{"id":627,"date":"2018-10-26T00:18:28","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T00:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/cinemechanix-role-playing-and-story-mechanics\/"},"modified":"2023-02-24T15:50:16","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T15:50:16","slug":"cinemechanix-role-playing-and-story-mechanics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/cinemechanix-role-playing-and-story-mechanics\/","title":{"rendered":"Cinemechanix: Role-Playing and Story Mechanics"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I redesigned the character stats for Cinemechanix, one thing I wanted to do was make the whole \u201cStory\u201d side of the sheet seem less like an afterthought, in part by including some kind of crunch to the story stuff. Role-playing and story mechanics are something I\u2019ve never quite settled into a firm opinion on, in part because how well they work varies so much from one game to the next. I\u2019ve seen them make the game and I\u2019ve seen them break the game.<\/p>\n

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The Way I Actually Play part of me says that role-playing and story mechanics are completely unnecessary and sometimes even counterproductive because the best story and character bits are things that evolve naturally on-screen and can\u2019t be planned or forced by rules. This is clear from anecdotal evidence and personal experience. The Game Designer part of me counters that I\u2019ve been very fortunate to have spent most of my time role-playing with an exceptional group of players who are skilled at improvisation and characterization and have storytelling sensibilities that mesh well with my own, and that most groups are more likely to put effort into world building, storytelling, and characterization if there\u2019s a mechanical component to them. This is also clear from anecdotal evidence and personal experience.<\/p>\n

Since Cinemechanix is supposed to be a more \u201cdesigned\u2019 game (QAGS will always win when the points are made up and the rules don\u2019t matter), I\u2019ve ultimately decided to listen to the Game Designer, and it\u2019s been tricky. The big problem is one I\u2019ve run into over and over again for a long as I\u2019ve been designing games: simplicity vs. detail. Part of my brain loves rules that model things in great detail and account for every possibility in a (comparatively) simple way, but that\u2019s just the part of my brain that reads (and sometimes writes) rules. The part of my brain that actually plays games wants something quick and easy to grasp that the GM can modify on the fly to fit the situation at hand. Skill webs and pre-requisites and fine distinctions and situational rules often look great on paper, but they\u2019re tedious as fuck when you actually try to use them during a game.<\/p>\n

Through the various incarnations of the Cinemechanix character sheet, the recurring question has been \u201chow many types of stats do I need?\u201d Having more stat categories allows for finer definition of how different aspects of the character work, but they can also lead to unnecessary confusion and a sense that everything important has to be describe on the character sheet. In this case, the trick was to figure out how many mechanical categories (and, at least in theory, at least somewhat distinctive mechanics) I needed to cover the stuff on the story side of the sheet. I decided to start by assuming a one-for-one shift, with each distinct category or subcategory of story stuff translating to a new stat category. That immediately fell apart because the \u201cCasting Call\u201d and \u201cTrivia\u201d sections are purely descriptive in the first case and explicitly trivial in the second, and therefore don\u2019t need mechanics. The handful of things from the Characterization section that might need mechanics, like cool props or a distinctive appearance, can already be achieved with existing rules (Edges, Hero Props, Drawbacks, etc). If you want your character to consistently get a bonus on comic book lore rolls, give him an Edge in \u201cComic Book Lore\u201d rather than noting under trivia that he likes comics.<\/p>\n

Technically that only left \u201cPlot Devices,\u201d but it was a section with a lot of different subcategories that included good stuff (like resources and allies), bad stuff (like problems and enemies), and stuff that could go either way (like a criminal record: useful for infiltrating a drug gang, not so useful when applying for a job). The defining characteristic was that it\u2019s stuff that most affects how the story plays out more than how individual rolls are resolved. The original line of thinking was that plot devices expand or limit the character\u2019s options rather than giving the player bonuses or penalties: A man with a tank in the barn has options that are not available to a man whose outbuilding is uncontaminated by armored fighting vehicles.<\/p>\n

The beneficial plot devices–things like connections, allies, equipment, good reputation, and big piles of cash–seemed easier to deal with, so I started there. Just like in QAGS, Cinemechanix assumes that characters live the life of a typical fictional counterpart with the same general job and skill set: A private detective has a gun, a fedora, and an office with his name on the frosted glass of the door, a character with the \u201cComputers\u201d edge probably owns a computer, etc., and a vice cop has some criminal informants he can tap (or punch) for information. The resources available to a character are ultimately up to the GM, who can call for a roll if the answer isn\u2019t obvious. The only other option is inventory management, which rarely leads to good fiction. That being the case, the only real reason to define resource plot devices is to \u201clock in\u201d things that make sense for the character but don\u2019t necessarily come with the membership kit (not everyone who knows how to skydive has their own gear) or to give the character atypical resources (maybe your small-time crook PC was the current mayor\u2019s best friend growing up and can still rely on help from above when he gets caught).<\/p>\n

If resource-type plot devices are going to have a mechanic attached to them, it makes sense for it to be a bonus. The only other option would be to essentially create a separate sub-system with specific modifiers and target numbers for each resource or resource group, which undermines the core mechanics. It also makes it easy to slip into trying to assign values to different resources, and that way lies Champions. I could try to come up with a special kind of bonus to separate resource plot devices from Edges, but unless they\u2019re being bought from a separate pool of points (which I don\u2019t like), there\u2019s really no reason for it. The only possible argument I can think of against just rolling resources into Edges is that resources aren\u2019t as consistently useful as standard skills, but (1) when have you known characters to choose a more limited option when a broader one costs the same? (2) with a \u201cmake up your own\u201d skill system, that\u2019s already an issue–they guy who chooses a skill in \u201cAmerican History\u201d at least theoretically limits the application of his Edge more than the guy who just chooses \u201cHistory.\u201d For the most part the only time a player is going to choose a more limited option than he has to is if that option better describes the character he wants to play, which is a good thing. Last but not least, remember that in Cinemechanix the GM is supposed to treat the character\u2019s stat choices as aspirational: If a player chooses a particular Edge or Resource, the GM should assume that the player wants the character to use it in the game, and should build stories that allow that to happen.<\/p>\n

So yeah, if you want to \u201clock in\u201d a resource so it\u2019s less subject to GM fiat, just buy it as an Edge. That lets you access it unless the story makes it impossible and gives you a bump to your die roll as an added bonus. If it\u2019s really important to the character, it\u2019s worth the points. I might want to increase the number of points players get for Edges (or add new ways to get those points, possibly with the negative\/neutral plot devices), but otherwise there\u2019s no reason to separate resources from standard Edges. I just need to describe a few extra types of Edges in the character creation chapter, so along with things like \u201cnatural talents\u201d and \u201ctraining,\u201d you\u2019ll now have things like \u201cwealth and equipment\u201d and \u201cconnections.\u201d<\/p>\n

The negative and neutral plot devices are a little tricker. I\u2019ll talk about those next time.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I redesigned the character stats for Cinemechanix, one thing I wanted to do was make the whole \u201cStory\u201d side of the sheet seem less like an afterthought, in part by including some kind of crunch to the story stuff. Role-playing and story mechanics are something I\u2019ve never quite settled into a firm opinion on,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2000],"tags":[47,62,130,1739],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-design-ramblings","tag-rpg","tag-game-design","tag-character-creation","tag-cinemechanix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3399,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/3399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}