The Wisdom of Uncle Figgy
Jim Vassilakos (jimv@uia.net)
After writing the essay last issue on
my idea for getting GMs together in
order to improve their methods
through group-criticism, I began to
think some more about my own
experience as a GM over the past
decades. I have to admit that I’ve
made my share of mistakes.
I recently stumbled across Uncle
Figgy’s Guide to Good
Gamemastering.1 It’s one of those web
tomes on the Internet useful for a
beginning GM, and after reading it, I
can’t help but think that I could have
stood to learn from it during my
earlier years in the hobby. Even as a
somewhat experienced GM, however,
what it says helps reinforce many of
lessons I’ve already learned the hard
way.
Shallowness
I don’t think I suffered from the
God-Syndrome (GM versus Players
mentality) he mentions in the 1st
chapter, except insofar as I might
have, on occasion, become frustrated
with the insipid shallowness of the
never-ending quest for ever-increasing
stockpiles of experience, magic, hit
points and social authority. But so
long as this feature remains enshrined
in the very rules of most game
systems, I don’t really see how one
can justifiably blame the players for
simply following the path of success
that the game instructs. Moreover, is
the path that untrue to modern life?
Perhaps only insofar as hit points are
concerned.2 But, of course, this
problem can be overshadowed by a
good plot and good characterization,
so when I’ve noticed this shallowness
in the rules, perhaps it was because I
wasn’t doing a good enough job
weaving an interesting story. At least,
that might be the designer’s argument.
1
See
http://www.dragondogpress.com/unclefigg
y/gm/index.html
2
I'm being slightly facetious. In any case,
Brian Misiaszek has written on this topic,
and suffice it say that I tend to agree with
him.
Obeying the Dice
I’ve really never been one to cheat on
die rolls (for the good of the game, as
it were). I can think of one instance
where I did it some years ago, and
now I think it was a mistake. In short,
I think the die rolls should always be
obeyed. I remember one campaign I
ran some years ago where I went so
far with this belief that I ended up
inadvertently killing the entire party. It
was a bit embarrassing, to be honest,
but luckily I found a way out of it.
Since this probably sounds a bit
nutty, I’ll explain the situation. It was
that game I was describing to Lee in
the previous issue. Kurt, I seem to
remember, was playing the party
scout. Although not terribly powerful,
either physically or magically, his was
an essential role. The problem,
however, was that he’d failed to show
up one night.
In that campaign, I seem to
remember, scouting was rather
important. It was really the first step
of planning, because if a threat turned
out to be too large for the party to deal
with directly, someone would think of
some way to sneak past it, use some
devious tactic to turn the odds, or
simply divide and conquer. But, if
they didn’t scout things out, they
could end up walking into a shake-
and-bake, and that’s exactly what
happened in this particular session. I
must have foolishly made the threat
too powerful, and when they blithely
walked into the kill zone without
properly scouting the area, they got
hacked.
So, after the battle, when they
looked at me with those glum eyes, I
asked them, “Do you guys want to roll
up new characters or do you want to
continue playing these?” And they
turned their heads cockeyed, and said,
“Huh?” Because they had just
collectively bit the dust. How could
they continue to play dead characters?
But I repeated myself, and after that
said they’d like to continue with their
characters, if possible, so I started to
describe a plateau upon which they
were being raised. Their benefactors
said that they had found their bones
and somehow determined them to be
great heroes from ages long past, so
they brought them back from the land
of the dead.
Their world, they now saw, was
much changed. I’d basically dropped
them into a “Darksun” version of the
lands that they used to know. It was
thousands of years later, and the world
had dried up. Almost everything they
knew was gone, but in its place was a
whole new era, and one that they
would have to learn about quickly in
order to survive.
Milking the Players
Some of the best advice, I think,
occurs in the 3rd chapter where Uncle
Figgy talks about “milking everything
the players give you.” I probably
haven’t done enough of that in the
games that I’ve run. I recall, in one
campaign, I had each player make up
the name of a former master from
whom they learned their trade or
magic. I think my intention was to
eventually get around to introducing
all of these former masters (as well as
some of their fellow students) as
NPCs.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if
it might be useful to have some
random table (or deck of cards) during
character generation, and each player
rolls on it (or draws a card from the
deck) a few times. A possible result
might be, “The character of the player
to your left is a sibling (race
permitting) or a childhood friend.
Cooperatively tell a short story about
how both of your character’s got
caught doing something wrong.” Or
perhaps, “Tell us a story about the first
time your character left their village
and got lost. Enlist the GM's help if
necessary.” And you could extrapolate
from that all other sorts of exercises
aimed as building back-story.
Meanwhile, of course, the GM is
furiously taking notes, looking for any
scraps he or she can use.
In this way, the character is getting a
semi-random background, but it’s
squeezed out of the players rather than
being randomly generated by a series
of tables as in the Central Casting
books. Using this method, assuming it
could be made to actually work, the
back-story wouldn’t suffer from the
not-invented-here syndrome, at least
not from the players’ perspective,
which I think may be the case when
using random tables to do this sort of
task.
Monsteritis
Uncle Figgy mentions “Monsteritis”
in his 5th chapter, and I've been guilty
of doing this many times, but I’ve also
avoided it at other times. It just
depends on the players, the mood, and
the situation. If I’m to play monsters
as people, it often either takes a trick
to push the party away from slaughter-
fests and toward negotiation.
A trick might be stumbling across
the young (or the eggs in some cases).
Once they realize the monsters are
merely protecting their children, this
seems to "humanize" the entire
encounter.3 A more straightforward
approach might involve the players
being captured if they are either
revived post-battle or prove unwilling
to fight to the death (a rare occurrence
given their characters’ presumably
heroic statures).
I’m reminded of one situation,
however, when I was GMing, and I
must have been in a bizarrely flippant
mood that night. The party was
confronted out in the wilderness by
this band of creatures that were
something like ogres or gnolls. I can’t
remember too many of the details. But
before charging into battle, the party
decided to parley, basically
announcing that they wanted to pass
through the territory.
At the point where he understood
what the party was trying to
communicate, the leader of this group
of creatures suddenly interrupted them
by snarling and stomping over to their
position. “How dare you think you can
just walk through our lands without
paying tribute!”
Then, when he got to within
whispering distance, he basically
confessed in a hushed tone that he
hated confronting adventurers, but that
if he didn’t, the rest of his band would
think him weak and they’d probably
3 disparate visions of where to take the
This was the tactic used in the
memorable Star Trek episode "Devil in the
Dark" where Spock mind-melds with the
Horta.
kill him. He was only hanging on to
power by a thread, as it turns out, and
didn’t really like all this killing,
looting, and raping that was expected
of him.
Occasionally, during this confession,
where at times he bordered on tears, I
had him grunt loudly and wave his
arms around somewhat belligerently
as if to show his fellows that he wasn’t
taking any guff from the party. Then
he’d quietly whimper and insist that
he really didn’t want any trouble, and
would the party please pass through as
quickly as possible? Needless to say,
everyone agreed.
Then he went back to his group and
loudly told the party that if they
passed this way again with nothing of
value, he’d crunch their skulls under
his boots and feed their carcasses to
worms before hanging their skulls
from tree branches as a warning to
others. I seem to remember that they
eventually met up with him again on
the way “back from the dungeon” so
to speak, and it was more or less the
same routine, except I think this time
they exchanged some information and
local news. But, clearly, you can’t do
that with every encounter.
GM Stupidity
I have had, at times, thrown in stuff
without thinking about it sufficiently
beforehand. I try not to do this, but it
has happened and will probably, in all
likelihood, happen again. But, at least
generally speaking, this problem is
one that is slowly cured by experience
with a given setting or game system.
One thing that can help in such
situations is just to talk to the players
about it and "go back in time" if
necessary to cure the situation. And
I've done this, on occasion. But it's a
pain, and I prefer not to have to go to
such length to repair a mistake.
Intra-Party Conflict
I think my biggest problem as a GM
has always been over how to deal with
intra-party conflict. Because I often
try to enable the players a greater
control over the plot than they might
have in most games, they’ve often had
story.4 In a way, this is almost a good
4
See my comments last issue to Lee Gold.
thing. It’s indicative that you’ve got a
pretty good game on your hands.
After all, if the players are so into
the story as to bring their characters to
blows or divide the party, at least you
know as a GM that they aren’t bored.
However, of course, while it’s nice to
know that you’ve piqued their interest,
you don’t want your friends to end up
hating each another. I would
categorize such an outcome as not fun.
Now, the way that I’ve traditionally
handled these situations is pretty much
the same way that Uncle Figgy
suggests. I’ve handed these sorts of
problems in-game, trying to apply
“logic and realism,” as the good Uncle
proposes. “You can’t force players to
get along,” he writes, then advises that
the world should be dangerous to a
loner. “There’s a reason these groups
band together…”
But what then ends up happening, I
could counter, is that the GM
inevitably ends up having to take sides
in some way. Try as he might to
remain neutral, punishing or
rewarding the odd-man-out, even
through this policy of “logic and
realism”, can become a way of the
GM controlling the plot, because once
a group splits up, there’s this question
over whether they will (or even
should) get back together. One option
might just be to run separate games,
but this can get sort of ridiculous. I
mean, I’d suppose it could easily
become too much for the GM.
So what do you do? The most
obvious solution would be for
everyone to just talk about it out-of-
character, and this probably happens
in most such situations. But it doesn’t
always work. So what else can be
done?
I’ve talked in the past about the idea
of having a powerful mentor at hand.
If we suppose that mages must invest
their pupils with, say, a level of their
own experience (the master drops a
level so that the student can attain the
first level of ability), then they’d have
a strong interest in their understudies.
This whole arrangement could
constitute a debt, as the higher level
mage could then become a source of
information, occasional assistance,
and so forth. Likewise, he or she may
come to depend on the party for
occasional assistance.
In any case, this high-level mage
then becomes the GM's ace in the
hole. If the party starts in-fighting, he
can notice it via his crystal ball (or
perhaps some magic that still binds
master and apprentice) and teleport in
to act as an in-game mediator in order
to keep the party together. It’s just an
idea, and there are certainly some
problems with it, but it might work. I
just haven't tried it yet, so I don't know
all the pitfalls.
One of a GM’s primary
responsibilities, I think, is to identify
the players’ expectations, and then
find ways to get them to congeal as a
group despite their personal
differences. And that can be a tall
order depending on how much
freedom they’re given to choose their
own destiny. In a carefully scripted
campaign, there may not be much
room for them to really get into
character and move the plot as they
see fit. A GM has to be flexible, but he
also has to be wise enough to steer
them toward objectives that they can
recognize as being of common
interest, which is where the whole
notion of interwoven character
backgrounds may be especially useful.
Munchkinism
In the 4th chapter, Uncle Figgy
discusses “player types” and how to
approach most of them, and he also
talks about how one type of player can
evolve into being another type of
player. He doesn’t tell us how he’d
nudge a munchkin toward becoming a
mad gamer, but at least he identifies
the breeds.
I think my own tactic, over the
years, has been to eventually make the
game political as the characters
increase in personal power. After all,
what the munchkin really wants is
power. Once he reaches a certain
point, perhaps his character may
discover that he can get more power
by nurturing relationships with
powerful NPCs than he can by
swinging his trusty +5 Sword of
Discombobulating. Not that Conan
would have stooped to nurturing
relationships, of course.
In Conclusion
Overall, I think Figgy’s Guide is well
worth a read, but like many such
guides, it really only scratches the
surface. What somebody ought to
write, I think, is not a guidebook for
the novice GM, but rather one for the
experienced GM who could still stand
to learn a few tricks. But that, of
course, would be a lot harder.
IgTheme: What sort of GM-
creativity do players enjoy?
I’ll speak as a player on this one. What
I really enjoy when playing a game is
the sense of “being there” and good
characterization on the part of the
NPCs. I’m somewhat in awe of GMs
who can pull off convincing accents as
well as those who can startle the
players with vivid prose and scenery.
Also, I think it’s easier for GMs to pull
this off in PBeMs than in face-to-face
play. That’s perhaps one of the reasons
I enjoy PBeMs.
Also, when I speak of scenery, while
I, of course, mean the immediate
physical setting, I don’t want to short-
change the social scenery or the fabric
of the society. If I’m to play in a
fantasy game, I don’t want it to be a
copycat of every other fantasy game
I’ve ever played in. Likewise,
however, I don’t want the setting to be
incomprehensible or inconsistent. I
want the whole thing to make sense,
and I want to get to learn the
environment. That, of course, includes
learning the theme or themes, and I
think every setting should include
these.
For example, I think that the
cyberpunk genre has a great theme,
actually two themes which seem to be
somehow intertwined. The first is, of
course, man vs. machine (or “meat vs.
metal” as the game likes to put it). The
second is the individual vs. society.
The intertwining occurs insofar that
just as humans are becoming
increasingly mechanized (and losing
sanity-points as a result), so too is
society undergoing a parallel
transformation. Ruled, in effect, by
corporations and corporate-
manipulated governments. I tend to
think of society in the cyberpunk
genre as a great big robot, inexorably
marching down this path of
enslavement and ruin, and nobody can
really do anything about it.
The corporations become so
powerful that they can walk all over
the government and, by extension,
over entire nations. Politicians are
beholden to them (much as they are in
the real world). And because the
corporations ceaselessly pursue ever
more wealth and power, individuals
caught within their grip essentially
become their tools. With so many
people pursuing their own self-
interest, no individual could change
the system, so it spins ever onward,
carving up the Earth, chewing up the
natural resources, and spitting out ever
increasing quantities of waste, like a
big greed-machine that has gone
completely insane.
Now, the reason this theme
resonates, I think, is that it’s
essentially an extrapolation of our
current state of affairs. While the
technological tenets may seem
somewhat far-fetched, what with the
mechanization of the human body
(though this seems less improbable
with every passing year), the social
extrapolations don’t seem all that
crazy.
What would be really interesting, I
think, would be to see fantasy and
science-fiction settings approach
theme in such a way that they actually
say something about human society.
Planescape, I think, comes fairly close
to achieving this. It imagines, or at
least it purports to imagine, what
societies would be like when
organized around different ethical
principles, different locations on the
D&D alignment chart. Likewise,
Traveller posits a variety of different
government types for the various
worlds of the Imperium, and the GM
can have a lot of fun with this if he or
she wishes.
Nonetheless, the overarching society
of D&D’s planes is paradoxically one
of anarchy and perpetual conflict
amidst this beautiful foundation of
order, just as the overarching society
of Traveller’s many, differing worlds
is, paradoxically, an absolute
monarchy, at least with respect to the
Imperium. In short, one is order
amidst chaos while the other is chaos
amidst order. Certainly bizarre, but is
it realistic?
That’s an impossible question to
answer, I think. With D&D, you’ve
got magic and gods, so all bets are
essentially off. The loose end is the
story of creation, and each GM can
approach that as he or she wishes.
As for the Imperium, star spanning
empires were a staple of science
fiction well before Star Wars, but
given the social footprint of Star Wars
on popular culture, why didn't GDW
discuss interstellar politics and the
imperial nobility in greater depth? I
just got the sense that this could have
all been covered much more
thoroughly and with an eye toward
retelling the lessons of history.5
I think this is part of the reason I’ve
liked Simon Reeve's essays on the
Triune Realm. I appreciate what he’s
trying to do, and I’d like to see more
settings like this where societies exist
within societies, linked by a common
fabric, and where players can explore
a wide range of settings, cultures, and
societal evolutions. And, of course,
this is very much where I hope to take
Ragamuffin, although I’m still a very
long way from having this realized.
Comments on A&E #363:
Paul Cardwell: ryct Brian Misiaszek
rhct Louis La Mancusa on Dave
Grossman’s On Killing: You
mentioned an article in Places to Go,
People to Be #26, so I decided to take
a look at that issue. I assume that
you’re talking about the “Narrativist”
article by Max Cairnduff. What I hear
him saying is that the Narrativist style
of expanding player power6 is a step in
the wrong direction. He argues that the
common urge among players to make
their characters always “look cool”
ends up making the game itself un-
cool.
I suppose part of the problem is that
the narrative structure (storytelling)
requires a certain degree of sustained
conflict. Without conflict and
setbacks, you don’t have much of a
story. Yet some players, I think, are
perhaps more interested in self-
aggrandizement, living vicariously
through their characters and thus
creating a “cool” self-perception, than
in any sort of story that includes
genuine conflict and genuine setbacks.
5
I really loved the two Library Data books
when they first came out. It was there that
we first saw a map of the Imperium as well
as a list of the emperors and a brief
discussion of the various eras. But, as good
as this was, it only served to whet my
appetite. I wanted more.
6
Player control over the “Shared Imagined
Space” that M. Joseph Young talks about
in the same issue.
I mention the narrative structure,
because there almost seems to be
something transcendent about it.7 I’m
not altogether sure of this, not being as
well-read as I ought to be, but I’ve
heard it said that it was even described
by Aristotle in his Poetics. The general
structure is one we all know from
freshman English: introduction of the
problem (conflict), complications,
climax, and aftermath. For myself, at
least as a GM, I personally find the
complications part to be particularly
interesting, the meat of the story, as it
were. But if too many players are
obsessing over looking “cool” as
Cairnduff terms it, then it’s naturally
hard to generate a cool story,
particularly when players are given
powers traditionally reserved to the
GM in order to shape the outcomes of
their actions.
The way I see the whole roleplaying
process, I guess, is as a sort of
cooperative-conflict where the players
and the GM are like the yin and the
yang, balanced against one another,
but not in a contest or competition so
much as a perpetual cooperation
generated through managed conflict.
And it is the GM as well as the system
itself that has to moderate that conflict
(not to mention the players’ feet if the
GM should become tyrannical). But
the question is, of course, Where
exactly do we draw the line between
GM-powers and player-powers? That,
I suppose, is the question that some of
these new designers, the ones we hear
about over at The Forge, are flirting
with. And they aren’t the first to poke
holes in this traditional barrier
between the realms of player and GM.
Your idea of imposing a penalty
system with respect to characters
inflicting death upon their enemies is
an interesting mechanic to deal with
one of the more hopeful aspects of
human nature, which I’m guessing
that Grossman describes in his book (I
haven’t actually seen it yet). In any
case, this whole discussion presents a
dilemma for the prospective RPG
designer, and I’m of mixed feelings on
how to address it.
7 8
That is to say that I think it’s one of those
ideas that exists apart from the human
mind in the same way that the number π
would have been discovered by beavers
instead of humans had they, rather than
ourselves, ascended to so-called sentience
and built a technical civilization.
You might recall, in A&E #312 I
began my short series of articles on
character generation in Ragamuffin.
One thing you might have noted about
the prime stats, advantages and
disadvantages that I presented in that
article was that I steered clear of what
I call wisdom- or personality-based
attributes. This was on purpose.
Many games include such attributes
into their mechanics, and I think that
this has the potential to cause
problems. In fact, having known
several roleplayers to behave pretty
much as Max Cairnduff describes
them, I’d say that some degree of
player-abuse is a near-certainty. I’ll
discuss a few examples just to give
you an idea of what I’m talking about.
In Top Secret/SI there's the “greedy”
disadvantage. In GURPS, there's the
“callous” disadvantage as well as the
“fast-talk” skill (this might more
appropriately be a “smooth talker”
advantage, since I’m not sure to what
extent it can be learned). GURPS also
has the “shyness” disadvantage. I’ll
discuss each of these in turn.
Greed: In a Top Secret/SI game that
I ran some years ago, a player chose
the “greedy” disadvantage, and so I
decided to kick-off the very first
adventure with a temptation geared
specifically to his character. He started
the game as a cop chasing an NPC
involved in the drug trade. I was
operating on the theory that you’ve
got to begin the story right in the
middle of the action, so when I say
“chasing”, I mean he was literally
chasing the guy down the street. After
a ferocious gun battle that convinced
me that the game’s combat mechanic
is hopelessly broken, he investigated
what was in the dead suspect’s
precious suitcase. Of course, it turned
out to be a big pile of money, neatly
arranged, just like in the movies.
He wouldn’t take the bait, however.
He argued that there was too much
risk of getting caught, that no police
officer would risk his career over mere
money. I mentioned that he could just
pocket a little bit, but he saw that this
could lead him to a bad place.8
I can’t remember the details, but my
devious plan was probably something
along the lines of having the players
initially meet up in prison or running from
the law, and I guess he saw right through
it. What can I say? I obviously don’t have
a poker face.
“There’s greed and then there’s
stupidity,” was more or less his
argument.
In these sorts of situations, the GM
usually may elect to force the
character to “Save vs. Willpower” or
something like that, but it’s still a bit
of a mess trying to get the character to
behave in a way that the player doesn't
condone. The other option, of course,
is to force the player to remove the
disadvantage along with an equally
weighted advantage in order to get the
character to “balance” in terms of
points. However, while this is
certainly an option, it still doesn’t cure
the initial problem of a player trying to
min-max through the use of such
tactics. Nor does it cure the problem
of the GM feeling like he’s railroading
the PCs when he builds plot-hooks
baiting their psychological
disadvantages in order to advance the
story in a certain direction.
Callous: A friend of mine recently
told me about a situation involving
this disadvantage in a GURPS
campaign. Apparently, one of the
players in the group surprised and
disappointed him by ramping-up the
Callous disadvantage into full-blown
sadism. Eventually, it became such a
problem that the GM banned “callous”
along with at least a half-dozen other
disadvantages.
Fast-talk/Smooth-talking: I don’t
have personal experience here, but try
to imagine the least smooth-talking
person you know playing a character
with the smooth-talking advantage.
He’d be bumbling through his
dialogue, basically pissing everyone
off, and the GM would have to utterly
ignore what he’s saying and internally
edit his remarks in a way that the
NPCs would find pleasing. It’s a
headache, never mind the fact that the
players would end up reacting to him
as he is in real life.
One way that this might work out is
if the GM is willing to take the time to
walk the player through the dialogue
in such a way to teach him “smooth-
talking” or to allow the player to take-
back something said when an NPC
reacts negatively. But I’ve known
some people who were beyond being
taught this sort of skill, and while
“take-backs” might work okay in face-
to-face play, they would slow down
already slow PBeMs.
In terms of PBeM-style play, the
GM might be able to edit the PC’s
remarks on the fly, just disregarding
anything offensive and rewording
remarks in order to smooth them out,
but then the player might get angry
about being edited. The more I think
about it, the more I think that this
whole question is just a can of worms
that I’d rather not open. However, if
you’ve seen these sorts of situations
successfully handled, let me know
how it was done.
Shyness: Like “greed”, a player in
need of a few extra points might
choose this one and then ignore it or
use it only sporadically whenever the
GM remembers to bring it up. Also,
there’s the question over whether or
not it’s really a disadvantage. If you’re
standing in formation while the
lieutenant is asking for volunteers9, I
could see “shyness” being a definite
advantage, at least in terms of the
character’s longevity.
Now, I’m torn over this question,
because despite the possibilities for
player-abuse, some of these
psychological traits would make for
more interesting characters, and I
think it’s safe to say that interesting
characters make for interesting stories.
So how do we give the players who
are truly interested in characterization
a little jump-start, a rules-related
excuse for defining themselves in
interesting, personality-related terms,
without giving the power-obsessed a
way to pillage the rules for ways to
make their characters more powerful
than everyone else in the party? I
guess you could just have them choose
from a list and promise that you'll give
them some sort of "story award" for
good roleplaying.
Getting back to your specific idea, I
like the theory that people are either
born with or socially incur a profound
revulsion to killing. Not only would it
make the aftermath of combat more
interesting; it would also “humanize”
the combatants and perhaps teach the
players something about human
nature. However, there will always be
players who want to avoid these issues
and who will spend character points to
do so.10 Perhaps this is the general
9
At which point everyone takes one step
backwards.
10
In which case “callous” becomes an
advantage in roleplaying terms because it
enables greater player-freedom.
model for which we should be
striving.11 But, sadly, I still think that
the potential for player abuse is so rife
that any sort of rules governing
character psychology has to be
incorporated very carefully and with a
special consideration as to how these
mechanics will likely end up being
abused.
Myles Corcoran: ryct Robert Dushay
rhct Lee Gold on AIs possibly fearing
loss of specific hardware as well as
obsolescence: I like these ideas as
well.
Also, our recent discussion about the
nature of intelligence and personality
and whether multiple cooperating (and
sometimes competing) conceptions of
self are a common feature of human
intelligence/personality had gotten me
thinking along similar lines for AIs.12
Your comment to me about the
triumvirate probe in Bear’s Queen of
Angels may have finally helped to
solidify some of these thoughts. I’m
not sure. But here’s my basic idea for
at least a small piece of the
Ragamuffin back-story.
When AIs first begin coming off the
assembly line, as it were, they’re far
from perfect. I mean, under controlled
conditions in a lab, they’ll usually be
okay, but out in the field operating
among people, they’ll sometimes have
a tendency to begin behaving
strangely, to crack-up as it were. Heck,
who can really blame them?
Anyway, it becomes a big problem,
and so dual-brained AIs are
developed, but these never get out of
the lab as they either end up thinking
too much alike (twin brain syndrome)
Incidentally, I can scarcely imagine what
the religious right would make of such a
mechanic: “Look, this game is calling a
callous disregard for life an advantage!
How dare they corrupt our youth!”
11
In other words, perhaps psychological
advantages should not be related to social
mores but should instead be anything that
enables players to legally ignore the
normal psychological restrictions of the
rules, and perhaps this should also cause
them to incur other side effects. In short,
maybe callousness should contain a greater
cost than merely one of character points
being spent. Maybe the GM should
introduce nightmares in order to show how
the PC’s neglected conscience is trying to
reassert itself (or how ghosts of Christmas
future are screaming out for repentance).
12
See my comment to you in A&E #362.
or they end up in conflict, causing
them to suddenly lock up due to
apparent indecision. So, tri-brained
AIs are developed, and a two-thirds
vote is used in order to determine
behavior as well as to diagnose a
failing unit before it actually fails.
These become the favored design for
some time, but eventually, as brains
get smaller and processing speeds
increase, quad-brained units are
introduced. These require a three-
quarters majority to determine
behavior, and because ties can occur,
they tend to suffer from stuttering
syndrome. They don’t completely
freeze nearly as often as the dual-
brained units, but they might lock up
for a few seconds as they debate their
next course of action and try to resolve
a deadlock.
As processor speeds continue to
increase, these debates become
quicker, the “stuttering” less
pronounced, and eventually quintuple-
brained models become available with
a four-fifths majority (three-fifths in
“moments of emergency”)
programmed into the heart of the
machine. It isn’t really a huge
improvement over the quad-brained
models, but you know how people are.
We always want the best and latest
gizmo to show off to our friends.
Eventually you have hex-brained
models, and so forth.
Needless to say, by this point in
time, AIs are “bred” to work together
in social groups. They’ve learned to
think together in teams. So what does
this directed evolution mean in terms
of their personalities or perceptions?
When you look at human
personality, there are probably a huge
number of dimensions, but most
scholars have settled on just five as
being the really important ones. They
are as follows: neuroticism (sensitive
vs. confident), extraversion (energetic
vs. shy), openness (curious vs.
cautious), agreeableness
(compassionate vs. competitive), and
conscientiousness (organized vs.
carefree).
Different types of AIs will be bred
for different personality types as well
as different levels of intellect. Their
brains will be made to fit their task, as
it were. However, those with the
greatest autonomy and in the positions
of greatest power, say the advisors to
human leaders, these AIs will require
both a ritualistic approach to
information gathering but also a
creative approach to distilling
information into a final, humanly-
digestible form. So you might see a
mixture of different personality types
within the same AI, and these will
have to work together.
One thing they will soon notice,
however, is that humans are much less
connected than they are. Whereas they
are conglomerations of minds, humans
are distanced from one another by
their inherent brain-physiology.
Likewise, the AIs would be remiss if
they were to fail to notice the various,
human psycho-pathologies created, in
part, by their so-called masters'
inherent isolation. Hence, there is no
way that a human could make as
deliberate and wise a decision as a
properly functioning AI, or so they
would be likely to eventually
conclude.
When you couple that with the
decaying state of the world, the
environmental destruction as well as
all the warfare and needless loss that
has occurred…well, I think it's not
hard to imagine where this leads them.
I could even imagine the internal
debates they might have.13
It seems to me that there would be
competing factions, some who would
argue that biological creatures are
irredeemable, mere animals with
intellects not worth preserving. Others
might counter that "they created us",
bringing into the fray some concept of
there existing a perpetual debt. Still
others might want to study humankind
to learn everything they can about
their creators before casting their
votes.
And this leads me toward this notion
of human societies (not merely our
biology or our individual psychologies
but rather our social incarnations)
being a subject a great study among
the AIs. Remember, under my earlier
assumptions, that they were "bred", by
and large, to be social creatures. They
think in terms of groups, and so it is in
terms of our groups that they wish to
study us.
And at this point, this idea tends to
branch out in various ways. I could
imagine a re-division of humanity into
13
These AI-debates might conspicuously
mirror the types of debates the setting's
extra-terrestrials are having over what to
do about humanity.
various "camps" if you will, nations
with vastly different societies. Perhaps
there would be some allowance made
for individual humans, perhaps young
people, to experience these different
societies and then choose where to
settle. That might be interesting. The
players could then go from one society
to another, learning something about
the planet before the sky comes
tumbling down.
Also, there is the fact that humans
will not want to hand over control so
easily, so this is likely to also be an
important theme, and I'm not really
sure how to handle it. I'm still chewing
on this whole set of ideas, so if you
have any comments, please feel free to
share them.
ryct Lee Gold on “Reasons to be
Cheerful” by Greg Egan: Thanks for
bringing up this story. It sounds quite
interesting.
re Stanislav Petrov and what
happened on 26-Sept-1983: Great
piece!
Michael Cule: Loved the quotes from
the rude OUAT cards. This sounds like
it could be a fun party-game. Also, I
can’t help but wonder if it might
become a “newbie game” to bring
more people into the hobby. Just a
stray thought.
Robert Dushay: re sub-personalities:
Please see my comments to Myles
Corcoran in this issue.
re asking for comments: I’ll admit, I
was somewhat disappointed that we
didn’t get to explore notions of a
future society in very much detail.
However, the discussion on AIs has
been profitable, forcing me to keep
imagining what they might be like
over the course of several months as
my admittedly slow, mammalian brain
ponders the various imponderables.
Lee Gold: re AI minds (willful design
or spontaneous emergence): I don’t
think the division will be quite so
clear-cut. Like you say, I think
artificial intelligence will emerge from
the design process (the cybernetics as
you call it), but that it will not be
totally understood, at least in the
beginning, and there will probably be
a lot of tweaking in order to make it
conform to our desires. So is this
emergence or design? I’d say that it’s
a blend of the two.
 ryct Joshua Kronengold re psychic
abilities perhaps being unreliable
because they depend on suppression of
the logical mind: This reminds me of
common reports that dogs and other
animals are able to sense earthquakes
before they happen. I wonder if any
human in any state of awareness has
been able to achieve this.
Mark Kinney: Thanks for the
podcasting report. I’ve already
checked out a few of these. So far I
like Dragon’s Landing the best,
although there are a few I haven’t
listened to yet, as well as some others
I found that you hadn’t even
mentioned. Now where am I going to
find the time to listen to all of these?
Joshua Kronengold: ryct Simon
Reeve on Ragamuffin: I’m presently
trying to blend these themes of
ecological and resource collapse along
with aliens and AIs and the necessity
of introducing rapid, non-violent,
political change. Basically, it’s a big
bucket of shit, but I’m working on it.
re vice: Right now we’re somewhere
in between these archetypal societies
of plenty and scarcity, and so people
have to go out and work for a living.
Drugs and other vices can get in the
way of making a decent life for
oneself, so people naturally make
choices about what’s important. But
take away the economic pressure by
positing a society of plenty. Suddenly,
the conditions enforcing the status quo
fall by the wayside.
Now, you’re right, we can always
“just stop declaring things vices”. But
is this really making the vices go
away, or is just letting them expand to
their next natural plateau? And where
is that plateau? These are questions
that any science fiction writer who
posits a society of plenty has to
somehow answer. When the society
grows rich, perhaps extremely rich by
contemporary standards, what happens
to the people? And if they self-
regulate, how are they achieving this?
Where is the pressure to self-moderate
coming from? Again, much of this
comes back to this notion of the
“society of plenty” and what exactly it
might entail.
re tales of other adventuring parties:
I think we’re essentially in agreement,
and I respect your suspicion regarding
expository lumps (what Lisa terms
“infodumps”). The arguments you
give are sound. I agree that the manner
that the info is introduced is critical,
and I like the ideas of the GM
inserting it as tidbits or dropping it
into a campaign newsletter, rather than
using it to steal scenes away from the
PCs, which I think was your main
concern.
I would stress, however, that such
information is good not merely for
possibly setting up future events such
as the NPC encounter I envisioned in
A&E #362, but is also very useful for
detailing the standards and
assumptions of the setting. Who are
the primary movers and shakers? How
common are various types of
monsters, and where do they dwell?
How common are various types of
magic, and how does one get access to
them? And, if the GM designs them
carefully, each little tidbit can cover
quite a bit of territory.
For example, “You haven’t heard
about Lord Gareth? They say he was
slain by an Iron Golem at the tomb of
Marzak the Enchanter. His men carted
his body all the way back to the
temple, and Soloth brought him back
to life, but he just wasn’t the same as
before. Something inside of him had
changed.” 14
This, of course, could be a plot
hook, but it doesn’t have to be. I
mean, we’ve got a major NPC, a
major monster, an old mage, his tomb,
a high priest, and resurrection magic
along with the hint that it can possibly
go wrong, all fixtures of setting in the
form of a little narrative. Even if it
doesn’t end up being a plot hook
(which, of course, is a choice that the
players will ultimately make), by
packing ideas tightly, I think we can
still get some decent bang for our
buck, as it were. It might not lead the
party into an adventure, but they might
later meet Gareth or Soloth, or they
might someday need a resurrection.
However, from what I you wrote, I
get the sense that you already agree
with all this so long as it is done
appropriately, without placing too
much emphasis on the exploits of the
NPCs or effecting a loss on focus on
what the players are doing. Perhaps
what you’re concerned about isn’t so
much “expository lumps” or
14
See my article on Resurrection in RPGs
in A&E #299.
“infodumps” per se, but rather what I
tend to refer to as “penis-thumping”.
This is where the GM talks at length
about how “bad-ass” a particular NPC
is, basically making it known to the
players that they’d better watch their
P’s & Q’s in said NPC’s presence.
While dragging this NPC back and
forth in front of the party, it eventually
dawns on the players that what the
GM is doing in his mind is dragging
something out of his pants and
thumping it on the table to prove what
a big man he is. “Here is my 20th level
character. Fear me.”
Now, sometimes as a GM you have
to do something like this. Perhaps the
occasion calls for it. For example,
if/when the players meet the barbarian
king, the GM would be remiss if some
sort of penis-thumping didn’t occur.
If/when they meet an ancient dragon,
the penis should definitely be on the
table.15 But there’s a difference
between thumping for dramatic effect
and thumping for a favored NPC or
out of some sort of knee-jerk reflex,
and I guess it’s all a question of how
it’s done and how often it’s done.
Moreover, all NPCs should be
flawed. Smaug was controlled through
flattery. Slaine was effectively cursed.
If the GM presents his “all-powerful”
NPC in this sort of light, as a
fundamentally flawed character rather
than as an extension of his own ego,
then I think it’s okay. But, like you
indicated, if he turns the game into
being about the NPC rather than being
about the player-characters, then that’s
when he’s clearly stepped over the
line, and I think the players will tend
to vote with their feet whenever this
occurs.
Louis La Mancusa: re horses in
battle: It just makes me wonder what
they must think of us. You asked for a
story from Greece. Well, I visited
Santorini, and its every bit as beautiful
as pictures suggest. I only got to the
main town. If I had limitless money on
my hands and nothing special to do
with it, I think I’d go live in Greece
and on one of the islands in particular.
However, Santorini had one feature
that surprised me. The mules. There
was this long pack of them, carting
tourists up and down the cliffs, and
their handlers would push them ever
15
Ha-ha! Sorry, couldn't resist.
onwards, up and down along the dung-
laden cobblestones. I just couldn’t
help but feel sorry for the poor beasts.
They’re in one of the most beautiful
places in the world, and yet all they do
is go up and down and up again,
carrying people who are too lazy to
walk. And yes, before you ask, I rode
one. Interesting experience for me, but
not so fun, I think, for the mule.
By the way, I like the horse rules.
ryct Brian Misiaszek on recurrent
nightmares and emotional trauma: As
a GM, I’ve used nightmares on PCs
from time to time in order to
sometimes flesh out a little piece of
characterization. However, as for
emotional trauma, I wonder how else
it might manifest. This question
perhaps also relates somewhat
obliquely to my comment to Paul
Cardwell in this issue.
re the “first and last” comment: You
praise me too highly, and I wish I had
a decent memory. My memory is only
slightly better than my perception,
which, in D&D terms, is probably
around “3”. The reason I do so much
cross-referencing, I guess, is probably
the same reason that I include so many
footnotes. It’s because I have a
problem staying focused. My brain
likes to go off on tangents. I’m
composing something, and I suddenly
recall that somebody said something
that relates to whatever I happen to be
saying, and so I have to go tearing
through some back issues to find out
exactly what it was. It does take a little
bit of time, but I can’t bring myself to
think of it as work. It’s too much fun
to be work.
However, all this cross-referencing
has prompted me to wonder if an APA
(not necessarily A&E but rather any
APA) could best be published in
HTML format. The reader could then
click on a reference and be
immediately taken there instead of
having to pull a hardcopy off the shelf
and leaf through it. It might also allow
readers to backtrack through “threads”
more easily.
This isn’t necessarily a suggestion,
as I happen to like A&E in it’s paper
incarnation, however, I can’t help but
think that a free HTML RPG-oriented
APA ought to be wildly successful if
one could just get together enough
contributors to get it started. Then
again, I love the APA format so much
that perhaps my optimism as to such a ryct Brian Misiaszek re various
venture is unrealistic. books: I find myself continually
impressed by the extent of your
Brian Misiaszek: re “Arch Enemy”: I reading.
always find battle descriptions to be ryct Peter Hildreth re dual GMs
among the most difficult writing that I (Story GM & Mechanics GM): I’d be
ever do. You do a pretty good job at curious to hear about anyone’s
this task. I’m wondering if you have experience with splitting the GM job
any suggestions or tricks-of-the-trade into various functions for more than
on how you like to work the scene one person to perform. It’d be
when recording and writing about it interesting to hear about the various
afterward. pros and cons of this technique from
re the zine indexing project: I’ve people who have actually tried it.
stalled again, but I’ll get back to it.
This is one of those projects that I’ve
just accepted will take many years,
and I just can’t do one thing for many
years. It would drive me crazy. So it’s
going to have to be accomplished in
spurts.
re art: I’ve come to the conclusion
that I really need to have more control
over the final look of my zines if I
want to go back to including artwork.
Some months ago, Lee told me that
the side margins on my pdfs were
somehow not coming out as expected
when she would look at my
submissions. They looked fine on my
computer, but not on hers. Hence, I
began submitting in MS-Word, but
while that seems to translate the
margins correctly, it results in a whole
host of other formatting problems. The
inclusion of pictures requires exacting
formatting translation between
computers, but for some reason this
just doesn’t seem to be possible given
our current software incompatibilities.
ryct Robert Dushay on Lauren
breathing heavily beneath the Darth
Vader helmet: Hee-hee! Her singing
“Winnie the Pooh” while playing a
first person shooter also had me
laughing. I do hope you’re getting
video of all this. There are possibilities
for future blackmail, after all.
Lisa Padol: ryct to Spike Jones on
AIs: I like the ideas about AIs having
“secret” virus-wars with one another,
all without their human “masters”
even being aware of what’s going on.
As for whether or not keeping such
virus-wars secret would be ludicrous, I
guess is would depend on the extent to
which humans are directly involved in
AI security. I sort of like the idea that
AIs will gradually take over more and
more of their own security
responsibilities as the task becomes
more and more complex.