The Gaming Outpost

  Three weeks ago we were discussing CharGen, that is, character generation in role playing games.  Then we focused on freeform approaches; but there is much to be said for other ways of doing it.  The majority of games break down between two types, randomized and point-based, but there are a wealth of variations of each.

  A lot of gamers don’t like random character generation; they want the ability to use points to build the character of their dreams.  Against the overwhelming hue and cry, let me make the defense for randomized systems.

  There is inherent in the point-based approach this unstated assumption:  all characters are created equal, not in law but in fact.  It suggests that the star football player, the valedictorian, the president of the student government association, and the school nerd are all equally endowed but have strengths in different areas.  I’m reminded of a quip made by a balding professor at the beginning of a speech, just after being introduced by the amply bearded long-haired host:  “I figure we all get the same measure of hormones, and if he wants to use his to grow hair, that’s his choice.”  The fact is that we are not all created equal, even when you account for differences.  Humans are equal in law, but would anyone argue that physicist Stephen Hawking, major league baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan, entrepreneur Donald Trump, President George W. Bush, evangelist Reverend Billy Graham, and actress Angela Lansbury are equal in fact?  And even if after comparing strengths and weaknesses we decided that their abilities all came out roughly to the same amount, would we then be willing to include ourselves and our friends on the same list?  If all game characters are the same, then you don’t need character generation–you just say, Here’s a one each character sheet, please write your character’s name at the top and you’re done.  The game is made interesting because characters have differing strengths and weaknesses, but also to some degree because they have different total strength.  When you look at the heroes of our stories, you realize that they are not equal, either.  No one can argue that the nine companions of the Fellowship of the Ring are equally gifted.  Clearly Gandalf and Aragorn are superior to the others.  Take into account the enemies, and it is obvious that gifts are not equally distributed.  Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, 3PO, R2, Obiwan, and Lando are not equals, nor are they equals with Vader, the Emperor, Darth Maul, or the trade federation representatives.  If these characters were equally gifted from the beginning, the story would be much less interesting.

  Point based systems tend to create characters who are equally gifted at the start, except in those cases in which players either don’t know how to use the system or intentionally create characters weaker than they might.  Randomized systems capture at least some of this aspect of different strengths and different levels of overall strength, making some characters inherently better than others.  That’s more realistic; it also makes for better stories.

  Obviously if the randomized system is geared such that it can create completely worthless characters, it’s flawed.  This is the real problem with most randomized systems:  they create some characters of no value.  They also tend to create mostly average characters.  Fixes to this run the gamut from preventing any player characters from being below-average at anything (a weakness itself, because sometimes the most interesting characters are the incredibly strong brute idiot and the brilliant weakling) to throwing out characters who don’t meet certain minimums (which doesn’t prevent a proliferation of average characters) to creating mostly superheroes in every area (again, eliminating the interesting balances between strengths and weaknesses).  But there are fixes that work.  These ideas might stimulate some of your own.

  One fix is a combined randomized/point based system, in which the range of points to be made available is established but each player must roll to determine where in that range his character falls.  This gives the variation in total ability while giving the players control of where the weaknesses lie.  The same result can be achieved by first rolling stats and then adjusting them by moving or spending points.

  In an interesting reversal of this, I recently saw a suggestion in which the total number of points were fixed but the distribution was random.  The implementation of such a system might be complicated, and it does suffer from the flaw of assuming overall equality of characters and the lack of control over the character strengths by the player, but it provides interesting variation between characters empowered in one or another area and those with generally balanced ability.

  One idea which has been suggested is a sort of template and points system, selecting a basic character type for its specific strengths, and then spending a much smaller pool of points tweaking it–such as getting a stupid brute, and then deciding whether to make him a bit less stupid or a bit more brutish.  What a templates and points system allows the designer to do is devise character concepts, whether as strong as classes or as weak as primary areas of ability, to use as a starting point.  Thus you could have templates for the character who tends to use force, versus the one that tends to think, or negotiate, or outmaneuver.  Each of these could represent a core set of abilities, possibly associated skills, and a splash of points that would be used to customize them.

  Another quite workable and little-used idea is to provide for different die roll choices for different aspects of the character.  For example, you might say that there are six scores which can be any number from one to twenty; the player is allowed to roll, once each:

1. d20 (1 to 20, linear)
2. 3d6 (3 to 18, fairly strong tendency toward 10 or 11)
3. 3d4 (3 to 12, fairly strong tendency toward 7 or 8 )
4. 4d4 (4 to 16, very strong tendency toward 10)
5. 2d10 (2 to 20, weak tendency toward 10 or 11)
6. 2d4+12 (14 to 20, weak tendency toward 15 or 16)

and arrange them in any order desired.  This gives a lot of different curves, assuring that at least one score will be at least 14, at least one will be not greater than 12, only one could be below 2, and so forth.  It is still very random, but it has a bit more stability in the differences between characters.  Clearly you will not get one character with all twenties and one with all twos.

  There are ways to design point-based systems that overcome the concept of equality.  One fascinating idea that has been floated but not, as far as I know, implemented in a published game is the notion of borrowing points at interest.  Thus you would give players a hundred points with which to build characters, and if they spent these hundred points they would have a novice character with which to begin play.  However, if desired, a player could borrow another hundred, two hundred, several hundred points, and use these to expand his character into a master at the high end of ability.  This would appear inequitable at the beginning of play, perhaps; but then, assuming the same points that are used to build the character are also earned during play and spent on improvements, the character who borrowed tremendous numbers of points would have debts to pay, and so would have to be out earning the points just to pay off his debt; the novice character meanwhile would be rapidly catching up, as he has no debts, and in theory at least would pass the master at some point, because due to the interest on the loan the master has to pay more points for the same skills in the long run.  The details of such a system have not yet been worked out.  What’s the rate at which the loan has to be repaid?  What’s the interest rate?  Is there a maximum amount you can borrow?  What happens if the character is in arrears on the loan?  The bookkeeping might be prohibitive.  However, for creating a game in which characters like Luke Skywalker, Obiwan Kenobi, and Han Solo all begin together, this has a lot of promise.  Luke, the one who spent only his starting points, would improve fastest.  Han would have borrowed some extra points for his skills, and so be better than Luke initially but advancing more slowly.  Obiwan would have borrowed very heavily, and now be spending nearly all his earned points on his debt, unable to significantly improve in the foreseeable future.

  There is a contingent of gamers who like the idea of starting on an equal footing (a very gamist idea, although not all gamists value it).  No character generation system is right for every player or for every game.  If you can find a way to get characters to define a character concept and identity and then translate that into game mechanics, as we discussed in CharGen, that’s the best way to get what you want–but it’s a lot harder to do in a fantasy or sci-fi setting, because it’s tougher to get the benchmarks for what’s appropriate.  Having options is important; understanding their strengths and weaknesses is essential, or the options don’t matter.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

The ten foot tall polar bear towered over the door to my igloo, and the igloo iself as it roared at me. My M-5, an advanced automatic rifle that fired fletchettes, lay fifteen feet away on the snow. And my back ached where my body had served as a scratching post for Mr. Bear as he hooked me in a neat ambush when I wandered outside like a stupid tourist.



I was dead. It was a simple as that. No magic, no psionics, a pair of extendable finger claws, and a lightweight grav-pulse hold-out pistol that probably would not work in this tech bias anyways(my cybernetics did not.) against a thousand pounds of speed, claws, and terror.



The sprint toward my rifle which had fallen off my shoulder when I was flung through the air got Bear’s interest. He watched me sprawl and lurch on the slick ice, and then halfway there he decided to stop me.



Thwump. His clawed paw smacked me in the left shoulder, and yes, learning to fly is the hardest thing.



Like a nimble juggernaut he rolled along on his four feet toward me, picking up speed, and his mouth opening to go for the first real bite. Bear played a game with me. Guess, the Artic Circle is short on amusements.



My grav-pulse slapped him and stopped him in puzzlement, and then it refused to fire. Warning lights ran up the sides of it. Something had gone phoeey in its guts.



A mad idea occurred to me, and since madness held more cards than nothing, I tried it. My gleaming metal claws popped out, and I knifed them into the energy cell with no effect. Nervous, I did it again, and a charge ran up my arm to temporarily paralyze my right arm. So I tossed the pistol with my left, and scrambled away frantically.



Destabilization of the grav matrix occurred, and my body got picked up and flung about to see a collapse inward of snow and air, and Bear that all tried to get into the same foot cubed spot at the same time. I came almost to the effect edge, and versing out, and then the grav matrix which supported the high-end curvature of space-time was permanently and physically disrupted. A block of red “snow” clumped down in front of me.



I’d heard of people suffering similarly destructive versing outs who were literally reborn as if the multiverse sort-of lost track of their body.



I went back and lay down inside my igloo with the M-5 by my side. And I tended the peeled skin on my left hand which had frozen stuck to the metal housing of the pistol.



A humming woke me, and I went outside to look. A bright, yellow school bus rode in a somewhat straight line many miles away. Jumping around enthusiastically, I packed and headed out after it.



Day turned to night, but not before I found a road, and a battered sign saying “Duluth 30 miles” facing the other way.



Depressed at the seeming tragedy, I hollowed out a snow cave alongside the road, and went to sleep.



A chugging and a roaring woke me, and I scrambled out to see vivid yellow in the white and overcast landscape. The schoolbus came back my way.



So I hopped out, and stood in the middle of the road between the tracks the bus made the day before. It stopped a hundred feet away, and men pointed rifles at me from windows on either side of the bus.



I put my hands up, and my visible weapons down. They scooted forward.



“No handouts.” A lyrical female voice sang out from the stairs at the front of the voice.

“Trade?”

“Whatcha’ got?”

“Little gold, some soup, a swiss knife, a computer.”

“Computer! Does it work?” I heard a man say, and then the female negotiater said “Hush.”

Interesting, the lady seemed in charge. I knew I had them, unless they decided to rob me, but they seemed respectable sorts.

“Played a game of solitaire last morning.” I said calmly.

“Let’s see it.”

“Whatchyou got?” I shot back.

“We can offer residency in Duluth Community College City-state if it actually works.”

“Is that all?” I said knowing that the first offer is rarely the best even if I did not know the value of the item on this market.

“You won’t have to stay out her to be banditti or iceman fodder. That’s something.” A man interjected, and I nodded. It was the best deal I could get.



Upon climbing on the bus which was full up with trashed wooden desks, and tires, and telephones, and a Seventies era satellite receiving disc, and a dozen well-armed and fur-coated people, the lady in charge demanded to see my computer.



She was pretty and smart and harsh.



“Just a second.” I tested their responses.

“Now, or by my oath as a Selected, I’ll have you fed to our dogs.” The dogs in back of the bus started to howl with the mention.

So I pulled out my wallet, and thumbed through a half-dozen things that looked like credit cards, until I got to the right one.



It was the thickest, and the lowest tech of the lot which meant that it should work here. I had it specifically made in a high-tech world to work in a lower tech bias world. I pulled it out to general shock, and then scorn, and then distant pity.

“He’s mad; throw him off, Selected.”

“Activate.” I said, and a shimmering holofield appeared above the card. “Display ‘Solitaire Game Three’.” And the picture changed to a somewhat murky view of the game. My Windows PC in my homeworld had better resolution, but it was not powered by the warmth of my hand, and you could not drive a car over it without damaging it.

“I prefer ‘genius’ rather than ‘mad’.” I said quietly as they took the card from me.

“Okay, you’re in. Welcome to Duluth City-state, citizen. We’ll be there in about four hours.” The Selected said, and they ushered me to a seat as she tried to figure out my device.



The theory du jour seemed to be that I was a lucky scavenger that had found a top-secret government project from before the Spasm and the Frost. They had smart people back at the College(they said with reverence) who could figure it out. Nobody asked me how to work it. So I sat there and listened to them talk, and pieced together a history of a world gone wrong, and the effort to fix things while we shimmied and slid and occasionally pushed toward Duluth Community College.



Taduesz

Mark’s latest article Rewards helps us take a good look as some of the aspects of rewards for good gaming. While I enjoyed the article, I’d like to take a look at the flip side of rewards. That’s right, let’s talk punishment.



For me it’s only fair that if players get rewarded for playing the game well, they should receive some kind of punishment if they play the game poorly. When I say poorly I’m referring to actions that are horribly out of character and destructive/disruptive to the game itself. If the GM doesn’t punish this kind of behavior then he is telling the offending player that these actions are acceptable. By allowing the poor gaming to continue the group runs the risk of no longer having fun or, worst of all, falling apart completely. So, how do we punish poor gaming?



One thing to realize is that punishment can take as many forms as rewards do, and it doesn’t need to be painful. In most games we can cut back or even eliminate the XP gained from a game session and use that as our punishment. If the player continues to have his character beat up every beggar he runs into, the GM will subtract XP each time he insists on doing so. I know this is a favorite way for some of my friends who GM to deal with disruptive players, but I’m not too fond of it.



The problem I see with this method is that XP is normally rewarded at the end of a session or adventure, and that’s not the best time to implement punishment. Even if your not using XPs as the reward, waiting until the end of a session is asking for trouble. Doing so leads to hurt feelings as players will often claim they had no idea what they were doing was wrong and “Why didn’t you tell me?”



In my group we have a two pronged approach to help deal with the problem of punishment. The first approach is from the GM’s side, and the other is from the players. One of the keys for us is that punishment must be done at the time of the offence. If you wait until the end, it’s normally too late. So, let’s look at the GM side first and see what we can do prior to the end of the game.



As the GM I have a rule that I will warn you three times per session for poor roleplaying. If you try to slaughter farmers for fun, regularly act out of character or continue to disrupt the game you get a warning. After the third warning, I punish you every time you game inappropriately. We’re all at the game to have fun and as each game dictates the type of actions that are acceptable (Toon actions are much different than Shadowrun), I translate Inappropriately to mean:



“Causes an unwelcome disruption to the rest of the group’s gaming experience.”



You want to slaughter farmers? Fine. The town guard is going to come, kick your butt around and lock you up or, in some cases, your character may be put to death after a quick trial. At the very least you going to get a stiff fine and a bad reputation. That bad reputation will follow you until you do something to correct your bad publicity. If necessary, I’ll change the alignment of your character or remove powers/abilities that hinge on proper behavior (e.g. A Paladin or cleric’s powers and spells) until you redeem yourself.



You want to interrupt the game with “This funny thing happened at work” stories or Monty Python quotes every ten minutes? Fine. After the first three warnings I’ll remove XP right on the spot, I have all NPCs react to you as if what you are saying is being said in character or, if it’s bad enough and you won’t take a hint, I’ll ask you to leave. I’ve only had to ask one person to leave the table because they wouldn’t stop being disruptive.



We know that the GM is the main source of conflict resolution in an RPG, both in-game and out of game while at the table. However, as I mentioned before, the GM isn’t the only person who has the ability to punish bad gaming. We can’t expect the GM to focus on running the game and be the only person to deal with problem players. He needs some help.



Everyone at the table is there to have fun and the players have as much of a stake in the quality of the game as the GM does. In my group players who continually act out of character or who are disruptive/destructive in the game are punished by the others at the table. The players take teh initiative and warn the offender that his actions are not welcome.



If you want to beat up every beggar that you come across because you think it’s fun, the rest of the party will try to stop you with PC vs. PC actions. These actions range from in character debate to combat to witholding information or aid from the offender. The main focus of the group is to react to the player in game. The group uses their characters as the tool to get the offender to play along. We’ve found that this kind of PC pier pressure works very well at correcting bad gaming behavior and, as the actions are done in-game, it maintains the focus on playing the game.



The other option that my group uses is for the group to ask the offender to please stop being disruptive as it’s ruining the game. If the group doesn’t want to hear any more movie quotes they ask the player to please stop. Directly asking someone to not do something isn’t easy. We’re all friends and we don’t want to hurt feelings, but it’s very effective and sometimes necessary.



Many players at first don’t realize what they are doing is disruptive to the game. If they got a few laughs when they quoted Python the first few times they may think it’s ok and not realize they’ve crossed the line with quote number thirty. Asking a player to stop being disruptive may cause a moment of discomfort for the group, but I find that this is quickly overcome as the disruption is forgotten once attention is back on the task at hand – Gaming.



Everyone slips once in a while. Everyone talks out of character and out of turn, and everyone is disruptive occasionally. That’s why I prefer to warn people. If after warnings the player is still being disruptive corrective action is needed because if you let it continue it’s only going to get worse.



-Brett

War can be an interesting (if sometimes gruesome) subject, but for now lets focus on culture, specifically the cultures of the Roman Confederacy, United States, and the Soviet Union.



The future of the United States seems to keep coming back to its past. Mexico’s entry into Union had unknowable effects (at the time) on economics and politics. In all likelihood those changes would save her nearly eighty years later.



On the economic side, competition in the labor market from Mexican business men did more than raise pay and with it affluence. It continued the cycle of capitalism and created new markets for goods already being sold. Millions of people clamored for luxuries that they once couldn’t afford (and with immigrants that number was growing). So, while many robber barons took an initial hit in from having to pay higher wages, the number of people they could sell to eventually multiplied several fold.



Looking at a stretch of time from about 1870 (Lee’s last year in office) to 1880, the number of affluent increased and so did the number of entrepreneurs (Andrew Carnegie was working class Irish OTL…). The creation of new companies, the raising of new factories and the investment in the stock market all rise at an unheard-of rate [PP: Marxism and Labor Unions gain virtually no foothold the U.S.]. This pushes economic and technical development ahead by twenty or twenty five plus years.



1880 comes. The first experiments begin with the automated loom and Analytical Engine designs imported from Europe, mainly for increasing efficiency and sorting/accounting purposes. An improved version of the pantelgraph, a precursor to the fax machine, was also imported.



No idea was considered too absurd to invest some amount of money in. Henry Ford introduced the Model-T in 1895, based on a design by Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler and backed by Edison. A water-valve machine capable of doing Boolean functions replaces the older Analytical Engines. The old pantelegraphs were replaced by photoelectric system (traveling over phone lines) in 1908.





The invention of the diode rectifier tube in 1904 gives computer manufacturers an electronic medium, instead of a mechanical one. Radios appear in virtually every home by 1910. Television comes by 1930, and color TV by 1935. The U.S. Military starts a research project with Bell Labs to streamline computers, leading to the transistor in 1938.



It might be easier to imagine all these changes if one were to walk along Main Street of Anytown, U.S.A. The smell of steak and eggs is coming from the local diner, but so is the scent of enchiladas and something else that has an unpronounceable name in Navajo. When you walk in you hear the locals speaking mainly in English, but on occasion switching to Spanish for one purpose or another. In one booth there is a cluster of Reverends and Ministers having a debate. It’s a spirited conversation right now between the Cherokee Pentecostal and the Catholic priest over something having to do with baptism. Not really too important as you sit down to order. The jute box is playing swing, but somebody has a portable radio out playing Habanera, the latest craze out of Cuba.





Kids come rushing in to meet their parents from a hard day at school. Sixth grade Latin textbooks are shoved into book bags as they slide into booths. The waitress brings your meal and you dig in. High schoolers finally file in, as their classes get out ten minutes later. Some are graduating early and are looking at which college they want to attend and having a very mature discussion with their parents on the issue. Others are complaining about their calculus homework and wish they had Native American Mythology, which won’t be until next semester. The diner has just gotten a new color T.V. and they turn it on for the first time to the ’38 World Series, but some ranchers complain about wanting to watch the Lacrosse finals. Both were interrupted by one of President Quentin Roosevelt’s (son of famous Senator Theodore Roosevelt) “Fireside Chats” that was being simulcasted on radio. He is expressing joy on the Allied victory over Roman Confederacy forces at Rotterdam (in Denmark), but expresses his sorrow to families who lost a relative in that battle. It was a costly victory with 28,000 casualties. RC armor divisions nearly broke our lines.



Leaving the U.S. and going back about seven years, you land in a traffic snarl on Tower Bridge Thames River in London in the summer of ’31. Traffic is being held up by one of the constant construction projects being done under the Economic Restoration Act. The public loves it, but the paperwork for all of this is torture for you and your staff, as you are the main bureaucrat they give all the administrative work to. What is even more of a headache is trying to pound and pent coins sitting in the Royal Mint to the Confederacy Standard Pound. Of course the House of Lords has to be waxing dramatic by introducing a bill to rename the country Britannia. Now you’re getting calls from members of the House of Commons complaining for no particular reason.



Your mind switches over to what you need to do when you get home. You have to help your son study for his Norse and Celtic Mythology exam, another part of the Confederacy Governing Council’s Aryan Education Act. You try and get your mind off of government work once again by rolling down the window and watching the sites. You can here another motorist railing on to his spouse about how the “damned bloody Colonials” won’t give the new trans-European power its due respect., being that they just gave diplomatic status to the former Queen and Prime Minister-in-exile Churchill diplomatic status.



You decide not give this fellow’s blather any more attention as you turn on the radio for some music. Instead you get another simulcasted announcement about the near-completion of the trans-Channel rail tunnels that will connect France, Britain and the rest of the Confederacy rail system. What the announcement doesn’t say is what your office has known for months; they have been using Jewish slave labor to build it.





You pan out again and descend on Moscow. Your head of the security detail for Lenin and you were hand picked for the purpose. You graduated at the top of your class from Moscow University with a Master’s Degree in Political Science. You surprised your parents by joining the Red Army, but garnered your father’s support by becoming one of the youngest senior officers ever commissioned. Now here you are, personally guarding Lenin with your very life. It hurts you to see him in his degraded state, having recently had a stroke that left him without the ability to walk and paralyzed on his left side. The things that he still had were his faculties, the ability to sway people with his fiery speech and that piercing stare that could chill the hardiest solider. You’re listening to him as he gives his opinion to the assembled Generals on recent Germ…ahem…Roman Confederacy agitation toward Soviet Union member states near their neighbor’s borders.



The subject is interesting, but not overly exciting as you have heard most of it before, despite Comrade “Father” Lenin’s ability to orotate. You look over the Moscow skyline from the bay-windowed office of the Kremlin. Smoke stacks of worker owned factories that rise against the new sky scrapers being built (despite the fact it is an imported capitalist idea). However, there is a dark side to this that sends chills through you. Half the phone lines in Russia are bugged and constantly monitored by Офис внутренне обеспеченности (Office of Internal Security). Thousands of “summary judgments” and executions have been carried out by the Офис правосудия (Office of Justice). You remind yourself that such things are necessary in these revolutionary times and such things have declined in recent years, but you still wonder why Comrade Lenin doesn’t trust the people that he loves so much. Those doubts dissolve as he gives you a fatherly look and a pat on the arm with his one good hand.



And so we return to the world at large and the events that are about to follow. In the early morning hours of September 8th, 1938, Japan launched air strike and invasion of the Constitutional Monarchy of Hawaii, 61st State of Union. After most of the Pacific fleet had been sunk they landed an invasion force and set up experimental Roman Confederacy rockets and aimed them at the mainland. They also announced the Sovereign Europe Doctrine with a summary in this statement, “You, the former colonies of the Great European Powers, forfeited your right to any role in our politics when you severed ties with your mother lands in your wars of rebellion. Now you come back and impose your will on our pursuits, much like an estranged child demanding inheritance from a parent. So, as you wage unjust war upon us, we will wage a just war of self defense upon you.”



A force of Marines, though deprived of their armor forces, hadn’t read that press release and really didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. They had evacuated to another part of the big island at the foresight of one of these officers who smelled more than just an air attack. They launched a gerilla war against Japanese occupation forces, which were unprepared for the tactics. This is where the art of war of the Native American tribes paid off. There were several violent clashes that reduce themselves to hand-to-hand fighting, a competition between American Standard Capoeira (imported from Cuba) and Japanese fighting styles (Kendo, Karate, and Jujitsu). By using little more than standard issue grenades the Marines blew up every supply store they could get their hands on and made the Japanese spend thousands of rounds on decoys. The Japanese simply ran out of ammunition, while the Marines had kept the use of small arms to minimum. Now the Japanese were outgunned and captured.



At this point it might be convenient to explain the condition and training of U.S. forces. When Lee had a look at Army units on the frontier, what he saw horrified him. Undernourished, improperly trained and improperly equipped units with some corrupt officers that weren’t doing their job. Of course this wasn’t universally true, but it was true for many. Lee, ever the vigilant soldier, took steps to reform and revamp the U.S. military. Military colleges were chartered across the country, to be regulated by West Point Academy. All troops were to be literate and college educated. Several degrees would be offered. You could earn all the way up to a Doctorate d in Military Logistics and Doctrine, in Naval, Calvary, or Infantry sciences. Over time, as the sophistication of our military grew, so did the number of jobs available to soldiers grow. Later legislation established a joint program with civilian colleges to train soldiers in degree fields like mechanical and civil engineering.



Lee also established a salary and pension program that rivaled anything else put into place in any other country. With a minimum of eight years of military service a person, upon retirement, would receive a guaranteed lifetime pension, U.S. bond based retirement benefits, and free insurance (a relatively new concept in Lee’s time). By the time of WWII they had extended benefits to job finding services and tax-exemption to all veterans of war.



The loss of naval forces was a severe blow, but not of the same type as OTL. We had the advantage of maximized industrial output to quickly replace lost ships. The main problem was deploying armor. Despite the fact that are forces were well trained and equipped, we maintained relatively small amounts of armored forces, as they had never been used in actual combat and we had seen no need for excessive amounts. That changed when President Roosevelt assigned command of U.S. forces in Europe to General George S. Patton. Patton was gruff man, but one who was a juxtaposition of cowboy and intellectual. He carried colt revolvers, but wrote poetry and was a student of history. He was also a brilliant tactician. He figured out how to maximize the tactical performance of armor and drilled his men day and night in those tactics. He then took every scrap of intelligence he had on the weaknesses of RC armor and drilled his troops not only to take advantage of those weaknesses, but to look for new ones when RC forces learned to avoid old ones.



The process began the slow and arduous victory in Europe. The victory over Japan was no less painful. American and Japanese forces were pretty evenly matched in weapons and training. The absolute dedication of Japan’s troops to die for their Emperor made bloody battles. But ATL we were prepared and matched their tactics with our own. We lured them out every chance we got and surprised them with every trick we had. During this time the Japanese landed an expeditionary force into Alaska through the Allusion Islands which we met and annihilated over a three month battle. By 1941 we were near the Japanese Home Islands.



In Europe we had taken control of Spain, Belgium, Iceland, Poland, and were working our way into France. The Roman Confederacy had made the unwise move of invading Soviet satellite states, believing the Japanese could occupy enough of our attention to keep us off their backs. The Soviets fought back and massed their forces and new ultra-heavy mobile artillery along the lines and pushed forward with all abandon. The Roman Confederacy has its own “super guns” and wonder weapons (including the long-range rockets and primitive cruise missiles). It was a war of breathtaking destruction and piled bodies up like cordwood. Their investment in the Eastern Front left the Western half of Europe with dangerously thin lines. The first decisive victory came in March of 1942 when we had finally neutralized the majority of submarines and naval mines around Britain. With the capture of Shetland Isle and her airfields we engaged in a naval blockade and constant bombardment of her shores, as well as launching bombings strikes.



But even with that RC British forces still clung. It was time to unleash the deadliest weapon ever seen, a nuclear bomb. The first was dropped in the English Channel, taking out Roman Confederacy naval reinforcements. With a flash two carrier groups and a formation of troop transports and destroyers were sunk. The only surviving ships were two submarines that had surface after their ballast tanks had been ruptured by the shockwave. The second was on the main body RC British Army forces. The local lakes rose at least half a foot as ground water was pushed out of the soft loam of the fields. What was left of army forces was a crater and blackish-brown circle where grass and the top layers of soil had been scoured away. We also rolled out pigeon guided smart bombs (yes…pigeon guided…there was a research project OTL). We were able to use fewer bombers and fewer bombs.



We were welcomed into London by the Free British Forces (forces that had defected and placed themselves under the command of the government-in-exile). We also took weapons labs and factories that held advanced weapon designs. If our invasion had been six to eight hours later then in all likelihood they would have launched advanced fighters. But one even more frightening discovery was now in plain sight. A long-range rocket was sitting on the launch pad and the nosecone assembly was sitting in the hangar with a nuclear warhead attached.



After a total communications blackout we went back online with radio traffic, convincing the rest of the RC forces that Britain was still under their control. The next move was a stroke of pure luck. The two rail tunnels that went under the Channel connected to rails that ended in Paris. We simply loaded up rail car after rail car with equipment and men and steamed onward toward France, unloading in Lille (clearing out forces there), and marched on Paris with in the time gap of a few hours where they had no idea of our presence. Troop transports landed right behind present forces and pushed hard and fast. From airfields in Paris we launched strikes into Germany and Italy. Two more A-bombs were dropped. Italy was taken first. Germany was taken after a furious battle in Sudetenland and a grind into Berlin.



Japan actually fell after the Roman Confederacy, but not without suffering some notable losses. The Japanese actually were manufacturing jet fighters in under ground bases that would have survived even nuclear weapons. The first wave of naval forces suffered massive damage from jet fighters that they simply couldn’t shoot down. We had to halt an invasion force of one million troops in the middle of the Pacific Ocean while we figured out what to do next. The plan was simple enough and involved a nuclear bomb. We launched as many bombers as possible with fighter escorts. Only a few, toward the back of the formation, each carrying one bomb. Two bombers raised to an altitude above the air battle and losed their bombs, equipped with altimeters. The fighters and bombers peeled away and the bombs exploded mid-air and the shockwave knocked the enemy fighters from the air. The rest of the bomber group separated and dropped their bombs are airfields and troop position. The last Japanese jet fighter offensive was met with imported German jet fighters. The final surrender came in February 1943.

Next time the Red Shadow will linger…

The explanation of how to use plasma weaponry (not my cannon which was too advanced for this world, but simpler devices)to the American Overlords of 2015, and about a half-dozen other tricks gave them much greater security. And in so doing, it confirmed the wisdom of my decision to trust their good hearts. They were harsh because they were afraid of terrorists. Making them stronger made them less afraid. And that let the kindness out.



Having thus proved myself a friend and soothed their fears, they listened when I told them to make “Free Cities” in the Middle East where everyone who wanted to live in peace, and was willing to sign on to a quite restrictive document could go. The new cities were built on piers into the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea, similar to Venice, and for similar reasons. The residents wanted to get away from the gunmen, and just be happy little merchants.



The gunmen hated it, but with the “no mercy” kill zones around the cities the merchants got rich and happy in secure conditions. It was rather like the gated communities in my home world except it was a city instead of a suburb.



Then we expanded to a nearby traditional city which lacked the clear lines of fire of the “Free City”. The expansion was founded on the idea that more people are decent and honorable than are crazy even in a crazy society. We gave away, free of charge, pump shotguns to every person over twelve in the city.



One of my fondest memories is seeing a line of fat, out-of-shape men and women on lunch break walk across a city square to a chanting crowd of young men and their hanger-on young women, and at shotgun point escort the troublemakers out of town. The scene shines in my mind’s eye.



The parasitical gunmen hated me, and named me in their propaganda broadcasts, Azareth, the demon prince of evil war. I guess it was an evil war because the people they had oppressed for so long, the people who actually were useful, had started to fight back. Didn’t the merchants and craftsmen know their place in life? Guess not.



Meanwhile, I took some training in AT, anti-terrorism operations. And I traded in my Mac-10 for a M-5 fletchette rifle.



They seemed similar levels of technology so that I could probably use the M-5 in about the same number of worlds as the Mac-10. The M-5 was a lot more devastating and reliable. It would chop a guy in two in about four seconds.



I refused a “smart” gun for the reason that many worlds’ technology level, what the Martian terraformer, who originally came from a twenty-seventh century Anno Domini world, called “bias” might not let it work in them. And my plasma cannon was for those worlds which did let higher tech work in them.



But all good things come to an end, and luck fails, and even the best bodyguards cannot stop every sniper attack.



I woke from versing-in cold and shivering which was a change from the last world which seemed to specialize in sand and heat.



An overcast sky gloomed over a chill and flat plain covered in snow for as far as the eye could see. I stood up to my thighs in snow, and guesstimated the temperature to be twenty with a further twenty-five mile per hour wind.



I needed shelter quickly.



A mylar tarp from the last world, and my middle ages style cloak from my homeworld came out of the backpack pronto. The tarp got strung up as a windbreak with a plasma cannon and an M-5 as its support poles.



Quickly running through my psionic skills and then my magic skills left me fifteen minutes colder and more worried with a big handful of nothing. That left technological means of creating warmth. A more detailed survey of my near surroundings revealed no fallen trees or branches.



So, I dug in the snow with a camp shovel made of ultra-lightweight ceramic which could double as a radio antenna. I found after a few minutes some grass which I proceeded to chop up with my memory metal hatchet because the ground had frozen solid.



Dear reader, if you are a verser, stock up on those silly Swiss knife type devices. Multiple use inventions are one of my biggest helps. When you are carrying everything you own on your back, you need to shave ounces when you can.



I considered giving up right then and there, let me tell you. This was a remarkably inhospitable world. But, I did not want to lose. Besides, the people here might need me, if there was any people in the whole world.



The only thing to do was to build an igloo. Pulling out a metal pan took but a moment, yet, I could feel myself more awkward and slow. The hard crust on the snow made things more difficult to dig, but at least it kept the snow from being sprayed into my eyes.



Slogging along I cleared a spot, and then built a wall that joined my windbreak. It would be easier with knife the Inuit used, but the sand-castle method of building an igloo sufficed since I had no other choice. Exhausted, and wretched, I kept on building. Finally, I started to feel a little warmer as the walls encircled me and got up to four feet.



The rest break, and the opening of the self-heating Chicken Noodle Soup package were heaven to my weary arms and cold ears. I shook as I tried to open the package from either cold or exhaustion, but the smell revived my smile.



The dome collapsed on me, and it took a long ten minutes to clear out the floor of the igloo. Another try, and I had a partial collapse which I held up with my back and arms while putting more snow up at the same time. The slightly rickety igloo needed a door, and I did not feel up to making something proper, so I just carefully removed a few pan bricks from the wall. I used them as the beginning of the central column to provide extra support to my rickety structure.



An outer windbreak wall of ice kept the blasting wind out, and my cloak served as a bed with the mylar as blanket. In less than five minutes, I was quite toasty inside my igloo that an Inuit child of ten could have bettered.



It was aggravating, but I scooted outside to get those blocks of grass that I had forgotten. They needed to thaw a bit, at least before they became part of a fire.



Then it was back into my makeshift bed, and off to a tired dreamland. I woke once, saw it was darker outside, ate a snack to keep up my energy level, and went back to bed.



You think jet lag is bad, what about world lag?



The next morning saw more soup, for breakfast. Vegetables with Beef is good, also courtesy of my last world.



I was just able to get a small fire started, and that warmed up the igloo a lot. I wondered if I needed a chimney hole, but I would wait and see.



A quick excursion outside let me know just how cold “cold” remained. The dazzling light of the Sun broke through the clouds for about three minutes, and it lighted a fiery sword stretched across the icy snow directed toward me, the viewer. The reflection dazzled the eyes and lifted the spirits. I had been here twelve hours, and already I missed the sun.



Inside, I studied my items, and made the best shield against cold I could. Then back outside, I hiked about a mile square looking for anything of use. A five pound branch cheered me a little. Firewood would help.



A movement to my left got me scanning the slope that rose in that direction. Minutes slipped by, and it looked as if I would need to move, or suffer frostbite and then hypothermia. The polar bear lost patience first. It rose to all fours, and then to its hind legs with a challenging roar from about fifty yards away.



My first reaction to run, I stifled. If I ran, that would incite the bear, and it would probably freeze my lungs, to boot.



The long walk back to my igloo became worse when the bear made to follow me in a shambling stroll. But I got in first, and with M-5 and plasma cannon, I went back out. It was nowhere to be seen.



Nervous about the protection offered by my flimsy igloo, I sat about making a more proper one. A fire in my old one used up the branch, and melted ice so that I had something to drink which is essential in the cold climate surprisingly enough. And it gave me water to layer onto my newer and sturdier and chimney hole owning, and air-blocked door in proper igloo fashion.



The water froze and strengthened the igloo a lot, but it was still a relatively crude structure. But I slept inside with more warmth, and no drafts, and a feeling of a job well done.



I heard some ka-thumps next door during the night, and I wondered if my old igloo would be standing in the morning. Clutching my rifle, I waited for the bear to attack my igloo, but it did not. Possibly, the wind had knocked down the rather frail first one. But I was not convinced.



The next morning after eating one of my steadily shrinking supply of soups in self-heating packages, I slipped out of the igloo to see the outside world.



The crashing weight of a paw held by a nearly half-ton of predator caught me in my back, and hooked me out of the air blocking passage like I was a fish in a river. He expertly flipped me through the air to crash ten feet from the door in an awkard landing.



Then my ambusher stood up beside my door, and roared so that the world echoed, or so it seemed to me as I stared at the ten foot tall brute.



Taduesz

  We’ve said something recently about CharGen, that is, character generation, one of the core mechanics of most role playing games.  Another that gets a lot of attention in game design discussions is what is referred to as rewards systems, that is, what the players get for playing the game well.

  It is taken as axiomatic in discussions of role playing game design that if you want players to act in a certain way during play, you need to design a rewards system that encourages this type of play and discourages other kinds of play.  This has inaptly been called the carrot and stick approach, trying to suggest that there is a reward for doing the right thing and a penalty for doing the wrong thing.  The actual carrot and stick approach is to dangle the reward in front of someone such that it always remains out of reach, but they keep pursuing it.  This strikes me as a particularly poor choice for a role playing game, as eventually the players will realize that they’re never going to get the carrot, and they’ll stop moving toward it.  If you conjure an image in your mind in which the stick is attached to the back of the donkey and the carrot hangs on a string from the end of it, so that the donkey keeps walking toward the carrot even as it moves with him, you’ll realize that this is the sort of system that only really works well for jackasses.

  There is an important lesson to be seen in this, too.  Long ago I played in a game in which the reward system involved gaining experience points to a target number, at which point you were permitted a roll on a table which would indicate a minor character improvement, provided that this character had not previously received this improvement.  As play progressed, it was more and more difficult to reach the level at which the next roll was permitted, and less and less likely that any benefit would be received for it.  The result was that the players ignored the reward system, as something that didn’t functionally matter to play.  If the reward system is seen by the players as dangling that carrot unattainably in front of them, it will quickly become superfluous, encouraging nothing.

  However, that notion of rewarding desired conduct and penalizing undesired conduct is often fundamentally misunderstood, resulting in rewards systems that are internally conflicted and inconsistent, systems which in attempting to reward one sort of play actually encourage another.

  Multiverser has no “rewards system” at all; there is a sense in which nothing is rewarded and nothing is given as a reward.  Yet people play it, and find rewards, because the rewards are inherent to the experience.  This is the starting point to designing a reward system:  understand what it is that your players want to get out of the game, and encourage that.  By looking at it in a game like Multiverser, where there is no built-in reward system, we can begin to fathom what it is that gets people to play, and so understand what kinds of rewards are likely to work.

  To some players, the game is about the challenge, the competition, going up against something that you have to defeat.  At the risk of infringing on someone else’s theories of role playing, we will call this player the Gamist.  To him, the ultimate reward is that feeling that you just won, that you beat the odds or overcame the enemy or solved the problem in a significant way.  I’m currently playing in a Multiverser game on our official forum here at Gaming Outpost in which not so long ago I was engaged in a battle of magic.  The attacker fled; the attacker’s conjured assassin was driven away.  I had beaten the enemy, I had won the conflict.  The gamist reward here is phenomenal.

  To the player we would call a Simulationist, reward is a lot more subtle.  It involves feeling like you’ve entered another reality, in some sense, that you’ve explored a possibility and discovered something about it.  In that same game world, my background in law convinced the local prince to assign me the rather complex task of organizing his judicial system and creating a legislature as a way to bring his medieval princedom toward a modern democratic citystate.  I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to organize a dozen judges into a tiered judicial system with an emphasis on precedent, and more on devising a bicameral legislature in which one house represented the fading nobility and the other the mostly illiterate peasantry (how do you arrange elections for representatives when the electorate can’t read and write?).  I was watching the world evolve, and was involved in the center of it.  There is a great reward in being part of something like this.

  There is another kind of player who is often called the Narrativist.  There are a lot of ways to explain this player that that would lead someone to object to the terminology, but let me suggest that the reward for narrativists is the creation of something of a morality play; that is, we’ve created a story which is about an issue.  In that same world in which I fought the wizard and organized the legislature, the man who appointed me his Chief Justice required that I “swear fealty” to him, and I in essence did so:  I told him that I didn’t promise not to argue with him, but in the end I would recognize he had the right to decide what the law was.  But this man had closed all the churches in the princedom.  It was his opinion that the religious people were fighting with each other to the detriment of the community, so he made public religious ceremony illegal.  My character is very religious; and after taking his position he discovered that one of the major religious groups which was shut down was essentially agreed with his own faith.  That put him in a position in which he had sworn obligations to uphold a law that could easily be used to persecute people who shared his religious beliefs, which indeed could be used to accuse his self of treason.  The tension here is a wonderful narrativist premise, as the character must wrestle with whether he can serve as the chief jurist in a legal system that oppresses his own faith, or whether he can from his position of limited authority make it possible for that faith (and others?) to continue to be practiced and encouraged in the city despite the strictures placed upon it.  The reward here comes from resolving those tensions in one direction or another.  Narrativist rewards can in some ways be the most interesting.  My character could be the deliverer who puts the crack in the wall that ultimately admits the flood, such that the prince is forced to permit faith again to be expressed and practiced openly.  He could instead be the martyr whose death galvanizes the people to stand up for their freedom.  There are great story possibilities here, and the realization of those story possibilities is itself the reward.

  Mechanical reward systems can be gamist, narrativist, or simulationist; what that means ultimately is that the rewards encourage one kind of play.  The question becomes, how do these systems work?  I am convinced that a functional rewards system has two aspects; these must both be aligned the same way, or the system is incoherent–that is, it encourages and discourages the same sort of play at the same time.  I think I can give an example of a simple and familiar system which encourages gamist play of a particular sort (there are many types of play within each of the general groups mentioned), and of a popular fix that is used to attempt to change it which in fact makes it incoherent.  It is probably the most popular and best known model for role playing game advancement, and it’s probably the best known fix as well.

  The model is simple.  You kill monsters and collect treasure, and this gives you experience points.  Experience points are valuable because when you get enough you advance a level and so are better at killing monsters and getting treasure.

  Some people don’t want the game to be all about killing monsters and getting treasure.  They want it to be about playing your character well and creating good stories.  So they dump part or all of the point system for killing monsters and getting treasure, and instead give experience points for good role playing, in character actions, and advancing the story.  These experience points are valuable why?  When you get enough of them you can advance to the next level, and so become better at what?  You become better at killing monsters and getting treasure.

  I hope it’s patently obvious at this point what the problem is.  The functional reward system gives you something for doing what the game wants you to do that makes you better able to do what the game wants you to do.  The so-called “fixed” system gives you something for doing what the referee wants you to do that makes you better able to do what the referee doesn’t want you to do.  There is a fundamental discontinuity between the two prongs of the reward system.  It is incoherent.

  If you learn nothing else from this article, remember that a functional reward system has two aspects.  Rewards are given for actions of a particular type, and they are in a currency which can be used for actions of a particular type, and those types must be in accord or the system is dysfunctional.  A rewards system must both recognize desired play and facilitate desired play.

  There is a sense in which rewards can be almost anything and fit any type of play; it’s more a matter of how they’re earned and how they may be spent than of what they are.  Yes, there are some rewards that fit some kinds of play better.  But having just seen the flaw in the usual fix to the common system, you may be wondering whether it’s possible to design a rewards system for play that is not gamist.  Although I don’t consider rewards systems necessary (remember, Multiverser doesn’t have one–play is its own reward), I think it is possible.  Perhaps a consideration of the possibilities will put some ideas forward.

  To recap, let’s consider the gamist model.  A character earns experience points for beating the odds, whether that’s for killing monsters, solving riddles, capturing enemy spies, disarming explosives, or any other in-game challenge.  Those points are then spent to make him better at killing monsters, solving riddles, capturing enemy spies, disarming explosives, or some other in-game challenge.  This is the basic gamist reward system, because rewards are given to reinforce the inherent reward of winning, and are a type which help the character win over greater odds in the future.

  A player recognizes that his character has values which could easily be brought into conflict.  He moves that character into a place where the conflict will be forced upon the character, where he will have to choose between one value and another, and in doing so is given a credit.  He may then use the credit to purchase something to add to play that will help resolve this conflict one way or the other, such as bringing another character into the scene, or placing a previously unmentioned object within reach.  This is an arguably narrativist reward system, because it gives rewards for the creation of premise-enhancing situations which are of a type which helps the player advance the core of the story.  (This is more difficult, as a very similar reward system could be used in a simulationist exploration of character/situation game.  It also involves aspects that are not inherently narrativist, such as the ability of the player to add something to the game world; there are some excellent gamist games available from independent publishers which include this idea.  The critical point here is that the player who creates a situation in which a moral issue is brought into conflict is rewarded with the power to resolve that conflict, and so create story.)

  For a simulationist example, we’ve got to do something a bit more radical, perhaps.  A character in a new city takes a job as a stablehand.  The player puts effort into describing the life and activities of a stablehand, and his character’s feelings about this; he controls the character to be a good stablehand.  A tally is kept of the time he spends at this activity, with extra credits for doing it well.  When a predetermined score is reached, the owner of the stable approaches the character and offers to promote him to work as a groom.  This is arguably a simulationist reward system, as the rewards are given for playing appropriately in the context of the setting and lead to new opportunities to explore other aspects of the setting.  A better example that works well in a more modern setting would be for the character to be a reporter for his high school or college newspaper; by doing a good job at reporting the stories that matter to the school, he gets enough points to become a reporter for the local paper, county paper, small city paper, major city paper, then perhaps a correspondent for CNN, each advance opening up areas of the world to him that were not available before.  Other players in this particular scenario could be photographer/cameraman, editor, and assistant, with functions that keep the group together as a team, but require them to advance as a team.  Thus the simulationist system rewards exploration by enabling exploration.

  There are countless ways to do reward systems for each sort of play. I believe that the way to get at it, though, is to begin with an idea of how the game works without any reward system at all, to determine what sort of play you want to encourage, and then create a reward system which gives the players currency in response to the sort of actions desired which can be spent to make possible more of that sort of actions.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

After reading Mark’s article Funny I got to thinking, as I’m sure you did as well when you read it, about the humor in my games. I started thinking about what works to deal with it, when it works and how I make it work. After mulling it over for a bit I’ve come to the conclusion that humor is unavoidable in my games. In fact, I think that it’s unavoidable in every RPG. But that doesn’t mean we have to let it take over the game.



It’s been my experience that most humor happening during a game is disruptive. Perhaps not totally disruptive, but it does distract from the task at hand (i.e. pulls you out of the game world momentarily). I think the problems that we run into when humor happens is: “How do we get back to the game?” We all like a good laugh but we also like a good game, and if we let laughter take over the game will loose out. What to do, what to do…



As I see it, laughter during our games is normally based on in-game events that trigger something the group thinks is funny. That something can be a funny story from games gone by, a funny real-life story or even an honest to goodness in-character something that was supposed to be funny. No matter what the funny thing is, it’s normally started by something in-game.



I had a PC in one of my horror games that ended up, after much strangeness, trying to hold off a group of cultists in a restaurant with a banana. Screwy situation for sure, and tons of laughter was had by all as the description of events was laid out. As the GM I basically ran with it, using the laughable situation in my descriptions, making the NPC cultists react strangely to the banana and adding some funny bits into the dialogue as well.



What I didn’t do was let the situation stop the game. It’s not easy to do, but you take what the players give you,just like we do with non-humor situations, and run with it. This not only allows you to have some fun and get a few laughs with the group, but also keeps you in control. When you’re in control, you can stop it at any time.



With the banana situation, I let the laughter work for a bit and then turned the situation into a more serious issue. Lives were on the line after all as the cultists were clearly there to kill the PCs. No matter how funny/strange the situation, a possible deadly confrontation was never out of the picture. I continued to move the plot forward. The key to being able to do this is to remember where things were headed before the humor happened.



Your party is always in the process of doing something. Exploring a dungeon, slaying a dragon, getting information from a computer, investigating the effects of a new spell, sitting and waiting for something, etc. No matter what it is, PCs are always doing something before the laughter starts. Remember what that something is and keep heading for it in your descriptions. Laughter cannot be maintained for long if the plot continues to move forward. It will linger for a while, and the plot may move a bit slower while the players are giggling, but if you keep things moving it will end and you will maintain control of the situation.



There are times when you need to kill the laughter quickly, and taking the long road of “rolling with it” isn’t a viable option. As you are in control you can shorten the time frame by advancing the plot quicker. Let’s turn back to the banana situation for a second.



When I could see that the humor could last quite a while and ruin the tension that was supposed to occur, I decided to speed things up. The cultists pulled out guns, with one of them also producing a grenade – without a pin of course. The group’s laughter died quickly and the PCs turned to the matter at hand. Sure we still had a few giggles, but I would not acknowledge them. We were back in business and this was serious. All focus was once again back on the game.



As you roll with the laughter, using the humor to help describe the situation and keep the plot moving, watch for when the laughter starts to die. Once that happens, do not allow it to start again. Do not acknowledge any attempts to prolong the humor. Focus your attention only on the PCs who are acting seriously and in-game. Those not initially focused will quickly become so. No one wants to miss out on the action if they can help it.



I do not suggest that you kill the laughter outright. Not only is that very difficult to do, I’ve found it’s not as effective as acknowledging it and working with it. It may take a couple of times, but after a while the group will see that humor isn’t a bad thing – it has it’s place and time. However, in order for the group to know when they need to let the laughter die and move on with the game they need the GM to guide them.



Well, that’s enough out of me. Let me know what you think and I’ll see you in the forums!

I woke in a familiar alley in Philadelphia, but it was thankfully daytime. A long time ago, I had met a vampire when I walked out of this alley. Wondering what I would see, I stepped with forced casualness out into the deserted street.



Small signs on nearby buildings stated “For sale!”; “Auction April 14, 2015, no reserve.”; “Tenants wanted, cheap!”. They were artistic; the design done with more advanced computers and printers than I had known. But they were flags of surrender all the same.



Flocks of birds flapped upward, and grass grew in a crack in the middle of the street, and a faint honking assured me of human life somewhere in the dusty metropolis. Maybe this was an alternate reality where Gavin the Vampire had gotten his way, and destroyed Humanities faith in the Gods and the Creator which had been their best weapon against the vampires.



I turned toward the honking noise, and set out walking. A certain eeriness had me looking over my shoulder occasionally as if someone was watching me. Haunted cities can do that to you.



So I checked my skills. A simple mental focus on a piece of ragged plastic did not cause it to move, or anything. A whistletone spell did not summon it to me. But it did someone something else.



More birds soared skyward, and then a stop sign at the end of the road changed its message. I gawked for a second at the outdoor computer screen.



“Stop in place. Do not move. Make no attempt to communicate or signal in any way. Resistance will be met with lethal force.” The sign said in English, and then Spanish, Arabic, Kanjii script, pictographs, and finally American Sign Language. It then recycled itself. Even though the message was plain and shown only for a moment, I felt compelled to keep staring at it, and I caught it all the first time. I read fast, but not that fast.



A faint buzzing to my left, and with my peripheral vision, I saw a two foot long double bladed helicopter. It carried twin turrets for some sort of miniaturized gatling gun. One was on top, and the other was on the bottom, and both were trained on me.



More buzzing could be heard to my right, and above, behind, and now I saw one of these creatures full on. It looked menacing. And it moved with the delicate precision and deadliness of a skilled fencer.



I had no magic or psionics. Rather desperately, I tried to mentally access my Lekostian cybernetics, but they blandly proclaimed a “high-order error” back to me, and referred me to tech support if I had any questions. Seeing as tech support was dozens of light years and many universes away, that seemed unhelpful.



So I stood there sweating and then getting angry, and then cooling off both phycically and mentally as the minutes ticked by.



Finally, a van drove around the corner, and a door opened in the side.



“Get in.” The former stop sign instructed.



Once inside, I noticed how heavily everything had been constructed. This was a bomb-mobile used for transporting active explosives, I surmised.



We eventually came to a stop somewhere, and the door opened. A pleasant female voice invited me to step out into the corridor and to leave my backpack behind. I did, and I found one door which I rather resignedly took since I did not want Them to get nervous or irritated. Them might decide to express that feeling.



The room had an uncomfortable raw edge, and it smelled of claustrophobic security which its hundred by fifty foot size did little to diminish. It was obviously durable beyond almost anything I had seen except for some of the creations of really advanced cultures.



“The charges against you are terrorism, illegal immigration, possesion of a fusion device commonly known as a nuclear bomb. What say you?” Blared from a speaker on the wall.



“Not guilty, um, not really my fault, and the plasma cannon is a sub-crtical mass energy system enabled to temporarily achieve fusion levels, but on its worse day, it only would pack the explosive power of a hundred pounds of TNT which is significant, but hardly in the range of a nuclear device.”



A whirring noise sounded which might be only for my benefit.



“Found guilty of being an illegal alien, and possessing a high volume of explosive material. These two in conjuntion merit death. May God or whichever deity you worship, or choose not to worship have mercy on your soul, if you have one.”



Another whirring as a pipe with a nozzle end rose from the floor. I stood in a gas chamber. And so I prepared to fight.



Primitive compared to my Lekostian cybernetics, but still my extendable fingernails had their uses. I scraped a chunk of concrete up with a fingernail, and frantically tried to dice it into dust which I would add my spit to, and insert the mass of dirt as a stopper into the nozzle.



“Sentence suspended due to needs of investigation.” Blared from the wall, and the deathpipe retreated back into the floor.



A door on the far side of the room opened, and a general flanked by two heavily armed bodyguards in black with a wide array of weapons stashed in their harnesses came in.



“Get the gentleman a seat, and something to drink. Coffee?”



“Coca-cola if you have it.” I responded shakily as the adrenalin left my body. He nodded genially from across the room. And soon some attendants had a table and chairs for us, and my coke. It was classic good cop/bad cop.



This knowledge did not save me from a surge of gratitude for being treated like a human being.



“So, who are you?”



I considered the question for a moment, and then shrugged. No doubt they had sensors on me at the moment, but even if I could muster the psi focus to fiddle with my body’s reactions, that would likely only mean they went to the sodium penthothal that sooner. I could suppress my reactions, but not make a convincing fake over a number of hours.



“Call me Taduesz. I am a verser, an extradimensional. An American.”



“Really?” He invited me to go on, and I let the silence stretch for a bit. He conceded with good grace which was easy as he held the high card, a black ace of spades with my name on it.



Speaking to the table brought up pictures of an alley from orbit that appeared empty, and then poof, there I was. It was the nightmare of many a verser. A global scan with very fast reaction time. Other versers had told me of people showing up to meet them, but unless directly summoned this was the quickest reaction I had heard of.



“You are very good, very thorough.”

“Paranoiad as all get out, you meant to say.” He responded, and I smiled.

“I figured that was understood.” I said, and he laughed. See we were all good buddies here. The soldiers who had unobtrusively never let the muzzles of their guns off me chuckled as well. My opinion of the organization went up. Most low-level shooters did not cultivate a sense of humor for prisoners. I added subtlety to their list of attributes.



“Of course, your story is impossible. We want to know how you developed a stealth technology for terrorist infiltration. Your target, allies, sponsor, nationality, the usual.” He said with casual cool that was a threat.

“Yeah, and we might even let you choose which Hostage City gets it in the teeth.” One soldier hissed with a shocking venom.

The general waved him down.

“Now, no need for us to go bomb a couple square blocks of Damascus or Cairo yet. Taduesz here could decide to be very reasonable and save the taxpayers the trouble.”



I thought for a second. And then very slowly, I reached down to my ankle for the money wallet I strapped there.



Pulling it off in exzaggerated slow motion, I pulled out a coin apparently made of obsidian.



“Have your boys and girls carbon date it. And x-ray it. And then put it next to an isolated computer while in some bright light.”

He took it and asked what it would do. I smiled, and asked for a cot. Frustrated, they left, and my cot was sent in which was another good one in their favor. It would have been easy to justify not giving me one. Despite their harshness, I was starting to like these guys.



The coin-shape contained a 1995 nickel, a small pin of radioactive uranium that had decayed to a much smaller level due to the enormous time span the little time capsule had undergone. I had it near Tau Ceti from some alien selling “Genuine Extinct Earth Artifacts.” And it held a terribly simple and rugged computer clock powered by the radiation. The clock had been counting for over a billion years.



Within the hour, they were back to me with a group of excited and angry scientists, and the general and several more guards. I knew why the scientists were upset. I had turned over their favorite theories of the Universe. So they called me a hoaxer, and a charlatan with one breath as with another, they begged me to explain. Humans are not very rational in case you had not noticed.



“Wait until they look at my other stuff.” I said to the general over the clamor.

“They already are.” He replied with a kind of helpless look at the pushing and shoving and hysterical questions.

I gave them some advice on what not to do with my equipment, and I gave the scientists enough red meat to chew on.



“We are going to want the rest of your data. Even if it turns out to be complete fraud, my chief scientists say that it is a very interesting fraud which could shed useful light on a number of issues.” The general said.

This was an interesting way of looking at it. My respect for these people might have grown. Either they were off the deep end with that theory, or they had some theoretical framework for using lies to find the truth. Or maybe, it was as simple as the notion that the best lie has truth in it, and they thought they could sort out the wheat from the chaff.



“One of the implications of what I said was that death is not such a problem for me. I don’t like it, but its bearable.”

“So?” The general said as I walked up to him with my hands behind my back.

“So, stop threatening me with an empty hand. If you want my help, convince me.” In a way, it was me that was bluffing. They could gas me, and that notion sent the raging heebie-jeebies going up and down my spine.

“You want the nickel tour in less than a billion years?” He said with an attempt at humor.

“Not just the facility, the world.”

“I’ll give you my view on it which is SatCom’s view.” He replied, and ushered me out of the room. His guard objected, but the general replied calmly. This was a command decision. If I was who I said I was, then the downside risk of me killing him, or destroying the facility somehow was worth the potential upside.

With this, I figured they were not letting me out in the open air where I might spray an aerosol full of super Ebola.



We went up in a glass elevator to his command center. Glass walls looked out on green fields. And then a wall would change and a picture from somewhere in the world would flash up for the merest second. But somehow, I remembered every detail without trying.

“Turn down the focus, our visitor is overloading.” The general ordered, and the pictures lost some vividness.

“Advances in understanding of neuro-physiology coupled with new ‘monitors’.” One guy explained to me as I walked up to examine one more closely, and I realized that everyone who might need to know who I was in the large room already did. Their internal memo system was formidable.

“The green field is real. Studies showed that pictures of a green field were not nearly as pschyolically beneficial as being able to look through glass straight at it.” A woman explained. I was getting briefed.



So I tossed out a couple words to guide the briefing.

“Hostage Cities.”

“Damascus, Cairo, PA area, Lebanon, Baghdad, Riyhadh are the primary targets for retributive strikes.”

“If we are struck by a national of one of those states, or it can be reliably proven that one of those states or people inside it had a hand in financing, training, recovery, or support in any way, then we make a response to the city in question.”



I was aghast.

“That’s horrible.”

“Yes, it is.” The general said re-entering the discussion. “So is bombing our people. We merely require that the govenrments of the Unstable Region enforce their own laws.”

“Which you made them pass.”

“Yes.” The general said with a flinty stare. There was no apology in them.

“Its either that or let them bomb us at will, or totally destroy them, or totally subjugate them by the methods of Vlad Tepes, public mass torture, because we would have to be harsher than their own governments to get them to submit to us directly.”

“So you are the Overlords of the planet?”

“Yes, again.” The general said wearily. “Look, we tried other ways. We tried to have a world order, but for reasons that still provoke a lot of arguement as to whose fault it was, this did not happen. No crying over spilt milk.”

“So, how successful is it?”

“Not bad, we had one serious smallpox scare in Atlanta last year, but the cities are emptying out nicely. We contained it with only five hundred casualties.” A smile lighted his face as he described a ‘victory’.



“Why was Philadelphia so empty?”

“You’re in the outskirts of the old town now. Turned back to the forrest mostly.” Someone commented as he flickered slightly. Then I saw others flicker. I was surrounded by holograms. The guards and the general were real, as was about ten percent of the rest in the room.



A soldier chuckled.

“I’m starting to believe this guy, General. He just twigged onto the telecomuters.”



“Most of our workforce is telecommuters which is driven by the fiber optic landlines laid down by the Defence Communications Act of 2004 which did for telecommuters what the interstate highways did for the 1950′s. Its easier on everyone. No commuting.

But the military reason is that a large metropolis is a too tempting target for terrorists. The largest city in the nation has a million people, and it is losing a thousand people a day. We hope to speed that up. People either live by themselves as the New Hermits on five hundred acre of no other people and use a ‘copter or a Humvee to get in and out, or they live in stretches with a house on a road every couple hundred feet, or they live in villages legally limited to ten thousand people. Most of those top out at about thirty-five hundred.”



“It makes it hard for a terrorist to do serious damage, and of course, most of these villages have single roads in and out so that a plague can be easily contained with two heli-lifted APCs.” A major said as he flickered past.



Why, I wanted to ask, but I did not want to ask. The general answered my unspoken question.



“L.A. nuke. At first we thought the Chinese had done it. They had threatened enough times.”

I nodded for I remembere in my original world, the Chicoms threatening on several occasions to nuke the West Coast.

“But our scientists quickly determined that it was a crude weapon that was ‘lucky’ to have worked at all. And we traced the bomb material to Arab sources, and to a group of terrorists in Syria. So we napalmed the countryside for a dozen miles in every direction. But it was not enough. They had died, five thousand terrorists, and they were supposed to be happy according to the Poisen Swamp’s media.”



“Arab media.” A lady explained. “Makes our worst yellow journalism in our history look downright responsible.”



“We bombed Damascus, rather harshly, even though we did not firebomb it. And we caught that butcher, Hafaz Assad who had sympathized with us in English, while he in Arabic rooted the crowds on. He acted like we were fools. In under a day, we put in a new government. And we told them the rules. And we told everyone else the rules.”



“There was plenty of support, reaching nearly forty percent for turning the whole ME into green glass. Anger and panic and determination to never ever let it happen again ruled the nation. Things got hairy for a while.” The general said.



“What the general is too modest to mention is his Congressional Medal of Honor for …”

“That will be enough.” The general barked with fury riding his face.

“No, sir, it is not. He needs to understand.” A woman said, and the rest of the room agreed.

“I put down a coup d’ etat by certain high-ranking officers with the aid of that piece of garbage M-16.”



I watched a video recording of a stone-faced colonel walk into a bar where a dozen armed men of high authority conspired, and try to arrest them. And in the ensuing fight take enough wounds to kill a man twice over, and have his gun go balky, and still prevail. It was in black and white; the product of a anti-robber video.



The general looked weary to the bone.

“You may not be able to use everything I have, but I will offer what help I can unstintingly.” I said as the room erupted into cheers. Somehow they knew of the advanced tech I had, and the possibility of changing the world.



Perhaps, if I could make them feel safe enough, they would venture to drain the swamp rather than simply put up seawalls against its toxic tide.



Taduesz