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RFLS
2018-08-16, 05:13 PM
Grarow, Amosa, Kar, leave.

I've got a session coming up in the game I'm running in which the players are going to be researching a few different historical topics. They've expressed interest in the research taking the entirety of the session; they don't want a one-and-done roll for each topic.

It's a Star Wars game; the players are stopping over at Obroa-skai (a planet known for its libraries) on their way to the Hapes Cluster to learn about lightsaber creation, Sith alchemy, Force-sensitive animals (which is directly related to alchemy), and probably some general prodding about the dark side of the Force. All of those other than the animals are generally going to have been pretty suppressed until recently (after the Empire fell out of power). The system is FFG's SW system, if you want to provide system-specific advice.

What sort of things would make such a session interesting?

Koo Rehtorb
2018-08-16, 06:08 PM
Memorable NPCs to talk to.

Glimbur
2018-08-16, 08:36 PM
Give them some agency and power. Don't just tell then what the facts are, let them decide some things. Heck, give them a list of three facts and one is true, or a list of five things and they need 3 for a light saber.

LibraryOgre
2018-08-17, 09:16 AM
With suppressed information, a good portion of it should be simply locating the right library, first. Who knows where the Library of Forbidden Jedi Subjects is, and who will direct them there?

Once they get to the LoFJS, don't give them books and datacrystals... give them holocrons that they have to query. They have to interact with the "Librarian" sharing a lot of knowledge, and some of those holocrons WANT things. Some of them demand oaths (Secrecy? Or perhaps even dissemination) or tests (to prove that they are worthy or ready for the knowledge contained). Some of them speak in riddles, use ancient languages, or just don't have the right data.

Two of them contradict each other.

Oh, and the organization system is HORRIBLE.

Mendicant
2018-08-20, 12:58 AM
Well, the fun in real-life research is the breadcrumb trail of answers that beget more questions (and the sources that might have those answers.) To simulate that, you'd probably want to first generate a list of facts, falsehoods, and revelations. The facts would be fairly basic stuff--not common knowledge, seeing as the subject matter is already esoteric--but things that would be known to most of those familiar with the literature, like a short list of known force-sensitive animals. The falsehoods and would be the session's primary hazards, with the "danger" in this session coming from the threat of believing a falsehood at the end. The revelations are the big-ticket treasures that could shift things for the players in a major way.

Then whip up some controversies--this author thinks x, but these authors think y.
Some of the controversies are intermediate--getting the right answer here just tells you your next step. For instance, there are two rival schools on the subject of Sith Alchemy, and figuring out this controversy just tells you which one is credible.
Some of the controversies are dead ends--there is no right answer, or the right answer isn't knowable, or the two sides are both wrong, or what's being argued over is actually unimportant. For instance, there's a controversy over whether Darth Vader is a product of alchemy, and the truth is that he is, but it had a negligible effect on him or his abilities.
Some controversies are terminal. You get to the end of the road here, and then figuring out the right answer gives you a bunch of facts or discounts a major falsehood.

Finally, make up a list of volumes. Give some of them leading titles like Against Kurna Vurl, which lets them know that there's a Kurna Vurl out there who has opinions that are controversial, which means they maybe have to go hunt of ol' Kurna in another library. There should be a couple "the wikipedia entry on this subject" volumes that provide some of the facts and core controversies. Make a *bunch* of volume and scholar names even if you don't know what they all say so you can ad lib. (You could also cut out the volumes as anything other than throwaway flavor and replace them mechanically with different libraries and archives. That lets you paint a more intrepid picture of the research.)

Bonus stuff: Maybe mix in some fun trivia about these characters, like "Kurna Vurl is perhaps most famous for being decapitated by another scholar's lightsaber during a particularly acrimonious faculty conference." You can also reach back to these names/works later in the campaign when someone makes a check ("You know that can't be right though. Darth Fungious conclusively discredited Heterine Resonance theory when he published Principles of Saber Construction and then cut off Kurna Vurl's head.")

Now you play a lot of the session sort of like multiple concurrent games of Clue. Each controversy has some facts and maybe a revelation in its "solution bag", and then suggestions about what's in there come from the various sides. The volumes (or the non-crank ones, anyway) act as the Clue-style player hands that you can check with a successful skill check for one or two facts at a time. Unlike Clue, the volumes might have overlap, so checking a second or even third source could just keep reconfirming things you already knew.

Have a way of marking down what they've read and where they've been and what they found there, and make it super clear up front that
A: There is a real danger of leaving this with incorrect info.
B: They might have to go back into a volume to see if there are any "cards" they missed.

Rockphed
2018-08-20, 01:24 AM
My initial thought was that, while learning things can be fun, having to figure out all the things that they can learn is less so. They don't want a simple research roll for each thing, but you having to invent facts and research trails is a pain. Instead, come up with the 4 or 5 things they can learn, and then make them work for it.

They might have to repair the computer index to be able to find what they are looking for. There might be tests to learn the information. Some genius might have put various force sensitive animals in stasis pods which have malfunctioned. The book containing his research might be at the far end of the cavern where the various freed animals make their home. Possibly the start of their research sets off some local cult dedicated to keeping certain knowledge hidden, culminating in a standoff between the players and the cult. Maybe the players can join the cult. Maybe they have to kill the guards. Maybe they can live without that bit of knowledge. Maybe the head cultist has a beautiful daughter who will gladly betray her father after one look at one of the players.

Having said that, the multi-dimensional clue and "give 3 facts, make them pick the one that is correct" ideas will probably help keep the session feeling like research instead of an action movie set in a library.

NichG
2018-08-20, 02:54 AM
I don't think making research about disbursal of a fixed set of information makes for a very interesting session. Rather, when I've played characters who were researchers, the primary satisfaction of that gameplay was to be able to alter the space of the possible through coming to a greater understanding of some underlying hidden structure of the world. That is to say, it's less about 'do we get to know the things we needed to know to advance the plot' and more about 'can we find new levers which can be pushed on?' - with the particular thing about research being that the lever was always there, but that proper understanding of it allows you to know how to push in order to achieve the effect you want.

The core ingredient of such a thing is that an undiscovered lever is tied to inconsistencies, paradoxes, and surprises. When you see something that works a little differently than you expect, you can follow that thread to find a way to make something that works wildly differently than everyone else would expect. Library research is finding the start of that thread, while experimentation is following the thread. By it's nature, library research is going to be more GM-driven (you choose what there is to find), while experimentation will be more player-driven (because they get to choose how to explore further), so that's something to watch out for - it's okay to have a session at the library where you scatter some new threads to follow, but making research start and end there is going to cut off the actual gameplay bits of the endeavor.

A fun trope for research-themed games or sessions is when something is too successful. That moves against the tendency of real research to be a string of failures enabling the one rare success, and makes the tension more about surviving/controlling/coming to terms with what has been found than overcoming the tedium and frustration of a difficult-to-figure-out mystery. So e.g. the players find some reference material on a banned and censored competing view on the matter of Sith alchemy, where it turns out that the reason it was banned was that the side-effects of the approach are catastrophic, but which hint at maybe there being some way to unify those insights with the mainstream and thereby overcome the consequences - experimentation into why the side effects exist follows.

LibraryOgre
2018-08-20, 10:33 AM
Another option, that might be fun (though a lot more work), is set up a few investigation challenges, and have them make tests and gather successes. For every success they get, they get a notecard with a piece of data on it...data which may or may not be true.

So, they make some checks, and you decided that, for lightsaber building, a 15 is a success, and they get 1 note card. You also decide that a 20 or a 25 is a better success, giving them 2 or 3 notecards. Each test takes 8 hours of work... for something relatively mechanical and once well-known like lightsabers, you might just make it "Accumulate X successes and you can make one; Y successes will open up a few options to you.

For more complex information, you might have them gather and organize the notecards themselves. So, they work for a few days and, between them, acquire 10 notecards... and then they bring that together and try to make sense of them. They might be missing some crucial details, which makes it harder. Some data they gathered may be wrong or horribly biased, and they may set out to confirm some data, which would be another check.

It is a lot more work (instead of writing out notecards, you might set up a spreadsheet with information that coincides to different playing cards... if they draw a King of Diamonds, they get X information, while a Queen of Hearts means Y, and maybe every even-numbered spade is a lie), but it contributes to the "hunt for information" aspect, lets those with relevant skills be useful, and then turns everything into a role-playing exercise while they argue about what the information means and how it all fits together.

Quertus
2018-08-20, 06:32 PM
So, this one time, in CoC, in a game I was not in, the party did some research, and learned that there exists a cursed talisman that could ward off the Cthulhu monster that they were investigating. They sought out and found the glowing stone talisman. And, as advertised, the Cthulhu monster recoiled when the talisman was strongly presented.

Of course, under the hood, the talisman was radioactive, and worked because the monster was aware of this fact.

Personally, I love investigation that leads to more questions, of the type, "why..." and "what can we do with...".

RFLS
2018-08-21, 12:36 AM
Holy crap, I was not expecting this much advice. This is awesome.


Give them some agency and power. Don't just tell then what the facts are, let them decide some things. Heck, give them a list of three facts and one is true, or a list of five things and they need 3 for a light saber.

I do like the idea of giving the players agency in choosing from a set which bits are what they find and are "true." I think I'd go so far as to extend it to "here's a set. Pick the ones you find; your research is pretty definitive on those. The rest may or may not be." This works particularly well with FFG's dice system.


With suppressed information, a good portion of it should be simply locating the right library, first. Who knows where the Library of Forbidden Jedi Subjects is, and who will direct them there?

Once they get to the LoFJS, don't give them books and datacrystals... give them holocrons that they have to query. They have to interact with the "Librarian" sharing a lot of knowledge, and some of those holocrons WANT things. Some of them demand oaths (Secrecy? Or perhaps even dissemination) or tests (to prove that they are worthy or ready for the knowledge contained). Some of them speak in riddles, use ancient languages, or just don't have the right data.

Two of them contradict each other.

Oh, and the organization system is HORRIBLE.

Nice. I had not considered giving the creator/keeper of a Holocron its own agenda, but that seems like a bundle of fun. I do intend to keep Holocrons as particularly rare and treasured items - finding one is fantastic; finding more than that in one place is (would be) a massive plot point - the reasoning being that Palpatine got his paws on the vast majority when he acquired the Temple, and then hid them away like a magpie.


Well, the fun in real-life research is the breadcrumb trail of answers that beget more questions (and the sources that might have those answers.) To simulate that, you'd probably want to first generate a list of facts, falsehoods, and revelations. The facts would be fairly basic stuff--not common knowledge, seeing as the subject matter is already esoteric--but things that would be known to most of those familiar with the literature, like a short list of known force-sensitive animals. The falsehoods and would be the session's primary hazards, with the "danger" in this session coming from the threat of believing a falsehood at the end. The revelations are the big-ticket treasures that could shift things for the players in a major way.

Then whip up some controversies--this author thinks x, but these authors think y.
Some of the controversies are intermediate--getting the right answer here just tells you your next step. For instance, there are two rival schools on the subject of Sith Alchemy, and figuring out this controversy just tells you which one is credible.
Some of the controversies are dead ends--there is no right answer, or the right answer isn't knowable, or the two sides are both wrong, or what's being argued over is actually unimportant. For instance, there's a controversy over whether Darth Vader is a product of alchemy, and the truth is that he is, but it had a negligible effect on him or his abilities.
Some controversies are terminal. You get to the end of the road here, and then figuring out the right answer gives you a bunch of facts or discounts a major falsehood.

Finally, make up a list of volumes. Give some of them leading titles like Against Kurna Vurl, which lets them know that there's a Kurna Vurl out there who has opinions that are controversial, which means they maybe have to go hunt of ol' Kurna in another library. There should be a couple "the wikipedia entry on this subject" volumes that provide some of the facts and core controversies. Make a *bunch* of volume and scholar names even if you don't know what they all say so you can ad lib. (You could also cut out the volumes as anything other than throwaway flavor and replace them mechanically with different libraries and archives. That lets you paint a more intrepid picture of the research.)

Bonus stuff: Maybe mix in some fun trivia about these characters, like "Kurna Vurl is perhaps most famous for being decapitated by another scholar's lightsaber during a particularly acrimonious faculty conference." You can also reach back to these names/works later in the campaign when someone makes a check ("You know that can't be right though. Darth Fungious conclusively discredited Heterine Resonance theory when he published Principles of Saber Construction and then cut off Kurna Vurl's head.")

Now you play a lot of the session sort of like multiple concurrent games of Clue. Each controversy has some facts and maybe a revelation in its "solution bag", and then suggestions about what's in there come from the various sides. The volumes (or the non-crank ones, anyway) act as the Clue-style player hands that you can check with a successful skill check for one or two facts at a time. Unlike Clue, the volumes might have overlap, so checking a second or even third source could just keep reconfirming things you already knew.

Have a way of marking down what they've read and where they've been and what they found there, and make it super clear up front that
A: There is a real danger of leaving this with incorrect info.
B: They might have to go back into a volume to see if there are any "cards" they missed.

This is really great; it actually makes the bit I was dreading (the actual reading) pretty fricking interesting to the party. Stacks of notecards seem in order here, as do lists of the cards and which topics they cover.

Bonus points for Darth Fungious.


My initial thought was that, while learning things can be fun, having to figure out all the things that they can learn is less so. They don't want a simple research roll for each thing, but you having to invent facts and research trails is a pain. Instead, come up with the 4 or 5 things they can learn, and then make them work for it.

They might have to repair the computer index to be able to find what they are looking for. There might be tests to learn the information. Some genius might have put various force sensitive animals in stasis pods which have malfunctioned. The book containing his research might be at the far end of the cavern where the various freed animals make their home. Possibly the start of their research sets off some local cult dedicated to keeping certain knowledge hidden, culminating in a standoff between the players and the cult. Maybe the players can join the cult. Maybe they have to kill the guards. Maybe they can live without that bit of knowledge. Maybe the head cultist has a beautiful daughter who will gladly betray her father after one look at one of the players.

Having said that, the multi-dimensional clue and "give 3 facts, make them pick the one that is correct" ideas will probably help keep the session feeling like research instead of an action movie set in a library.

Malfunctioning and/or decrepit stasis pods with dangerous animals is a time-honored classic. Time to break out that sweet sweet Metroid Prime music.


I don't think making research about disbursal of a fixed set of information makes for a very interesting session. Rather, when I've played characters who were researchers, the primary satisfaction of that gameplay was to be able to alter the space of the possible through coming to a greater understanding of some underlying hidden structure of the world. That is to say, it's less about 'do we get to know the things we needed to know to advance the plot' and more about 'can we find new levers which can be pushed on?' - with the particular thing about research being that the lever was always there, but that proper understanding of it allows you to know how to push in order to achieve the effect you want.

The core ingredient of such a thing is that an undiscovered lever is tied to inconsistencies, paradoxes, and surprises. When you see something that works a little differently than you expect, you can follow that thread to find a way to make something that works wildly differently than everyone else would expect. Library research is finding the start of that thread, while experimentation is following the thread. By it's nature, library research is going to be more GM-driven (you choose what there is to find), while experimentation will be more player-driven (because they get to choose how to explore further), so that's something to watch out for - it's okay to have a session at the library where you scatter some new threads to follow, but making research start and end there is going to cut off the actual gameplay bits of the endeavor.

A fun trope for research-themed games or sessions is when something is too successful. That moves against the tendency of real research to be a string of failures enabling the one rare success, and makes the tension more about surviving/controlling/coming to terms with what has been found than overcoming the tedium and frustration of a difficult-to-figure-out mystery. So e.g. the players find some reference material on a banned and censored competing view on the matter of Sith alchemy, where it turns out that the reason it was banned was that the side-effects of the approach are catastrophic, but which hint at maybe there being some way to unify those insights with the mainstream and thereby overcome the consequences - experimentation into why the side effects exist follows.

That's a good way of thinking about it - I was set up to provide passive answers to their questions and just put entertaining encounters in the way; setting up levers, like you put it, would definitely kick it up a notch.


Another option, that might be fun (though a lot more work), is set up a few investigation challenges, and have them make tests and gather successes. For every success they get, they get a notecard with a piece of data on it...data which may or may not be true.

So, they make some checks, and you decided that, for lightsaber building, a 15 is a success, and they get 1 note card. You also decide that a 20 or a 25 is a better success, giving them 2 or 3 notecards. Each test takes 8 hours of work... for something relatively mechanical and once well-known like lightsabers, you might just make it "Accumulate X successes and you can make one; Y successes will open up a few options to you.

For more complex information, you might have them gather and organize the notecards themselves. So, they work for a few days and, between them, acquire 10 notecards... and then they bring that together and try to make sense of them. They might be missing some crucial details, which makes it harder. Some data they gathered may be wrong or horribly biased, and they may set out to confirm some data, which would be another check.

It is a lot more work (instead of writing out notecards, you might set up a spreadsheet with information that coincides to different playing cards... if they draw a King of Diamonds, they get X information, while a Queen of Hearts means Y, and maybe every even-numbered spade is a lie), but it contributes to the "hunt for information" aspect, lets those with relevant skills be useful, and then turns everything into a role-playing exercise while they argue about what the information means and how it all fits together.

Hmm. I think I'm going to pass on the idea of giving false information on passed checks; my players have a strong dislike of that - the thinking is that a success should be a success, which I agree with. I will hold onto the idea of divvying it up so that more passed checks makes it easier to put together, though.


So, this one time, in CoC, in a game I was not in, the party did some research, and learned that there exists a cursed talisman that could ward off the Cthulhu monster that they were investigating. They sought out and found the glowing stone talisman. And, as advertised, the Cthulhu monster recoiled when the talisman was strongly presented.

Of course, under the hood, the talisman was radioactive, and worked because the monster was aware of this fact.

Personally, I love investigation that leads to more questions, of the type, "why..." and "what can we do with...".

Interesting. I like the split between knowing "it does this" and "it does this because." Providing deeper and deeper reasons seems like a good way to world-build at the very least.

Cespenar
2018-08-23, 04:36 AM
I have a funny idea, but it's a bit radical so feel free to ignore:

Open up Wookieepedia so that only you can see it. Their goal is to get to the page they want in the least number of clicks. You look at the page and read them three links to click. Each click simulates a unit of time: could be 1 hour, 4 hours, or a day.

paigeoliver
2018-08-23, 02:58 PM
"I wonder what it was like back then, back then........"

Describe the basic research, roll some rolls and then elaborate dream sequence set in the time period or around whatever they were researching.

That is pretty much the only way to make it fun and involving and not require you to do 40 hours of prep for a boring 4 hour session.

Mendicant
2018-08-23, 10:58 PM
I have a funny idea, but it's a bit radical so feel free to ignore:

Open up Wookieepedia so that only you can see it. Their goal is to get to the page they want in the least number of clicks. You look at the page and read them three links to click. Each click simulates a unit of time: could be 1 hour, 4 hours, or a day.

Yeah my Clue idea was heavily predicated on the heavy lifting done by wookiepedia. If you've got a setting that deep it would be criminal to not use it, and your use of it ia really elegant.

Grog Logs
2018-08-24, 06:51 PM
There are some great ideas here. Building off of them keep in mind that time is a limited resource. That's the barrier to us learning everything. Once time is a factor, then you can implement that in different ways while providing agency

For instance, there are three research paths to take. A) more about the NPC who discovered something, B) more about the technical aspects of a device, and C) more about the theory if the thing. Now, to research A properly will take five hours (or two days). To research B will take ten hours (or right days)...etc.

Each path provides different tactical advantages later on. Also, each path has branches for success (decreased time to accomplish them) and for failures (increased time, useless or false info, or inability to comprehend).

If they spend too much time studying and forsake sleep, they suffer exhaustion. And, maybe they also need to gather fuel supplies or something to repair the engines, shields, or weapons of their ship. They can spend less time on their ship repairs but their ship will be weaker in the next battle or they may have to land on a hostile planet (and have to fight their way out or be unable to escape in time before the Empire Strikes).

The players should know that they only have X amount of time (broadly speaking) before the Empire uses the weapon or attacks a planet in retaliation or discovers the Rebel base. Every moment over researching spells disaster for the Party or for NPCs that they care about. But, if they learn nothing, they will be unable to stop the Empire from doing a specific evil task.

Also, based on their background, some characters are slower at learning or get bored faster. For example, Han could not study as long as Obi Wan could no matter how critical the info. But, Han might hey more insight bursts. Think Tuvix (in contrast to Tuvok) in that Star Trek Voyager episode. Logic is not always faster but it may be more persistent.

Additionally, ask them what strategies they use: methodical (know more info but takes longer), skimming (quicker but greater chance of missing a success path and hitting a dead end), asking NPCs for help, coordinating with other PCs (slows the one being asked down but speeds you up, if too often, both of you slow down).

Other idea: The Scooby Gang in Buffy the Vampire Slayer often had to do research. How did that show make it interesting and create tension? (Too long since I've seen it to remember.)