{"id":2353,"date":"2009-03-04T09:15:46","date_gmt":"2009-03-04T14:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2353"},"modified":"2009-03-04T09:31:22","modified_gmt":"2009-03-04T14:31:22","slug":"gm-advice-a-learning-mechanic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2353","title":{"rendered":"GM Advice: A Learning Mechanic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a reader ask about the mini-game that appears in my D&D campaign<\/a>. A few people have expressed interest in it, and I thought it might be worth a look. I don’t pretend this is clever or innovative. This is very much a system I cobbled together as I was groping around trying to simulate a character learning.<\/p>\n

In our game<\/a>, I had a situation where one player was working to translate a “book”, which was several pages of backstory they needed to know. Any time his character had enough downtime, the character could sit down and spend a few game hours attempting to translate the next section. If he was successful, I’d hand him the next couple of pages of the backstory. If he failed<\/em>, his character still learned from the attempt and his future chances of success went up. <\/p>\n

As an aside, if you need to feed your players a bunch of backstory, this is a pretty good way of going about it. They will naturally recoil if you hand them 20 pages of prose to read all at once. Even if they’re into it, they will tend to skim it quickly so that they can get back to playing the game. On the other hand, if you make the backstory into a reward<\/em> and dole it out a couple of pages at a time, they will be a lot more excited about it. Players can pass the material around the table without any one of them being taken out of the game for too long. It builds a bit of mild tension as they look forward to the next reveal. <\/p>\n

Oh boy! We found a couple more pages of the Lost Tome of Naughty Evilry. Hand it over, Shamus.<\/em><\/div>\n

The Goal<\/span><\/p>\n

D&D has mechanics for long-term learning. (Skill points and leveling up and whatnot.) It has mechanics for immediate goals. (Roll the dice to open the lock.) But it didn’t have anything for mid-range character projects. Most gameplay mechanics are set up so that characters learn and grow from success. The more success, the more XP. I wanted a mechanic that would simulate an activity that was inherently driven by trial-and-error, and where (this is the important part) the character got gradually better at the activity as time went on. Learning would be fast at first, but progress would be slow. Later on, learning would slower, but success would be more frequent. In general, the system is good for specific tasks like “find cure for the plague” and bad for more generalized tasks like “learn biology”. Situations where you might want to use something like this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Looking for a secret formula or cure for a disease.\n<\/li>\n
  2. Solving an abstract puzzle (that is, the character must solve the puzzle, not the player) in-game.\n<\/li>\n
  3. Working to translate or decipher some runes, text, a book, a map, some symbols, or what-have-you.\n<\/li>\n
  4. Inventing or building something new.\n<\/li>\n
  5. Cultivating or breeding rare plants or animals.\n<\/li>\n
  6. Researching a special plot-specific magic spell.\n<\/li>\n
  7. Making sense of the parts of some ancient technology they’ve unearthed. (What the parts are, how they go together, what they make, and how to use it.)\n<\/li>\n
  8. Using clairvoyance to investigate a [whatever].<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I also wanted a system that would work independently of their other skills, levels, and abilities. They could learn this activity organically, without waiting for the next level up. This is great for simulating things that anyone can learn to do with practice, but are usually self-contained skills that aren’t going to be useful later in the life of the character. If the character is working on a Rubik’s cube, this game could simulate their progress as they learn the puzzle. Once complete, they would be able to solve a cube at will from that point on, but that learning won’t enable them to instantly solve a completely unrelated puzzle.<\/p>\n

    The System<\/span><\/p>\n

    (I had an alphabet novelty die that went along with the translation game, but let’s just assume we’re using Ye Olde d20.) The game goes like this:<\/p>\n

    The player writes down all the numbers from 1 to 20 on a notecard. Every time they roll a number, that number will be crossed out on the card. If they roll a 15, then they cross out 15. <\/p>\n

    Each attempt needs to simulate a stretch of in-game time. Hours of labwork, meditation, tinkering, writing on the chalkboard, or whatever is required.<\/p>\n

    When they make an attempt, they roll the d20. If the resulting number is already crossed out, then the action was a success and they get their reward. If not, they still get to cross out the number they rolled, which will improve their chances next time around. Using a d20, they have no chance of success on their first attempt, and a 5% chance on their next attempt. Every failure improves their chances by 5%, and every success moves them closer to their goal. You decide ahead of time how many successes it will take to reach their overall goal. (For our game, I had the book<\/a> broken into 13 sections. So the character finished the translation after 13 successes.) <\/p>\n

    That’s it. Pretty simple, really.<\/p>\n

    Drawbacks & Quirks<\/span><\/p>\n

    There needs to be some sort of cost associated with an attempt, or the player can just have their character binge their way through the problem. Oh? Mini-game? Whatever. I’m just going to start rolling the dice. Tell me when I win.<\/em> Time should obviously be a cost, but if you can work in another cost (money, lab equipment, magical components, computer time, energy) it will make things more interesting. <\/p>\n

    The system as portrayed doesn’t use any character stats, which means Grogtor the Barbarian will be able to decipher the runes just as quickly as Wizbeard the Mage. Obviously you’ll need to establish some sort of prerequisites for doing the work. (i.e. you must have an INT of at least 14 to even begin the task.) Ideally they should get a benefit from any character stats. (Perhaps a high INT score will make attempts take less hours or use less resources, for example.) <\/p>\n

    Also note that total success is inevitable. This system is designed for something that can be done with trial-and-error over time. As presented, you can’t ever fail<\/em> at the task, unable to proceed. Unlucky rolling will just make it take longer. <\/p>\n

    The Numbers<\/span><\/p>\n

    Just to give you a feel for how the game will play out. I ran the numbers, and on average a player will need about 24 attempts to complete a task which requires 10 successes. The breakdown goes like this:<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    Success Needed<\/th>\n Average Required Attempts<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
    1<\/td>\n6.27 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    2<\/td>\n9.38 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    3<\/td>\n11.79 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    4<\/td>\n14.00 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    5<\/td>\n15.90 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    6<\/td>\n17.71 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    7<\/td>\n19.39 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    8<\/td>\n21.04 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    9<\/td>\n22.42 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    10<\/td>\n24.07 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    11<\/td>\n25.39 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    12<\/td>\n26.75 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    13<\/td>\n28.02 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    14<\/td>\n29.34 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    15<\/td>\n30.73 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    16<\/td>\n32.09 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    17<\/td>\n33.24 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    18<\/td>\n34.43 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    19<\/td>\n35.65 avg. rolls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

    <\/center><\/p>\n

    So if you decide the character needs 15 successful lab sessions in order to find the cure for the zombie plague, then the player is going to roll the die about 30 times. If a lab “session” is a full in-game day, then a player character will need to work for about a month solid to find it. <\/p>\n

    Other Notes<\/span><\/p>\n

    I’d give a description for each success: <\/p>\n

      \n
    1. You managed to isolate a viable sample of the zombie virus. You can now replicate it in the lab for study.\n<\/li>\n
    2. You discovered a way to observe the virus work on tissue samples without needing to infect actual people.\n<\/li>\n
    3. You managed to isolate the proteins that mumbo-jumbo the victim’s cellular whatchado.\n<\/li>\n
    4. You learned how the virus works. Now you know how it spreads. (Blood, saliva, topical contact, Facebook invites, etc.)\n<\/li>\n
    5. You can now make a cure from a single tissue sample that will destroy the virus. Downside: It only works on the zombie from whom you took the sample, and their brain is now mush. So it’s useless, but one step closer.\n<\/li>\n
    6. You’ve figured out how to make the cure general-use. If someone is bitten, you can dose them to keep them from turning as long as you can get them to the lab while their brain is still in good shape.\n<\/li>\n
    7. You’ve streamlined the cure so you no longer need the lab. You can just carry the cure with you and dose someone if they get infected.\n<\/li>\n
    8. You’ve synthesized a general use vaccine. You can now make people immune to the plague!\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      You get the idea. Hope you find it useful. <\/p>\n

      Noodling around with this sort of thing makes me want to run a game again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I had a reader ask about the mini-game that appears in my D&D campaign. A few people have expressed interest in it, and I thought it might be worth a look. I don’t pretend this is clever or innovative. This is very much a system I cobbled together as I was groping around trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}