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A player-friend of mine once asked, “What is the difference between Fast Talk and Persuasion?”, when we were rolling characters for a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 2nd edition game. I shrugged and just said that Fast Talk is babbling and pulling wool over someone’s eyes, and Persuasion is attempting to get what you want through logic and rational arguments.

Recently I was listening to Ellen J. Langer’s book Mindfulness,  when right in the introduction she talked about a condition called mindlessness. Briefly put, it’s the “the lights are on but nobody’s home” syndrome, where we aren’t paying attention to what is going on around us and respond to stimulus is in an unthinking manner.

For example, the author described an experiment which involved a subject requesting the use of a Photocopier machine at the library. The subject would go up to someone using the machine and tried to persuade that person to let him use the machine to zap one copy. For one test, the subject asked, “Excuse me, may I use the photocopier machine I am in a hurry”. For test B, the request was phrased as “Excuse me, may I use the photocopier because I want to zap something”.

Interestingly, the experiment showed that (in a nutshell), people respond to both requests, without noticing that in test B, the explanation is rather nonsensical – the subject didn’t give a good reason why he would need to use the photocopier now. The author suggests that unless we are paying attention, our mind would “auto-complete” sentences if its structure is correct.

Another experiment involved a memo that was passed about in an office. It was written, “Please return this memo to room #02-02″. If you think about it, this is  rather strange memo – why would you write a memo, put it on someone desk only to request him to pass it back to you? Despite this, almost everyone who got the memo comply with the instruction.

Futility Closet has this story where a man managed to take over an entire city hall just by appearing up in a captain’s uniform.

These examples fit well into what the skill Fast Talk seems to be. You hinge on that people would not pay attention to your full sentence and make assumptions about your motives and credibility base on how you answer or talk to them. If you want to role-play as fast-talking, devious rogue, those are the examples you should follow!

Back in the time of yore, when one must colour his own D20 and Elf is a class in D&D, the assumed motivation for entering a dungeon is gold, treasure and magical power. More than 20 years later, this assumption has changed slightly, but it is still mostly centred on gold, magical items and experience points. Why not add something to this mix? Social status and recognition.

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The Meta-Plot can be a curse and a blessing. As discussed, it gives direction to the game – it also restricts. It justifies the rules, but at times the rules clashed with the Meta-Plot. Here are some of my ideas on Meta Plots and making them work in your game.

Introduce the Meta-Plot Slowly

There are some games which are 100% crunch and 0% fluff – then we have the opposite where fluff takes up so much room that it becomes as much as a required reading as rules. Nobilis suffers from this – what with Mythic Earth, Prosaic Earth, Lord Entropy, Ash Tree, the Bright and Shadowed Realms and more besides, fluff takes up about 70% of the book while the rules could be summarised on two sheets of A4 paper (with really small fonts).

What I have experimented for my first Nobilis game is to dish out the Meta Plot in small servings. Sure, I give an overview of the Vlade Bellum, what’s an Imperator and estates, but I save the rest for further espiodes. Sometimes in a setting-rich game there is a temptation to throw everything at the players – it may be wiser to focus on a particular aspect and as the players get their bearings, introduce more and more elements of the settings. For the first game I introduce the group to a “dead chancel” – which press in the point of what happened to estates that are erased out from creation and bring home the Vlade Bellum. They don’t have to deal with Lord Entropy or his bunch of Cammore for a while.

Get the Group to Create the Meta Plot

Spirit of the Century has a fantastic idea which I will be using for all my other games – getting the player to plot the backstory of their characters and having them star in each other’s story. For my fantasy homebrew of SoTC, I called each story a “novel” and have each character stars in them with another one as the “co-protangonist”. First, the player will offer ideas for how they will fit in the Meta Plot. The game was set in Titan (the Fighting Fantasy setting) and I briefly describe, on  a map, the important places, their culture and what significiant events have happened there. As the players plan their character’s origins, what they did during those significant events, how they end up meeting each other, who are their nemesis and so on, the players are describing how they fit into the setting’s Meta Plot. You, as the GM, could take chances to explain what’s relevant to their character instead of doing an information overload on all of them.

Second, the players come to owe that part of the Meta Plot – they created it and described how they would fit into it, anyway! That in SoTC yo would get Aspects for Meta Plot is a nice touch too.

Fast Forward Time

Sure, the status quo is this and that now, but what will happen in a hundred years time? Turning the clock ahead of the cannonical “present time” of the setting allow you, as a GM, to customise the material to your taste. Going backwards could be problematic as you need to make sure the latter events still happen, which call for research – unless you are ready to “reboot the setting” as in new Star Trek movie. In a hundred years time, a strong kingdom could become a weak one, the Great Old Ones are just a step away from being freed, a great war is on the verge of happening and a new weapon technology has shifted the balance of power.

You can also try to find an epoch in the settings where not much material was given – such as what Bioware did with Knights of the Old Republic – and fill in the gap yourself. There is also a geographic shifting – such as in Lord of the Rings Online, the attention is paid to all the lands mentioned in the novels but never visited by the Fellowship, such as Angmar, the Forsaken Inn, Oatbarton and so on.

History Lies

In the Chinese manhua “The Ravages of Time”, which gives a radical re-interperation of the events found in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the author basically says that “History lies” . That is one way to treat the Meta Plot if you need to loosen it up. They are, after all, just one version of the world according to the author of book. Add in new details, behind-the-scene facts and now-you-know-it truths.

Don’t Let Meta-Plot Stands in the Way of Fun

Nit-picking, canon walling and meta-debating are just waste of time when one rather be gaming. A game ought to be fun. Consistency can be resolved when the game is over, through email or forum – facts can be added, motivations could be altered. Saying “Drizzit would never do this!” while in a game (and while encountering the famous drow ranger) is akin to reducing the NPC and the Meta-Plot to just a black and white straitjacket. If we think of Meta-Plot as just the point of view of one person, not the entire record of a world or a person, the GM would have more fun planning and the players would be kept on the toes more often.

One way to have the right balance of Meta-Plot, to me, is to understand its purpose. To sum up the next article I have in mind, the Meta-Plot is to:

• Gives direction
• Influences design
• Influences the artefacts used in the game
• Provide plot hooks for adventures

On RPG.NET, I come across some posts which show hatred for the meta-plot; I also come across sentiments which goes “Ahh, this is just like every-other-game-out-there, I’m not buying it unless the setting is absolutely awe-inspiring or something”. Settings, background materials and even something like a sequence of events is the Meta Plot. It’s a bit like brainwashing, really; if you subscribe to a game’s meta-plot, I realise, sometimes you just follow along with it with your behaviours influenced by it.

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The Sun Tzu’s Art of War says that there are only three maneuvers in war – advance, stay and retreat, but those are enough to form countless strategies, much as how seven notes are enough for an infinity amount of music.

So far, conflicts in RPG has been largely physical in scope – combat and mass battles. Combat in RPG is a very well developed area – from D&D’s tactical take to more cinematic offerings such as Fengshui, Weapons of the God and the upcoming Spellbound Kingdoms.  Recently, another form of conflict has entered the fray – social conflicts.  Instead of armour and physical weakness, you look out for secrets which will give you an edge-up over your opponent – who has the most influence on him? What does he value the most?

Those conflicts, however, are largely tactical. When I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and a Song of Ice and Fire,  I am wondering if there is a way to have political conflicts, a match in strategies and so on. Conflicts that take place over a vast area, instead of being confined to an area.

Two games promise that…REIGN and House of the Blooded; I have to admit I have yet to read them, but they give me a feeling of “hands-off, top-down”, which I am not sure if it is the mood I want. If players are going to role-play as emperors, rulers or guild leaders, maybe they should be playing RISK, Age of Empire (the board game) or something else? What good does role-playing add to these types of large scale conflicts?

One idea to consider is what if the player goes against each other?

For another project, I have been charged with the task of a prototyping a real-time strategy game. One of the important feature about such games is usually the fog of war, and more so in this project. How do I go about preparing a board-game prototype with a fog of war? When it is the next player’s turn, even if he putting down some tokens face down, you know that he is doing something. Worse still, without computers, you don’t even know if he is cheating.

There is a problem with such a players vs. players RPG with an epic scope is that  the GM has to hide secrets. This may be acceptable for play by email, but how much more fun is this than Diplomacy? Is the GM just the piece of barrier like in a Battleship game? Secondly, if the players are present and they are the enemies of each other — well, is this the way people want to spend an evening relaxing? There’s a fine line in presenting a challenge and grieving when it comes to the game table, especially for a RPG where there more actions possible than a board game.

One idea I have been toying with is to mix board game mechanics with RPG resolution.  Actions made on a marco level influences the players while they are role-playing, and those high-level decisions may generate random encounters, influences reactions of NPCs and avaliability of allies. Of course, the GM must be quick to adapt as well! If the board game level indicate that the city which the party is supposed to be visiting is under siege, and it wasn’t so before the campagin start, then the GM must be fast enough to adapt to the new environment.

I sometimes think there is this approach to the game design. It goes basically as “right, we have this technology, and I have a genre in mind. Let push a product out!”. The “technology” here could be a cutting-edge game engine, a universal role-playing system like D20, a particular form of genre (say MMO or RTS) or a sparkling brand new next-gen console.

Then there is this other approach. “We have this inspiration, let see what is the best way to present it as a game”, or sometimes “With this genre, and with this inspiration, let see what is the best approach for this game”.

I come to see the “inspiration” as the Meta Plot. In “plain speech”, the Meta Plot is the Plot of the Plot for the game. It’s like the horror of the Warp for Warhammer 40K, the Melkor-Eru conflict in Lord of the Rings, or something as down to earth as World War II. Sometimes, a technique to skin your game and to come up with game mechanics is to use a Meta Plot as an inspiration.

Not all Games without Meta Plot are Badly Designed

Before going on, I have to emphasis one thing – games without a Meta Plot as inspiration driving their design are not automatically badly designed. For instance, Super Mario Brothers lack a Meta Plot in a grand sense of thing, nor is there one for Tetris, or I suspect for Final Fantasy I (the Final Fantasy games franchise is an interesting case study of “We have these cool mechanics; the plot and story is a seperate deal!”

The point is that a Meta Plot can be the inspiration for game mechanics and game design. Its influence can trinke all the way up to User Interface Design, quest designs, music, gameplay elements and even marketing/packaging. Could it? Let’s see.

Meta Plot and the Pen and Paper Continuum

Let begin with the pen and paper RPG world first. I have been gearing up to run Nobilis, in which each player represents an “avatar” of a concept on Earth, be it horses, communication, reading, katanas or even just blankets. The game is thick with Meta Plot – and the Plot is basically that Destroyers from Beyond Creation have come to erase out all Creation, and that includes the foundational concepts such as nature, animals, war and everything else. This Meta Plot supports the diceless game mechanics. Characters are assured of their success in any task unless opposed. This is a different take from most pen and paper RPGs which require you to make a roll to see if you succeed or fail at a challenging task.

The Meta Plot may inspire the game mechanic or the other way round, but I personally think that one thing is for sure – the Meta Plot and the game mechanics (and other design elements) must be in harmony. A big complaint of Exalted is that you never feel like the supernatural heroes which all the “fluff” (or backstory Meta Plot) makes you out to be. Or that Call of Cthlhu D20 is not as grim as its Basic Roleplaying incarnation because D20 (a generic “RPG engine” spined off from D&D 3.5) tend to gears toward heroic role-playing and characters created with the system starts out as better combatants.

Spirit of the Century, emulating pulp fiction, use the Fate 3.0 rules to allow players to create larger-than-life characters for their first adventure. We are talking stuff like Nobel prize winning scientist, ace pilot who has flew countless sorties or even a trained and skilled deadly martial artist who can floor a dozen. In fact, there is a complaint that characters in Spirit of the Century are virtually invincible, but hey, it fits the tone of the pulp fiction.

Don’t Rest your Head seems to follow “Meta Plot influences Game Design” pattern. You play as an insomniac who has been “Awakend”, granting you special abilities. However, you are also sucked into the City Awaken, a dimenison removed from normal world and is something out from a nightmare. There are rules for being exhausted – when you get more and more exhausted, you perform better and kick more ass, but there’s also a chance that you can get even more exhausted. That sounds like a good deal, except that when you are exhausted beyond a limit, you sleep and become a normal human being again, and you attract the attention of monsters who can’t wait to feast upon your helpeless body.

If we instead try to shoehorn this idea into, say D20 and GURPs, it will still work, but the mechanics presented in Don’t Rest your Head has the elements of exhaustion built right into its mechanics – you roll a number of D6 equal to your Exhaustion each time, with a 5 or 6 counting as a success. But if the higher dice roll is an Exhaustion dice, you gain 1 more point of Exhaustion (basically, there are other type of dice rolled at the same time, such as Discipline and Madness). Using another system to emulate this would be contrived.

Right, I think this article is kind of getting lengthy, and there is still a real life Flu I have to fight off. So I will just end with a “To be Continued…” here. Next up, I will pen (type?) down my thoughts on the Meta Plot and its drwbacks and how it fits into computer and board games.

Eve Online has it. Erepublik revolves around it. Darkfall gives freeform PVP and leaves enforcement largely to the players, instead of implementing it in game. Or you include other forms of conflict, such as heists, pick-pocketing, assassinations, as suggested by this Massively Online article “You don’t need PvP to be Successsful, Honest”

Having the power to vote your own party members, such as the virtual democracies in Eve Online, sounds very enticing. Allowing players to take the law into their hand in a free-form games sound fun. Instead of “you cannot be a bad guy”, it becomes “you can be a bad guy until other players stop you”.

Yet, including social mechanics like these introduce changes to the game’s challenge.

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I love to present a challenge, I also love to tell a story. My motivation for running games and being the perpetual GameMaster may be because I find it fun to see other people having fun. But at the same time, I want to have my fun too. So how do I get what I want by running games?

By running a terrific atmospheric game where players get to shine. To get players to shine, the opposition must put a good fight. I want to see what my players would do when hard-pressed and I am anticipating what sort of tricks they would pull. Sometimes what they do make me sigh, sometimes they make me laugh, but most of the times, they astound me. That is where my fun come from.

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