ParanetOnline
The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Taran on June 16, 2011, 06:51:38 PM
-
I just started running a submerged game and it's chalk-full of mystery. Or, I guess, it's supposed to be. The resident wizard has a Lore of 6. I'd kind of imagined a mini adventure happening where they are trying to find out a creatures catch. I find it hard to not give the players information when they are rolling Legendary +++ rolls. With rolls like that, there's really no need to do research. How do other people deal with submerged games and controlling information?
On a side-note, it's not that I don't want to give the players the information - I do - in fact, I find it makes the story better when the players can actually find out what's going on. It's more that I want small side-stories and stuff to come out of finding said information.
-
Make the Lore rolls necessary to get *leads* to answers, as opposed to the answers themselves. The player with Lore 6 *knows* that the Scroll of Anuba contains the information needed to make a Rezeluan Mindspider appear in the flesh so it can be confronted. And the last time he knew its whereabouts, it was in the hands of Disraeli Campos, a Wizard-turned-Warlock who went into hiding after stealing this Scroll from Edinburgh. Maybe it's time to collect on that bounty, remove an enemy of the White Council, and make progress in removing the curse on the party's White Court Virgin.
Edit: Recalling "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," the Grail Diary contained all the information needed to retrieve the Holy Grail because even the premier Grail researcher in the world couldn't memorize everything about it. And so many adventures centered around that book rotating through various factions' possession.
-
If you can't make a side plot of finding out the catch, make a side plot of catching the catch... so to speak.
Ah, too slow ;D
Devonapples idea is another way to go. If the information just isn't available, even the best lore roll isn't going to be doing any good. To make the roll not entirely useless, maybe you can go with the spin rule (or am I thinking of another?) and give him an aspect that reflects the information he has, so he is able to tag it later on.
Another way could be to look at the wizards aspects, what kind of a wizard is he. If he does not have much experience with creatures, you could wave a shiny fate point at him compelling this fact. His lore is high, but he does not know everything, and it just happens to be that he does not know anything about this particular creature. This compel would be the hook for the side plot, so he might just know enough to get into trouble (some monks in a far away monestry might know more. Too bad they are kung-fu ghoul monks[which you don't tell him right away, of course ;) ].)
-
How do other people deal with submerged games and controlling information?
Info has to come from somewhere. If your character were in the 17th Century doing research, he would discover that the cure for the flu was, indisputably, putting a frog in your mouth. It was the most accurate, socially-accepted information at the time. It was also completely wrong. So a character particularly adept at gathering info or even just "knowing" stuff still has to deal with the fact that the info most likely to come up may be untrue, untested, or flat lies.
Keeping them out of a library is impractical, but giving them access to false info can be a helpful way to control things. Eventually, like everyone else, they will have to learn to check out the source, not just the words on the page.
-
I think devonapple has the right idea. There's a good reason the rule books have references to libraries and time to do research.
I think there should be two levels of difficulty for lore checks. The lower level is to know "Oh, yeah, I think I've heard of that, doesn't it have some weakness?" and the higher level is "Oh, that's an X! It's weakness is Y!".
Also, if your player is spending fate points on his lore rolls to get them super high, then he's obviously investing in knowing a lot. Let him have his fun with that. Skill points and fate points invested in lore checks means he's not putting those resources into other areas, so you can find other ways to challenge him where he's weak.
Finally, you always have a few other options, such as splitting the party once in a while so the others don't have the benefit of his lore some of the time. Or you could find a way to give him a compel to NOT know the answer to something.
Oh, and remember the catch rules - some weakness *aren't* known to anyone who hasn't done research (resulting in a lower catch value). Make sure you know ahead of time how much common knowledge there is about a given monster.
-
I just started running a submerged game and it's chalk-full of mystery. Or, I guess, it's supposed to be. The resident wizard has a Lore of 6. I'd kind of imagined a mini adventure happening where they are trying to find out a creatures catch. I find it hard to not give the players information when they are rolling Legendary +++ rolls. With rolls like that, there's really no need to do research. How do other people deal with submerged games and controlling information?
I started using the Time Table for modifiying the difficulty of research rolls (which is why I'm kicking myself for not using it for modifiying the complexity of combat Thaumaturgy before someone else pointed it out).
If it would normally require a Fantastic (+6) Lore and a "few hours of research" to find the information in a library (which would also need to be Fantastic) then trying to get the information in "a few moments" actually requires a roll of +13! If the information was normally Good (+3) to find in a library, it would require a roll of +10 to have it off the top of your head.
-
zcthu3 is right on target. High lore points you in the right direction and dramatically speeds up the research. Much of the time though it doesn't mean total recall of the most obscure minutiae.
One example from the books would be Harry trying to recall having read about the gruffs. It required him reading through a fair amount of material to find what he was looking for.
-
I started using the Time Table for modifiying the difficulty of research rolls (which is why I'm kicking myself for not using it for modifiying the complexity of combat Thaumaturgy before someone else pointed it out).
If it would normally require a Fantastic (+6) Lore and a "few hours of research" to find the information in a library (which would also need to be Fantastic) then trying to get the information in "a few moments" actually requires a roll of +13! If the information was normally Good (+3) to find in a library, it would require a roll of +10 to have it off the top of your head.
This. The time chart is the most overlooked part of the rules. I love it. Yeah, you rolled high enough to find the info, but are you willing to spend the time needed? If you are, that may mean having to sit out on a few scenes as you pour over the materials.
I've been using this in my game. A character made a contacts roll to see if he knew someone who knew someone who knew about what they were looking for. That player had to sit out two scenes while he hit up his contacts.
-EF
-
I can't help but think that making a player sit out scenes for this sort of info thing more then a little stupid. I mean yeah I can see doing it that way if you have the "This is what I am doing while I go pick up the take out" scenario, but otherwise whats the point other then detract from the fun of the player in question.
-
I can't help but think that making a player sit out scenes for this sort of info thing more then a little stupid. I mean yeah I can see doing it that way if you have the "This is what I am doing while I go pick up the take out" scenario, but otherwise whats the point other then detract from the fun of the player in question.
How else would you factor in time, then? Every action has a cost. Talking to your information network, or pouring through your library, takes time.
With being on a time crunch, you have to give and take. If they had all the time in the world, sure, I wouldn't have them sit out. But their friend had been kidnapped, so they wanted to get as much done as possible in as little time as possible.
-EF
-
Rather then making them sit out, I would run it as a mini-scene where the actual talking to contacts for the information and the like is actually role-played out. I mean if I was the player forced to not participate, honestly I would feel inclined to leave the table for twenty minutes (or however long the two scenes take) and read a book or something. Otherwise my time is being wasted and I am sitting there bored. With my method the player is engaged and having a good time and not feeling sorta left out of the group because of some arbitrary game mechanics.
-
There is definitely merit to the idea of a miniscene with a character in that scenario. Not everything lends itself well to that though. A lot of scholarly research is going to be pretty low on excitement.
Just for the record it is hardly an "arbitrary game mechanic" to suggest that doing things takes time.
-
Things take time is perfectly reasonable sure, but both as a GM and as a player I am not going to want force or be forced to not participate in the game because of something like that. If it had happened often enough in a game group truth be told I am not sure I would show up next session at all. Because if your not spending your time roleplaying what the point of actually bothering to come at all?
-
You don't force them to sit out, it's an option the player can choose to take if they really want to get the information.
For example, Ashley the Wizard wants to research the giant werewolf creature (a loup garou) she and her friends have just encountered in order to determine it's catch. The GM rules this is pretty rare information - I don't have my books handy to look up the actual value of the Catch so let's say it's a Great (+4) Difficulty and several hours in the library.
Ashley decides to try and do it in only half an hour as after that the rest of the group are heading out to meet with a WCV who may have some information on the Loup Garou's whereabouts. Trying to do the research in 30 minutes means the difficulty rises to Fantastic (+6). Ashley has a Lore of +5, but rolls a -2 (giving her +3), spending a Fate Point increases this back to +5, still not enough to find out the information in 30 minutes! The GM says that she can either complete the research by skipping a scene (effectively spending an hour on the research), or can choose to rely on the limited information she has.
Ashley's player now has a choice - ensure that she has the correct information by skipping the scene and meet up with the rest of the characters later, or hope she has sufficient information and go downtown to meet the WCV with the others.
Put the option back on the player, let them decide.
-
I think that what Samael is trying to say is that "not playing" is not fun. So it should be avoided to the greatest extent possible.
Samael's issue is acknowledged by the core rules on page 262 of Your Story. I recommend that you all read the exchange between Harry and Billy there.
PS: How did the wizard get Lore 6? Did you raise the cap?
-
For players who are sitting out a scene or two, a GM could let them act out relatively trivial NPCs (depending on the group's openness to such a thing). Even playing "enemies" can work for the right gaming group. Since NPCs are easy to develop on the fly, a player may even help the GM flesh out a scene this way.
-
I like this idea. I think I might have to try it.
-
Make the Lore rolls necessary to get *leads* to answers, as opposed to the answers themselves. The player with Lore 6 *knows* that the Scroll of Anuba contains the information needed to make a Rezeluan Mindspider appear in the flesh so it can be confronted. And the last time he knew its whereabouts, it was in the hands of Disraeli Campos, a Wizard-turned-Warlock who went into hiding after stealing this Scroll from Edinburgh. Maybe it's time to collect on that bounty, remove an enemy of the White Council, and make progress in removing the curse on the party's White Court Virgin.
Edit: Recalling "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," the Grail Diary contained all the information needed to retrieve the Holy Grail because even the premier Grail researcher in the world couldn't memorize everything about it. And so many adventures centered around that book rotating through various factions' possession.
I want to come with you to Alderaan and learn the ways of the Force.
-
I think devonapple has the right idea. There's a good reason the rule books have references to libraries and time to do research.
I think there should be two levels of difficulty for lore checks. The lower level is to know "Oh, yeah, I think I've heard of that, doesn't it have some weakness?" and the higher level is "Oh, that's an X! It's weakness is Y!".
Also, if your player is spending fate points on his lore rolls to get them super high, then he's obviously investing in knowing a lot. Let him have his fun with that. Skill points and fate points invested in lore checks means he's not putting those resources into other areas, so you can find other ways to challenge him where he's weak.
Finally, you always have a few other options, such as splitting the party once in a while so the others don't have the benefit of his lore some of the time. Or you could find a way to give him a compel to NOT know the answer to something.
Oh, and remember the catch rules - some weakness *aren't* known to anyone who hasn't done research (resulting in a lower catch value). Make sure you know ahead of time how much common knowledge there is about a given monster.
I like this. There were some times that Bob was unable/very reluctant to provide information to Harry, prompting Harry to go out and do the research himself; I'm specifically thinking of Death Masks when Bob could not give any information to Harry about the , and in Dead Beat when Bob turned out to be the .
It also raises an interesting question about what resources you allow your players to access for gathering information. Since wizards and technology don't mix, who does the research if magical means of research are temporarily unavailable? Those individuals might not know all the correct questions to ask/locations to dig for information, and that could also lead to side adventures full of Red HerringTM (the favored fish of GMs everywhere).
-
I think that what Samael is trying to say is that "not playing" is not fun. So it should be avoided to the greatest extent possible.
Samael's issue is acknowledged by the core rules on page 262 of Your Story. I recommend that you all read the exchange between Harry and Billy there.
PS: How did the wizard get Lore 6? Did you raise the cap?
But if you remove the time requirements, you get into a situation that the OP is facing. The player made his roll, so he knows it automatically? There has to be a balance between time and success. That's the thing about research, it takes time.
I'm honestly curious, how would you fix the situation?
-EF
-
Honestly, I don't know if I share Samael's issues with this.
If I did, I'd probably just Compel people not to know things.
Failing that, I'd set ridiculous difficulties. Like, 17. And I'd justify them in-story.
"The Wptaksa was sealed in a can 15 000 years ago, and it just got out. It predates the invention of writing, and nothing alive had ever heard of it until last week. Nobody's studied it in that time. The only way to work out its weakness is to work backwards from the flavour of its magical aura, making several dubious leaps of logic on the way to your conclusion due to insufficient information. The difficulty is 17."
-
I'm a computer tech at a datacenter. I work with unix systems for most of my work day. It's not wizardry but as far as knowing things and how the research works, it's probably got a lot of similarities. To start with, nobody knows all the details. The only time you know everything about what you're doing down to the last flag or bit of info you need to pass to the commands are when you're re-doing a task you've done a lot and you're doing it by rote. Most of the time you first have to figure out what the problem really is so you're asking the right questions. That's a big important point right there that can trip up even the most knowledgeable person and it's where you may have to be with most of your plots with high Lore characters. Having all the right answers to all the wrong questions gets you nowhere useful.
After you've done the troubleshooting and isolated the problem, you issue the right commands to fix it. If you can do it by rote, cool. But often you'll end up knowing the right command but using the documentation to look up the right way to pass it particular info. Most of the time this is pretty quick. As long as the documentation you have covers that issue. In game, this may be the point where you grin maniacally and tell the players about that lost book that some minor power has and what they'll need to do to get it. Sometimes you don't even know the right command and that takes even more digging. This might be a way of implying that the PCs need some specialized magic they don't possess or a really tricky ingredient.
I've met people with 15-20 years of experience in the field who still look things up. There's just too much to know to do everything by rote. I think the way magic is presented, it's supposed to have the same feel of being too complex to hold it all in your head at once.
Oh, for sitting out... I generally only make players sit out if they're doing something that will add more oomph to them alone. I would feel kind of cheap if I made someone sit out just so they could unravel the info necessary for a plot I presented to develop. If it really required research, I'd just fast forward and pick up the timeline at the end of it, letting the other players do similar prep work. Something that helps the whole group really shouldn't be penalized. Although it would make convenient excuse for why their character was absent if they wanted to go buy food or something.
-
Thanks for all the good tips. I'd thought about the time chart...a little late after having the player make a bunch of Lore rolls, but I'll keep it in mind for things like this.
I really like having Lore roles tell you WHERE to find information, then make that information challenging to get access to - or at least have it be the justification for the Lore roll to take "half a day".
As far as having players sit out of scenes, I find it hard not to when the party splits up:
Player: "I go to the docks and talk to the workers to find info"
GM: "Sure, that will take a few hours. Roll contacts"
- Do mini scene of him talking to dock worker telling him the rumours -
Meanwhile everyone is watching. Then I move on to the guy who gone to the Library to do research.
The scenes are short, but yes, some people are not involved. Obviously, there are times when I just say "time passes and here's what you find out."
So, for me, it's almost the opposite. The people doing research (and potentially forwarding the plot) get a scene and the people doing nothing get to watch.
I try not to have people sit out of important scenes where there will be conflicts.
-
Note that by taking lore 6, he is saying that his character is "The man with the answers", and some times he just should know amazing things. Consider the equivalent investigation 6 is Sherlock Holmes.
That said, 'you know the right book', 'you know who the expert on that topic is, and have been exchanging letter with it for years', 'you can whip up a quick magic ritual to deal with that, under the light of the full moon' all work.
You can also try to move the mystery farther away from the character. Destroy evidence. Give him 2nd hand answers from people who are confused or don't know what to look for. Give him a list of a few options that are possible so far, or eliminate some answers, but not all of them.