an argument. Instead, they can lend support to any argument.
It's up to the GM whether players can change their arguments or retract them after seeing what other people have posted. It is my opinion that this should be allowed, but the GM should place reasonable limits on it to prevent abuse.
ARGUMENT RESOLUTION
Alright, so you have your arguments along with their reasons and (potentially) support. How do you determine what happens?
First every argument gets 3 points. Next, Yes, ... and ... arguments get an additional point and No, actually ... arguments get a one point deduction. The GM then goes through each argument and classifies each reason as either strong, normal, or weak. Strong reasons are reasons that go along with the theme of the game, are well-supported by past events, and make logical sense. Weak reasons are reasons that diverge from past events or don't make logical sense. Normal reasons are somewhere in between. Strong reasons give an additional point, while weak reasons deduct a point.
If a player has given an argument support, then that argument gets 1 more point per player giving support.
Now we have a bunch of arguments with scores. We could just say that the argument with the highest score wins (roll off to determine result of ties), but I like a degree of unpredictability in my games. Keeps players on their toes.
The best solution is what is known as roulette wheel selection. Essentially, each argument gets a chance to win but the higher the score, the higher the chance. Here's how to do it:
{table=head]Argument|Score|Result
A|3|1-3
B|2|4-5
C|6|6-11
D|1|12[/table]
[roll]1d12[roll] giving a result of 5, which means Argument B won. The pattern is that the result is (Last Result + 1) to ((Last Result + 1)+Score-1)
After you know the winning argument, then those action(s) and result(s) occur. In addition, the argument goes into the fact sheet. The fact sheet is essentially just a listing of every winning argument in the game so far. If you can use a reason, action, or result from an argument from the fact sheet, preface it with [FACT]. That reason is automatically classified as strong.
JOB OF THE GAME MASTER
The GM has a very important job. First and foremost, they need to determine what exactly falls under the purview of critical events. This is very much dependent not only on the type of campaign but on the importance of the event itself. Not every battle is a critical event and sometimes something that isn't normally a critical event is or vice versa!
Second, the GM needs to mediate arguments so that a) everybody gets an equal chance to be heard, b) to determine when to resolve the critical event, c) who makes the first argument, and d) whether an argument or reason is appropriate for the campaign. What constitutes appropriate is another thing that varies by campaign. Arguing that a demon appears could be appropriate in a high magic campaign, but is definitely not appropriate for a historical campaign set in World War I. Any sort of argument that equates to "I win" or is just nonsensical is definitely not appropriate.
The GM should also maintain the fact sheet. This isn't as simple as just copy/pasting winning arguments. Sometimes winning arguments can contradict previous winning arguments, often because circumstances have changed.
Finally, the GM needs to make sure that everybody stays civil. Any sort of collaborative storytelling can get out of hand. Tempers can flare, feelings can get hurt, and people can get nasty. The GM should make sure that that sort of things don't happen, which means that the GM must remain impartial.
INTEGRATION
Critical Event Gaming can be dropped into any game. For instance, pretty much nobody wants to run resolve every battle in a war in D&D campaign by playing out every battle using the combat rules. It would just take far too long! You could, however, have some smaller battles representing part of a larger battle and resolve the rest of the battle using Critical Event Gaming. You could also drop Critical Event Gaming into an otherwise freeform game to provide a framework to resolve arguments that sometimes crop up in freeform games (e.g. "My character would totally beat your character." "No he wouldn't!"). Basically, anytime the GM would otherwise make an arbitrary decision, you can use Critical Event Gaming to get all the players involved in the process.
EXPANDED CRITICAL EVENT GAMING
There are a lot of different things that I want to do to expand this concept, especially in terms of creating a framework for quasi-freeform character creation and gameplay optimized to use Critical Event Gaming. As I come up with them, I'll put it here.
CHARACTER CREATION
Character class, ability scores, feats, skills, talents, traits, and all the other shebang that comes with most character creation rules are really just different ways of describing a character. In a game, not only do we need to know who they are (so we can roleplay as them) but what they're capable of. Critical Event Gaming ignores most of that rule stuff, but we still need some way of describing a character. To that end, a character description is broken up into four groups: motivators, traits, abilities, and history.
MOTIVATORS
Motivators are probably the most well-defined area of a character sheet. Motivators describe what drives the character, what makes them do the things that they do. In short, they're the things that you should first think of when deciding how your character acts.
There are four types of motivators: love, anger, fear, and interest.
Love describes what makes your character happy. This encompasses everything from what they like in a romantic companion to what they like to do at the end of a long day to what they like on their pancakes. Obviously, you don't have to list everything!
Anger describes what makes your character mad. This also encompasses what disgusts, irritates, or frustrates them. Does your character really hate when children get hurt? Does your character get annoyed by traffic more than other people? Does your character absolutely detest dirt? Put it here!
Fear describes what makes your character afraid. This can be things like get nervous at hospitals to crushing fear of spiders to the fear of losing a loved one. It can be very general or specific.
Finally, Interest describes what the character wants to do with their life. Unlike the other motivators, which fall in line with basic emotions, interest describes longer-term goals. Interests can be amalgams of the other motivators - perhaps your character fears criminals, so they have an interest in establishing law and order - or it can be entirely different (not many people roleplay hypocrites!).
Here's an example for a prototypical Hollywood Wild West gunmen:
Motivators
Love
Beating a bad guy in a duel
Practicing with firearms
Wine, women, and song
Anger
People being bullied or taken advantage of
People doing nothing while innocent people get hurt
Fear
Dying without avenging the death of his family
Dark, enclosed spaces
That he'll hurt an innocent person, either directly or indirectly
Interest
Kill the people who murdered his family
Bring criminals to justice
TRAITS
Traits describe intrinsic qualities of a character. This is where you put stuff like gender and physical appearance, but it's also where you put other aspects of the character's personality. We already know what type of things motivate your character, but there's more to personality than that. Is your character an honorable person? Do they respect authority or do they buckle under it? How do they handle pressure and stress? Are they talkative? Do they like telling about their past or are they secretive? Do they like working in groups or are they a loner? Finally, this is where you can put special traits such as they ability to see in the dark or to regenerate limbs or other things like that.
In general, if it's something that can be described in a few words or a short phrase, is inherent to the character, and isn't likely to change for some time, it goes into here.
Here's an example of a Famous Mutant:
Traits
Male
Short, hairy, Canadian
Loner
Mutant
Can regenerate from almost any injury
Bones are coated in adamantium
Superhuman senses
Likes dark humor and gallows humor
Smoker
ABILITIES
Abilities are what other systems might call skills, talents, or proficiences. They encompass a plethora of different things, but can basically be defined as something that your character can learn and get better at. This includes language abilities, different combat abilities, magic abilities, but also includes professions and jobs the character is good at.
To list an ability, you give a short one to three (or so) words to describe the ability and then list qualifiers underneath it. Qualifiers can be information from how long you've been studying and training that ability or how long you've worked at that job. Qualifiers can also include reasons that your character has that ability or why it's important to the character.
Abilities are going to be changed relatively rarely, but qualifiers are probably going to be added, removed, or otherwise changed every single adventure (or episode or scenario, whatever you wish to call it). If you succeeded exceptionally well with an ability (or failed very poorly), you can even add that as a qualifier!
Here's a few examples of different abilities (probably not from the same character, but who knows?):
Abilities
Ufologist
Obsessed every since his sister was abducted by aliens
Worked for MAJESTIC 12, a secret government organization, for seven years
Enthusiastic Gun Collector
Owns over 200 different firearms, including a number of automatic weapons
Practices daily on his own firing range
Has never been in an actual gunfight
Private Investigator
Worked as a PI for 3 years
Got PI license after getting kicked off the police force
Getting annoyed that all the jobs are just finding cheating husbands and wives
Superhuman Strength
Can lift up 1 1/2 tons without any apparent strain
HISTORY
History is like a character's own private fact sheet. Here's where you put all the big events that have happened in a character's life. They can be from before the campaign started, but you can also put in things that happened during the campaign. Here's where you flesh out the rest of your character and explain why they are the way they are. It's also a place where the GM will be scouring for potential plot hooks. If you make an interesting character with interesting hooks, it'll make it a lot easier and a lot more fun for not only you but the GM and the other players!
WAIT A SEC...
"Wait a sec, TooManySecrets," I hear you say, "I'm thinking of something about my character that could be put under traits, abilities, history, and probably motivators as well! Where should I put it?" Well, that's not an easy answer. I left the differences between each section purposefully vague. If you want to put it in each section, go right ahead! If you want to put it in only some or just one, that's also good. (Personally, if I would tend to put it under abilities, but find what works for you)
Remember, if you haven't put it down on your character sheet then it's potential fair-game for somebody else to put it there through arguments. If that bothers you, then put it down!
FINISHING UP
If you want to use something from character sheet in an argument, append it with a [CHAR]. Anything with [CHAR] counts as [FACT] in all senses (the only reason you use [CHAR] is so that things don't get confusing). If you want to refer to another player's character, then use [CHAR:character name]. If you refer to multiple characters in an argument, then use [CHAR:character name] for each one, even if one of the [CHAR]s refers to your own character.
MISCELLANEOUS
FAQ
Ask me a question!
UPDATE HISTORY
12.18.2010
Expanded Expanded Critical Event Gaming with guidelines for character creation, which includes motivators, traits, abilities, and history.
Fixed some typos and poor word choice
12.14.2010
Original post
IMPETUS
Dungeons & Dragons started out as a modification of historical wargaming and, in many respects, the RPGs that have followed haven't completely thrown off the roots of strict rules, competition, and a focus on combat. RPGs have been used to simulate other things, but they usually run into the problem of overly-complicated rules that often do more damage than good. Freeform RPGs throw out the concept of rules entirely, but they often run into the problem that there's no fair way to mediate conflict resolution.
What I call Critical Event Gaming is not the first of it's kind. Most of the inspiration comes from Chris Engle's Matrix Gaming Rules, who gave permission in his 1992 essay "Campaign in a Day: A Matrix Game" for anyone to use and modify his rules as they see fit.
CONCEPT
The main concept of Critical Event Gaming is the critical events. Critical events are events that, when resolved, will have a major effect on the campaign. Critical events vary from campaign to campaign. It's part of the Game Master's job to decide what is and isn't a critical event. For example the result of a battle between two nations, whether a group of scientists can develop new technology in time to stop invading aliens, or whether a magic ritual is powerful enough to contain a demon lord are all events that are (probably) critical events.
When a critical event is reached, a player (or, rarely, the GM) makes an argument for a particular set of actions and results related to the critical event. Other players can then either add additional arguments or add support.
WHAT'S AN ARGUMENT?
It's easiest to explain with an example. Let's say that the critical event is that a number of players are trying to stop a demon lord from being summoned by the evil Lord Marcus and have developed a ritual to contain it. One of the players makes this argument:
The ritual is cast before the demon lord is summoned, and it is successful in stopping the summoning.
1. The wizards working on it are experienced in such rituals
2. Lord Marcus has not attempted a summoning of such magnitude before
3. The wizards have used the sword Androlam, which was used to kill another demon lord, in the ritual
The first sentence is broken up into two parts: action and result. In this case, the action is "The ritual is cast before the demon lord is summoned" while the result is "it is successful in stopping the summoning". The numbered list are the 3 supporting reasons. Each argument should have 3 supporting reasons.
Any player can make additional arguments, whether or not their characters are involved. Additional arguments take the form of:
Yes, ... and ... add additional result(s)
Yes, ... but ... changes the result(s)
No, actually ... denies the action(s) and the result(s)
Continuing our example, another player, who's character is Lord Marcus, makes the following argument:
No, actually the ritual is not cast in time and the demon lord is summoned.
1. The wizards have only had a few days to work on the ritual and are very stressed
2. Lord Marcus is sacrificing prisoners of war to hasten the summoning
3. Lord Marcus is getting support from his own group of wizards
Another player, who's character is on the other side of the world and doesn't even know what Lord Marcus is up to, makes the following argument:
Yes, but the ritual only weakens the demon lord instead of stopping the summoning.
1. The wizards have only had a few days to work on the ritual and are very stressed
2. The demon lord is one of the most powerful of his kind
3. The planar barriers are very weak right now
Finally, another player makes this argument:
Yes, and Lord Marcus is hurt in the backlash of the failed summoning.
1. The demon lord is very powerful, so the failure will cause backlash
2. Lord Marcus is sacrificing safety for speed
3. [FACT] Failed summons sometimes result in backlash
(We'll get into what [FACT] means later)
Players don't have to make an argument. Instead, they can lend support to any argument.
It's up to the GM whether players can change their arguments or retract them after seeing what other people have posted. It is my opinion that this should be allowed, but the GM should place reasonable limits on it to prevent abuse.
ARGUMENT RESOLUTION
Alright, so you have your arguments along with their reasons and (potentially) support. How do you determine what happens?
First every argument gets 3 points. Next, Yes, ... and ... arguments get an additional point and No, actually ... arguments get a one point deduction. The GM then goes through each argument and classifies each reason as either strong, normal, or weak. Strong reasons are reasons that go along with the theme of the game, are well-supported by past events, and make logical sense. Weak reasons are reasons that diverge from past events or don't make logical sense. Normal reasons are somewhere in between. Strong reasons give an additional point, while weak reasons deduct a point.
If a player has given an argument support, then that argument gets 1 more point per player giving support.
Now we have a bunch of arguments with scores. We could just say that the argument with the highest score wins (roll off to determine result of ties), but I like a degree of unpredictability in my games. Keeps players on their toes.
The best solution is what is known as roulette wheel selection. Essentially, each argument gets a chance to win but the higher the score, the higher the chance. Here's how to do it:
{table=head]Argument|Score|Result
A|3|1-3
B|2|4-5
C|6|6-11
D|1|12[/table]
[roll]1d12[roll] giving a result of 5, which means Argument B won. The pattern is that the result is (Last Result + 1) to ((Last Result + 1)+Score-1)
After you know the winning argument, then those action(s) and result(s) occur. In addition, the argument goes into the fact sheet. The fact sheet is essentially just a listing of every winning argument in the game so far. If you can use a reason, action, or result from an argument from the fact sheet, preface it with [FACT]. That reason is automatically classified as strong.
JOB OF THE GAME MASTER
The GM has a very important job. First and foremost, they need to determine what exactly falls under the purview of critical events. This is very much dependent not only on the type of campaign but on the importance of the event itself. Not every battle is a critical event and sometimes something that isn't normally a critical event is or vice versa!
Second, the GM needs to mediate arguments so that a) everybody gets an equal chance to be heard, b) to determine when to resolve the critical event, c) who makes the first argument, and d) whether an argument or reason is appropriate for the campaign. What constitutes appropriate is another thing that varies by campaign. Arguing that a demon appears could be appropriate in a high magic campaign, but is definitely not appropriate for a historical campaign set in World War I. Any sort of argument that equates to "I win" or is just nonsensical is definitely not appropriate.
The GM should also maintain the fact sheet. This isn't as simple as just copy/pasting winning arguments. Sometimes winning arguments can contradict previous winning arguments, often because circumstances have changed.
Finally, the GM needs to make sure that everybody stays civil. Any sort of collaborative storytelling can get out of hand. Tempers can flare, feelings can get hurt, and people can get nasty. The GM should make sure that that sort of things don't happen, which means that the GM must remain impartial.
INTEGRATION
Critical Event Gaming can be dropped into any game. For instance, pretty much nobody wants to run resolve every battle in a war in D&D campaign by playing out every battle using the combat rules. It would just take far too long! You could, however, have some smaller battles representing part of a larger battle and resolve the rest of the battle using Critical Event Gaming. You could also drop Critical Event Gaming into an otherwise freeform game to provide a framework to resolve arguments that sometimes crop up in freeform games (e.g. "My character would totally beat your character." "No he wouldn't!"). Basically, anytime the GM would otherwise make an arbitrary decision, you can use Critical Event Gaming to get all the players involved in the process.
EXPANDED CRITICAL EVENT GAMING
There are a lot of different things that I want to do to expand this concept, especially in terms of creating a framework for quasi-freeform character creation and gameplay optimized to use Critical Event Gaming. As I come up with them, I'll put it here.
CHARACTER CREATION
Character class, ability scores, feats, skills, talents, traits, and all the other shebang that comes with most character creation rules are really just different ways of describing a character. In a game, not only do we need to know who they are (so we can roleplay as them) but what they're capable of. Critical Event Gaming ignores most of that rule stuff, but we still need some way of describing a character. To that end, a character description is broken up into four groups: motivators, traits, abilities, and history.
MOTIVATORS
Motivators are probably the most well-defined area of a character sheet. Motivators describe what drives the character, what makes them do the things that they do. In short, they're the things that you should first think of when deciding how your character acts.
There are four types of motivators: love, anger, fear, and interest.
Love describes what makes your character happy. This encompasses everything from what they like in a romantic companion to what they like to do at the end of a long day to what they like on their pancakes. Obviously, you don't have to list everything!
Anger describes what makes your character mad. This also encompasses what disgusts, irritates, or frustrates them. Does your character really hate when children get hurt? Does your character get annoyed by traffic more than other people? Does your character absolutely detest dirt? Put it here!
Fear describes what makes your character afraid. This can be things like get nervous at hospitals to crushing fear of spiders to the fear of losing a loved one. It can be very general or specific.
Finally, Interest describes what the character wants to do with their life. Unlike the other motivators, which fall in line with basic emotions, interest describes longer-term goals. Interests can be amalgams of the other motivators - perhaps your character fears criminals, so they have an interest in establishing law and order - or it can be entirely different (not many people roleplay hypocrites!).
Here's an example for a prototypical Hollywood Wild West gunmen:
Motivators
Love
Beating a bad guy in a duel
Practicing with firearms
Wine, women, and song
Anger
People being bullied or taken advantage of
People doing nothing while innocent people get hurt
Fear
Dying without avenging the death of his family
Dark, enclosed spaces
That he'll hurt an innocent person, either directly or indirectly
Interest
Kill the people who murdered his family
Bring criminals to justice
TRAITS
Traits describe intrinsic qualities of a character. This is where you put stuff like gender and physical appearance, but it's also where you put other aspects of the character's personality. We already know what type of things motivate your character, but there's more to personality than that. Is your character an honorable person? Do they respect authority or do they buckle under it? How do they handle pressure and stress? Are they talkative? Do they like telling about their past or are they secretive? Do they like working in groups or are they a loner? Finally, this is where you can put special traits such as they ability to see in the dark or to regenerate limbs or other things like that.
In general, if it's something that can be described in a few words or a short phrase, is inherent to the character, and isn't likely to change for some time, it goes into here.
Here's an example of a Famous Mutant:
Traits
Male
Short, hairy, Canadian
Loner
Mutant
Can regenerate from almost any injury
Bones are coated in adamantium
Superhuman senses
Likes dark humor and gallows humor
Smoker
ABILITIES
Abilities are what other systems might call skills, talents, or proficiences. They encompass a plethora of different things, but can basically be defined as something that your character can learn and get better at. This includes language abilities, different combat abilities, magic abilities, but also includes professions and jobs the character is good at.
To list an ability, you give a short one to three (or so) words to describe the ability and then list qualifiers underneath it. Qualifiers can be information from how long you've been studying and training that ability or how long you've worked at that job. Qualifiers can also include reasons that your character has that ability or why it's important to the character.
Abilities are going to be changed relatively rarely, but qualifiers are probably going to be added, removed, or otherwise changed every single adventure (or episode or scenario, whatever you wish to call it). If you succeeded exceptionally well with an ability (or failed very poorly), you can even add that as a qualifier!
Here's a few examples of different abilities (probably not from the same character, but who knows?):
Abilities
Ufologist
Obsessed every since his sister was abducted by aliens
Worked for MAJESTIC 12, a secret government organization, for seven years
Enthusiastic Gun Collector
Owns over 200 different firearms, including a number of automatic weapons
Practices daily on his own firing range
Has never been in an actual gunfight
Private Investigator
Worked as a PI for 3 years
Got PI license after getting kicked off the police force
Getting annoyed that all the jobs are just finding cheating husbands and wives
Superhuman Strength
Can lift up 1 1/2 tons without any apparent strain
HISTORY
History is like a character's own private fact sheet. Here's where you put all the big events that have happened in a character's life. They can be from before the campaign started, but you can also put in things that happened during the campaign. Here's where you flesh out the rest of your character and explain why they are the way they are. It's also a place where the GM will be scouring for potential plot hooks. If you make an interesting character with interesting hooks, it'll make it a lot easier and a lot more fun for not only you but the GM and the other players!
WAIT A SEC...
"Wait a sec, TooManySecrets," I hear you say, "I'm thinking of something about my character that could be put under traits, abilities, history, and probably motivators as well! Where should I put it?" Well, that's not an easy answer. I left the differences between each section purposefully vague. If you want to put it in each section, go right ahead! If you want to put it in only some or just one, that's also good. (Personally, if I would tend to put it under abilities, but find what works for you)
Remember, if you haven't put it down on your character sheet then it's potential fair-game for somebody else to put it there through arguments. If that bothers you, then put it down!
FINISHING UP
If you want to use something from character sheet in an argument, append it with a [CHAR]. Anything with [CHAR] counts as [FACT] in all senses (the only reason you use [CHAR] is so that things don't get confusing). If you want to refer to another player's character, then use [CHAR:character name]. If you refer to multiple characters in an argument, then use [CHAR:character name] for each one, even if one of the [CHAR]s refers to your own character.
MISCELLANEOUS
FAQ
Ask me a question!
UPDATE HISTORY
12.18.2010
Expanded Expanded Critical Event Gaming with guidelines for character creation, which includes motivators, traits, abilities, and history.
Fixed some typos and poor word choice
12.14.2010
Original post