Save Vs Rant

Today’s episode is all about the game SeaFall, a 4x inspired Legacy game by the ingenious designer Rob Daviua. Despite the fact that Daviua is a living legend, we at SVR do not recommend SeaFall. It is our opinion that the game has too many flaws to provide a game experience we feel is up to the standards to which one should reasonably be able to hold someone largely responsible for the #1 rated game on BoardGameGeek.com.

Since this is a Legacy game played as an unfolding campaign THIS ENTIRE EPISODE IS A SPOILER. If you intend to play SeaFall at some point, DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE.

Having said that, the remainder of this blog post is safe and will not contain spoilers about Seafall.

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In game design, it’s sometimes hard to avoid accidentally creating a wrong choice. In a well designed game, there are more than one path to success. Some may be more certain than others. Some may require more skill or luck. Some may be easier for a knowledgeable opponent to disrupt. Even so, if the game allows for more than one approach to winning the game, more than one approach should be a valid strategy.

Consider the game Cheaty Mages by Alderac Entertainment. In it, you have to select which (and how many) of a number of differently matched gladiators to bet on, then, as one of the titular cheaty mages, cheat to make that contender the winner. A number of different strategies are valid, partially based on your opponents’ presumed strategies, but mostly based on your own risk tolerance and nerve. Do you put all your eggs in one basket or spread out your bets for more of a guaranteed win? Do you bet on the long shot contender for maximum gold or the nearly sure thing to keep things easy for yourself? Do you misdirect by casting spells on unrelated competitors, or do you focus on your chosen champion and his threats? All of these are valid strategies with different chances of paying off depending on factors such as luck of the draw, risk tolerance and the temperament of your opponents.

Meanwhile, in the Civilization board game, the culture victory is far slower than the military, technology and economic victories, and, furthermore, a player focusing on it is vulnerable to an opponent who is striving to achieve the military victory. It only becomes viable if everyone is playing sub-optimal strategies. It can be an interesting wildcard approach to the game, but is not generally a viable strategy, especially if your opponents recognize it is your intent.

The Joining the Winning Team  mission card in Arkham Horror (specifically, the Dunwich Horror expansion) is something of a source of ridicule.  It’s already incredibly difficult to collect 4 allies, and 4 allies will go a very long way toward making your character an asset to a team of cooperating investigators. The card is generally regarded as a waste of cardboard and a burden to the Unique Items deck.

We might, in the future, do a full episode on what Monte Cook has referred to as “Ivory Tower Game Design” – the notion that a game is a set of rules and that the player should be rewarded for gaining mastery of those rules (which entails the recognition that some choices are going to be strictly better than others). There’s nothing wrong with games where some choices are sub-optimal to others, nor even where some choices are strictly worse than others. That’s not necessarily a design flaw (though it could be if a sub-optimal or strictly worse choice were automatically paired with a better one or if there was one choice that was always superior to all others, but I digress).

What is a design flaw is when a game has strategies, whether implicit or explicit, that appear viable, but ultimately – either due to obfuscation of information or simply interactions that aren’t readily apparent – are not. This is especially egregious when these strategic decisions are made without foreknowledge of how the game will be progressing within a set campaign framework – when you are making long-term decisions without an opportunity to know not only how those decisions will play out, but how the rules that govern those decisions will play out.

Crap! I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be blogging about SeaFall!

Today at Save Vs. Rant, the story’s the thing as we discuss lore, and why it’s important even in everyday board games. Every game can have a story, whether that story is just an excuse for a game, or the game is just an excuse for a story.

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“Ok, each turn you choose a player to potentially sit out the turn by secretly concealing a card that says whether they sit out. Each player has a limited number of cards that actually make other players sit out and a larger number of bluffing cards. One player has the ability to make any other player change their choice. Simultaneously, each player decides whether to surrender, giving up their opportunity to score, or risk being eliminated. If you are eliminated 3 times – even multiple times in a single round – you are completely eliminated from the game. Once it’s been determined who hasn’t been eliminated, those individuals take turns drafting from cards that either give a fixed number of points, or a variable number of points based on how many of that specific type of card the player has, or even a bonus based on having the most. The option to have the power to force other players to change their choice of elimination, additional attempts to eliminate and removal of past eliminations may also be available to draft.”

That’s a mouthful. Compare:

“Every player has a foam gun and a number of click and bang cards. Each turn, you point the gun at someone and hide either one of your click or bang cards. The boss gets to make someone switch their target. Then, everyone gets a chance to duck out, giving up a chance to get loot so they don’t get shot. If you don’t duck out and you get shot, you don’t get loot, and if you’re shot three times, you’re dead and out of the game. Everyone takes turns drafting loot, which can be paintings (worth more with a collection), diamonds (worth a bonus for having the most) or cash (fixed value). The position of boss, extra bullets and bandages (which remove injuries) may also be in the loot.”

Still a mouthful, but a fully comprehensible and relate-able mouthful that doesn’t sound like the technical manual for Mandatory Doubleplusgood Fun Activity Time. That’s the difference lore can make. If you have a good game, it can almost certainly be made better by tying it to something we connect with culturally and aesthetically. That’s what lore is all about. That’s the fluff of the game that compliments the crunch.

Games we mentioned today, for better or for worse:

Sorry, Monopoly, Connect Four, The Game of Life and Yahtzee! are all forgettable games, and most people have one or more of them sitting on their shelf.  And before someone decides to go, “Hurr, durr, you’re playing Monopoly wrong – Free Parking is nothing and you’re supposed to auction houses” WE KNOW THAT. The game is still garbage – I mean, really irredeemable garbage – even if you play it correctly. Especially if you play it correctly. If I could completely destroy one board game from history, it would be Monopoly. My wrath would be swift and without mercy.

Tales of the Arabian Nights is long and frequently frustrating, but you’ll forgive it when you find yourself praying to a Djinn and discovering great wealth while you are whisked away to the City of Brass fleeing from a ghoulie.

Libertalia is a trick-taking card game with a really good pirate skin over it. Pirates who aren’t very good at pirating do their tricks first, while pirates who a really good at pirating wait til the last minute. Everything is described in terms that are both narratively appropriate and intuitive. Everyone has a good time.

Jumanji is a movie. It should have stayed that way.

Cash and Guns is the best Mexican standoff you’ll every play. Point foam guns at your friends and family. Become a mob boss. Divvy loot. Collect paintings. Enjoy John Kovalic’s delightful art!

Kingmaker is my favorite Adventure Path, and Wrath of the Righteous is Jeremy’s.  Paizo has been making these since D&D 3.0, and they have gotten it down to a fine art. Take a party from 1st to 18th level or so (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less). Do it in style!

Dixit is beautiful. It doesn’t have a story, but it doesn’t really need one. Mysterium is also beautiful, but it has a story. And some expansions. And all of Dixit is also potentially an expansion to Mysterium, so that’s neat as well. Seriously – amazing games with outstanding art. You’ll love them.

The Dragon Age RPG is a sad disappointment. If you want to see people enjoy it, watch Tabletop on YouTube, but for us it was a bust. Same with A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, but Tabletop didn’t do an episode about that to my knowledge. Maybe they will someday and they’ll enjoy it. Who knows? We did not.

Games we didn’t mention but should have are Microscope and Fiasco, which are paradoxical to this discussion because they both are almost exclusively about lore, but they don’t provide that lore to you. The actual rules crunch of the games is negligible and exists to facilitate the creation of the fluff. Microscope is essentially about creating a world, and Fiasco is essentially about creating a Coen brothers film. They are both truly intriguing collaborative storytelling experiences. Check them out! We’ll probably find an excuse to discuss them sometime.

Today at Save Vs. Rant, we’re going to be discussing math and logic, the building blocks of games! Remember: if you think you hate math but you like games, what you really don’t like is the presentation of the math, because all games are, at their core, math.

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Monty Hall, the famous host of Let’s Make a Deal, passed away this week. His memory will live on, however, in several ways relevant to our podcast. The first, and most obvious, is the infamous “Monty Haul Campaign,” wherein a DM gives away an inordinately large amount of treasure or inappropriately powerful magic item. This is named for the fabulous prizes to be won on Let’s Make a Deal. If you listened to our DMing 101 episode, you know that one of our warnings is not to be afraid of the player characters becoming too powerful, but there are limits to these things. Every game has some guidelines for what sort of treasure or magic items should be available to the player characters at any given level of play (whether the system uses levels, as such, or some other indication to measure power), and as with any rule, it’s important that before you consider breaking the rules and giving them more, you understand the purpose and parameters of the rule as written.

Monty Hall is also known for the infamous Monty Hall Problem in mathematics, an example of a counter-intuitive mathematical outcome. On the show Let’s Make a Deal, there was a classic scenario wherein the player had to choose between 3 doors (numbered, conveniently enough, Door #1, Door #2 and Door #3). Behind two of the doors was a dummy prize – a goat, for example – and behind the third door was the real prize – a brand new car, in our example. These were arranged randomly.

Upon choosing a door, instead of revealing what was behind the door you chose, Monty would open one of the other doors, revealing one of the goats. He would then offer to let the player switch doors* to the other still-closed door. The question, therefore is, should you switch doors? Does it even matter? And the answer to both of these questions, surprisingly, is “absolutely yes.” Switching doors increases your odds of getting the car.

Now, most of you are scratching your heads trying to make sense of what difference it makes. The difference is all in the information you are given. You now know where one of the goats is and, confident in this knowledge, you change your answer to capitalize on this newfound knowledge.

“Aha!” some of you might proclaim! “Since you’ve had one door opened for you, your chances have raised to 50%! I get it now!” Well… not exactly. Switching doors actually increases your odds of having the right door to 2/3. “Two thirds!?” you exclaim in disbelief, “How could this be?” The answer is, switching doors will always give you the right door, provided you chose wrong in the first place. Since your chances of choosing wrong are 2/3, your odds of getting the right door upon switching are, consequently, 2/3.

Consider the scenario that the car is behind Door #1. There are three possible outcomes of your first choice:

So, out of 3 scenarios, 2 of them end with you winning if you switch doors. And this holds true, of course, regardless of which door the car is behind. There. Simple illustration. And now you understand!

… or not. The problem has confused actual mathematicians, primarily because the pattern is difficult for the human mind to follow as presented. Let’s flip the way we think of this. Instead of saying that Monty is going to show us where one of the goats is, we can say that Monty is going to show us where all the goats except one are, with the stipulation that if we picked a goat, that is the goat he will not reveal. This rewording doesn’t change anything to our perception with the 3 door example (although it is, to be clear, a more accurate description of the rule by which Monty is playing), but the problem becomes obvious if you increase the number of doors and continue to have only one prize.

Let’s say, for example, there are 10 doors, 9 goats, and 1 car. When you choose a door, Monty will show you where all the unpicked goats except one are, with the stipulation that if you picked a goat, that is the goat he will not reveal. So if the car was in Door #1,  and you picked Door #1, Monty will open all but one of the other doors – doesn’t matter which one – and switching will make you lose. If, however, you chose Door #2, Monty opens Doors #3 – #10, leaving only Door #1 and Door #2 (which you picked) unopened. If you switch, you win.  The same holds true for every door with a goat – Doors #2 – #10 will yield a winning result if your switched! If you picked a goat originally – and odds are good you did – switching will always make you win.

This is a great example of how math and logic can be counter-intuitive, but still demonstrable in practical terms. A simple thing like giving you one more piece of information might do a lot more than eliminate one wrong answer, as anyone who is really good at social deduction games will tell you – when playing werewolf, the discovery that one player is a werewolf will almost always give the opportunity to see who they were collaborating with, and a big-picture approach might make give the whole picture from a single piece of information!

Mathematical discoveries like this can be one of the joys of gaming. Discovering the connections between seemingly unconnected aspects of a game, or noting the hidden consequences of a piece of information can give you a feeling of satisfaction like no other. Try to find other examples of hidden information that, if discovered, has greater consequences than are immediately apparent. Chances are, this sort of scenario exists in games you already play!

* I have read that this never actually happened on the show Let’s Make a Deal, and is just a thought experiment concocted by a creative mathematician, but let’s suspend our disbelief for a moment here.

Today here at Save Vs. Rant, we hope to give you an introduction to DMing with 10 pieces of advice applicable to virtually any game. We call it – DMing 101!

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10 points, a quick review:

1. Remember: You’re Here to Have Fun

Having fun and running a game are not mutually exclusive.  Some gamers perfer to run games to playing a character, but in the ideal game, both roles are – and should be – enjoyable.

2. Know the Rules

You don’t need to be the foremost expert in the game. You don’t need to know every rule by heart. You don’t need to be an encyclopedia of spells and powers. But you DO need to know the game. You need to proficient – you need to know what is possible within the constraints of the game.

3. Make It About the Player Characters

Outside of a few niche games with bizarre premises, your players characters are the main characters of the story. They should be the ones in charge – they should be the dynamic elements of the story. Their actions should matter and they should influence the world and story.

4. Don’t Forget to Plan

Know the beats of your story. Know where things are going and what is possible within your setting. It’s ok to improvise. In fact, the right sort of preparation can enhance your improvisational opportunities. Knowing what monsters synergize well.

5. Have Good Time Management

It is ok to for your game to have a lead in and lead out. Most gaming groups are comprised of friends, who enjoy talking, spending time together and generally hanging out. Knowing how your group spends their time and what their pacing is can be important and gives you the ability to plan and prepare correctly, without getting over your head or breaking in the middle of something.

6. Don’t Be Afraid to Let the Players Be Powerful

We play games, in part to live out fantasies. Most games are about larger than life situations and amazing heroes. In games with larger than life realities, it is alright to escalate the challenges. Adventurers outgrow wolves and goblins and find themselves fighting dragons and demons. Vampires gain powers and go from challenging the Prince of the City to overpowering global conspiracies.

7.  Talk With Your Players

This really cannot be stressed enough. If your players are disappointed or bored, you need to know that in order to address the issue. Knowing what kind of character your players want to play, what kind of story they want to go through and what kind of challenges they want to overcome is crucial to running a good game. The focus of your game might even change session to session. Players may very well want to experience variety in their game, and you can facilitate that if you’re aware of this.

8. Keep Good Notes

If your game isn’t a one-off, you’re going to have some history to your game. Even if it is a one-off, it might be necessary to jot a few notes as you go to ensure that you keep things straight. Obsidian Portal and Roll20 are excellent tools for tracking this on your computer, but honestly a Word or notepad file is sufficient. Notebooks are the classic method, of course, and simple non-digital tools work fine if that’s your style. Enlisting the players’ aid in this effort is a legitimate strategy as well, and helps keep them engaged.

9. KISS

Keep It Simple, Stupid! This is a great slogan for the starting DM, and a solid one for even the seasoned veteran. Overthinking and over-planning are common pitfalls for DMs, who so often forget that the player characters will always throw a wrench in your plans, and that’s ok. That’s something you should both be prepared for, and be prepared to be surprised by, and knowing when to keep things to a workable frame and when to truly flesh things out is an art that comes with practice. More often than not, keeping things simple and not sweating the small stuff is the best approach.

10. Don’t Be a Dick!

There is never a reason to be a dick. There may be characters in your game that are dicks. Terrible things may happen to the player characters. The game world may be cold, cruel and dark. Prejudice, evil and cruelty might run rampant. But you as a DM – as a person – never need to be a dick. Even if your game is a dark horror game, be mindful of your players’ limits. Be mindful of what causes them genuine distress and pain. You play games to have fun, and hurting your friends’ feelings and traumatizing them is not how you have fun. Sometimes, pushing the limits and playing dark or disturbing fantasy is the fun, but be sure everyone is on board for that sort of thing.

Like any skill, DMing isn’t something that you become a master of overnight, nor, though, is it something that should overwhelm and intimidate you. Keeping your first forays into running a game manageable is important to your success, and having a good idea of what to expect will go a long way towards keeping the experience enjoyable for both you and your players.

Today’s topic is Games That Missed the Mark, wherein we discuss some games that we feel failed to live up to expectations.

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When we talk about games that missed the mark, we aren’t talking about bad games necessarily. Nearly every game on our list is a decent game, but it fails to live up to our expectations.

Why does an otherwise decent game feel like it has failed to deliver? There are a number of common pitfalls game designers fall into. In many cases, a few critical design choices can bring an entire game down. Good design is more than just having good ideas and running with them – good games have strong themes, aesthetics and mechanics that all mesh well.

One of the biggest pitfalls to game development is tone, especially where keeping that tone consistent through the different aspects of the game is concerned. While it can be ok to have a juxtaposition of humorous and silly elements along with serious ones, there must be a balance to it. Some games, such as Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice,  are zany and silly, and have mechanics that are similarly lighthearted. If Luchadore! had mechanics for something serious like bleeding out, or if the game required serious math to play, the lightheartedness would be spoiled by the serious elements. Conversely, 7 Wonders is a serious game of building an empire throughout the ages. If there was an “Ancient Aliens” card, or if one of the game mechanics involved a tiddlywinks mini game, again, the mood and tone of the game would be spoiled. Meanwhile, the fact that Catan is available as a promotion wonder is silly enough to be amusing, but not so much so that it does not mesh with the tone of the game.

Mechanically, a designer has to consider the meta-game interpretations of their final product. Everyone who has played social deduction games knows that their group will have tells and strategies unique to it – this is the development of a metagame, and while no designer can truly predict the development of the unique metagames different groups will fall into, one very good reason to playtest a design extensively (and with diverse audience) is to ensure that where metagame strategies arise, that the game remains fun despite these patterns. You can hardly play an online game of Ticket To Ride without seeing a dozen listings for games with “NO BLOCKING!” emblazoned in their notes, despite the design of the game explicitly suggesting blocking as a strategy. Many players – especially casual ones – prefer to play the game without the route from Los Angeles to Las Vegas mysteriously disappearing on the 1st turn to player whose major route is Vancouver to New York. Even so, competitive Ticket to Ride players will agree unanimously that such well known metagame strategies aren’t sufficient to render the game unenjoyable, which is something a good designer strives for.

Tabletop games are a multifaceted experience, and a single good mechanic isn’t really enough to carry a game. Mansions of Madness had an intriguing mechanic wherein the player may have to solve a randomly generated puzzle involving sliding, replacing or rotating puzzle pieces. This is one of the most unique game mechanics I have seen, and it was one of the highlights of my few playthroughs of Mansions of Madness, but overall, I don’t think it redeemed the experience for me. Ultimately, the game was a disappointment for me, despite some of the mechanics and aesthetics of the game being very appealing. Your mileage will, of course, vary.

Ultimately, gaming isn’t just about gameplay itself, but about the themes, aesthetics and stories (implicit and explicit) that go hand in hand with that gameplay. Excellent games can have terrible execution, or simply have the wrong narrative elements applied to them. It’s not just the tools you have, but how you use them that makes or breaks a game.

Our topic today is Arkham Horror by Fantasy Flight Games, one of our favorite games of all time.

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The original Call of Cthulhu and other mythos stories were about how insignificant and inconsequential humanity is on a cosmic scale. The notion that we aren’t the top of the food chain – that we are beneath consideration to the majority of the universe – struck a chord with consumers of weird fiction during the Great War and Great Depression.  Perhaps there is a certain comfort in imagining that humans aren’t the be-all-end-all of the universe, or maybe the vast dread acted as a welcome respite from real dread.

Whatever the case, the genre has been warped significantly in the context of games. Even where elements of cosmic horror are retained, the notion of hope has been injected into the works. Humans stand a chance against the Ancient Ones. They have a chance of thwarting the plans of these unfathomable monstrosities and bringing peace and security to the inhabitants of our terrestrial sphere. This was never the intention of the cosmic horror genre.

Am I condemning games like Arkham Horror for going against the spirit of the genre? Of course not! I love this game, and it certainly wouldn’t be the same experience if every game ended with “And mighty Cthulhu devours the investigators effortlessly and a reign of darkness falls over the earth. Humans are treated a lowly forgettable vermin and even the cultists of Dread Cthulhu are subject to his inscrutable whims.” What a terrible game that would be!

People, especially games, enjoy stories of defying the odds, and what greater odds can there be than the stakes of a cosmic struggle between a plucky band of investigators and the most people entities in the known (known, but barely comprehended) universe? What greater glory is there to achieve?

Arkham Horror is not only a game, but a franchise now, with games such as Elder Sign, Eldritch Horror, Mansions of Madness and the Arkham Horror LCG all building on the world of Fantasy Flight Games’ interpretation of Lovecraft’s Arkham, MA.  Familiar characters like Joe Diamond, Ashcan Pete, Lily Chen and Kate Winthop span these games and, even where the gameplay may vary wildly, the feel and flavor of the characters remains consistent and familiar.

It’s telling of the quality of Fantasy Flight Games’ work that at GenCon they occupied an entire additional booth’s space to accommodate the line into their booth. The company’s popularity is well-earned. Check out Arkham Horror and, if possible, support your FLGS in doing so. Happy gaming!

GenCon’s tagline is “The Best Four Days in Gaming,” and we here at Save Vs. Rant agree enthusiastically. As veterans of the convention, we were overjoyed to have the opportunity to attend the 50th anniversary of the iconic celebration of gaming culture! Today’s special podcast details our experience at the convention and some of the highlights of what we saw.

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Some specific shout outs:

Wartime by WizKids was a unique experience to play. I demoed it was one of the designers and had a blast! It’s a bit of a quirky gaming experience, since it’s such an unexpected concept to try to bring to tabletop, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m especially curious to see how the concept gets expanded upon in future releases.

Kingdom Death Monster by Adam Poots Games, LLC is an incredible horror game, and a labor of love by its creators. The game gives new meaning to horror with not only its khafkaesque world of monstrous horror and unfathomable brutality, but with its absolutely terrifying price tag.

Victoriana by BJ Gailey and Brad Lawrence is a cooperative game set in the Victorian era (as the name would suggest). Shout out to Lawrence for his ability to sell his game! Despite the fact that there was not a full demo available at GenCon, both of us here at SVR are excited for this release!

Captain Sonar by Asmodee is another novel real-time experience that pits two crews of four against each other in submarine warfare. If you have a large game group – or know another small game group that isn’t averse to a combined get together – this could be a great game for you!

Finally, you know you have a game in your mind just waiting to be created. The Game Crafter can make that happen.  Seriously – look into it. The company is amazing, and their work it quality without completely breaking the bank.

GenCon is an amazing experience, and we highly recommend it for the avid gamer. There are panels with famous (and up-and-coming) designers and industry moguls, media guests, True Dungeon runs, exhibitions and, of course, no end of games to participate in. Give the convention a chance, and we’re confident you won’t be disappointed.

Today’s topic is initiative, the determiner of turn order. For most games, initiative and turn taking is essential to ensuring that the game run smoothly, and in role playing games, it is very seldom as simple as going around the table in clockwise order.

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In nearly every game, there are actions that can be taken out of initiative order, and these can add considerable complexity to the game. In most games, there is some system for taking a prepared action, where you do something contingent on someone else doing something. In most d20 games, there are two ways of doing this – the character can ready an action to do something immediately before or after another event happens, or they can delay to see what others do and take their action after doing so. Both of these permanently change their position in initiative order. The purpose of these actions is to ensure that acting first is never a disadvantage – you don’t ever say “darn it! I wanted to act after the wizard casts bull’s strength on me” because you can do that if you really want.

There is another way to go about this, however, that a few games used – stacked initiative is a system wherein actions are declared in reverse initiative order (the last person to act says what they’re going to do first) and then resolved in initiative order. This is an interesting spin on initiative, but in practice, it ends up doubling combat time and making players lose actions, which is disappointing. There are more subtle variations, such as wargames wherein the player with last initiative is forced to move first, putting themselves out there into what could very well be a desirable but vulnerable position.

In any case, it pays to think about the order in which things are done, and the fact is that even with initiative systems, it should generally be accepted that most things in combat are happening simultaneously, so while Thorax the barbarian might hit the evil wizard before he so much as moves, it would behoove the savvy DM to still describe the wizard as preparing to cast his devastating spell when Thorax’s blade strikes true, rather than implying that this magical mastermind was twiddling his thumbs when his head was cloven from his body.

Nearly every game allows some sort of free action system wherein minor, non-combat actions can be taken throughout a combat round. Most commonly, this is talking, and it’s important to draw a line between a few moments chit-chat and a game-stopping mid-combat filibuster. I personally don’t pull out a stopwatch to ensure that anything said falls within the 3-to-6 second combat round, but I’m not averse to cutting someone off and telling them they need to finish what they’re saying next round.

The important thing is always to remember to balance things in a way that is enjoyable for everyone at the table. Keep things reasonable – don’t let a few players dominate the game, don’t let a few actions overpower everything else. And, importantly, if a player has built their character around winning initiative, for gosh sakes let them win! Even if you feel that them pulling ahead of the pack all the time is irksome or throws a wrench in your works as a DM, remember that when a player builds their character to be able to do something, they should be able to do that thing, and initiative is no different.

Remember to keep things moving. Use visual aids and keep your players in the loop. Happy games!

The struggle between good and evil remains one of the most common themes in fantasy literature. Since fantasy is the genre that defined the most popular roleplaying games, it should not be surprising that this conflict is frequently reflected in both the setting fluff and rules crunch of the games. Today, we tackle the topic of alignment systems in roleplaying games.

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Morality in roleplaying games typically comes in two forms – absolute and sliding scale. In absolute systems, the character’s morality is described in terms. The character is “good,” “evil,” “selfish,” “unaligned,” “neutral” and so on. In sliding scale morality uses a numerical system to track the character’s degree of virtue or vice.

Absolute systems are common to games such as Traveler and Dungeons & Dragons among others. Ultimately, your character is of a given alignment with no ifs, ands or buts. A good character is good. His actions might be less consistently good than another good character, but they’re both “good” the same way that a guy who fights with a sword and a guy who fights with a spear might both still be “fighters.”

Sliding scale systems are more familiar to gamers used to computer RPGs, since these tend to track some sort of karma system where you become evil if you do enough bad things or shift to good if you’re too virtuous. Even in systems where morality is applied in absolute terms, it is not uncommon for there to be a (sometimes hidden) numerical element to good and evil. The Wizardry CRPG series tracked actions your characters performed that were “good” or “evil” (things like attacking non-violent enemies or using aligned artifacts) and shifted your alignment accordingly. The Fallout series uses a Karma system to track how your character’s actions have influenced them and the people of the wasteland. Numbers are easy to track and everything a computer does has an underlying numeric system, so CRPGs make extensive (if sometimes secretive) use of them.

Pen and paper roleplaying games often offer ways of introducing a sliding scale. Pathfinder’s “Pathfinder Unchained” and D&D 3rd Edition’s “Unearthed Arcana” both introduce systems for applying numeric values to alignment, both at least partially on the theory that it makes things less gray where alignment is concerned. I’ll admit that, personally, I’ve never needed – or even considered – something like that for my groups. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to remind a player that their character is good / neutral / evil and, therefore, probably should be approaching challenges from that angle, and I’ve never actually told a player they can’t do something because of their alignment. Nor, for that matter, have I enforced an involuntary alignment change (not counting magical effects, of course) even when a good character did something evil or vice versa because – absolute morality of fantasy settings aside – people are complicated and don’t always do the right / wrong thing.

Fictional examples of alignment changes and deviations occur. In the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Jack Sparrow finally does the right thing and, in return, Elizabeth Swan does the wrong thing. Is Jack good and Elizabeth evil now? No, of course not! One alignment deviation doesn’t  change the underlying nature of the individual, but it does make for a great story, and that’s a big part of what roleplaying games are about! Playing rich characters with vivid motivations doesn’t mean dropping alignment entirely, but it does mean making alignment a tool for the character rather than the character be a vehicle for their alignment.

Alignment is one of the many trappings of RPGs that help to add depth and quality to the games. In many games, the struggle between good and evil is one with real metaphysical weight as literal moral forces duke it out in shadow realms for the fate of the world, and such a momentous struggle compels our characters to choose sides – or maintain their neutrality – in the conflict for the heart and soul of the setting.

Sometimes called “social deduction games,” hidden role games are games where you are assigned a secret identity that determines your victory conditions. The classic example is Werewolf (sometimes called “Mafia” or any number of other variants), but the genre has expanded to include a diverse set of games.

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The classic Werewolf / Mafia game, without special roles beyond good guy / bad guy, has been mathematically solved – essentially, the ideal strategy is to ignore the social element and assign everyone a random number. Eliminate the players in that order and, provided you stuck to your guns, you have a better than 50% chance of the villagers / citizens winning. The bad guy counter-strategy is to start killing from the back, which means that the random choice must be closer to correct for it to work. Truly diabolical players might skip a citizen, which implies that the individual is the mafia which, if true, guarantees a mafia victory, shaking confidence in the method.

One way to directly address* this “weakness” in classic social deduction games is to disallow any method of producing random numbers. With no random numbers, you have to rely on the person who assigns numbers being a citizen, which adds an extra point of failure, reducing the winning percentage significantly. I leave, as an exercise to the reader, the actual math behind this (which changes based on the volume of players in the game, of course, and the density of the bad guys).

Most hidden role games, however, now include rules far more complex than simply assigning the players to a good team and a bad team. Ultimate Werewolf has over 50 roles plus an expansion featuring artifacts, which makes reducing the game to math exponentially more complicated. Including too many roles can, of course, overwhelm a moderator, especially if they are new to such games, or unfamiliar with many of the roles. For experienced groups, however, the sort of chaos it creates can be very exciting indeed.

Some hidden role games manage to make a complex game from a simple concept. Two Rooms and a Boom (available as a free print and play) is potentially quite involved even if playing with the vanilla rules and no special roles (beyond President and Bomber, of course). It is, however, better suited to larger groups (although it’s playable with as few as 6). It is also very vulnerable to cheating (but your group would never do that, right?).

Secret Hitler is significantly more involved (also available as a free print and play!) but prone to be a very satisfying play. It has random elements beyond the initial setup, which adds an additional layer of strategy and uncertainty.

Batman: The Animated Series themed game Almost Got ‘Im is unique insomuch as there is a game within a game. Modeled after the namesake episode of the brilliant 1990’s series, the game features not only hidden roles, but also overt roles and a poker game that determines when you may take your secret actions. While the role abilities are, admittedly, of varying utility, the game is a blast and will fill any 90’s kid with nostalgia for one of the great animated series of the era.

Every group that plays hidden role games regularly will begin to see meta-strategies emerge that are unique to their group. In games of Avalon with our group, there is a general agreement among villains that if two are on the same mission, the Assassin player is the one who decides if the mission fails or not (and if the Assassin isn’t on the mission, they almost invariably pass the mission successfully). The interesting thing about meta-strategies is that once you identify them and say them out loud, they tend to change in response, just as saying a player’s tells out loud tends to help them address them.

Hidden role games can be a great way to involve a large group of players, since many games have a limit of 4-6 players, whereas many hidden role games can accommodate substantially greater numbers of players (Two Rooms and a Boom goes up to 30!), or can make a great change of pace from games of skill or chance.  As a genre, hidden role games have really come into their own over the past couple years, and any game library is well served in having a few on the shelf.

* Apart from invoking Wheaton’s Law, because reducing a hidden role game to a mathematical exercise is unambiguously “being a dick.” Not that we here at Save Vs. Rant don’t love math, and we’ll rant about that another day.