GMing and Writing - Identify Stakeholder and Collect Requirements

 Everyday I review my PMBOK with ANKI. 

I realize that 

1. Players are the Stakeholders - End Users of the TRPG. 
2. Applying PMBOK - thus we identify the players and what makes them Enjoy the game. 
3. What makes them enjoy the Game are the Requirements. 
4. Don't forget the GM. he's also a Stakeholder and should also enjoy the Game. 
5. Lets simplify things: The GM can only juggle so many strategies to make the players enjoy the game. Let's Say 2-3 strategies. We want to limit the strategies because the GM's job is a lot. 
6. of the 2-3 strategies you have to: Categorize them, and you have to ALIGN them with the Stakeholders. 
1. CATEGORIZE STRATEGIES
1. Let's try ACTION Combat. let's say this is narrative pacing where the Players and the GM improvise. There is the Hook and an Immediate Feedback/ACtion from the Player, then the GM feedback/Escalates. I would recommend WORKING with your storytelling metrics - how much bandwidth does the GM have to plan out and "ANIMATE" the scenario. the GM's ability to ANIMATE scenario - his improvisation, his knowledge of scenarios, his ability to ESCALATE and DE-ESCALATE, his ability to create Conflict or Tension and to be able to release this tension (Catharsis). 
1. Whats special about ACTION storytelling is the ABILITY of the player to ACT. You don't have to think - emotion and its catharsis. "he attacks, you hit him back." EMOTION + CATHARSIS. Throw consistency out the window until you get a hang of what presses your player's buttons. 
2. Not limited to Combat - it can be SOCIAL, Technical, etc... if the PLAYER can respond instantly with an action that makes them feel catharsis then its working. 
2. Lets say PUZZLES. Let's say this is narrative pacing where the Players can Look at DATA and process it. they have the Opportunity to Look for an Angle. The ability of the PLAYERS to apply their PERSONAL skills and intelligence on a problem. 
   This also includes TALKING points and Interactions. 
1. It can be planning the Ship Rout in Traveller, SHOPPING, preparing for an Encounter, social puzzles/mysteries, etc... 
2. Give the Player DATA that his strengths will complement. Like ACTION but a slower burn.  
3. Role-Playing - Interacting with REALITY and being SOMEONE else. reinforcing the WORLD and reality the PCs exist in for the Player's immersion. 
2. ALIGN.
1. WHO enjoys what. Lets try a SURVEY using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting Players All give RANKING to the various things the GM can offer: Puzzles, Role-playing,  (after learning about RANKED voting - and how it works I LIKE it for most DEMOCRATIC decision making)
2. NEGOTIATE, CHANGE/MODIFY, and ADAPT. Interview and feedback with the players - negotiate what they ENJOY and how they expect to use their time. 
7. Prepare and Plan Accordingly. MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT. have X scenarios that are employed with the Strategies. At my 40s I can run probably 2-3 hours. I'm exhausted and dizzy after that. 

Good Cop/Bad Cop is Dividing Attention

Realizing that Good-Cop/Bad-Cop is a tactic meant to Divide Targets resources. When you are making a decision and trying to predict your outcomes. Creating two sets of outcomes based on two different personalities is harder than creating a set of outcomes for One personality - either good or bad. You can better foresee the outcomes if you're dealing with one Speaker/Target/Claimant/Customer/Client etc... 

So as a GM I would require some Social skills to employ "Divide and Conquer" or "Flanking Attacks" or "Good Cop and bad cop". A Clueless person about how the tactic works more likely will waste the tactic. At least one of the two is skilled. 

Next is that I will use Advantage or Boon or apply the Inverse modifier: Bane or Disadvantage to the person who is under this circumstance. 

Imagine yourself with your friend who you know well enough to know his/her tells, strengths and weaknesses. You're in a negotiation and advance a point of discussion that complicates the opposing party. it doesn't have to be a really good argument, even a bad argument works fine, as long as it Divides the Targets attention then it prevents the target from successfully arguing his case by building up credibility or strong arguments. 

This can be reversed, a skilled negotiator will use every negative point against the two people who are arguing against him. Dictating the pace and managing from an advantage position (the burden of proof is on the other party;  one party has to make more effort per argument). 

The same Biomechanics fighting multiple Opponents requires can be said about the Speech and Conversational Pacing mechanics - you have to be an expert in taking the weaknesses and flaws of one of the opponents to give the attackers obstacles. 

Death is Painful in many ways I didnt and can't imagine

the more I understand about the body, the more uncomfortable I am in killing scenes. One cannot help it as a GM, World Builder, and Storyteller - getting some powerfully sticky details that just burn itself into your mind. 

Particularly that:  

1) people just don't die "instantaneously" when hit in a vital part. As long as there is oxygen in their blood and atp in their muscles involuntary movement happens. Some part of them is still "alive". from the bowel movement of dying, to the enemy that holds the trigger down even after dying unleashing a spray of death to its own allies or at the PC involuntarily.  

2) a lethal injury means the person is either in Numb or Painful agony until they die. 

3) that burning is its own kind of torture 

4) that oxygen starvation from drowning or waterboarding is also another kind of torturous pain. 

4.1) the destruction of brain areas in oxygen starvation is a special kind of torture as parts of oneself cease to exist and can never be the same. 

5) that consciousness has a relativistic time element - it can stretch out time or it can just shut off abruptly. 

6) Characters with enough battle first aid will have extensive knowledge of injuries. Combat physicians will have knowledge of injuries and LONG term effects. Both calls for a sanity check. 

7) My idea of mercy kill is an opiate overdose. 

I stumbled on the reddit discussion about Chris Watts. I follow the morbid reality thread in reddit as part of my mindfulness reflections as well as my study of Horror after finishing GURPS Horror by kenneth hite (4e). The analysis of what constitutes a "Sanity Check" overlaps heavily with my Psychology, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, Cognitive-behavioral Therapy Studies. Note that Psychology and Behavioral studies overlap with Game Theory and Economic Studies if as a GM we want to simulate authentic behavior for players and analyze behavior we observe.   

The reddit thread talks about some bits on the autopsy reports of the murders which if ever done to the NPCs the players kill, it would be interesting to get their reaction. 

Stress is where Heroism can be better viewed. Stress Mechanics

Because of the Stress Mechanic (its like HP but the Stress doesn't go away so quickly without coping mechanisms like Vices and Habits; unified Conditions see 200425 GITB Quick Combat - Combat Mechanics,), I can now impose some tangible costs for very SMALL spaces and very difficult and frustrating equipment. 

the way I handled Load (Level of Effort), Stress, and Wounds is a Single Track of Penalties: 0, -1, -3, -7 and -10 and one of the 4 Modifiers to a Roll (so players don't get overwhelmed by the number of factors). 

I don't know yet how, but the NASA data on the crew would be my baseline. Noting that NASA crew is the exceptional or Elites and PCs fall under lower levels unless the GM sets it to more heroic competence levels. This means PCs require more maintenance and not as stable (no psych evaluation and filtering). 

It also helps that I have a Level of Effort aka Burden or Load Mechanic for operating Space Suits. The Time and Motion of Operating a Space Suit (like Space welders) and the physical toll even if in Zero G reminds me of Rapid Changes in Temperature exhausting the Body which leads to the superstition of Rain Causing sickness - that rapid changes in temperature exhausts the body because the body will switch gears and have to recalibrate itself (as it will always try to maintain equilibrium). It is the exhaustion that causes a weakened immune response and not the "rain" which leads to adequate rest and managing the transition to reduce the exhaustion. 

Interestingly it was discussed in the chapter of Embodied Emotions has started talking about Proprioception (I'm currently listening to Boosting your Emotional Intelligence by Jason M. Satterfield and a lot of CBT and Mindfulness studies seem to give me Ideas how to simplify my Management of all these factors: physical, energy levels, and stress). 200510 Cepheus Engine Variant Rules

Title: Stress is where Heroism can be better viewed. 

You explain to your Kids that Courage is Overcoming Fear. Then you reflect on that statement and where that saying leads oneself. Does that mean Virtue is overcoming Internal Weaknesses and Vulnerabilities? Is the Heroism found in overcoming the Physical Obstacle or the Internal obstacle? Is it heroic to overcome prejudice, intolerance, engendered bad behavior, and biases? When you think about the Economic vs Moral decision -what is $2 to a person who has nothing vs yourself, vs the moral/ethical act of providing aid - there is a disconnect between the Economic Decision (measuring the Physical Obstacle) vs the Ethical Decision (overcoming the Bias, prejudice, internal weakness). 

In an interview Jim Dinnigan (Who I never heard of until last night when Jay Duggar sent me the link and I listed to this while looking him up in Wikipedia) noted that Wargaming allowed them to Simulate and Model the situation so as to Systematically review Alternatives and review the Forces. Breaking the GAME, disrupting the prevailing forces in a situation is what we always look for when the Forces are against us. When it is to our advantage, we look at how the Opposite party can disrupt our advantage. The Change of Perspective lead to More information, and Actionable information to affect outcomes. 

Behavior and Cognition are the same, imagine what Jim Dunnigan was talking about but the battlefield for your attention and your behavior. To be able to MODEL the forces that affect your behavior and to disrupt these forces with levers and mechanical advantage. 

After Jon Oliver's lesson on how we teach history (I'm more studied in Filipino and Chinese and Roman History but his video is TRUE to Filipino and Chinese history; instead of race in Filipino history how the Poor has been used and vilified) the BIASES and false dichotomies/equivalencies that surround it is a ready example of Overcoming Internal Conflicts, not to remove conflicts but accept and make sense of them (example: Humans are capable of incredible compassion and love; while capable of cruelty and evil beyond comprehension - that cognitive dissonance is healthy and actually true to a degree).  

The thing about any good intention, action plan, and self improvement through Games is that these are tiny changes that can be easily disregarded and belittled. But over time allows us to shape our behavior and our gamer mindset. We seek to understand and play, I realized Gaming is emotionally ENGAGING with something I otherwise would not care for. Learning science, math, business, and all these things because I want to play or test these forces in a theoretical model gives me hope that the hobby is a wholistic way of self-improvement. echoing the domain: game in the brain. 

The paradox of Failure and Importance - some prethought strategies

In a TRPG there is a strange paradox where the higher the stakes, I expect a harder and harder roll. If I'm the GM, doesn't that make players fail more often than succeed? 

PC needs to overcome a challenge, to make this challenge - get passed the guard, get this deal signed/approved, hit the eye of the dragon, etc... the PC needs Luck to succeed... not WORK. 

This is my mental processing of this paradox. I want to have the Players feel the Gravity of a pivotal situation, but I do want them to succeed. How do I make them succeed? 

There are a few ways to allow the PCs to succeed but they do not trivialize the challenge. 

Aid One Another.

How does a the Baker help the Bucher? How does the Ranger help the Barbarian? How does the Rogue help the Cleric? Aid one Another does one crucial thing that heightens the Tensions of the Game, which the GM can use in great effect: Prioritize to the Party's objectives. 

The Aid action can be Simple like an Advantage/Disadvantage or it can be Complicated like a Task Chain everyone pitching in and modifying the circumstance of the role. A GM can step back and let the Players organize themselves, only stepping in to lockdown constraints and details to raise the tension. 

Pros and Cons

• Cons. Not as Satisfying as having the spotlight all to oneself, if this has been the practice. 
• Cons. Requires some prep studying the Aid Other Rules and Exploits. 
• Cons. It takes practice to step in and add constraints without derailing the team organization.
• Pros. It makes Success Costly and keeps the Tensions and Importance of the roll. 
• Pros. It's a Shared spotlight that lets the Players take up the 

Competing Constraints. 

If the GM things this would help, instead of rolling he can ask for - How in the competing constraints - Cost v Time v Quality/Effectiveness is an Action Performed. 

• The rogue does a Fast (Time) Scan of the surroundings, leaving himself Exposed (Cost). 
• The Cleric carefully (Time) inspects the bandages and injuries of the players and spares few remaining balms (Cost). 
• The steward and broker venture in the seedy part of town (cost in danger and risk), trying to get a good deal, prepared to hole up in booth for days (time).  

 Pros and Cons

• Cons. No roll, and the "fix" many players have in resolving tensions with a roll. 
• Cons. Players and GM sometimes cannot close a mental loop without having a roll.
• Pros. The tensions stays until the scene ends, and the main Climax of the scene is resolved.

Costly Success. 

Costly success means having to create Accounting of players Resources and Actions. Like any Cost-Benefit-Analysis it sounds like a Straight forward calculation in theory but it really depends on the Players and what they deem as resources as well as resources they cannot get back.

Players paying a Cost: in hit points, in spell slots, in drugs, and equipment, tools, consumables, etc... requires a lot of forethrough and documentation.  

• Cons. You need to know what is Costly to the Players and in the System. 
• Cons. You may need to do some upfront work of making the Cost Calculations unless the system itself can give it to you. The GM and Players may need to work out a BATNA or Opportunity Cost calculation. 
• Cons. You may have to have an unsatisfying learning curve to get those KPIs down to see what works OR you can observe someones game and see what players consider costly. If the Player doesn't work with a budget or track his equipment or character's Spell slots/abilities per day - they may not find this method effective. 
• Cons. This may be additional work for the players with the bookkeeping.
• Pros. One player who manages the assets of the Party is all it takes to put context to costs. 
• Pros. You achieve the Value analysis of the Success 
• Pro and Con. You can plan your challenges around these costs (PRO) using Earned Value Management and Expected Monetary Value analysis which one may need to learn (CON). which is basically assigning a percentage to the resources of the Player and assigning a Success Chance. and Seeing how likely they will blow through a resource budget. 

Costly Success: One Goal/Function for Another

Another type of Costly Success is making the PC have to CHANGE their goals in the middle of the undertaking. Instead of Killing the enemy, driving the enemy away; Instead of protecting the King, protecting the Bloodline, Instead of defending the Fort - buying time for someone else. 

Making Players have to Re-assess and let goal of GOals they've decided and the benefits they would have gotten: the Knight his Fief, the Rogue his riches, the Wizard their rewards.

Changing one's Mind. the Goal of this is to change ones mind. This only works well if there is uncertainty and sunk-cost in the Status Quo. Otherwise, there is no COST to changing the character's mind. 

• Cons. Set up, the GM has to note everyone's buy-in and what specifically are they getting out of the goal. 
• Cons. Some games the players are already teams and their Mission/Vision is not written up so the GM will need to do leg work to get goals for the players. 
• Pro and Cons. Another painful Goal is Function Change. The rogue is not the talker but the Knight, the The Knight is not the Tank but the Mage or the Cleric, etc...

Breaking down Challenges. 

To break down the challenges into smaller increments. Like the Schelling Point Combat the GM breaks the TENSION down to Long actions to smaller time scales until the Schelling Point or Climax. 

• Cons. there is a lot of UNKNOWNS when skills are made in Long Actions like minutes, hours, 4-5 hours, Man-days, Man weeks etc.. The GM worries about inconsistencies and thus weakening of Stakes and Effectiveness. 
• Cons. Changing the Language Framing the success on a Single Roll vs a Series of Actions. This means either the GM has to give immediate feedback where they are in their road to success or fail or its this Ambiguous condition where the Players cannot tell if they are succeeding or failing. The need to prepare clear feedback to the players on where they are in the situation. 
• Con and Pro. The uncertainty is like real world - we dont know if we've won the client over, finished the building on time, or there are any bugs that would bring the program crashing. This draws from the Players and GM's managing these Real World uncertainty and issues and being able to have fun in this.   

Mix and Match. All the above are just mental artifacts to help define and break concepts down to usable chunks. These may not carry though intact in your use of them, but I hope it helps.  

Know that I use these as well in REAL LIFE as I do Requirements Gathering and apply Interpersonal and Team Skills in meetings and stakeholder and requirement analysis. To me Project Management is a TRPG but with higher stakes and less catharsis, I only get to take the experience of success and failure with me to the Table and live out how else this project could have turned out if I had different or more agency and resources at my disposal. 

Distraction in my Alternate Cepheus Engine writing - How to rewrite the Introduction

I got distracted writing my Game Prep. After some thought while I stretched and hygeine I realize I can break the problem down by approaching it Iteratively. This follows the Principle - that I can have more words in a digitial format as long as I have usable indexing and organizing. I can have a lot of Data and Information, as long as Visually the Reader knows to Check the outline and Scan the indexes for key words they want to jump to. 

My distraction is the Variance between Rules as Written and my own mental procedures. 

Rules as written: Roll Dice + Characteristic Modifier + Skill vs 8. 

My Mental Proceedure is: How does this Roll push the story Forward? Then Roll Dice + Modifiers vs 8. I want to explain Roll vs Modified Roll. I want to explain Scale, Scope, Competence and Function etc... 

So I realize I should Organize Information in this way Instead. 

Basic → Intermediate  → Advance. 

Basic: Roll Dice + Modifiers vs Difficulty. 

Intermediate: How does the story go forward with a Roll? Then Roll. 

Advance: How the story goes forward and Break this down to a 3 Part Tension Build Up: Expectation/Desire, Conflict/Unexpected Outcomes, and Closure/Resolution/Tension Release. Then Roll. 

Basic  → Intermediate  → Advance. focus on User/Player Experience. 

You can play at any level, and fudge everything when you hit a problem. The difference of each level and sub-element is how satisfying it is to everyone in the game and the Technical Debt it creates. In the game we are trying to Withold our Disbelief or Keep Immersed.  Inconsistency is what rules and standards try to manage, what was easy or hard in one point of the game cannot change without violating the expectations. 

The Terms Basic or Advance deal with the level of Difficulty and how much it affects technical debt build up in  game. You can always run games fast and lose, but there is a trade off when the world is not consistent and without consistency - there are no stakes. (rant of many regarding Starwars and Rick and Morty Story Lord episode - when deus ex machine removes the stakes). 

Basic is the Rules and Framework of the System. Basics can easily change and may change often because some mechanics may be better for Intermediate and Advance Conce. 

Basic 1: Limited Modifiers

• Modifiers are Typically Comptence: Stat + Skill modifier. 
• Limited Modifiers - Only what matters, assumption the we know all variables in the game and the roll is the variable that matters. 
• Difficulty Benchmarks.   

Basic 2: There are only a Limit of Modifiers: 

• Competence: Stat + Skill
• Condition: Wounded, Tired, Dazed, Enhanced, etc... 
• Advantage or Disadvantage. How we always simplify Adv/Dis, that it always negates each other, and either only exists int he absence of any competing or contradicting modifiers. The GM/Ref having perfect knowledge is the final arbiter.

Intermediate is Bigger Picture/1000ft view used to navigate the game if its going to the right direction. These techniques are supposed to let Players and GMs move to Big Picture or to Details. 

Intermediate Techniques is Analysis, Decision Making, and Problem Solving. 

Intermediate 1: Difficulty and Scale.

• Scale. The concept of Scale (tackeled briefly by Kenneth Hite in GURPS Horror notes from my 2015 gaming ideas repository ) - this is the limitations and capacity of a given Character or Situation. 
• This models if a Character is against Many. 1 man vs 1 team of 5. 
• This models resources, time, tools, and output. 1 man with 30 days to prepare vs 1 team of 5 with a week to prepare. 
• It modes tools allowing a Character to manage an organization of 1000 or an army of 10,000, against different scales of challenges. 
• Scale is being able to identify where in a Big picture is the character, then Zoom in or Scale down to a Challenge suitable to Push the story forward. 
• Scale is the ability to Reference back to Goals, Objectives, Criterias if we are going the right direction Technically. Being able to gauge player satisfaction or engagement is an Advance concept. 

Intermediate 2: 5Y, 5W, Pre-Mortem, Visualization, and Chain of Outcomes. I wont go into details of using these all for games and work. Lets just say Its easy to go endlessly in how these skills are all used, and we keep a collection of skills we can consistently depend on for solving these elements in the game. 

Advanced. These are a collection of Storytelling Devices, Framing Techniques, Active Listening, Empathy Aids, Interpersional and Team Skills and Conflict Management Skills. Advance techniques are difficult to Juggle while performing Basic and Intermediate processes 

Social Actions - Character Options in Social problems in your games part 2 of 2

What is the Social Equivalent of Flanking?

Options in Combat engage us by giving us Power over the situation. I believe that the thrill of Combat is in the Thrill of being Empowered. Social Situations are more complicated and unlike Thrusts, Blocks, and Swings, they are not as Tangible to an Audience or any onlookers - but the Barbs, the Punching-Down, the Shade, and all the Tactics that Go into Social Conflict is real and something even more painful - given how much people feel disempowered by the complexity or how the Perception may stray from the Reality. 

I dont want to go into the Many Models in detail - GURPS with the many splat books and skills have a TON of options but is subject to a Lot of GM's fiat, L5R and WOD is known for this by giving Characters a Score to measure their Humanity, Honor, and Internal Fortitude and having some Actions specifically named, and D&D has a very basic one with a limited set of conditions.  Then there are those in REAL LIFE which are modeled in Books (and Role-playing Exercises) in Humble Inquiry, Socratic Method, Influence Skills, Negotiation Skills, Due Diligence Skills, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy , Cognitive Analytic Therapy, etc... 

1. Do we want to explore Social Actions? 
2. Do we want players to MASTER social Actions as much as they master Weapon maneuver Options?
3. Do we as a GM want to be versed in the Social Warfare of Aggregated Social Challenges of a Much Greater Social Challenge? 
4. What is scary and uncomfortable about Social problems in the Games? What are the barriers to entry?
5. What would make it engaging?  

World Building as we Play

There is more World Building Tools and Settings than the market can explore, learn, use, and share. That at this point everyone is making worlds and making tools to allow us to make worlds. The more difficult challenge is World Building Collaboration in a reciprocal and personal level.
To differentiate this from the collaboration done to populate a setting, there is collaboration where in we experience the affect of other games or other stories in our immersion as well as we play.

Shared Worlds and Living Settings

Living Settings would have been this reciprocal and personally involved collaborative world building but is has not yet fully developed and matured to meet such goals. Among its many challenges any community with a setting ultimately fractures and cannot sustain the connections over time. Pretty much it suffers the problems of transitioning from an Organization to an institution. As An institution it would have a core set of processes, goals, and methodologies in dealing with issues and conflicts with its goals. As an institution it would have greater levels of cohesion.

While this is going to require a lot of steps and skills to bridge the RPG community to an RPG institution, I'll think about this a little bit more. Particularly what are the trade-offs of the Institution-like qualities it will need to be a collaborative process in such as the scale of several Game Tables.

World Building as We Play. 

One set of Tools in World Building I've only heard about but not has fully developed is the Build as we Play model. Particularly tools that Facilitate Collaborative World-building as we Play amidst a session and not after or before we begin the story.
I dont mean a front loaded preparation process, instead we have the  tools that facilitates quick building of the many consequences and iterations of a particular aspect of a world. That when a Player introduces an Element of the Setting - it takes an elevator pitch or a 1-2 min spiel by which he alters the reality of the game and change the setting. Unleashing this idea into the world doesn't mean it gets to be dictated by that player solely - the other players set Scope, Constraints, Mindset, and Unintended consequences of what one Player has set upon the world (see Gamer Skills Counterpoint Technique).

My Hypothesis Process:

1. The game begins with 3 key assumptions about the setting all the players agree on. 
1. Recommendation: 3 criteria assumptions
1. Timeline. Example Ancient (specific ex. Axial Age, Mythical Age, Proto-Civilization age, Dark Ages, Low Medieval Age, Enlightenment, etc... )
2. Realism (called Austerity by Kenneth Hite in GURPS Horror; His definition is one of the best thought out and worded ones around) . Mythical, Fantastic, Sorcerous (magic that has a lot of limits  and  scarcity), Heroic, Gritty etc...
3. Scale-Scope. Scale is how much of the actions and consequences ripple out in the setting, and Scope is what the Players can directly affect. (another thing discussed by Kenneth Hite in GURPS horror). 
2. As they create characters and fill in their backstories, they talk about the world and the setting. This is when they introduce elements like: Magic, or Magical Items, Lost Artifacts, Lost Technology, Psionics, Aliens, Other beings, Wars, Treasure, etc... 
3. The other Players Modify these elements as the Player tells the back story. So while one player takes 2-3 minutes talking about his background the other players modify the: Scope, Constraints, Knowledge/Ignorance/Misinformation/Common Practice, Attitudes, and Unintended Consequences of that Setting Element. (see Gamer Skills Counterpoint Technique). each player can have a turn in modifying.
   This means the player building his character will work in feedback from the other players as they collaboratively build the world as they play. 
4. repeat 

Setting Elements

The next step would be making setting elements like Manorial vs Specialized, Republic, Empires, Scientific Method, Various kinds of Status Quo, Communism, Theocracy, Capitalism, Liberalism, Fascism, etc.. Drawing from various "Civics" (from Civ 5) about cultural and institutional constructs.

Making these elements modular, where the Setting Impact will be spelled out and how it affects individuals and societies made into a formula or mechanic (a way to simplify the huge mental load such Elements of the Settings reality).

from Gamer Skills

Yes &/But

Heuristic. Adapt most feedback to Yes and or Yes but. This tests the Improvisation and collaboration Skill.

A well known technique in Improvisation discussed at length in Happy Jacks and other more Narrative Driven Gming Styles.

Counterpoint

Heuristic. Alter someone's contribution with Yes And/But/Or with the following ways

• Scope,
• Constraints (ex. Scaricity, rarity, costs, time, availability, utility, etc…)
• Mindset (which is Knowledge/Ignorance/Misinformation/Common Practice/Attitudes regarding what people think or feel about this; Example its taboo, its a mistaken assumption, no one knows that its wrong and its really something else, etc...), and
• Unintended Consequences

80% Storytelling Techniques, and 20% system mechanics

Its easy to progress in Game mechanics since there are so many to learn, but the Collaborative Storytelling, Preparation, and Session Running seems to have a greater weight per Scene than mechanics.
What I mean as per Scene is the elements that build up right before "What do you do?" part until the scene is resolved (ideally we have enough of a transitional pause to jot down 20 seconds of notes).

• Various Framing Techniques (frame a loss, risk, gain, strawman, steelman, etc...), 
• Show not Tell, 
• Counterpoint Sandwich (like a compliment sandwich but with either buns as counterpoints or the middle is the counterpoint), 
• 3 contrasting descriptors, 
• Action not Adverbs, 
• 20-30% sensory narrative (in words or gm talk time; this means that when the GM narrates he narrates 80-70% in visual and makes sure he dashes it with other sensory narratives), 
• Yes And/But/Or, 
• Listening and Collaboration (as an exercise this would mean listening for 2 minutes and having to make good notes related to that; and as part of collaboration infer all the other goals and constraints of the speaker), 
• etc.. is not given as much emphasis.
  If it was a GM screen it would be 80% of the space, and mechanics would be 20%. 

It reminds me of Grammar Cards for Language Learning Anki Cards- its a formula and there are randomly generated elements (nouns, verbs, descriptors) the Learner has to work into the formula.

I can imagine a Anki Card for Counterpoint Sandwich asking for me to Work in Cat, Watch, Coughing, Redish, Quickly and GO! Conditioning the brain till it can improve on the most subtle mentions of the other person.

Game Mastering Research Update; leave it to Gamers to Game Self Improvement.

So I'm preoccupied in updating my Game Mastering Skills and Heuristics Document. I found this so much easier to update than blog posts because blog posts have an expectation to have a 500 word singular theme or  idea. I cant exactly say a small thing like "I finished reading dungeon world" lolz. An idea as incomplete as that, I might as well post in G+.

Anyway I've just finished a BUNCH of readings:

1. GURPS Horror (finally after all a few years I finally got to finish it). 
2. Chronicle of Darkness
3. Dungeon World (its rather short compared to the rest). 
4. Qin The Warring States (thoroughly, not just a systems analysis).
5. Qin the Warring States the Art of War

Using my Production and Operation Studies. 

So I've been studying Production Operations for about 4-6 months now. Reading stuff recommended, and those that an Industrial Engineer should have studied. One thing I'm clearly taking away is the techniques that refine and improve Processes and Activities that can be clearly applied to the way Games are run and played. 

I'm self studied in Game Design and User Interface or designing a User Experience since the 2000s when I hoped to get into Game Design Course (which didnt exist then). These "User" design techniques augmented by studies of Behavior Sciences, particularly Kahneman and Tversky's work (thinking Fast and Slow, Prospect Theory, and Applying the Behavior Sciences in Designing an Experience and Process). 

To put simply The Game Master Skills and Heuristics are actions and activities that allow someone to repeat and practice certain abilities that would enhance their Gaming Experience. Its have emphasized the following:

1. Actions. instead of Principles, Guidelines, long Essays of theory. Lets give  the Gamers ACTIONS to do. We can give them a default set of actions, and we can expand to how to modify and improve what ever Action Process they use to improve their gaming experience. 
2. Working Memory Management. Many of the Techniques have their emphasis in dealing with a terrible working memory or hacking and conditioning it so that skills are so ingrained that they occupy less of the working memory and allow greater bounds of complexity as well as preventing the gamer from being overwhelmed. A good mental environment, a 5S inside one's head.  
3. Opportunities for Deep Work. As we identify skills and heuristics, a lot of small techniques get mastered quite quickly and more opportunities for DEEP WORK begin to emerge for the Gamer. This can take the form of Flow in prep and refining improvisational abilities OR with his/her players. 

Moving into Gaming Agnositic has had some Interesting results. One of the most useful is focusing on the User Experience and Game Experience that does not hinge on any system. To have tools that allows the Gamer to have greater levels of engagement, experience, and enjoyment regardless of system. Isolating core principles that no one system can hold monopoly lolz (LIKE SCIENCE! Lolz)

You'll notice the Studies in Operations Sciences are BLENDED with Zen and some Philosophical Works. If you've checked out the Toyota Production System and Kaizan, its kinda steeped with Eastern Philosophy. Particularly the derivations of Buddhist and Confucian continuous improvement (commonly known as Kaizen). Whats notable about this is how it related to Memory and Skill Mastery. There is so much mysticism about it, but when you explore works concerning memory, behavior and biases it can be interpreted as a 5S and Lean Six Sigma approach to self improvement. 

Arthur V. Hill and many of the Operations Sciences researchers have noticed that MANY of  the "tricks" in the science can be applied in a personal level (coining Personal Operations). Especially since its an OBSESSION with heuristics which should be very familiar to gamers because these are basically the Models and mechanics we horde in our memory when we learn other game systems. Imagine using that memory, conditioned to memorize tons of Heuristics (game mechanics) applied to more practical mechanics and GAMIFYING those mechanics . That mindset that can pick and choose, modify and improve, or HACK, heuristics and models to serve what ever ends we gamers so desire lolz. 

To be a Gamer, particularly a TRPG gamer, maybe a kind of heuristic collector. There is some gamer pride about being able to learn ANY heuristic or mechanic or model. And there is an amount of satisfaction with being able to PLAY with any  heuristic or mechanic. And to play and play with these models - how MUNCHKIN is that method to max out a particular skill. 

I can go on and on. I'll just leave with the note that I'm always on the look out for feedback and collaboration in developing the Skills and Heuristics document. Feedback is a key aspect  of being a Gamer - when our expectations dont match up with reality, our ability to adapt and improvise is one of our strong suits. So if you want to join a particular feedback loop of challenge its good to look for places that would allow our limits and flaws to be visible and work on them. 

Adjustment of Post Frequency and Projects

I am currently working on several long posts that would take up about 5-10 hours to fully edit and make. My sickness and exercise regiments is going to hamper a lot of my work. Its better to measure in terms of Months how much hours I can scrounge up. About 10 hours a month on these projects.

Up-Coming projects:

1. Narrative Mass Combat Warfare System in an A6 pdf draft version 2015
1. I think it would take me about 3 months to finish this, it would need about 10 hours of work to finish, and maybe 5 hours to finish. 
2. There is going to be a Logistics made-fun in the case study method 
2. Narrative Combat Guide in A6 pdf 2015. An overlay system to some various RPG game systems as well as part of an Open RPG system I'm developing that suits my purposes of running the case-study school of GMing.
1. Probably the next after the warfare.
2. Hoping in succeeding drafts will have more flow charts to explain structure. I would love to dress it up with art but as my health is not as good I have less and less time.
3. Apply the Narrative Combat System on GURPS lite - modifying it to be lighter and easier to run. (using areas, initiative by being ready to say what they are going to do instead of stats, and other Narrative enhanced mechanics)  
3. Using Free-Mind, Mind mapping the Game. A guide of efficient use time and how to frame goals in prep.
4. Editing my GURPS Low Tech Western 11C. Hopefully i get it all done by the end of the year after the other projects above. I will have more time if I pause my campaign but I need to keep running so I'm currently wrestling with the need for more time to develop better techniques and document them and the material I gather running games. 

Success Quota Mechanic. Complexity in Major Tasks.

I'm moving to failure is OK mindset because of the influence of my work and studies. In GURPS this means the having roughly a success quota of 2 in 3-4 attempts. To put it as briefly as possible:

• Workload tasks is in intervals of hours, for up to 4 attempts.  
• Man-Day task is in intervals of Workloads, typically 4 attempts or 2 workloads per day with 3 workloads pushing the limit. Man-Day task is -1 to -2 penalty to the roll. 
• Pushing the limit causes an immediate interval cost to rest right after on a success, and a failure causes two intervals of rest and doubles the cost. 
• A Week-long task is in intervals of Days at, with 1 day of rest needed for every 3 days. -2 to -3 penalty to the roll. 
• Teaching someone to Ride a Horse 
• Writing a simple treatise or composition with a lot of thought. A speech, or a summarized report compressing several thousands of words of material.   
• An Audit of a season's accounts for a Barronet.  
• A Month-long task is an interval of Weeks, with 1 week of low activity for every 3 weeks of attempts. -3 to -4 penalty to the roll. 
• Fortifying a Town or a Small Section of a City
• A Diplomatic even of the Scale of Counties, Towns, or Petty Court. 
• Training a Company or Small Battalion.
• Intensive training of Basic Literacy.  
• Writing a Small treaties of a few to a dozens thousands words. 
• A Season-Long task, is an interval of Months with 1 month of low activity for every 3 months of attempts. -4 to -5 to the roll. 
• Court Intrigue or Major Diplomatic Event in the Scale of Empire or Kingdoms
• A Major Trial
• Training a Battalion or Regiment, Gathering supplies to prepare for an Year long Campaign
• Fortifying A City
• Intensive Training someone Working Literacy.
• A major or Important Treatise of about scores of thousands of words, if the material to draw from is on hand.
• A Year-long task is an interval of Seasons with 1 season of low activity for every 3 seasons of attempts. -6 to -7 to the roll. 
• Examples: One of the initial stages of Great Reforms of Great People of History.
• A portion of Justinian's Hagia Sophia, Belisarius Campaigns, Tribonian's Corpus Juris Civilis, John the Capadocians Tax Reform. 
• Alexious Re-invigoration of the Roman Empire, Currency Reform, 
• Alfred the Great's Reforms
• Charlemagne's Reforms
• Augustus Ceasar's creation of the Roman Empire
• Marians Miltiary Reforms
• Emperor Maurius' Military Reforms. 
• Tang Emperor's Military Reforms and Sections of the Great Canals. 

Why this changes?

• From the Art of Teaching and Creative Thinkers Toolkit lectures particularly, Failure and Attempts are part of success. The mechanics inform and enhance the problem solving process by allowing PCs to make multiple attempts to simulate the attempts made and the many set backs that are part of Success. 
• I find most gaming Systems that do not allow setbacks which is terrible. What I mean by terrible is it is sets mindset that may be hard to separate from realities of problem solving and creates the false narrative that heroes succeed on their first try. It is dramatic to fail. and failure can be fully explored as part of Role-playing. 
• The BIGGER the project, the more complexity and distractions abound. From my many lectures, I haven't gone around to Understanding Complexity by Professor Scott E Page but they've talked alot about his work to point out that Bigger Projects are more Complex and many instances of failure and setbacks happen along the way.
• Emphasis in Preparation and Planning. While the system implies the PC breaks up the project into many sub-tasks the way the Player can approach the problem is open ended. By thinking in this Frame work the system encourages the players think in how to set about Smaller Win-able tasks that build up to the much larger scale task. 
• A Player with Skill-12 will try to work towards tasks at Workload level, avoiding taking on much bigger tasks on the Man-Day level. This encourages more planning when he is at a lower skill level. 
• At a Higher skill level the Player can take on bigger tasks, and his appetite and ambition can be more grandiose. 
• This is an important mindset when thinking about Major Tasks and how they can fit in the Narrative. I want these things in my games and if possible the game of other GM's. 
• How I solve problems is how I game. The same tools I use in GMing or Role-Play is the same tools I use to frame problems. It needs an update, to something better.  

Disclaimer

• People have different Burn Out Rates. Factoring Characters with shorter or longer rates before burn out, try using a "save" system for every attempt. Feel free to modify to account for different burn out rates. 
• Cogntive Biases of Hyperbolic discounting or Degrees of Separation exerts a very strong influence on people like a frog being slow cooked. While one can make themselves feel urgency, communicating that urgency or setting that tone consistently is hard. Plus the complication of Burn out and Paranoia. Urgency with the Need to Rest is troublesome and worth throwing into a challenge. 
• Emotional Intelligence. It was in professors Robert C. Solomons Passion Philosophy and Intelligence of Emotion that I was made aware I tend to know my emotion by its symptoms and not how I feel. Emotions are complicated and Burn-Out is hard to detect, but the cost of Burn-Out follows the Cure vs Prevention model. 

GM Tools: The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle is the 80:20 Rule. What it means is that there are patterns in our everyday surroundings that occur with the 80:20 ratio. These patterns can be noticed by how strikingly juxtaposed they are from one another.  The 80's relationship with the 20's is typically something negative: asking myself "Let's say the 20% is this <insert factor> what would be disappointing or troubling to be the other 80%".

Some GMs gave examples that: 80% of the Problems made by 20% of the players. Another example is that the real work may take 1 hour, but it really takes 4 hours to do all the things before and after it. Nick DeVera pointed out another memorable way to think of this is Yak Shaving.

As a tool, its not meant to taken exactly but an abstract measure of by how much may lie beyond my initial assessment.

As a GM Tool

Step 1: take a key activity and make an informed guess how much time and resources it would take.
Step 2: multiply all these by 5!
Step 3: rapid fire technique to list out all the possible thing that may need to happen. (this is a Divergent Thinking Technique) and write them down quickly in the small amount of time you have. A creative thinking technique is starting from any point of the alphabet and naming a new thing from any letter up to 3d6 many options. (a creative thinking technique is to push away from old patterns of thinking is by randomizing).
Step 4: Decide how complicated the GM is going to make this, and how appropriate the challenge is to the situation. Use the Pacing Technique (I keep forgetting to cover this) to evaluate time and place (Pacing as a Sensing Technique).

In Planning.
The Players can be involved and practice this technique. It allows them to exercise Divergent Thinking as they rapid fire all the other related options and ideas surrounding their plan of action, as well as other plans of action. If the GM does this he's created an example of a Divergent thinking exercise (from Professor Gerard Poccio's Creative Thinkers Toolkit).

Combined with the Six Hats Technique. this is a Planning session that may count as a adventure session, even though the Players are just planning things out.


Disclaimer:

• Confirmation Bias. looking for the value of 80:20 may lead to seeing it more
• Choice Supportive Bias. memory is tricky as it only takes note of the option chosen and not the other options.

Extra Credit Episodes as to TTRPGs, "Difficult is Fun" and Plan, "Practice, Improvise".

Relating and Adapting Extra Credit with what I'm learning and my own notes. Always a great resource for ideas and key concepts. 

Quick Summary: Punishing vs Extra Challenging Games as related to TTRPGs.

1. Extra Challenging games have more consistency in rules thus rewarding mastering the rules. in TTRPGs it helps when the core system is applied to as much of the game as possible, with less exceptions. 
2. More tools to work with or allowing for more strategies to win. This is accommodating the different strategies players favor to use in situations. 
3. Telegraphing Opportunities within the game. Fore-shadowing and Managing Expectations tend to fit this in many ways. This is part of pacing as well (why pacing is a key sensing skill).  
4. Iteration to retry (lowering the cost of retrying)  This is how the GM paces or moves from challenge to challenge when presenting other options and opportunities to succeed. 
5. Usability. Strongly related to 1 and 2, rules that are easy to use and tools (or strategies) that are easier to get into. 
6. Challenge Curve.  Basically how to pace challenges. Pacing is also the skill

Review: Pacing - the set of sensing* questions and techniques
Check out the #sidequest regarding Dark Souls (which I reminds me 

Another jewel from Extra Credit. More tools to assess and work on my game :D while most TTRPGs favor the other two (planning and improvise), practice comes in the form of techniques that can be encouraged.

In my case  I've been studying skills related to preparation, framing, negotiation, sensing  etc... these soft skills used in real life are problem solving skills that are player based. in this video, polishing these particular skills and challenges for these skills serve how best I can prep for a game and hone my gming. 

PPI and Difficult is Fun reminds me that these virtues in DiF applies directly to the skills we want to focus on. So if I should be able to identify the PPI or strategies I want to be Open About in my GMing and make sure to ask myself if I'm being consistent when I make certain decision about the Game. 

How We Learn by Professor Monisha Pasupathi Ph.D. talks about something similar in Chapter 16 under learning strategies. by What is similar is the 5 techniques discussed in Difficult and Fun is a form of feedback loop between Players and GM in learning each other and the game. They are elements that make up a particular set of strategies discussed. Plan Practice and Improvise relates very similarly since its how the GM designs his game and draws from himself. In my Hypothesis: We game the same way we solve problems, it is a way to deconstruction our own favored strategies in problem solving.

*sensing is a term used by Professor Michael Roberto to describe when we are trying to find out where we are in any given point or in the middle of an ambiguous problem. I'm a person who have attention overload and find myself lost in problems because I cannot hold on to the data I need to sort through it. So often I'm sensing where I am. Over time I believe I'll be doing this more often, and if your mental situation is like mine having a reserve of techniques for sensing.

Workload Rule-of-Thumb

A continuation from the Narrative Mass Combat notes on rules of thumb.

This is Workload. a useful rule of thumb. In my studies its been very usable in many things like planning for games (since airsoft is almost half hiking/running in wilderness) and planning special endurance related events and activities. 

• Its a handy rule for a game, as much as Force Multiplier maxims (will be discussed in the future)
• Use it to plan out real life or in game activities.
• Note that in certain seasons there is one to four workloads of daylight.
• Less fit people need more frequency of rest or lighter loads. 
• It informs how much work to budget and when people can rest. Note with fatigue there is entropy in the organization. 

Its based of metrics from the Tactica and Small Wars Manual. 

• A useful rule of thumb. Workloads. 
• A Workload is 4-5 hours a day (like a human). This is work where the animal is doing its maximum load without injury (this is relative to their body weight):
• 30% for animals below 1,000lbs, 
• 25% below 2000lbs, and 
• 20% below 3000lbs). 
• Warriors trained in the march can carry 40% bodyweight (60lbs). 
• Halving the Load lets the warrior double the workload he can perform. Warriors can do two work loads at 20% their weight (30lbs)
• Humans can travel 20km/12mi per workload. Horses and Camels about 40km/24mi. Oxes 15km/9mi per workload.  
• A fit human can do a workload a day for 6 days for a season. Animals are less at about 4-5 days. Mules and Camels are the exception and as much as a human.. 
• When there is 2 work loads per day increase the rate of rest 2 days to be sustainable. If not mark a level of wear. Every level of wear is a penalty to a lot of rolls, almost all.
• Every level of wear is 2-3 days of rest. Doubling every level of wear. As the level of wear  depends on the game system. in 2d6 target number it would be 1 penalty. 
•  When there are 3 work  loads per day double the frequency of rest or else take another level of wear. 
• Workloads can be used for Men and Beasts. It can be used in modern measures or as a personal rule of thumb. remember its the not just the limit of endurance but the limit of safety. 

Narrative Mass Combat: Part 2 - Applying Groupings and using Economies of Defense

This post is for GMs who want to tackle mass combat or scale the game at the level of armies and states.

Strategikon and the Art of War has rules of thumb about how much I need for certain victory. First I want to discus Economies of Defense. In later posts I will go into Terrain and Circumstances which is discussed in the Sun Zi's Art of War (AoW for short in future discussions) but I will go into implementable examples and aids. I will then go into Force Multipliers or Dividers, these are Meta Systems that can be plugged into Game systems that do not have Mass Combat.

Economies of Defense

I found this concept very useful in both combat, in sparring and airsoft, and in Mass Combat. The concept allows me to focus on economies of Attention.

This simplifies how having greater numbers of soldiers works. That greater numbers over another force allows me to divide the defense of another side. That One against One means both having 100% of their Defense available, while Two against One halves the defense of the lesser Force.

This concept means numbers don't matter as much if the greater force cannot divide the defense of the other lesser force (numbers mean more "Shifts" of fighting, wearing down the smaller force). This simple matter means that in Narrow or Contested Ground (the Art of War: The 9 types of ground) I cannot take advantage of greater numbers as effectively.

Reiterating that in a fight of 2 to 1, the casualties of the greater force depends on how efficiently one can take advantage of the opening created by the flanking of the other. This flexible mental concept of dividing the defense is so useful it will greatly improve the GM's narrative when describing forces and organization. In the geometry of battle ranks thin to cover flanks against greater numbers. When ranks thin, gaps are not filled as quickly and when lines break flanks are exposed and the men in ranks despite how tight they may be may see too many men and fright takes over while the other side gains bloodlust.

Defense can be translated as adapting to the circumstance externally dictated. That in an organization I act defensively when I am adapting and reacting, instead of directing and attacking. This takes the concept to an abstraction for scenes not as geometric as battlefields.

Quality and Quantity of Force

Because of various biases humans use these numbers to determine their force instead of going by quality. It is easier to mass the numbers by using full-time or part-time soldiers forcing other men to fight in the army. 

That in earlier eras numbers mattered more than quality and they would get all the fighting age males (and sometimes too young, too old, and women depending on the circumstance; typically aged 14-40) and herd them. One realizes that this "buffering" of numbers is why one hears about 1 out of 10 or 1 out of 5 fighting men. Spartans and Vikings (Raiding northmen) were typically 4 out of 5 fighting men (20% being servants who dont really fight but may be made to do so in the rear). In the poorest quality of troops one needs at least 1 warrior beating the shit out of people to control 8-9 other people (1-2 of these people mostly serving as servants).

One realizes that it is a Herd of humans, disciplined by violence, threats, conditioning, practice, punishment and rewards. That these marvelously arrayed blocks of battalions or regiments of humanity can be compared to herded animals. There are times of great motivations and prize to be won, but fear and pain are the most common tool of disciple. No wonder Sun Zi talks about the dangers of cornering a foe, when cornered every man becomes a fighting man. 

In Sins of the Crusade, the army is made up of 1 of 4 are fighting men. Slaves, Criminals, and the many second sons and disguised daughters of a Europe that is experiencing the limits of its carrying capacity. 

Using Groupings and Economies of Defense

Now begin by taking the Strategic and Tactical strength used in an Era. Great Empires during Ancient Eras waged wars in the scale of Corps and Divisions (100,000 to 30,000 per side on field of battle) where they moved pieces of Divisions (10,000). This includes the Ancient Near East Eras, Ancient Roman Era, and Most of the Chinese Eras (eras I know fought in this scale prior to renaissance eras).  In other eras it was battles of Divisions to Brigades (50,000 to 10,000) with pieces of Brigades to Regiments. In the Medieval eras they fought in the scale of Divisions and Regiments (30,000 to 5,000).  

Once I know what size I will be dealing with, this is broken up to its "Tactical" and "Strategic" units.  These are relative terms, with the emphasis of Tactical being what is on the ground or being used. Strategic is the forces that takes more preparation, they have various stages of readiness, and factors what can be raised or what is in reserved. 

A Corps of 50,000-30,000 men can be Strategic if its the total pool of manpower that State can draw from or as a Tactical unit, it is the force being deployed and used. In SotC the Strategic unit depends on who I are talking to: The Emperor or Bohemmond or Abu'l Qasim. Bohemmon's Strategic force is his whole army of a Brigade sized force of 10,000 men (but at 1 warrior out of 10 men), and his tactical units are two regiments of ~2000 controlled by his Hypodoux (visduc in french; the terms change as they don't want to use the greek terms) Tancred and Mauger. Alexios has about 60,000 and as he assigns them they are his strategic units: 20,000 which he's assigned to Megas Doux John Doukas, and 10,000 to deal with the Balkans. How these forces are deployed is their Tactical level.

Finally at the Tactical level, when forces are engaging each other I can factor economies of defense. In the Tactical scale I examine the terrain realtive to the size of the army. A man is a Pace wide (2/3 a yard or meter), so to hold a line of 40m I need 60 men. I reinforce these men with ranks, as armies are mobs that smash into each other and a line can easily fall without reinforcing ranks. In open terrain numbers are even more pronounced and important, even if the quality is questionable.

Ill go into Force Multipliers in another post.  

Translating it to Dice

In 1 to 1 each has a 100% resources to defend and there is a 50% of either one to make an attack penetrate the defense then we can work with this baseline. In odds of 1 vs 3, the lesser force has 1/3 of their defense available. Multiply the defense penalty to the 50% baseline, in this case 15% chance to defend. This translates as a -35% penalty to the defender or a +35% bonus to the attacker. Just to be different I will recommend a penalty

Two forces can be of equal in number, but if one force is able to divide the Other's ability to defend this would allow the other to better overwhelm the other.

If there are penalties for "Fatigued" or "Spent" forces it would apply to their defense as well. Again, at "half" strength, the half the odds of success and translate that to dice odds. 

Back to basics : exploring the fears to enhance immersion

Fear in war should be better explored. There is Fear of the enemy, fear of...
... the minor tyrants  who use violence and coercion for men to fight a battle they want no part of,
... never seeing or going home,
... being sold into slavery,
... the close quarters of ranks compressing in battle or moving,
... the blow that will come from nowhere,
....screams of men slaughtered like animals,
... being crushed and trampled,
... being maimed and crippled,
... being trampled or smashed by a wild animal or a stampede of men,
... the hunger and suffering of the march and camp,
... the exposure to the elements,
... the disease and dysentery ,
... uncertainty of numbness from Fatigue, wounds, or illness ,
... failure, defeat and execution,
... reputation and honor lost,
... fear for the life of the man beside them,
... for their tribe and home,
... loss of friends and loved ones,
... The gods and being damned, etc...

Every fear thoroughly explored and visualized in the narrative and every tragedy contemplated makes for a good war campaign (or adventure) .

Every pain as well, the loss, starvation, thirst, ache, loss of innocence, etc. I guess expanding the ways to describe and reimagine these all enhance the game.

The focus or mastery of the negative aspects. The ideas I instinctively shy away from but need to explore to humanize and give war, adventure, violence, and killing proper context.

Currently working with the techniques above to enhance immersion, techniques to frame tragedy effectively or unexpected success, and consequences that pull in opposite directions until confusion.

Implementable 

Edit: to implement the techniques above what I would do is take the awareness I have of their fears and focus on it. Remark about the fear and how people react to it. That in war or in an environment of violence this is what drives them and all the stories of how crazy and irrational it makes people. Work with the observable fear in its subtle cues and consequences.

Ex. Many non warriors are forced to fight and you can see their button welding sergeants and corporeal hovering nearby.

Proceed next to ask the player what his character stands to fear from this situation. Or to start small as him what he empathize the fear of the man next to him.

Just a couple of times per session check for what situations make the PC nervous and if they would express it in their decision making. If the player still does not feel it from the environment to translate to PC, the frame in the negative and emphasize on risk. I will have multiple articles on framing if it is asked or needed.

Narrative Mass Combat: Part 1 - Groupings and Leadership

3 part post about Narrative Mass Combat. This helps in running Mass Combat since it gives some basic principles to consider.

I will give more specific examples and show how I use this foundation from recordings of my on going campaign. An open and system agnostic system.

Learning the Groupings and the Leaders

On a game table there is only a limit to the number of Players a GM can handle. This concept of groups and the tasks they can handle or, for training, the amount a trainer can train is called workstreams. If the GM considers how many players he can handle, this is an example of the kind of thinking that goes into workstreams or group tasks.

Key Concepts

• Smallest group is a Team. Very similar to a Game Table or a Group of friends talking - typically 4-5 people. The team is found in military as Fire Team and lead by a Non-Commission officer called a Corporeal and in many Business Settings we have the team and have a team leader. These teams assigned for a particular task, project or department.
         A Household or Family is a Team with the head of the family the leader. A Clan or Tribe elder is the head of a group of households in as far as representing them and remembering their traditions, history, and rituals. Another leader of a group of households is a Bailey aka Bailif aka gobernadorcillo ("Little Governor") aka Steward.
• A group of groups. The next size of group is Section or Squad. A Section is made up of number of teams, typically a couple of Teams. Depending on the size of the group Sections can be made of a number of Teams, but we do have conventions of just a couple of teams.
         Administrative groups have their own Teams which is separate from the Population they manage. The basic unit of many eras are Scribes. Other terms for such basic units are Pages and Clerks. Administrators have a lot of terms for them, a lot in the Roman tradition. Some religious orders draw their administration from other successful Administrative organizations. Christianity draws from Roman traditions, while in the east philosophical and religious organization are the pattern for bureaucracies - example is the Taoist and Confucian systems. 
         Religious Orders also follow some kind of grouping and leadership. Novices serve as team members while their leader is a rank higher having some some religious office. A Friar or Monk is part of a Mendicant order. They are in effect Novices until they gain rank and holy orders. To keep things simple, they are all Novices, even lay people, with minor differences in vows from their mendicant order or place in the community. Novices are separate from the Laity as they are the ones managing the laity.     
• The group leader cannot be the leader of a subgroup. This is when the pattern becomes fractal and repeats as we Zoom out at larger and larger groupings. Each team will have a leader, and the one in charge of the entire Section cannot also be the leader of one of these teams.  The overall leader of a Section is a Foreman in worker groups, in some militaries we have Sergeants, in the Roman tradition we have Dekarchs, Decurions, and Conteberions.
         In religious groups there is the Priest with his team or his section and teams. Depending on the era Priests have varying degrees of importance and status. the "product" a Priest provides is sufficient for a community or wealthy patron. The size of novices and laity that support his activities depends on the status he serves. In the next level, bishopry, typically is at the level of generals and counts. The Bishopry or Patriarchy (Theophylact) are considered "princes" of the church. Its really up to the GM or the Setting how much influence they have.  
• Conventions of Leadership and Groups change all the time. Different Eras have different conventions of conventional group size for a particular task. A platoon is a small group of 4-5 Squads under a Lieutenant (Pentakonarch) while a company is 8-15 squads under a Captain (Centurion, Chief, Captal, Hekatonarch etc...). 
       There are many forces that determine convention: the ability to support full time soldiers, traditions of leadership (the ability to create and train leaders), and the body of knowledge peoples possess about warfare. This also changes as armies lose their numbers over a period of a war. Note the repeated expression of the pattern found in the Section level.
        Typically a region provided 1 fighting man per household in earlier eras where these men were the Pater Familia of the household. This changed to almost 2-3 households per specialist fighting man (Heavy Infantryman or Archer) as soldiers became dedicated and specialized. light cavalry was supported by three times their infantry counterpart (6-9 households), while heavy cavalry twice that of light cavalry (12-20 households).  

The Komnenian Roman Tradition

• The Tetrarch or Corpreal commands a team 4 men. 
• The Dekarch or Sergeant commands a squad of 10 men. A learned Dekarch would be wise to have his 2nd of command lead a Tetrarch and another lead the remaining men of the squad. 
• The Hekatonarch or Captain commands 8-12 squads. He will have a lieutenant, one of the "Primary" Dekarks, who will command his personal squad while he maneuvers his other squads. 
• The Comes or Count (also called a Tribune) commands a group of 4-5 Hekatonarchs. The group is called a Tagma, or Bandon. This means he administers over a Tagma, a region of about 1200 households. 
• The Doux (Duke) commands 3-5 Comes (Counts) or Tribunes. The region administers is of the same name as the force he commands: A Themata or Theme. This is made up of 4000 to 20,000 households. In earlier Eras this was much densely populated or bigger to make for the lower density. Alexios commanded about 8-12 Doux or Strategos. Sometimes he had problems with the Doux and separated the Administrative role from the Military leadership having Strategos. He lacked capable administrators and borrowed heavily to finance his armies created many "orphan" forces that did not have a Themata to fully finance the force. 
• Rome's Pretoreans or Constantinople's Scholae are Battalion (Bandon/Tagma/ Marian Cohort) level forces that draw its finances from the households of the Capital. These "House Guards" are similar to the Houscarls or Huskalars. The important thing to remember is that these House Guards are client families of the ruling family, and are typically very loyal and dedicated. They are also very wealthy as the wealth of the households that support these have the Patronage of the ruling Family or Faction. This is a source of loyal manpower if the line of patronage in uninterrupted. 

The rule about the Group Leader has to delegate the leadership of all subgroups and cannot have a subgroup under him, creates "Hypo" (under) versions of his Title like Hypo Strategos or Hypo-hekatonarch. Of course its easier to just call the lieutenant the same rank as the sub leaders under the Group leader. 

Learning Notes. 

• As the group gets bigger various rules get harder and requires dedicated people. At Company level you have an officer, an Optio, who is in charge of logistics. Other than the Lieutenants/Sub Leaders of the Group Leader, he has a Sub leader who is in charge of all support personnel. He may not command a sub group but all the support people counts as the subgroup under him. 
• I should be able to move up and down the scale of group easily. Once I master how to break up a force into its subgroups I can better work with the numbers without being overwhelmed. Remembering I deal with the Sub-leaders of this groups helps both in visualizing the kind of entity I'm dealing with. That communication degrades per level the information disseminates. That the sub-leaders have to communicate it to his men. 
• I realized how important training particular maneuvers are because it requires less interpretation when a command is given. 
• In Part 2, we talk about some rules of thumb and generalities that give us an idea of what each Group Scale can do and expected to do. 

Back to Basics - Each Session is a Unique Dialogue

Realizing Each Session as a Unique Dialogue is a new mnemonic/coping mechanism and tool for me. A session is not just a Game, but a Conversation where we deep dive into the character. We find something NEW, and we do that from the challenges and conflict that come up. particularly the un-intended consequences and random events that happen in the game. 

Unique

Let me emphasize in a UNIQUE dialogue. As an Objective, that means I have to come away with learning something new about the PCs or Players. Something material to add to my notebook and game notes. Its discovering a New thing to Appreciate about the Players.

Particularly something Unpredictable! This metric is challenging if I am able to control or limit my expectations and when I am reeling from the stunning effect of my expectations being bypassed and I have to work to catch up. 

Dialogue

Unique Dialogue vs Conversation. Dialogue means really LISTENING. Often used by manipulative people to frame a situation, falsely, as a way to cause *Unilateral  (One sided) Change vs *BiLateral (Both Sides) Change. 

*I find them "Big Words" and Jargon used to confuse people.

In any point in the GM session, I should be asking myself - Did I learn something new? 

[Reflections] Ads for Skilled Players

Early on I realized that information is a barrier between people. As much as Shared Interests can connect us, differences in Interests separate us. I hated the vicious cycle of how this worked and how disconnected it made me feel. When I learn something, it should not make it harder to connect to people. The more I know, the more differences it can create and the natural thing for me was to make these differences matter more than they should.

I was reminded by this again when I noticed that trend of "Skilled Players Wanted!" I get it, it takes time to teach people to play a certain game. I felt that even more when I tried to teach people GURPS and realize I've made a pretty steep requirement for Interaction. I realized that was the problem of how I played DnD or GURPS, with all the expansions and companion rules I required. Holy Crap I'm distancing myself from people. 

It was first expressed in my personal philosophy and then towards my gaming. Tearing down those walls and reworking all the things I learned into being System Agnostic - its like becoming a Humanist. Of course there is the system I grew up with, and the system I know very well - but in the end I have to strip away the system and look at principles that can be applied universally. 

 So we can talk about games, I can "Yes&" in any gaming conversation if I can get down to the Attention Mechanics and Soft Skills that creates the Game Experience. We use game systems like Tools, and we each have a particular technique in applying these tools. I want to ask about your technique.

Everyone is in various stages and levels in their life. Its life, I should be able to relate if I work with what matters. Everyone wants to game, they will channel their desires and imagination and I should be able to work with it if I listen.

I guess it should boil down to "if the person is a pain in the butt?". Thats all that matters, people easy to deal with is all I need to make a great game experience.