The Gaming Outpost

The stale smell of the couch, and a popped spring lulled me to sleep. The click of a trigger had me drawing my M-5 from under the couch before I fully woke up.



My boss at the detective agency pointed a .38 revolver from behind his desk at some nervous punk with an envelope in his hand.



“You-you’ve been served. Can-can I leave now?”

“Don’t try to sneak up on a guy next time, or there might not be another next time.” My boss growled, and I relaxed shifting over to breathing exercises and a bit of meditation to get my heart rate under control.



After the punk left, my boss looked over at me.



“Way to wake up in the morning. By the way, nice reflexes.” He nodded toward my gun, and rubbed sleep out of the corner of his eyes before grabbing a couple plastic bowls and some spoons that needed a rinse and a scrape to serve as containers for corn flakes and milk.



I set down to breakfast with him, and compared this mentally to my sea bass and strawberry cream cake feast of last night. How have the mighty fallen, I told myself with a rueful smile. Actually the flakes weren’t bad.



We both looked at the envelope like it was a poisen snake, and my boss turned from it where it lay on the desk to me. I scooped the bowls off the desk, and reached out and dropped them into the sink.



“Give me a report, Tadeusz. What am I paying you the big bucks for?” He growled with as much of a friendly smile as he could muster this early in the morning.

“Big bucks?” I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Big bucks.”



“Sir, we’ve got two people I’m suspicious of at Tychor Shipyard, and one guy at Halston Shipping, a ‘young Mr. Halston’. ”



“He’s a jerk and a cheapskate. My sister dated him in high school. Once. He tried to get her to sneak out of a restaurant to avoid the bill. She ended up paying.”



“Right. I think, but cannot prove, that jerk is bribing the client rep in Tychor to use his influence illegitamately to convince his own company to agree to a bad deal. I think the guy in the office is covering it up somehow. But I can’t prove anything.”



My boss nodded.



“Good job, you got a nose for trouble.”



I laughed thinking to myself of all the nasty situations I had found myself in. Maybe, I was God’s troubleshooter with an emphases on ‘shooter’.



“I also recruited help, Jessica and Jack Black are interested in helping for the sake of settling old debts and soothing upset stomachs and consciences.”



He stared at me for a long moment.



“Well, you have a unique style. I’ve heard good things about him, and nothing bad about her which in my field means pretty good indeed.”



“Someone stole the bike.”



My boss shrugged, and told me to go down to a nearby junk store, and buy another for ten bucks. So I did. The early morning light silvered the roads, and tendrils of fog evaporated from the streets as I walked.



Soon, re-biked, I called Jessica on my watch.

“Your voice is crystal clear. Nice cel-phone. Where can I get one?” Jessica said with female laughter in the background.

I turned off my watch’s optimizing program, and static crept back into the conversation.

“Uh, yeah. If you’re not busy…”

“No, just a boring day at the pool. Secret agent Jessica Black reporting for duty, control.”

I hoped her enthusiasm for spy novels did not override her self-preservation instincts.



“Can you manage that conversation with the mistress. Find out who she is.”



“Oh, is that all? I found out last night, and invited her over to the pool party. She has a pretty bad swan dive. Looks like a drunken goose if you ask me.”



The efficiency of the female grapevine among the elite should not have shocked me, but it did.



“Very impressive. Get back to me on that, and I may have another mission for you.”



“A girl’s work is never done.” She said, but her voice sounded cheerful.



Something was bugging me. And then I realized, I’d walked out without checking the envelope.



D’oh.



So I biked back.



“I’m out of the investigation of our office cover-up guy. He has a restraining order on me and employees of the same.” He held the envelope up, and then he threw it down on the dirt and gravel outside his trailer.



“It just makes me so mad. I could kill them myself. I try to catch crooks, but the crooks have friends in government, and the friends have friends on the bench and nobody important ever gets caught. Tadeusz, we are drowning in corruption.” He sat down on his front porch and hung his head. He might have been crying. The fellow did not look like a paladin, he looked fat, and balding, and a little dirty.



I was starting to get personally offended. Scooping up the notice, I carefully read it. My supposition held up.



“We are going to see justice in Straits City. First thing, you fire me. Then I’m not banned from investigating. Two don’t tell them you fired me until they bring you up under charges. You think you could weasel that with a good lawyer?”



“Good lawyer? I know a tough lawyer, could slice and dice their pet weasels. Moved here from Jersey to get in on the boom which is now bust. Guy named Young. His problem is he’s honest.” He looked ready to fight, and we shared a moment of cameraderie while something bothered me. Never mind, it wasn’t important, I decided as I set off again.



Actually I was sort of happy to have that notice served. It seemed too early for such moves, and that meant office guy was nervous.



So I biked back to Tychor, and slipped in when the receptionist was turning a page in her romance tome.



I plopped myself down in his office, and waited, taking the time to read the papers off his desk.



He came in, and balked at the door.



“You are not supposed to be here. I have a court order. Get out.”



“Hi, I’m Tadeusz, reporter for a new paper starting up. Seeing if I can find any dirt about corrupt officials taking bribes. Know any dirt?”



I was practically laughing in his face while he turned blotchy patches of red and white.



“I’ll call the cops.”



“Good idea. Cheaper on gas if they come here, and take your confession.” His voice was lowering and mine was raising slightly.



He looked around, and stepped over to his desk to fumble in a drawer. I put my hand in my pocket for my knife figuring I could get it out quicker than a gun. The bottle of pills he pulled out relaxed me; I’m not so sure about him.



“Just get out. I have nothing, nothing to say to you.” His low hoarse words, and the way he looked around made me sure he was terrified of others overhearing him.



“Friend, confession is good for the soul. Its also a whole lot cheaper than doctor bills.” I spoke quietly, and he looked up to see my compassion. It was like looking into terror, a maddened animal caught in a trap. But he refused to break.



I walked out, and slipped around as I had done before.



“Back to check on the copier?”

The office next door asked me, and I nodded giving it a good lookover. We both heard the following conversation through the wall.



“Callton (Halston, I assumed), they know. We have to stop. Pull back. It won’t work. No. Very well. Yes, I’ll calm down. Yes, okay.”



The rest faded as he stopped talking so excitedly.



I looked over at the manager who sat riveted while calculations ran through his brain.



“You’re not a copier repairman.”



“How can you say that? I did repair your copier.”



He smiled in a grim way at my jest and my point. I try not to lie; if the other person misunderstands, oh well. Jesus did that same thing, so I guess its okay if used well.

“OK. But this, this I have to take to upper management…” I raised my hand.

“There’s a problem in spy novels. Who do you trust? Does he have a protector in the top ranks? Besides, you know what happened, but can you prove it?”

Bitterly, he frowned, and then he got up to pace the room. Frustration roared out in silence as he stalked back and forth.



“I knew, I knew some of the numbers seemed awfully tight to projected limits like they chose to spend every last penny alotted and other things seemed way flabby. And the way that design company got treated last month seemed pretty lowdown to me. They got forced to make adjustments to a design at major expense which looked to me to be our fault. I considered saying something because we were trashing our reputation, and in a business like this rep matters, a lot, but those above me seemed cool with it.” His whispers laid out to me another scheme.



Grekkar Design had made the plans for a mod on the Mary Piper, and then they had cut their projected costs for another design on a sister ship thinking they would do a few changes, but be fundamentally the same. Good business all around for Tychor and Halston and Grekkar. But then Tychor charged for lots of changes that were stupid little stuff like buying new garbage bags, for crying out loud, and Hallston meekly accepted it for some reason. Maybe, young Halston got his bosses to give him a big budget by saying ‘asbestos’, and this squeaked it under. That’s what I mean when I say unreasonably tight budgets. When you have a three million dollar budget, and you come fifty three dollars under that’s pretty lucky if it happens once. And Halston blamed the design company so they had to make new designs from the ground up which means they lost their shirt.”



He finished, and I nodded much enlightened.



“It seems to me that since the last fraud worked they’ve decided to go for another one. Halston already has allies that he can probably blackmail or intimidate now that they’ve danced with the devil, and he’s going for straight defrauding of Tychor this time. Simpler and bolder because they got away with the last one, and they think they are invulnerable.” I spoke quietly, and he nodded.

“Look, I’m on the case. Keep quiet for now. If something big doesn’t happen in a week, you go ahead, and do what you need to do. We may need you as a witness.”



I slipped out, and came to the back door. The men were still hanging out there.

“Look buddy, who are you?” One said, and the others ruffled enough in their spots to let me know that the steel cage porch was not free for passage right now.

“There’s something fishy going on around here, and I’m here to get to the bottom of it.”

They cursed and agreed.

“That Halston punk, I don’t trust him far enough to throw him. And our management, I’m not sure which side they are on. They are talking about layoffs.”

“Thieves steal jobs. I’m a thiefcatcher.”

They looked at me studying and judging my quality. Then they let me pass with a murmured ‘good luck’.



I walked around looking for the client rep. Instead I found my tenspeed being examined by four large men near a black car.



I walked up to them. They turned and started moving toward me. And around the corner, the workers came heading for their picnic tables in the shade of a warehouse. Like a flock they turned my way coming to my rescue.



The client rep came out of the office and started shouting at the men to go back to work. This was a private discussion. I turned and smiled at them.

“Its only four of them.” Despite the client reps shrill commands the workers stood close enough to come running to my rescue.



One of the big guys walked up to me. He was almost my size except he had more in the waist.

“We’ll talk later.” He said in what he thought was a menacing growl.

“Where? At my trailer. I’m afraid sharpshooter would blow your head off before you could say anything. No. Let’s talk here.”

“Fine.” He said and swung in a roundhouse punch which I ducked, and counterpunched into his solar plexus. A paired kick in his left shin, and a blow to his nose left him blinded by blood and hopping on one leg.



Tripping him into the path of the others, and finishing them off takes less time than it would take to describe it.



I walked in over their bodies, and past the receptionist who protested in little chirps while fluttering her arms.



Catching up to the client rep in his office on the phone, I flung him into his wall.



“You little punk. Conspiracy to commit assault and battery. Pretty serious charge.”



“Try to prove it. Besides you are not barred from being here. I know people.” He spat at me like an offended house cat. Problem was, I was a wolf.



“Have a nice day.” I said civilly and walked out. The car beckoned to me, and so I bent the law a little bit. I backed it up, and drove it around the building to point it in a straight shot at the water. Then I got out, and watched it roll into the water across the vast empty lot between the two warehouses, and into the sea next to the dry dock. The workers were falling over themselves laughing so hard that I passed on talking to them. Instead, I smiled and waved as I pulled out with my tenspeed heading for the “Ruthless”.



I got there in time for lunch which was salmon steaks and fresh-baked bread, and sun tea brewed on the back of the ship. Simple but excellent.



Jessica reported that the mistress was being strung along like the one before her, and she hoped to become the third Mrs. of the client rep, but it was annoying her the wait was. Relating this seemed to turn her stomach.



“One of the worst problems with being a criminal I think is the company. And being the Law you have to hang out with the same scum. It isn’t all fun and games.”



Jack patted her on the knee after my consoling speech, and she brightened back up enough to finish her share of the meal.



She went on to tell me about the various accounts the client rep kept, and I wondered.

“Yes, he keeps it secret from his wife. But how is that going to help us?”



“You wanna bet he kept it secret from his first wife too?”



We finished our meal, and she went back to her pool while Jack sat back and relaxed. He felt my eyes on him.

“You want to know why three wives, right? I seem like a good guy and smart, what did I do wrong?”



I did not say anything.



“My first was great, but she had problems. I thought they were too much, and besides as I climbed in my career, I did not have the energy or the time to straighten things out. So I split. Number two was frankly a disaster. She is currently in and out of clinics and seminars where she ‘learns about higher planes’ or ‘discovers anew how other people messed up her life’.”



I thought about that, and sadly knew that a lot of the people in the flatter, less magical, grayer worlds yearned for a more magical existence. And a lot of those in the more colorful and interesting worlds (often in the sense of the Chinese curse ‘May you live in interesting times’) wanted a more mundane and ordered existence without the Glory ready to burst out at anytime.



“And so, three, Jessica who is nice and wonderful, but is twenty years younger than me. Doesn’t get a lot of my jokes, and sometimes seems serious when she should be frivoulous, and vice versa.”



“You’re not …”



“No, of course not. She has problems, but I’m dealing with them like I should have with the first wife. Laziness and cowardice.”



“Don’t forget stupidity.” I said my voice bubbling with laughter.



“Yeah, us humans can never forget that one.” He agreed joining in.



We sat there for a while longer in companionable silence while I thought. Then I biked out to an apartment where the former wife of the client rep lived. I asked her for her help, and she refused.



“We didn’t have much money then, but he shared fairly with me putting our daughter through state college. And that is past; no need to bring up old wounds. I have a new husband now, and we are very happy.”



I could see the bitterness, and the acceptance in her eyes, and wondered as I stood on her doorstep if I had the right to disrupt her life. Then I remembered a Porsche peeling out of a parking lot, and a paladin crying, and an honest accountant practically pulling his hair out.



“Hypothetically, if a former wife found out her husband, a supposedly generous man, had hidden away most of his money in secret accounts, and perjured himself doing so, would the wife be interested, or would she just prefer the annoying man to go away.”



Her head came up, and a blaze that would have singed concrete block blazed in them.



“That ^*(*()%^*&(… I’ll skin him alive. I always knew he should have more money than his accounts showed. I figured he’d spent it on show girls. And especially after he went through the money my Daddy gave me for his foolish plan to buy a yacht and start up a tour business. I didn’t use to live in a small apartment. My new husband is a good man, a decent man who keeps his word, but I was born to wealth. I did the debutante walk in ’75.”



She fluffed her hair back, and under the hardened and more sensible woman I could see the romantic girl unused to direct contact with snakes.



So we went through her financial books from the days of her old marriage, and got his new books(all of them) with the aid of a friend of hers in a bank she had worked at as a teller (that got her steaming, her being reduced to that at one point while ex-hubby drove what? A Porsche 911, I said, and then I worried a bit because she had a depth of venom that frightened me. Its not that she was a bad person, its just that, to be chauvinistic, she was a woman scorned, and boy was she ticked.



We built a pretty tough case, but a check with this Young guy revealed a problem. Most of the crime was over the time limit by several years. To say she ranted and raved was an understatement. The police came by to check on us as a “domestic disturbance” call. We sent them away with a partial explanation aided in its believability by the financial papers neatly layed out over the whole living room floor.



We sat back and thought. Her husband came home, and saw me, a strange guy in his house, and explanations ensued. Over the dinner of porcupine meatballs and salad, he tried his best to calm her down, and eventually he succeeded.



“Darling, I love you more than I ever did him.” She finally said, and the whole thing went back to a new norm.

“Too bad none of us is a writer. We could sell the story to the book trade, and smack el idiot at the same time.”



“Actually, one of us is a writer.” I said distantly as I tried to track in on something that was coming to me. I’d studied with Twain and Tolkien, I remembered faintly, but that was not the “it”.



Suddenly I stood up as a scheme in vague detail but glowing color popped into my brain.



“Can you ask your friend at the bank to get someone to make a loan offer to a rich customer for say a yacht?”



The wife leaned forward on her husband’s lap, and smiled like a wolf scenting prey.



Later I talked to Jessica and Jeff asking how much they were willing to sacrifice to see Halston and the client rep go down. I tapped the yacht “Ruthless” with my hand. Jessica agreed quickly.



“Why?” Jack asked perplexed at her speed.

“Well, I just thought it was time for you to buy a new yacht. One you could name ‘Jessica’ or something.”

He grinned and hugged her on the fine white bridge of the ship he was throwing away and happily.

“Time to embrace the future instead of a failed past. Time and long past time.”



I was happy to see that in addition to being a detective, I had some skill as a marriage councillor. Both marriages seemed better than ever.



The next day, the accountant, for whom I had fixed his copy machine, wandered past a furiously calculating client rep. The client rep had just received a phone call from the bank wondering if since he was such a special customer, he might like a rather large loan. He’d heard about a boat, a princely yacht being offered for sale, and well since both parties were such good customers, the president of the bank saw no reason not to bring everybody together.



The accountant offered to help organize the financial presentation. He quickly proved that the client rep had only half the finances needed for the loan. Too bad, the client rep did not have a rich friend who could help him out by cosigning for the loan because it was really a great deal.



The suddenly bright faced client rep with dreams of owning a huge yacht firmly in place, called Halston who was not eager. But entreaties and veiled threats and reminders of past favors soon got him to understand that the client rep really, really wanted the yacht, and unless he, Halston, wanted to dump all his profitable embezzling overboard, and maybe see a spiteful bit of leaking to the press he’d better co-sign.



So, I was onboard the “Ruthless” in the harbor dressed as a caterer, and therefore invisible to the client rep. The big occasion called for a party.



Jessica stood in for Jack as the pigeons did not know her. A surprised second (the current)wife of the client rep who had not known until this morning of the sale and their ability to afford it was kept from coming by a boxload of financial books mysteriously appearing on her front door step.



As the ‘young Halston’ walked on board followed by the client rep, my ‘former boss’ was finagling a copy of the current financial books out of a secretary at Halston where they showed what he expected.

“Once a cheapskate, always a cheapskate.” He’d visit his sister tonight for Lasagna Night as she often begged him to do. She would be amused, and so would her family of five. It had been too long since he had enjoyed the warmth of normal humans, he mused, as he ate some Ramen soup.



The party was wonderful, and the transfer of cash was made in international waters to try to dodge the taxman.



Later that night, as we caterers went to our comfortable beds, one caterer, a ticked off woman emerged to finagle with the anchor. Then she climbed overboard in a rubber dinghy she bought for the purpose. No one woke, the alcohol had been especially fine and potent and plentiful.



No one woke until a rented midnight fishing boat with a husband with a documenting video camera usable for low light conditions and a very ticked off woman came by to fully document that the boat was freely floating and moving, and no one was at the controls. In fact, no one was awake.



So, the first thing the client rep heard was the shrill whistle of the tug boat as his yacht was taken under tow for salvage. He protested, he screamed, and with the papers provided by the lawyer, and with the tape we had him. He did not stop screaming until his first wife showed up on deck in a captain’s jacket, and sweetly asked him.



“Darling, what was it you always used to say about payback?” He shut up then, and dragged himself off to the bar to get thoroughly drunk.



Territorial officers were waiting on shore to take ‘young Halston’ into custody. It seemed he had used the firm’s line of credit in place of his own for the cosigning.



The bank demanded immediate repayment of the loan, and took all the client rep’s money before he could recover. Then they turned to Halston company which was willing to let ‘young Halston’ out of jail if he personally covered the remainder, and if he never darkened their door again. He took the deal, and left town.



I came by and talked to the PR flack, and told him the game was up. It was now or never time for him to confess. He did, and served eighteen months in minimum security. His confession put the client rep in jail for a lot longer, and there is a warrant out for ‘young Halston’.



The client rep’s first wife is happily moving into a rancher and her daughter is going for a masters at a very nice college. Ten percent salvage rights on a yacht can go a long way. They look peaceful and content.



Jack and Jessica bought another larger (of course) yacht with hydrofoils, and they named it for her (of course). They look like they are on a honeymoon.



My boss took his fee that Tychor and Halston both payed him, and bought a new, used trailer in the woods, and a really big gun. Business is picking up.



I hear that Grekkar Design had a party that lasted all night when they heard the news.



And I went to visit Jack on “Time with Jessica”. He made me a crab salad he admitted he’d bought in a store. Jessica was keeping him too busy to fish every day. But he still got out every other day.



“So what are you?”

“What do you think I am?”

“I’m still thinking maybe an angel. I’m not sure I want to know.”



I smiled, and pulled out a slot on my watch.

“This should work in this dimension, I hope. The rules of reality changes from dimension to dimension.”



A picture of a flaming person (glowing and covered in flames), followed by a wheel with eyes, and lastly a too clear-eyed man in a black leather jacket who held a blade of fire and just looking at him in a picture made the goosebumps rise because even though he looked almost completely human, you knew he was and never could be anything so small.



“That’s my collection of ‘angel picture’. Sorry, I don’t have more. Most angels I’ve met are pretty camera shy.”



I reached out and closed his gaping mouth with a finger. Then I sat down, and told him my story from the black hole to now.



I got up to leave.



“Thanks, Tadeusz.”

“For what?”

“For restoring my sense of wonder. I thought I understood most everything, and now, now…” He burst out with joyous laughter at the possibilities of the universe, no, the multiverse.



I walked away into the night to try to find my ten speed which had been stolen. Despite that, it was a grand night, and I walked on whistling. I had plans for this world. Starting a detective agency would be great fun; and maybe I could learn enough so that when I met Sherlock Holmes in another world, I would not embarrass myself.



Eventually near downtown, I felt something unusual. Scriff. Another verser. Intrigued, I set out to track it down.



Who could it be? Kira and her immortal Milos, the Martian terraformer, the Prince of Fire and the Princess of a tiny county who abandoned it for a strange redhead who could now probably teach the Firestarter a few lessons, the Knight and his lady-the Paladin, the Alchemist even, or David, Michael di Vars who was a good fellow, maybe my Russian army friend, or the Nordic girl from Lop Skjar(however you said it)? The faces of dozens of friends from across the verse came back to me, and I realized that in talking to Jack about my past, I had reminded myself of the loneliness of it all.



I sat in the street, and indulged myself in tears for the bleakness of it on the dark night. But my self-pity passed, and I trudged on feeling better, and trying to track the source of the scriff down in the myriad alleys joining and rejoinging each other.



I came to a corner, and around it there stood a crooked man in face and body. His black garb and his backpack hung on a too thin body as he gnawed at some ill-seeming black bread. Not recognizing him, I introduced myself.



“Yah, whatever, never heard of you.”



“Then you’re new to this versing? How many worlds have you been too?” I assumed that the experienced verser would have at least heard of me. My pride at the limited fame pushed me to go further, but I tried to control that pride.



“No, no, no. Hundreds.”



I thought him mad to look upon his manner, and listen to the cryptic meaning of his words.



“Tell me what this world is like.” He interupted my train of thought to place his demand. There was no threat, simply a demand. Besides, he did not look as if he could carry out a threat. A fifteen year-old boy could have beaten him soundly, I thought.



I began to explain the world, and I did not get very far before he paused in his continual scarfing down the bread to tell me to stop.



“Not here, not here.” He said with a sing-song voice, and a dreamy look in his eyes.



“What’s not here?”



“Utopia; the Perfect World.” He punched a button on his hand, or attempted to, but I caught his thumb in a vise.



“No good. More painful, but still we go.”



A click from the direction of his shoe, and boomph! A choking mass of green gas filled the alley.



I ran and tried to close off my lings, but I only got as far as the edge of the gas cloud before I fell into gasping and sputtering darkness while I cursed the madman inside my head. Recognizing him now from descriptions given to me by other versers of a verser who tries to find Utopia, and kills himself shortly after entering each world that is not Utopia.



I think such actions would make you insane by not letting your body stabilize after each transition. Either that is true, or he was already insane, because he certainly is now.



Tadeusz

Mark’s latest article Wait reminded me a lot of my old Choose not to Choose article. Mark, of course came up with a different line of thinking than I had, further proving that it’s almost impossible to exhaust an idea.



In Wait Mark tells us that there are often multiple ideas and ways that a particular issue or situation can be overcome, and that occasionally we can get bogged down with the “what ifs.” That got me to thinking about how solutions to such situations come about in our games, leading me to realize that many are developed out of character but yet implemented in character.



Let’s say your party is trying to find a way across a deep chasm in a dungeon. Everyone wants to find the answer that accomplishes a goal and yet gets them through without a scratch (or at least minimal damage). These situations are often where we break from our character’s persona. As we brainstorm the options before us, we focus on finding a way to win or beat the situation, coming up with answers and ideas that are more of what the player would do or know than what the character would.



This is actually an old complaint that most of us have heard before. It usually crops up when a player has a barbarian with a three intelligence score who suddenly comes up with a system for crossing a room of spikes and pit traps so complex that it would confuse a mechanical engineer. Technically, the character could never have thought of such a solution as he’s just not smart enough – however the game group accepts the solution and moves on. Some gamers hate this as they feel it breaks from the “I’m in a real world” feeling that they want to achieve. Others don’t mind it at all, and would hardly even notice it if you didn’t point it out to them.



One of the reasons I think that players don’t mind out of character problem solving too much is that any solution that saves the PC’s bacon and keeps the game moving along is considered good. Same goes for GMs. If the PCs are able to conquer and move on that’s good. Most GMs don’t want the players stuck at a trap, riddle or other encounter for too long. We have a pace we like to keep in our games and if we can further it along with some out of character answers, that’s something we’ll accept.



Me, I’m rather torn on the whole issue. While I think it’s normally more fun for everyone to have their character perform actions and come up with ideas based on that character’s intelligence and knowledge skills, it doesn’t always work out in game. Sometimes it’s more rewarding to the players to be allowed to implement a great idea they have even if it’s out of character.



As I’ve said quite often in my articles, RPGs are all about having fun. And if your group is having fun by having players add in non-character knowledge to accomplish goals, that’s fine. The only thing you have to do as a group is to be consistent. If you allow the dumb barbarian to come up with a steam powered door opener one time you can’t disallow a similar feat the next time with the “Your character isn’t smart enough” argument. One of the things I do is to set ground rules at the beginning of each scene to basically tell the players what I’ll let them get away with.



If I don’t mind that they use out of character knowledge in a certain case, I allow it to happen but generate an in character reason for it. “While you’re thief hasn’t actually seen this type of pulley system used before, he has luckily heard enough about it over the years that he’s able to get it working.”



When a player comes up with an idea that is out of character and I don’t want them to use out of character knowledge I respond with something like “While your fighter can come up with that idea, he just doesn’t have the knowledge of how to implement it.” Or perhaps “As a librarian you’ve heard of disarming tomb traps like this, but you really don’t have the skills to do it.”



I try and tie any rejections I give them with a reason based on their character’s abilities or knowledge skills. As I’ve learned in Why Did That Happen? flat rejection is bad, but if you can tie it into the character, it’s much more acceptable to the players.



Again be consistent. If the players know that you’ll use these clues to tell them when they can “cheat” and use out of character knowledge, they’ll be more willing to role-play out the in character solutions when you want them to.





That’s all from me for now. See you in the forums!

  This idea will be difficult to illustrate without–well, without an illustration.  My illustration comes from playing Solitaire.

  If you’ve played much Solitaire during the course of your life, you’ve probably at some point been playing it while other people were in the room.  Even if you haven’t been, odds are good you’ve been in the room while someone else was playing.  It catches my attention that in such circumstances, at least one of those not playing will look over the shoulder of the player and start giving advice on how to play.  That advice usually amounts to telling you that you can move a certain card that you have not moved, on the apparent assumption that you’ve overlooked it.

  There are a couple of things I’ve noticed from this; one of them is that most people don’t know how to play Solitaire.  That is, they know the rules effectively, but they don’t understand any strategy behind it.  They will tell you to move cards that could indeed be moved, but which on the one hand don’t improve your position in the least and on the other might make your position worse.

  It is important to understand in Solitaire that there are very few moves which do not have the potential to make your position worse.  You can always safely move an ace or a two from the play stacks to the ace piles; moving a three could, under certain circumstances, cost you the game.  I’ll illustrate.

  Let us suppose that as the cards lay, neither red ace has yet appeared.  The three of spades is sitting visibly on the top of the right hand pile, six unknown cards beneath it; the deuce of hearts is sitting alone on the left end, that is, no cards hidden beneath it.  On the remaining five piles are various cards, none of which is a king, ace, deuce, or three.  Most players will tell you to move the deuce of hearts to sit atop the three of spades.  Why?  You are told to do this for no better reason than because you can.  Yet that move gets you absolutely nothing and weakens your position–it reveals no hidden cards and reduces your options for the next move.

  To clarify, let us now turn over the top three cards in the deck.  What card appears?  Of course, it is most likely that the card which is there is not relevant to anything here; on the other hand, you’re going to turn over seven more sets of three cards, any one of which might make a difference.  Let’s look at some of the possibilities.

• It is possible that that card is the ace of spades, and that the spade deuce sits beneath it (or is otherwise about to be revealed).  By playing the ace-deuce of spades to the ace piles, you can now follow it with the three, which opens one of the six hidden cards in that right-hand pile.  The bottom card in that pile is the most difficult card to uncover in the game, so getting through that stack should be a priority.  Note that had you moved the deuce of hearts to the three of spades, you would now be unable to open that pile, and might remain so, particularly if the ace of hearts and three of clubs are both locked within it.
• The first card could be the diamond deuce.  This requires careful thought.  If (as I have so far implied) you are going through the deck three cards at a time, and when you finish the stack you will go through it again, the ability to take this third card out of the deck could be of significant strategic importance:  doing so will shift the remaining cards one place, giving you access to six cards which were otherwise unavailable.  Yet you might not wish to do that at this time.  After all, it could be that on the next turn of the cards you will remove two cards from the deck, and then no others.  Had you moved the deuce of diamonds from that first position, your deck would now be locked into showing you the same seven cards you had already seen.  However, if without moving the deuce you remove no other cards, or three other cards, or any number of cards divisible by three, moving the deuce will get you a new set of cards in that deck.  So you would want to keep that option open, to use it when it matters.  Of course, if you’ve already moved the deuce of hearts to sit atop the three of spades, that option is gone; you’ll need to produce a red ace to advance the game.
• That first card could be a king; it could be very useful to move the deuce of hearts out of the way so that the king can land on the table, giving you a place to play a queen.  This would be more clearly true if the top card on the sixth pile is a queen of the opposite color, as the move would be made immediately, opening one of five hidden cards.  In this case, the right move would most likely be to place the deuce of hearts atop the three of spades.  See, you think, moving the deuce of hearts was the right move.  Yet why should you have moved it before this instant?  What benefit was there in having that open place for the king before you knew you had the king?  No, the right move was to wait, not to move the two until there was a strategic benefit to doing so.

  Thus we see that there are times when you can make a move under the rules, but the move has no strategic benefit and can become a detriment.  In my long experience and observation, such ill-considered moves can cost you a game you might otherwise have won.

  We can understand this sort of thinking in games in which the choices are more clear.  If you sit down at a chess board, there are twenty possible opening moves you can make, and a like number of responses.  Each of those moves leads to other possible moves, which lead in turn to others.  There is not an infinite number of possible games; however, the combination of moves and responses is so great it would be difficult to calculate.  Yet you may only make one of these moves.  Thus you recognize that you must make moves which have strategic benefits which outweigh their disadvantages.

  Role playing games are in some sense far more complicated than chess.  I cannot imagine a moment in a game in which my options were so few as twenty.  However, as with chess, at any moment in play I am limited in my choices by the fact that I must choose, that is, that I cannot do all of the things I might do at this moment, but am limited to a small number of these.  If I am going into combat, I can probably choose a weapon and an angle of approach; in some games I can also choose a defense or a combat style.  However, in most role playing games, I cannot choose three weapons, two directions from which to attack, multiple defenses, and more than one combat style.  I have to pick what I think will work.

  As with Solitaire, though, it may be the case that there are times when I need not choose.  I might have enough money to buy item A or item B, but not yet enough to buy item C; but if it is not essential that I have any of those items at this moment, it might be strategically better to keep my money in my pocket until I need to make that choice.

  That is the message of this column:  sometimes it is better not to choose, to leave the deuce of hearts sitting where it is until there is a clear advantage to putting it on the three of spades, to not castling your king to the king’s side until you see whether it would be better to castle to the queen’s side, to not making the decision until the decision matters.

  It is easy to get trapped into answering the question what are we going to do if?  It is certainly important to consider those questions, and to have possible answers.  Yet it may also be important to keep those answers fluid–to be able to make that decision when it matters, and not be locked in to an answer which isn’t strategically best at that moment.

  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.

I explained on the dock as the sun set over the harbor how this shipyard was being defrauded by a client rep who was supposed to be on their side, and help them understand the point of view of the other company, the shipping one, as a liason man. He seemed to be in the pocket of the shipping company and using his influence inside the shipyard illegitamately. But I could not prove any of this.



As the sun set, my agent, a retired shipping exec with a unquiet stomach, a Mr. Jack Black, started looking down in the mouth.



“This wouldn’t happen to be Halston Shipping, would it?”

I nodded.



“You planned to run a scam posing as another corrupt shipowner using me and my yacht as your frontman, right?”



“I thought I wasn’t so juveniley obvious.” I muttered in chagrin.



“In this, you are ‘juvenile’ as you put it. You do not seem to be used to subtlety and the interplay of office politics. I rather expect most of your enemies know you did them in. Me, I still have people who think they are my friends a decade later after I got them fired.”



I looked back on my long career, and acknowledged his point. The hammer of tyrants rarely bothered with suavity. It was not in my nature. I was nice to friends and ordinary people, but enemies tended to get both barrels in the face.



“Besides, I would not call you juvenile. There’s something odd about you. I’m not sure what it is. How about if I figure it out before you tell me, I get another question.”

Since the likelihood of him figuring out that I was a multi-dimensional visitor seemed slimmer than a skinned fish’s scale, I agreed.



“So, you are known to the people at Halston. What about Tychor?”



“Maybe not. There’s a good bit of turnover at companies where people cheat, y’know.” He added with a grin after a bit of thought.



We sat there and thought, and he broke out some sea bass he had caught earlier that day. Without thinking, I whipped out my dagger, and began skinning the fish with professional skill. Only after, I saw him staring at me using a combat dagger with gold inlay on the hilt did I realize I might have to conceal a bit from his curious mind.



“You look like you’ve done that for years.”

My mind flashed back to a time when they called me King along the Irish coast. Master of about fifty families like the dozens of other kings that sprouted all over the land of Eire in that day. I flashed a grin at him.



“You might as well give up.”

“And now would ye want someone who gave up easy, laddie?”

I admitted the justice of his point, and then I realized he had recognized the style of the land’s knifework in my own. He was sharp.



His trophy wife came up, another perfect blonde, with an wagon loaded with strawberry cream cake, and other goodies. We had a fine party on the back of the “Ruthless”, and my hosts were charming, and never pried much past a sharp question or two.



I borrowed a cel phone after almost using my wristwatch to connect to the local microwave net (which it could do), and told my boss what was up. He mentioned that someone from Tychor had called to check up on me. Seemed a mite nervous my boss thought.



The lady of the ship came into the bridge area, and waited for me t get off the phone. She was stunning, of course, and I was a bit nervous wondering what her aims were.

“I’m glad you came along. Jack’s a good man, and he has been mooning around looking for something to do. I call him my modern day pirate.”



Jack came in at that moment, and got a kiss and smiled easily. For a long moment, I saw his face at the helm of a ship from some years back. I had traded fresh water in casks for a barrel of apples and a new spar while I roamed the oceans under the nom de guerre, the “Dread Pirate Roberts.” This was the doppleganger of that captain in the other world.



“Indeed.” I croaked, and Jack just grinned pleasantly while his mind filed data bits away. He had me off balance.



To get back on track, I explained the whole situation again to Jessica. She seemed quite intelligent.



“Why don’t you go talk to this mistress? I bet she’s not happy about it. Probably wants him to dump his wife so she can become lady of the house. And like most men in that situation, he probably just wants to keep playing the game.”



I nodded and a thought unworthy occurred to me, and I did my best to supress it.



“Nice poker face, Mr. Taduesz. But the obvious question is how do I know about this. Well, let’s just say I had abundant opportunities to become a toy, but I passed looking for the real deal.”



I looked blandly at her not admitting anything, and she and him laughed together.

“Very good, Taduesz. In addition to a decade spent in Ireland, time on the sea, multiple masteries in several styles of the arts with the knife, a gold knife so we know you are not hurting, add to that a poker face worthy of a professional card shark, when you feel like bothering.”

I busted out laughing.

“I need to get home before you pry out all my secrets. Remember, we are going to have a go at getting them tommorrow.”

We shook hands, and they said “Tommorrow” with me. Evidently, Jessica wanted to join her husband in the crookbusting fun. Fine with me. She could talk to the mistress, maybe.



We still had only fragments of a plan but it was starting to come together.



Taduesz

I have to say I felt a small surge of pride when Mark’s article Variations mentioned my column idea. It’s always nice to get a kind word from those who you respect yourself. That feeling actually lead me to my idea for this article.



Quite a bit of GM and player advice deals with getting through the rough spots in gaming. Bad behavior, style differences, difficult characters – all of these things have been dealt with many times by quite a few different authors and, I would say, rightfully so. These issues are some of the things that stop folks from having a good time, the main goal of RPGs, and anything we can do to help each other deal with these issues and continue to have fun is good. However, working through difficulties as a game group isn’t the only way to foster good times and to improve on our skills.



I’ve heard it said many times by salesmen that there are more people are willing to tell you about a bad product to experience they’ve had than there are those willing to tell you about a good product or experience. I think this translates quite well to the RPG world. We often don’t take the time to tell our GMs and players that they did a good job, or to point out the things that they are doing well. Why is that?



Everyone in your game group would like to hear some form of the phrase “Good job!” But yet it’s not something that seems to come up that often in or out of our games. What I’m not talking about here are the times when we congratulate out fellow player for scoring a good hit for lots of damage on a dragon, or the times when someone makes a successful skill check. While these things are nice, and it’s good to give a quick pat on the back when they happen, they don’t really give the sense of “Good job!” that I’m looking for.



What I’m talking about is telling the GM that he did a great job bringing the adventure and game world to life. Telling a fellow player that they were so in character that you almost forgot they actually aren’t that character. Taking the time after your game, even if your character died, to say “Thanks for a great game tonight guys, I had a lot of fun!” That’s what I’m talking about. Positive reinforcement gives everyone a sense of not only a job well done, but also a feeling of accomplishment and recognition by their fellows. This also helps us know what kind of behavior is considered good in our game group.



After every game I GM, I make it a point to tell the players that I had fun and that I’m looking forward to the next game. I feel that if I had fun at a game a good part of the reason is because the players helped to make it so. Players often look to the GM as the leader of the group, if the GM tells them that they did well and that the adventure was fun for him to run because of the quality of the players, that’s a big warm fuzzy (as my wife would say) everyone likes to hear.



Even if there were some rough spots in the session, like a bad rules argument, I point out the fact that even though we had a problem, we got through it and now we have the answer if/when that situation comes up again. While it’s not always possible to do so, I don’t want to leave my games on a bad note. Sure, from time to time there will issues that can’t be swept away with a simple thank you (see Why did that happen?), but it can’t hurt.



I try and do the same thing when I’m playing in a game. After the game I thank everyone for playing with me. If I had a good time I’ll also point out a few specific actions by the GM and players that are highlights for me. “That was great! (to player) The way you pulled together that explanation out of the air for why we were in the warehouse was awesome! I loved the way you and (insert GM name) roleplayed that out.”



If I didn’t have as much fun as I had hoped, I still thank the group for playing with me. Everyone takes the time to schedule a game session into their lives. We cancel other events, move things around on the calendar, get in trouble with our wives for playing twice in one week… Everyone made a choice to not do something else in order to be at the game. That’s at least worth saying thanks to those who thought gaming with you was important enough to them that they would be there.



I think I can further explain by tying back to Mark’s Variations article. After discussing his reluctance to do a re-write of certain article ideas, he stated:



“Then I remember Brett Bloczynski’s fascinating concept for a column, Expanding an Idea. Whatever I write, he looks at it and finds something else to say about it.”



The simple use of the words “…fascinating concept for a column…” made my day. While the phrase isn’t a glowing recommendation for others to read my stuff and it doesn’t say my writing is incredible or anything that crazy, it’s a very nice way to pat me on the back and publicly say “Nice job kid.” Makes a guy feel good.



Now I’m not saying that we have to gush over each other at every game or article. There’s going to be a time when you show up to game and you hate it as I did in Don’t GM Angry, or you read an article and you don’t like it all that much as I discussed in You’ve Lost Me. The key is to maintain a positive attitude and to realize that one bad game session or article (or game supplement for that matter), shouldn’t undo all of the good times. To help reinforce those good times, be sure to say thank you. If nothing else, you’ll do your mother proud by following some of her advice.





That’s all from me for now. See you in the Forums!