Researching and Inventing in RPGs.

[Alex Abate Biral]

Hello people!

My name is Alex, a new user here and I am soon going to start a simple rpg campaign with my friends using the rules found in the Over the Edge RPG book. However, I am hoping to use this campaign to test some of my ideas on the game. Since I liked this forum a lot, I thought that maybe I could get some feedback on those ideas beforehand.

One of the things that always bothered me is that most have a well defined set of rules for a combat game, but nothing for other kinds of actions/conflicts. One of the ideas I plan on testing concerns the inventing of stuff (no matter if it is a new kind of resistant glass, a new spell or whatever). Usually players  make some small text explaining their invention, the GM either approves it or not and, in the first case, some dice are rolled. What I want is to make the process more interactive, something that could be important in a campaign, not something that is there just so the characters can customize their weapon or whatnot.

What I am thinking of doing is this: every invention starts with the player telling me what they want to do. Then, if the GM deems it possible, either the player agree with a way to do it proposed by the GM or uses a proposition he himself creates and the GM agrees. For example, if creating a bulletproof glass, the GM might suggest a: a new method of tempering the glass, or a new way of layering the glass. However, the player decides to instead try a new combination for the glass formula.

The next step requires that the inventor finds a way to make his vision possible. In this step, the GM breaks the rough plan the player came with into various researches. Each research must be studied and solved before the invention is complete. Depending on how each research goes, the final product is affected. In the last example, the player might need to find a good material to combine with silicon dioxide, a method to make the molecular structure more resistant and the fine tuning the percentages of each material. If the player does well in the first research, gets a small problem in the second and a big one in the third, the result could be a very resistant glass that has small, hard to find weak points and that uses much more than needed of some expensive materials. The idea is that having an invention broken down in researches allow the player to choose between trying to make something perfect but invest too much time/resources or something that works just fine for now. Also, these researches may be as abstract or concrete as the player and GM wants. So, the player may write a long essay on which materials he uses or just say he finds a good combination.

How the players would perform the research, I still haven't thought throughly yet. One idea that I had is that they accumulate resources and invest toward the problems. Sometimes, they might make breakthroughs or sometimes they might create a flaw in the project. If the player suspected a flaw, he could make prototype testings to see if he finds the flaw, but he ends up wasting resources if this is not the case. Another idea I thought was to give the player some kind of puzzle where he has to figure out the secret, like the father in Lorenzo's oil figures out that both fatty acids have the same source.

I know this idea is still very raw, and I hope people here can help me make something fun of it. If you have opinions or thoughts on it, please post it here. Thank you.

[Alex Abate Biral]

Greetings again, people!

I am sorry if my last post was too confusing. I wrote it in a hurry and I believe made a rather unreadable post. So, I will try to explain more simply what I intend to do about researching in my game:

First, when a player wants to research something, he must explain the GM what he wants to create. He must also explain how his invention is going to work. This second part may be aided by  the GM, and is important for the next part.

The third step takes the way the result of the second step and breaks it in different tasks. Once all tasks are accomplished, the player has developed his invention. However, depending on how well the character does in each step, the invention will work better or worse in some areas. Certain flaws may appear in each task too, leading to problems with the invention.

Note that what was done in each step is not final. A character may develop his invention, use it for a while, and decide it needs more work in this or that area. Also note that each task may be researched by a different person. It would be possible for two characters work in the same invention in different tasks, or even to take an invention by someone else and simply try to improve it.

What I wanted to ask people here is: what they think of this division and what they think would be the best method to implement the third step's tasks. I was thinking that each certain amount of time a character spends researching one task, he would gain so many research points, depending on his skill with whatever topic is appropriate. Each task would need so many points in order to be completed. If he was in a hurry, the character could put less points for some penalty on the invention (but at least 80% of total) or a bit more for some bonus (up to 120%).

I was also thinking that sometimes, when a character puts points toward a task, he could create a flaw. A flaw in the invention will make the final invention a bit less useful. When a flaw is inserted in a task, it could be detected by early prototyping. Aside from that, it would be visible when the invention was finished. In order to remove the flaw, it is necessary to work on the task some more. Possibly, ass points put in that task after the flaw was inserted would be wasted if the flaw was to be removed.

I hope I was clearer this time. I am sorry for my last post and I thank beforehand all who post their opinions here.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Alex, and welcome!

I appreciate your second, clarifying post, but it so happens that I am still a little bit confused about your goals.

You refer to "the game" and "my game," but I can't tell whether you are talking about a game you are designing, with the possibility of publishing it, or the activity of playing a game with your friends, basically a modified version of Over the Edge.

If it's the first, then this is exactly the right forum for it. If it's the second, then I will move this thread to the Actual Play forum, and we can continue from there, probably with some questions about your previous experiences in other games.

Best, Ron

[Alex Abate Biral]

Oh sorry, I should have explained it better. I will start a new campaigns with my friends using an already published game (over the edge is a simple, very rules light game). During this game, I plan to slowly introduce various new game mechanics, like the researching mechanics here described. I plan to see the reaction and tweak them until they seem fine.

Think of these mechanics as sub-games, which probably could be used in any system. I do plan on trying to create a full rpg system later on (with these mechanics as optional rules), but I will wait until I have finished reading some design books I bought and I get more experience with rpgs in general. So, this does pertains to the creation of a new game, although for now I am using a ready made set of rules. But if you think this should be moved, feel free to do so.

The reason for this system to be is that I believe researching and inventing is not a social activity in RPGs. Whenever a character I played tried to create something new, I wrote up what I wanted for the GM and rolled a dice. Once I actually thought out the details with a fellow player, but it was clear to me that researching could hardly be an important part of the play experience.

Once again, sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Ron Edwards]

Excellent! Thanks, Alex. As you can see, I've moved this thread to a different forum.

To have a better discussion, I need a little bit more information. First, have you played Over the Edge before? If so, did player-characters try to invent things? How did that go?

Second, have you or other players run characters to invent things in any other game? D&D, or whatever, doesn't matter? How did that go? Was it fun, and why or why not?

Answering these questions will make it absolutely clear to all of us, reading, what sort of "fix" you're looking for in your upcoming game. But without these answers, there is no way to understand that. So please let us know.

Best, Ron

[Alex Abate Biral]

Sorry, I should really have explained this since the beginning.

For now, I am choosing the Over the Edge rules solely because they really don't get in the way, so I can do some testing in the game and don't worry too much I will break this or that. While I usually go for more rules heavy systems, like gurps, I want to analyze how my ideas do in a simpler system before trying them in more complex ones.

I never in the over the edge setting, though I did play a small game that used similar rules. I recently acquired the book, and liked the setting very much. I believe it is varied enough that I can test many of the things I plan to without stretching too much.

My main problem with research is that, whenever  I created a character that used it much, I felt that I was simply detracting from everyone else's fun. Usually any new invention I had would be reviewed by the GM on off time, but if that wasn't the case I would be afraid of taking too long discussing with the GM what to do,as all the time I spent inventing  no one else could interact.

I guess that the best experience I had with it was when playing was when playing a son of ether on a MtA game. But in that game, all characters did some kind of inventing when casting the spells, tying them with their paradigm.

What I want to accomplish is to create a fun subgame that represents the action of inventing/researching something. I want it to stimulate players to interact and poll skills together in order to accomplish the goal, with different end results depending on the path taken. I want it to offer problems to the players that can be solved in more than one way, and that may possibly lead to adventures by themselves, bringing opportunities for PCs who don't research anything to affect the game. I want a system that rewards players for thinking their ideas through and doing some research, hopefully in a team effort, but at the same time doesn't penalize too much players that wouldn't like this kind of activity and research alone. I want a system that can be swapped back and forth from the background, not hampering players that are not really a part of it, but giving researching players a fun game. Finally I want a subgame that is fun enough that it might be the major driving force of an entire campaign.
By the way, thanks a lot for taking your time replying, Mr. Edwards.

[Ron Edwards]

Mister my butt. I'm just Ron. (I'm not cool enough to finish with "comma, yo." Too old. I typed it then felt really stupid.)

Anyway, you said you "felt" you were detracting from everyone's fun. In the worst-case situation when you felt that way, what game were you playing? What system did it use for invention? If it was any kind of D&D, by the way, see if you can remember what edition, 'cause it matters.

I'm asking because the thing about Over the Edge is, it's basically all one system. If your biker character takes a swing at a yuppie, you roll dice equal to his score. If your magick'd up dude makes a silver wand to inscribe demonic names into Dimension X and hence control the demons ... you roll dice equal to his score. That's pretty much it.

So that makes your stated goal kind of odd. You started by noting, correctly, that combat rules are often highly nuanced with many steps and details, and that rules for other stuff aren't. So you said to yourself, "I'll make inventing-items rules that are more like the combat rules." (Tell me if I'm mis-paraphrasing your first post, I'm repeating it my way to make sure I understand correctly.) But now you're looking at a system which is famously non-nuanced for anything and everything, most especially combat. So your invention rules are really gonna stick out, you know?

Anyway, it'll make more sense to me if you're specific about the time when you really felt like the invention action was causing fun to decrease among the group. So let me know.

Best, Ron

[Alex Abate Biral]

Sorry Ron, that is just the way I usually address people. Didn't mean to imply that you are old.

About my experience with inventing, it isn't so bad. The only adventure where I had to come up with stuff in front of other players was when I took a gadgeteer advantage on a gurps game. At first, I tried to make thngs that were more or less plausible, but it took too much time. Once I started to take a more MacGyver approach, things worked out fine. It is not that I didn't have fun there, but I believe the system could be improved.

Anyway, if you want to understand better why I am doing this, it is because I want to create various systems to simulate activities normally left out of rpgs.I believe that by taking actions normally solved by just rolling a dice and adding more depth to them, players that want this kind of activity ill have more fun.

And I understand what you are saying about OtE, but I went for it because I think a more complex rpg would have various parts that could not interact well with my system, or that would require special attention. While my OtE will look a bit weird by having these extra rules added to it, my objective is not to improve OtE, but to develop my subsystem.

I want the subgames I create to eventually be usable with more complex systems (you could think of them as add ons for any rpg, or at least most, rpgs), but for now, I will try with this simple game, where all I have to consider about the researcher is one attribute, and see how it plays out, what kind of situations come up. Once that is done, I will try something more complex, like GURPS.

By the way Ron, thanks for taking your time to discuss this with me. And feel free to criticize the idea as you see fit. This also is valid to anyone else reading, feel free to post here too.