Fog of War (reboot)

[Charrua]

Since Dreamborn may or may not respond to this, my request is for anyone else who experiments with this mode of play:

My largest concern with this mode of play, within my group of friends, is managing the social contract.  That is, my playing group is, for all intents and purposes, ADD, highly distractable, and, like small classroom children (I'm a former school teacher), in constant need of refocusing.  I'm not complaining about it (at all), however it inherently limits certain types of gameplay because of it (without modifying the social contract and being intentional about it). 

Therefore, I'm *DYING* to know what types of conversations dreamborn, or anyone else who decides to emulate it, had to make it work so well *green w/ envy*, and how the attention managed to stay in a game where all the fortune occured at the beginning of the game.  I.E. What preplanning conversation took place (if any), what reminders (by anyone) occurred, and how did the players feel over the course of the gaming session.

Cheers.

[Ron Edwards]

In case anyone's wondering ...

I'm all for continuing the discussion on the topic. I will probably split the thread beginning with your post. Charrua, but for now, let's carry on to see what can be made of it.

Best, Ron

[Barlennan]

A couple of years ago I played in a D&D 3.5 campaign.  The DM ran with fairly dense fog of war - we knew our own hit points, and rolled our own damage, but relied on colour to know how badly damaged enemies were, and drew maps on graph paper based on the DM room descriptions.  This is probably how I'd have run the game based on reading the Dungeon Master's Guide, too.

Between my time playing Neverwinter Nights, and similar out-of-character knowledge from the other players, I would not argue that we went into most combats with the 'realistic' lack of knowledge described here.  However, there were some non-combat moments which were genuinely 'blind'.

The clearest example I can think of is when our characters were asked to travel to a nearby town and collect four potentially harmful tomes for research purposes.  Between various wandering monster encounters and the tedious in-character discussion with the librarians, this fairly simple task consumed 3 3 hour sessions. 

All four books were described individually and had suitably ominous titles.  The DM did pointedly ask if any of us wanted to browse them ourselves, but all three of us said we weren't that stupid.  Then, as soon as we loaded the books on our cart, one of them teleported off it again.  For the entire return trip, it would move short distances whenever no one was looking.  To counter this, we tried to keep it in someone's hands at all times; for at least one combat, the tome-bearer fought one-handed to avoid putting it in his pack.

We finally delivered all four books - and learnt that
(A) The book we'd been worrying about for the past 4 hours of play was prone to practical jokes, but not capable of outright escape, so
(B) The XP reward for the mission was based on the DM's chosen difficulty (easy), not our perception of the difficulty (hard).

As an aside, the DM later said that he'd worked out the effects of benefits and penalties of reading each of the four tomes in detail - but what D&D character in their right mind reads a book they know nothing about.  Once again, more information, even if provided out-of-character, would have increased the chance of someone accepting the trade-off and reading one of the books - leading to character development, possible address of premise, and other good things.


In conclusion, my own experience of fog of war is that it's tedious and frustrating - if the DM doesn't explicitly tell the players what's dangerous, the players have to assume that everything is.  This may feel like increased tension, but I would consider it false tension.

Finally, I'd suggest we can learn from novels and films here - the audience (and sometimes the characters) routinely receive 'unrealistic' information.  For example, I doubt that real-world bombs have convenient LED countdown timers on them - but there's far more tension in knowing you have 53 seconds to disarm the bomb than in knowing that it'll blow up some time, but you don't have the foggiest clue when.

[Ron Edwards]

Cool!

I went ahead and split these posts from Fog of War, in which Kent (dreamborn) provided an excellent description of that form of play. Let's keep going with the issues brought up in the new posts.

Best, Ron

[Callan S.]

That fighting with a book in one hand hurdle wouldn't have been invented without the players fear of the unknown. Its a player contributing to the game without being in some comfy authorship seat to do it. I understand not reading the books removes some content, but it would have been content that was all one way - what the GM wrote. It wouldn't have been a player invention thats also integrated with GM invention.

I'll pass on the librarian talks - I can't tell how or if fog was used there.

But yeah, this sort of invention gets in the way of the next system reward in D&D. What'd be cooler is if it earned one of the rewards to be had.

I've been wondering about fear lately and how maybe gamism needs fear 'issues' like nar games have moral issues. I think I've tried to intellectually work out whats good to design - looking at the technical of what happened and fully missed that I was feeling some fear during the mostnotable tactical engagements. That includes just the fear of losing.

Perhaps how riddle of steel has spirtitual attributes, something the player finds frightening for real (like snakes, heights, stabbed in the eye with a needle! Whatever it really is). It gets combined into conflicts, to stop that pure pawn stance detachment. I mean, I like to use a cool pawn stance perspective most of the time, but when I say use I mean fight to maintain that under the pressue. See I don't get computer game gambling simulators, why you would play them, but I do get the thrill of real gambling with money on the table. One difference is fear.


Quick actual play anecdotes, if it helps: Man, back in the day - wandering around Rifts earth in various robots as early teen players. It sounds silly, but when we find this recently attacked city and in robots, we begin to look a cracked open bank, just the words ' somethings coming' or such like sent us scampering - about a million half realised potentially bad things in my mind atleast. Also the attack encounter where we met other bots coming over the horizon for the first time - I can remember not knowing what might come of this, plenty of doomsday scenarios, what otherwise would be a 'roll init, roll attack, etc etc' if I'd just known stuff (which sadly I do these days).

[Simon C]

So the question kind of has become:

"How do you get some of the cool effects of "Fog of War" (extreme seperation of GM and Player information) without getting some of the bad effects"

Does that seem fair? I would list some of the good effects as:
- It can aid "immersive" play for some players, helping them to "get into the mindframe" of their character.
- It lets the GM surprise the players, which can be fun.
- It rewards players who can correctly guess, or use tactics that obviate the surprises - it rewards effective gamist play.

And some of the bad effects are:
- It's a lot of work for the GM, keeping track of information usually managed by the players.
- It puts all the power, and all the responsibility, in the hands of the GM. 
- Players can spend a long time in "unproductive" activity - not completing their goals.

It's funny that you mention "fear" Callan.  I'm reminded of a game I ran for my younger cousin and his friends, when they were sarting out roleplaying.  They were approaching a dungeon mouth, and noisily dispatched the orc guarding it.  As they grew closer, I described how they could here the rolling thunder of orcish drums from deep in the tunnels - the orcs were gathering.  This was purely colour for me, I wanted to convey that the orcs had probably heard the fight outside, and I used an evocative description to do that.  The effect was completely not what I expected.  Unversed in the D&D "Anything we encounter will be appropriate to our level" mindset, they looked at each other, the Orc-Hunting Ranger said "let's get out of here guys!" and they high-tailed it.

This was pretty funny for me, but it also pretty much derailed my game.  At the time I didn't know what to do about it, but I realise now that my problem was not providing enough informaion to the players, "out of character".  I guess my question is, how do you keep that "fear" which undoubtably made for a powerful experience for them, without accepting the possibility that they'll run?  In terms of the list above, how do you keep the "immersive" without also getting lots of wasted time? 

[contracycle]

Well I think that is very well said, and I think that you have correctly nailed the key issues: the GM's workload and the frequency of unproductive time.  I do not agree that the location of power and reponsibility in the hands of the GM is a problem, because that of course is the voluntarily arrangement arrived at by people concerned.

IMO the workload issue is ideally addressed by "paying other people to write games for you".  I'd be perfectly happy to purchase and then execute scenarios off the shelf, IF they could be written in a suitable manner.  Thus I think, the solution to this problem lies not in game mechanical design as such, but in scenario and play procedure design.

I think the unpoductive time problem is also a procedures thing; to some extent even I agree that the seperration of real and imaginary worlds has been excessively fetishized.  I think many computer RPG's have the right when idea when they alert players to developments with a message indicating a new objective, or "your journal has been updated" and similar.  I now wonder, why not give players explicit objectives in a similar manner?  Why bother to maintain the recognisably false illusion that "you can do anything"?  It seems to me that this sot of device may solve much of the useless cogitating.

[cydmab]

One phenomenon I've noticed in the current campaign is "obvious" choices. The GM sets up what he thinks represents a major, important, dramatic decision for the players... and the players immediately choose one or the other with no reflection. Example: we met a unicorn in the woods, and it started trying to lead us somewhere. We IMMEDIATELY started to follow. After the game the GM thought that was an odd decision for us to follow the unicorn so easily. But to us, the choice was obvious and apparent: we had unstoppable foes behind us, unstoppable foes ahead of us, we were desperate for any ally or help we could get. So we jumped at the possible help. Even if it turned out to be a trap (and it was).

I guess one solution would be massive debriefings between games. I sent the GM a couple two-page "thoughts of my character" between a few games, and he said they were "really helpful." But there was no direct feedback, and no one else was doing them, so I stopped. But my sense is if you are going with the massive preperation approach, it may be better to have every player do an hour a work + GM doing two hours reading and altering player made bangs, plots, and scenes instead of just the GM doing 6 hours of work.

[Callan S.]

Surely 'negates prepared material' isn't an issue if you work on how fear can be channeled to produce difficult situations/repurcussions? Like fighting one handed while holding a book and the overkill of the orc (out of useful spells because of...just an orc). If it can be channeled, it negates the need to prep so heavily in the first place.

The book holding seems to be grasping a basic game system function that's on offer. Perhaps a series of mechanical options (each with a resource cost or risk to a resource) is one step, with fear making the players kind of 'mash' at them based around their fear of the unknown and the resulting resource fluctuations creating issues in themselves.

[Simon C]

I think I see what you're saying.  You're saying that a well designed situation means the choice isn't "avoid the scary thing and also the prepared situation" vs "ignore the fear and plow on", but rather "Accept a disadvantage becasue it might be better than this unknown quantity" vs "Risk the unknown to avoid a known disadvantage."

So, choose between fighting one handed or opening the book (which isn't a good example, becasue it's so contrived and reeks of GM force).  Or choose between going down into the dungeon in the face of the scary drumming, or set up an ambush along this well used game trail, with signs of orcs passing regularly (which is how I should have framed that scene).  So you're making lack of PC knowledge into a thematic choice.  I like it, I think.

[cydmab]

While the channeling idea sounds interesting, I think it might be worth emphasizing that players can behave in very unpredicable ways sometimes in low-information environments. I've been told by the GM several times that he found our behavior "Very strange" during the low-information part of the game.

Example: we learned that a group of about a dozen or two cursed elves were given the fighting prowess to be able to slaughter a town of 1000+ people. And that those elves were still around. We also heard that there was another group of elves, that weren't hostile but were feebleminded. Our scout reported that there was an encampment of about 50 elves ahead. I took the position that even if there was a tiny chance that one of those elves was a cursed elf, it wasn't worth the risk of going to the camp, as even one or two cursed elves could wipe out the party. So we avoided the camp.

The key is that our reaction was unexpected to the GM.

In my own mind I've noticed another issue. We have a rule of thumb that the GM will not kill PCs unless we do something "really stupid." The trouble is that with low-information environment, its very hard to tell what counts as "really stupid" actions from the player's perspective. Such a rule+low information => extreme caution.

[Callan S.]

Hi Simon,

Ummm, not really. I'm talking about an irrational choice, spured by the fog. If I understand you, your talking about rational choices based on risk assesment.

Let me give an example of irrational behaviour from grand theft auto (not based on fear, more like thrill seeking): In GTA I'll be breaking the speed limit as usual and wam, see a jump. I veer off and drive up it. Coming off it, I'll roll my car and have to climb out before it explodes - the explosion buffeting a nearby police car and giving me one star of wanted status. I then have to rush to the nearest car so I can have this wild police pursuit while I try to get to a police bribe star (drops one star of wanted). The ammunition costs, armour damage, etc leads to more 'quests' to recover these resources, which often lead to more fun hijinx. All from one really irrational urge to hit a ramp I didn't need to.


Hi cydmab,

Example: we learned that a group of about a dozen or two cursed elves were given the fighting prowess to be able to slaughter a town of 1000+ people. And that those elves were still around. We also heard that there was another group of elves, that weren't hostile but were feebleminded. Our scout reported that there was an encampment of about 50 elves ahead. I took the position that even if there was a tiny chance that one of those elves was a cursed elf, it wasn't worth the risk of going to the camp, as even one or two cursed elves could wipe out the party. So we avoided the camp.

The key is that our reaction was unexpected to the GM.

Disagreeing here - the key is that the chosen option - avoidance - leads to no resource issues (which if they were there, would produce scenes). In the book example, holding a book in one hand is quite a penalty to fighting - it could lead to losing alot of HP, potions, perhaps even party members. Getting one and especially the latter back would mean the players would push toward getting those back, taking the story by the reigns.

Say avoidance triggers a moral penalty, and moral penalties are deflated by wenching, and wenching leads to angry boyfriends or even mayors, etc. Oh wait, I said moral penalty - say instead a lack of the normal moral bonus they usually enjoy! Penalties always sound like a smack.

But I suspect avoidance is actually a bigger issue - one of not engaging at all. The book example had the players take on an objective and were prepared to meet it through some adversity/fights "KEEP THEM BOOKS!". I'll be very direct - avoiding the elf colony is taking on an objective and being prepared to meet it through no adversity. Am I too direct in thinking that when you guys avoided the colony, it was without interest in meeting adversity in doing so? I think I have quite a few examples of that from my own gaming history I could dredge up, anyway. Suffice to say, I think my moral penalty above doesn't actually work if the player still isn't interested in taking on any adversity (in the pursuit of his objective).

In my own mind I've noticed another issue. We have a rule of thumb that the GM will not kill PCs unless we do something "really stupid." The trouble is that with low-information environment, its very hard to tell what counts as "really stupid" actions from the player's perspective. Such a rule+low information => extreme caution.

This is, in my estimate, another issue entirely. To put it in a nutshell, the only acceptable means of killing a PC is one offered by the player - the GM can't make up this shit. Only the player can offer it. Usually 'only if you do something stupid' is a version of this - the player kind of accepts that by being stupid, he's offering a means to kill his character. But, and bear with my frankness for a moment, it's entirely flawed - the term 'stupid' is murk filled, and you even give an example of how its murky. No one knows exactly what it means, so the GM thinks he sees player permission for PC death, when it wasn't actually given because player and GM are working from two different versions of 'stupid'. Like dogs in the vineyard has explicit rules for PC death and player control of that, that's the area you need to address, rather than fog of war.

[contracycle]

I agree that in the low information context players do things that were not anticipated.

I disagree with Callan inasmuch as I don't think introducing adversity here helps illuminate much.  The players were openly and directly attempting to avoid adversity; which is a sound tactical choice.  In the context in which the GM is entitled to kill you "for stupidity", part of the danger is that the GM will rule that walking into a 50-strong camp was "stupid".

But clearly the GM intended for this group of elves to be a lifeboat for the players, to which they could go for help in the face of their real adversity.  But the players did not know this and could not know this, becuase this was not signalled.

Its like two black-clad ninjas having a fight in a room lined with black velvet.  Neither can even see the other well enough to read and predict and anticipate their actions intelligibly.  All they can do is guess, probe, and evade.

Hence I think the solution is to create signals that give a lead to players, without it being overly revalatory.  I suggest that if the players had had the equivalent of a CRPG local map with a flashing waypoint marker superimposed on fogged out terrain, this would have conveyed to them the need to enter the village even if it did not tell them what they were going to encounter.  They may still have adopted a near infinite number of strategies by means of which to infiltrate or investigate the camp, but they would have been definintely on track.

And I do not think that such signs can emerge from WITHIN the SIS, becuase if they do they will be subject to the same caution and doubt as before.  A signal from outside the SIS itself is much much less ambiguous.

[Callan S.]

Hi Contra,

I'm wondering if that waypoint you mention is more than I realised when I first read it. If it were more than just a way point and instead a sign that says 'Have you got the balls to go here?!" then I can understand your issues with illumination - players must recognise that you are throwing down a gauntlet (for them to pick up). It'd be crap if you challenged someone to chess and they just walk away having not heard you (or worse, sit down with you, still not having heard you).

But I'm not sure...

Hence I think the solution is to create signals that give a lead to players, without it being overly revalatory.  I suggest that if the players had had the equivalent of a CRPG local map with a flashing waypoint marker superimposed on fogged out terrain, this would have conveyed to them the need to enter the village even if it did not tell them what they were going to encounter.

Bold mine.

As I know it, throwing down a challenge must include the other person being able to turn it down. If they are unable to turn it down, they are also unable to choose to take it up. I can understand wanting someone to know that yes, a challenge has been given and not slip off track in that sense. But that they need to do it - that doesn't work with me, regardless of the number of prep hours. What are you aiming for?

[contracycle]

My aim is just to get the player group to proceed from point A to point B.  This is a different issue over your concerns about challenge and adversity, I think.  What I may have proposed to you previously was that all the available challenges you wish to present are "waypointed" so that players know that they are there, that they are choose-able.

The advantage I think this presents is as follows: say you spawn on an RTS map (becuase they use a type of fog a lot).  You can see on your mini-map that you have spawned on the west edge of the map.  You can see your way-point marker on the east edge of the map.  Now you now several things: the target is directly east, but there is empty space north and south that may contain something interesting, useful, or dangerous.  There is nothing  but nothing to the west, and so there is no point considering or discussing going west.  The USEFUL decisions the players can take are explicitly signalled.

Another technique might be to portray two paths to a goal, and stick named waypoints on the branches.  So, you have to get to the dragons lair to slay it, and you can explicitly choose to face the challenge of either the Cliff Path or the Dark Forest, say, en route.  Just the names alone gives you some information to work with in choosing your challange, but does not lay out the details.  It does, however, make clear what the available actions are without introducing alleged "in game" railroading. 

Reverting to the book scenario, the GM had prepared the consequences of reading these books but the players were unwilling to risk doing so.  Again perhaps, if the option to do so had been explicitly available, rather than implied, the players would have been more ready to take it up.  It was not clear if this was something they were "meant to do", and if they were NOT meant to do it, if they were "meant" to have concluded from other information in the SIS that this was a pandora's box type no-no, then they may well be punished by the GM.  I suggest that if this were explicitly flagged, the players would know they had "permission" to explore down this route, even if there was some risk attached.