magical investigation = coloring setting???

[David Berg]

I've been playtesting a game that I want to be (a) highly immersive in "sense of place" in the setting, and (b) concerned with discovery of the supernatural.  It hasn't been working, as the players have been (understandably) occupied with solving the problems I've thrown at them (yes, the dynamic is more complex than that, but I'll save that for an AP thread).

I was brainstorming a reward system that would really "pay off" for a game about discovery and my brian went "ability to acquire more/better info" and then to "improved perception".

So, like, if you play longer and better, your character perceives more about their environment.

Now, this is contigent on said perception actually getting the player somewhere.  "Oh.  Huh.  Neat.  Moving on..." doesn't strike me as an ideal or sustainable model.  Whatever the character sees now that he didn't see before has to be actionable.

I'm having trouble coming up with info content that fits that criteria.

1) For example, let's say John plays an herbalist character, Roderick.  Roderick gains levels in perception, and begins to see colored auras around plants.  These colored auras don't tell him anything right away, but with a little bit of experimenting, he discovers that certain colors correlate with certain useful effects, like healing or numbing etc.  Now let's say the players decide to try out a magical ritual they've read about, to create fire.  Roderick gathers up the plants with red auras, thinking they'll be appropriate, and the ritual goes well, indicating that he was right.

2) What would be ideal would be if each time Roderick enters a new place, John asks me about its details.  Then he hones in on certain details that he might glean info from.  When John decides to pursue the info, maybe Roderick stares hard at the object in question, or speaks a word, or John spends some resource.  This would be great!  The setting becomes more vivid and detailed, not because the GM is force-feeding color to passive players, but because the players are actively probing it!

So, does anyone have ideas on how to tweak (1) to make it lead to (2)?  As described, (1) would just cause John to say, "Are there any plants in the room?  Okay, just a fern.  I stare at the fern.  Blue aura.  Whatever; I can grab blue-aura plants from the forest."

[jag]

One system of this that i've really liked is the reagent system in the Elder Scrolls computer game series (Morrowind, Oblivion, etc).  Briefly, each reagent (which includes parts of animals, plants, rocks, etc) has up to four properties.  Each property is related to some in-game effect (levitation, bonus to attack, cure poison, etc). To make a potion, you need to combine two or more reagents, and every property that is on two or more reagents is added to the potion (with a strength increasing with how many reagents have it).

The thing that makes this very interesting is that the number of properties you can identify on a given reagent is dependent on your alchemy skill.  So at first, you have no idea what anything does (although you can experiment to give yourself some ideas).  As you gain some skill you see one property of a reagent, so you know some potions you can make but certainly don't know all.  You also might find unexpected side effects from making potions, as unknown properties interact with each other.  More skill allows you to see more properties, until eventually you can tell everything about a reagent by looking at it.

This leads to a nice effect that might be similar to your #2.  In order to make certain potions, you know you need certain properties.  So you are always looking for reagents that might have those properties -- and the more the better, since adding them to the mix increases the strength.  Furthermore, you might find a replacement for a given reagent, since the original might be expensive or have undesired side effects. 

This adds a very nice layer of exploration to the game if you have the alchemy skill -- in addition to wandering around doing whatever you're doing, you are also very carefully checking the environment for reagents.  This comes at some significant preparation cost for the GM, but it's at least something to think about.

[Marshall Burns]

David,

Have you played any roguelikes recently?  'Cause when I'm hungry for the kind of exploration and experimentation that I think you're talking about, I start up ADOM or NetHack.  Maybe there's some insights in 'em for you?

-Marshall

[David Berg]

I've actually never played computer games or console RPGs.  Well, I played Zelda a bit when it first came out, but that's about it.

Interestingly enough, a friend of mine who's a big Morrowind fan actually told me about the alchemy system years ago when we were discussing a magic system for a tabletop RPG.  Thanks for reminding me, Jag!  The idea that any given effect you may wish to produce requires multiple components, and that each component has multiple properties, is perfectly appropriate. 

I do worry about the process of finding stuff.  I don't want a whole lot of "okay, GM, we wander around for a while, tell us what stuff sets off our Alchemy Sense; we take it."  (A lot less fun when you don't have a screen to look at, right?)  I want some way that the places the PCs enter become full of potential significance to an adventure, even if said places aren't full of weird plants and animals.  Does "very carefully checking the environment for reagents" involve something beyond just keeping your eyes open?  If so, what?

Last night, a friend of mine suggested an emphasis on omens.  Looking for colors, numbers, shapes of shadows, paths of insects, and other omnipresent stuff.  These symbols would be used to describe a given place for the purposes of some sort of "reading" of the scenario.  Like, throw the runestones, correlate specific stones to things you've seen, interpret their individual positions and collective patterns as some sort of prediction or instruction.  This strikes me as a good direction... though I am having trouble fleshing out the "and other omnipresent stuff"... and I worry that it might be hard for the players to develop any bearings re: what's worth reading into and what isn't...

[Marshall Burns]

Oh, for some reason I thought you'd played Rogue or NetHack or something.  I wonder where I got that.
The big draw of roguelike games (for me) is the exploration and experimentation you have to do.  In fact, you have to do it just to survive.  Let's take ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery), my favorite, for an example.  Through trial and error, you learn things like, "Yikes, bolt spells will ricochet off of walls; must be more careful" and "Note to self:  never eat a kobold again" and "Some equipment turns out to be cursed" and "Getting wet rusts my weapons and armor.  And ruins scrolls.  And spellbooks." And that's just some of the basic stuff that you learn in your first few attempts.

At the intermediate level, you start discovering things like "If I put objects on an altar that matches my alignment, I can find out if its cursed" and "Don't let gremlins get wet, because they multiply, which I should have seen coming.  Also, wands and spells of light will instakill them" and "If I eat a pixie, I teleport uncontrollably at random intervals.  Addendum:  eating a blink dog enables me to control this."  And it gets more advanced after that; "If I get in good standing with my god (must make sacrifices regularly; live sacrifices are very good; do not sacrifice wild animals when neutrally aligned), I can place a bottle of water on the altar, and it will become holy water.  I can dip stuff into holy water to uncurse and bless it, or I can throw it at undead creatures to do some nice damage."  There's stuff more complicated than that, too.

Now, of course, there's a big difference here in that all of this stuff is decided beforehand by the designer of the game and set-in-stone, but there's also the relevant bit that this sort of thing is encouraged (if not required) by the game.  You might want to check it out.  However, there's a pretty steep learning curve, not only to being able to survive for more than five minutes, but in controlling the game in the first place.  At any rate, should you be curious, ADOM is free at http://www.adom.de