[eXpendable] Environments and Maps

[greyorm]

As a more coherent follow-up to my LJ post about this subject:

I've been working on eXpendable here and there, but sadly with much less progress than I would like (though a good portion of that is due to a lack of time). The recent design issue I've been attempting to tackle has been clarifying how Environments work, in terms of Environment dice (and how to create and use them), and how maps are affected by (and affect) this. Looking back, while the idea was there, how it actually functioned was never clear in the Ronnies draft.

My original idea was to have environments described in terms of equipment and services and other interactive stuff, each having so many dice of Stamina, and as battles were fought, those points of Stamina being used up as the area became more and more smashed up, with bad things started happening, problems multiplying, and penalties to various actions accruing. I'm coming back around to that thought at this point as the simplest solution to a number of issues I've encountered in other possibilities.

BTW, if you aren't following the slow development of eXpendable, here's the deal: it's an action-oriented sci-fi game about interstellar prisoners used by the government in low-survival-rating missions as restitution for their crimes. The rules-deal regarding the above stuff follows, including current thoughts (note that it is Sorcerer-ish mechanically, so you have a baseline for some of the ideas below if you haven't been following so far):

Environment dice are effects occurring in the local environment that may prevent a challenge to the characters or their opponents, penalizing various rolls, and are measured as a number of dice (1-die penalty, 2-die penalty, etc). They are created when a player (and only a player; this option is not available to the gamemaster for NPCs) wants to avoid taking a hit when he fails a defense roll in a violent conflict (and only when he fails a defense roll).

The player may choose to shift a number of dice of Lasting penalties caused by that failed roll into the Environment instead of taking those injuries himself. Functionally, this means the gamemaster is given that number of dice to describe some local effect that may or may not cause penalties to those in the area depending on what actions are being taken. These penalties -- called "Environment dice" -- may not cause penalties to Stamina, only the other Attributes, and are described as some sort of localized effect (a computer terminal destroyed, pipes blasted open, doors jammed, crates smashed open).

Environment dice become permanent penalties that remain on the map, affecting or or not anyone (or anything) who ventures through that area again. If it seems reasonable according to the fiction and the damage, penalties can affect other areas linked to the area in some manner. Don't be slavish in applying this or worrying about if they should or shouldn't apply, though, Environment dice are not measurements. They are fictional and mechanical obstacles for the characters, meant to provide some additional tension, possible tactical opportunities or problems, and choice-and-consequence gambles.

So what they do exactly and what actions they will impede are often completely up in the air when they are assigned. The gamemaster should listen to input from the players regarding possibilities to what any given set of Environment dice are and what they affect, though he is not bound to such and should feel free to tweak and alter such suggestions while paying attention to interesting and fun suggestions from the players.

But all this means locations need to be developed: stuff needs to be available to get smashed, blown-up, cracked open, and so forth and then it needs to GET smashed, etc. This is a response to an issue I've noticed in nearly every RPG I've ever played, particularly D&D: the battlefield is something that is treated as static background to the fight, rather than an integral part of it taking as much of a pounding as the combatants. This aims to get around that by creating both problems and opportunities (but mainly problems) for the characters in the form of damage to the surrounding environments of their actions.

One issue I'm having with all this is putting a cap on shifting damage to the environment. How much can any environment take? I want it open enough that the players can take an active role in describing and populating (and destroying) the environment, adding to it or detailing it with damage-shifting, but not so open that the game is all about the players shifting damage into the environment. There needs to be some kind of non-restrictive limit on the ability.

Another issue is the issue of cosmetic damage. Just describe such things? What about environments that don't seem to have anything that you could make a mess out of or would cause problems for the combatants?

Which brings us to the map.

I'm a fan of set-pieces used for mapping, rather than blueprints -- that is, areas tenuously connected by the fiction rather than graph lines on a sheet of paper. If you remember how mapping was done in old computer text adventures, using area names and lines connecting each other to others, that's what I'm thinking of for eXpendables. It might be called Relationship-map mapping today, and I'm looking at doing it that way as it has the beneficial effect of only detailing the important and scenic areas meant to be used in play, not all the boring piddly shit in-between ("Look! Janitorial closet #17! It's a 10'-by-10' room! And another empty 30' corridor!").

You get the unimportant stuff where nothing happens out of the way, the places where there isn't anything interesting to the fiction: if you think about it, this is all the stuff you never see in the fiction on television shows, like all the miles of corridors and storage rooms on a spaceship, every single crewman's quarters, and so on and so forth. Instead, scenes and environments are one and the same and serve the same purpose. That is, scenes to do not happen in environments, environments are scenes.

So, before play begins, you set up the environment -- the loose "dungeon map" if you will -- and populate each established area with all sorts of interesting scenic goodness and varying Environmental Stamina dice that can be worn away, triggering problems on down the line if and when they are used. I am strongly considering the ruling that once the Environment's Stamina dice are used up, further penalties shifted to it start "cascading" and affecting the surrounding areas.

However, issues can clearly arise when someone comes up with a "new" area via a Smarts roll which becomes important to play, since a new area by default hasn't been detailed or assigned dice or description or anything else. I need to consider that and how to deal with such an event beyond "just go with your gut" (which is workable, but a cheap way out). I figure I should write some words on it and procedures to take when doing so.

Ultimately, I'm not sure if the above rules will make everything happen as I'm envisioning, but at least I have some rules down for it, and though it is going far slower than I'd hoped, I am coming much closer to having a playtestable beta document. Questions? Observations? Confusions?

[Christoph Boeckle]

Hi Raven

Just an observation: I find the idea of messing around with terrain interesting and will read further playtesting reports!

[greyorm]

Excellent, Christoph. Thanks! I'll make sure to update as things are developed. I should hopefully start basic playtesting early in the coming year.

[Vulpinoid]

There's a way that comes to mind which would allow the environmental development system to remain relatively freeform and based on player interactivity, while maintaining a sense that it is grounded in reality.

It has come to mind based on the extensive miniatures gaming I've done.

Modular terrain.

Under this theory, you'd develop a range of terrain zones which become available depending on the type of setting being used...outdoor settings could include "Swamp", "Forest", "Mountain Pass", "Ruined Outpost"...indoor settings could include "Science Labs", "Quarters", "Communications Array" or "Power Station". Each map could be square representing 50' x 50', and these are then divided up into an array of smaller rooms and corridors (or key terrain features for outdoor maps) reflective of the larger environment depicted.

In this way you get the janitorial closets that are needed for routine operations, but you also get a decent balance and "realistic" environment that purely random generation might not provide. Such maps could be made available as PDFs.

Using this type of system, the characters might roll to see which modular part gets added to a play area once they reach the edge of the explored field, They might get an additional roll to see if they encounter anything specific as they explore the specific rooms within that terrain zone.

Just an idea.

V 

[contracycle]

I quite like the concept although I'm a little shaky on the intent and how Smarts works.  As for the intent, am I right in think that I can sustain damage, and then transpose this damage to the environment in such a way that it affectsmy oposition negatively?  That seems a bit like turning a loss into a win, which may not be a bad thing but just struck me as unusual.   As for Smarts, can it, as it seems by implication, call into being a space that was not (know to be) there before?

Anyway, maybe you could use a kinda flowchartt, an idea about which I have circled myself a few times, but your specifications lend it some purpose.  So you would have a page that is a chart of room relaitonships rather than a literal map, and the various flowchat objects (circles, squares, diamonds) could be used to specify a general property of a room - limited entry, or secure (like a prison cell or weapons locker etc) and so forth, and then inside or next to these boxes you have a list os Stuff That Blows Up, with each carrying a number of dice that can be assigned to it.

So your Lab Environmnent is designated with a diamond and contains Volatile Storage x2 (6 dice), worktop x 6 (2 dice), Emergency Sprinkler (1 die), and is connected by lines to the other spaces by which you can enter and exit.

This allows you to generate a template that at-the-table GM's can employ in designing environments; so you have a Science Facility which stands in for all similar buildings, and which thus contain the above Lab Environments connected to more mundane things like Offices and Dorms and so forth.  This template then is just a sample which the GM can either use directly or use as a starting point for building their own layout, but which thereby sets precedents for the links between spaces and the kinds of hazards they contain. 

Such a template could even be organised in a concentric pattern to represent small, medium and large installations, and you then use only the set that applies; or you could take a template and block out those items that do not apply in the current situaiton.  Or they could be split, so that for example you have common rooms in the centre while those rooms specific to a Biohazard Lab appear above a dividing line, and all those relevant to a Physics Lab appear below it.

The template is both prop and exposition, and if you had to add a new room you could just draw it on by hand and add a connection line where appropriate.  Developing these templates would allow you to specify your setting in various details by establishing the stuff specific to your setting, and you would have different batches of templates for different settings.

[greyorm]

I quite like the concept although I'm a little shaky on the intent and how Smarts works...As for Smarts, can it, as it seems by implication, call into being a space that was not (know to be) there before?

Correct. Smarts is an attribute that allows you to make statements that then become true in the game world if those statements do not contradict already established truths. It's the point in the movie when the hero and/or supporting character makes some important statement about something that no one in the audience knew up until then, and which they may not have known themselves up until then.

The example in the draft document is, " 'Hey, these things don't like fire! I mean reaaaaally don't like fire!' I roll my Smarts against, um, 3 bonus dice if you're using fire against them." The other example is, "Damnit, we're cut off! Where's the blueprints...wait...there's a shortcut between the med labs and the reactor...here! Let's go."

I'm thinking of using a difficulty chart running from "my character would know/have learned this" to "I would have to be an idiot savant" to provide the opposition dice for the action, or something a little more story-tension oriented ("easy" outs have higher difficulties -- the difference between "I've found an empty passage leading to the illegal lab" to "I've found a lightly guarded passage to the lab"); if the knowledge is meant to provide some sort of mechanical bonus or avoid some sort of penalty, that is used as (or added to?) the difficulty. Just "Smarting everything up" is mitigated by the fact that failing the roll penalizes your Smarts, so it becomes a self-limiting resource as play progresses.

As for the intent, am I right in think that I can sustain damage, and then transpose this damage to the environment in such a way that it affectsmy oposition negatively?  That seems a bit like turning a loss into a win, which may not be a bad thing but just struck me as unusual.

That is the intent, with the following caveat: "...MAY affect opposition negatively." It shouldn't be a guarantee. But I have no idea how it will work out in play. It should also create potential problems for your character (which are now unavoidable, in that they are now penalties, not injuries). It should be a trade-off and a gamble.

As an example: Attacks and defenses are rolled and your character is injured by a massive crate hurled at him. You decide that isn't happening and decide you are shifting the damage to the environment, re-describing the event as ducking the crate, and the GM details the damage as gas canisters exploding, filling the air with a obscuring green vapors. Visibility has been reduced for everyone in the area: die penalties to actions requiring sight or knowing where other beings are.

But your templates idea is great! I'd been considering something similar before, but hadn't really thought of setting up a series of basic/sample interchangable templates (and I should have). It simplifies things nicely and works; I am using the same concept to create sample/template technologies, weapons, vehicles, armor and such for the technology and gear rules. The prop-aspect is a definite bonus.

Many thanks, Gareth!