Management and Role-playing II; Problems with Pure Evil Races

Continuing The use of the Art Critical Thinking in RPGs.

1. Making High-Stakes Decisions - This is the introduction to the lecture and poses to the listener how people decision and how there are techniques that improve on them. To the GM, it is how the players make decision and how to better predict them or play to their weaknesses.
2. Cognitive Biases - The list of cognitive biases, is like a list of traps. Players who are able to identify these, can spot certain traps. For the GM, his knowledge of these traps help him play to the problem solving tendencies of the player. This is where the real intellectual challenge which is fun can be found.
3. Avoiding Decision-Making Traps - The previous lecture allow for detect traps, this lecture is how to disarm SOME of them. Players might find this useful when brainstorming and interacting with each other (since the GM spreads the information among them, based on their varied perceptive capabilities).
4. Framing—Risk or Opportunity? - GMs will get a whole lot of fun out of this, as they carefully play around with the skill to confuse the player's as the best course of action. Ideally the GM's NPCs doesnt play it too thick.
For Players, this is useful when trying to reach a consensus with each other.
5. Intuition—Recognizing Patterns - Intuition: as a GURPS advantage versus what I learned in the lecture is very different and makes more sense. My new house rule, to reflect this powerful aspect of intelligence and its point cost is:

• Intuition halves default penalties when using related skills (round down) (Ex, naturalist -2 instead of -3 for survival; Soldier -3 instead of -6 for Tactics).
• Reduces raw default penalty by 1 (IQ-5 instead of IQ-6 for Artist)
• Reduce margin of failure by 2, minimum of 1 with skills that are greater or equal to 12.
  
• +3 bonus to highly ambiguous pattern recognition (ex. ciphering, cryptography, and some sci-fi point-defense gunnery where the gunner tries to predict fire patterns).

Objective Morality and Role Playing. Wow another Philosophical debate regarding how to play RPGs in the thread. My problem with objective morality, where the GM defines what is Good and Bad in a setting is that there is no room for free will. There is no room for choices, you will do what you are designed to do. So evil races are characterised as following the authorship of the world builder.

The funny thing about Objective Morality is that, it has no room for empathy. You cannot have the intelligence to understand choices when there really are no choices. Since there are no choices and empathy is useless: then what Role are you playing except that of a 1 dimensional automaton.

This becomes explicitly true in a deterministic setting. Another way to describe a deterministic setting is when the GM will always railroad you.

Purely Objective Morality breaks down very quickly and easily in the realm of RPG fantasy. Fantasy test all plausible limits already, the burden of this philosophy just raises more problems than it solves.

Complexity, despite how Ambiguous and Messy is better than ignoring the consequences of one's actions.

Management and Role-playing

How interchangeable management skills are with GMing surprises and doesn't surprise me. If you boil management and GMing down to its essential elements, they are both a methods of making a constructive and productive group effort.


Lessons that apply to GMs.
6. Reasoning by Analogy - RPGs are fast moving, you have a short amount of time and you need to communicate complex ideas as effectively and quickly as possible. Reasoning by Analogy has many flaws and many strengths. Understanding it better, helps the GM pose more interesting explanations and problems to the players regarding a situation. It also allows the GM to Frame challenges and situations effectively.
7. Making Sense of Ambiguous Situations - This is about Sense making or making sense to players. the skills presented are very useful in giving the players a puzzle or a challenge that is slowly and subtly introduced. Many game situations are best described in this way, Players are recieving information based on their senses and not just "meta-gaming" so it is important to be able to simulate the realistic and imperfect conditions that instigate their problem solving.
8. The Wisdom of Crowds? - This is particularly relevant since it actually points out that the Players and the Improvisation and their Ideas are much better than any one individual can possibly make up. The key lessons in this lecture is how to promote and maximize the process and how the GM should take advantage of this creativity to make it an enjoyable experience.
9. Groupthink—Thinking or Conforming? - This is highly relevant because, going against group think is what makes for an interesting adventure. When group think happens, possibilities are left unexplored.
10. Deciding How to Decide - This deals with the GM and his role as a facilitator. I really love this one because it re-emphasizes my intuition about GM and takes it further by giving examples and explaining the science.
11. Stimulating Conflict and Debate - Intra-party conflicts may be more real and more interesting than their cohesion. Cohesion, like that of a military unit, doesn't take advantage of other elements found in The wisdom of crowds. You can still have you well oiled team, AND have them bring their valuable differences to the table to make things interesting.
12. Keeping Conflict Constructive - Isn't this another job of the GM? It talks about Passions and how to channel and align the emotions that run high in the game. This is particularly useful because you want your games to be memorable yet sustainable. One of the interesting aspects of this lesson is how to be able to have all players contribute and have a substantial influence over the outcome of the party's action, beyond their combat role.
13. Creativity and Brainstorming - The example of Cid Ceasar is great when considering that a game session is pretty much the same. Maximizing the Creativity of players through frame problems and challenges is where the degree of skill of the GM shines by itself. When a situation is framed interestingly, the way a GM describes a situation the players react to, the players become engaged and surprise and continually improve on the ideas that came before.
14. The Curious Inability to Decide - Moving the Game forward is hard. Building consensus and momentum are always problems. They might appear time consuming but there are methods to push the game along quickly and effectively. it is the GM's job and he's got to invest in his craft to better steer players to consensus.
15. Procedural Justice - HA! Why railroading is UNIVERSALLY bad and why "fairness" matters in your games. Game systems and being fair goes a long way in enjoying the game. Don't go by just your experience, why not check out the science and how it applies to other things in life.
16. Achieving Closure through Small Wins. This is what a lot of GMing is about! In fact this is pretty much what I look forward to in my games.

Damn, I'm such a nerd. How nerdy is it to use science and methods used by the most respected and powerful Corporations and States to achieve fun, glory, and memories in a table surrounded by friends?

I'll tackle this next.
Lessons that apply to Players
1. Making High-Stakes Decisions
2. Cognitive Biases
3. Avoiding Decision-Making Traps
4. Framing—Risk or Opportunity?
5. Intuition—Recognizing Patterns

Civilization Building GURPS homebrew

Its only recently, from my understanding of economics am I able to make a better informed homebrew system for basic civic building. This Creation of Civic Entities, is useful for the world builder who have players who want more details.

Coming up with the material for this took time and this is a by-product of my mixed interest of business (economics) and gaming. Specifically the allocations and their causes and effects were something I wouldn't be able to figure out on the fly. Having it down on "paper" helps a lot in getting a bearing.

This is not for everyone and this is a work in progress. I am happy to accept any constructive criticism for my works, so that I can improve on them. There are errors i cannot see because of the ideas I'm juggling with in my head, so pardon the mistakes.

This is meant to create civic entities so that a GM can populate his setting with regions that act like "living" organisms. These act like NPCs, reactive and life-like. They respond to events and circumstances: changing, growing, thriving, withering, or dying. Like NPCs, these are in themselves stories of ordinary people and their lives. Their joys, sorrows and hardships told in the abstraction of a rule base, and readily available to the Story tellers interpretation and the Player's observation.

Players who have in them the force and insight of great leaders of old might find these organisms helpful in telling their character's story. Despite the macro scale of the actions of these entity, it is the tiny details that fuels much of the stories. Details that act like allegories to the tale of the entire region.

The other Links can be found in the Stuff I made Section
Civic Entity Creation Spreadsheet
Mass Combat Made Easier
Mass Combat Quality Distribution Calculator Spreadsheet.

Why cube root? Many of the economic correlations are curved by nature because of diminishing returns. Representing it in this way is simpler and fairly easy to pull off. Anyway, i'm not a mathematician and math is not a strength, although I try to tackle them despite the amount of time it would eat up.

Plugging in The Art of Critical Decision making again.
Art of Critical Decision making lessons concerning Productive Internal Conflict, Facilitation and Roles of a Leader, etc. are all marvelous and very useful advice to game masters. again I highly recommend that GMs take advantage of the "science" of handling groups of people and facilitating the most effective and creative output possible.

It is not only fun, it is also enriching. I find the skill and the ability to smooth over conflict, enhance productivity in others as well as myself, and see through the haze of confusion, emotions, risk and fleeting time as powerful tools in working towards maximum enjoyment.

The Art of Critical Decision Making

The Art of Critical Decision Making is another gem from The Teaching Company that is really useful in gaming. I know gaming is fun, and its supposed to stay fun, but it can always be a little more challenging and interesting.

Imagine, being able to exercise and apply skills such as these in the epic and extraordinary situations of your games. Games evolved as a way to exercise our thinking, and when we seek to challenge ourselves and our surroundings the game only escalates into more productive and imaginative forms. (well in my opinion).

I've purchased the download and find the price SO Worth it (even relative to my income). Imagining the scenarios where I prey on the irrationality of my players: Cognitive Bias, Framing, Recency, Cognitive Disonance etc. A simple puzzle, made into a irrational "mine-field" of shadows and specters leading them towards danger, adventure or demise.

GURPS Mass Combat Made Easier and What is the Entity of a State?

GURPS mass combat is a bit hard to take all in. at once There is a limitation of examples because of the word count limit. So what I did is: I made a fairly easy step by step method for me to prepare a Military Campaign Game.

Thanks to Google Docs, I can easily host the it here without having to wory about the incompatibilities of Open Office and Blogger (which is the reason why my format is weird).

This is another of my "If I'm going to make it easier for me, then I should be able to make it easier for everyone" hobbies, within my GMing hobby. Having a method in preparing a game, makes life easier and allows me to completely forget about it when other priorities come up and come back to it after.

What is a the Entity of a State?
In the proccess of developing the method discussed above I hit on a formula by which I can calculate the economic size of a given entity. The formula can be found in the link above. It is remarkably robust and usable with S. John Ross's Medieval Demographics made easy.

An "Entity" is an accounting term that best describes nations, peoples, and states (basically assets) that are not entirely inclusive within the resources of its ruler but still controlled by him or her.

This is another interesting perspective I learned in accounting that is useful in looking at the world and being able to describe it. Accounting after all is a language of business (and in this case: economics). Entities are in that vague division between Possession but not part of one's possession. In GURPS, it is best to represent the a ruler's influence over such through the Patron advantage (B72, Ultra Powerful Organization 20cp).

Kingdoms and Empires are held together by its Rulers. One can say, it is the ruler's duty to the "State" to adjudicate, preside, and devote time to the handling of its affairs. The state can be a bureaucratic machine, like those of empires, or it can be a host of powerful peers, like in a feudal kingdom, republic, or democracy. In return, the ruler has access to its resources: its armies, artisans, and merchant fleets. Occasions where the "frequency of appearance" roll kicks in means there is trouble and the Ruler is needed to fix it.

Rulers have their own wealth, separate from the entities of the state. Typically they are at least powerful patrons by themselves (B72 Patron: Powerful Individual, 10cp). The GURPS "multi-millionaire" which holds Status 5, is already a powerful Baron. Don't let the titles get you confused Counts, Earls, Marquis, Duke and the other titles are merely grades between levels of wealth. GURPS wealth starts taking huge leaps after Status 4, by differences of 1000% (10x). Within the 100x to 10,000x there are many gradients of power which become more tangible because of the Mass Combat System. I prefer generalizing these increments using the Range Combat pattern of 50% increments: 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15 etc...

The Mass Combat system basically allows a differences of 50% resources equate to 50% more hired goons. When the rule of thumb to overpower an enemy decisively is to have 3:1 their number, smaller increments gain more notice.

A ruler worth 500cp might have: (i'm not using disadvantage points)

• Patron (Ultra Powerful Organization; free to take anything he wants +100%) 40cp
• Allied Peers or Vassals (6-10 men of very high point value: 10cp x 6) 60cp
• Lesser Vassals (6-10 men of extraordinary point value: 5cp x 8) 40cp
• Elite Retainers (51-100 men elite point value: 3 x 12) 36cp
• Wealth: Multi Millionaire 2 (x10,000 times average starting assets) and Status 6 (+4 status 20cp) 120cp
• 296cp (204 left for the character and other advantages)
  

Feudalism in GURPS and Random knight Generator

Feudalism is very tricky and difficult to reflect in RPG system. It is not as much “ranks” of status but more about oaths of duty. A powerful lord may have a title to give a name to his status, but it is the Oaths of loyalty that truly define where his place is in the world.

In GURPS terms, a knight swears oaths (Duty B133) to a Lord (Patron B72), who in return provides the character with assets (Wealth: Wealthy B25), station and privileges (Status 2: Knight, B28).

As the Character advances, he acquires more holdings (+20 to +50% incremental increase of wealth) and vassals (Allies) of his own. Achievements and Holdings of great significance would naturally translate to more privileges and station (Status).

These vassals are acquired in the same manner, the Character was acquired by his Patron: through the pledge of duties and rents to be rendered in return for the character's own duties, grant of rights, and holdings to the vassal. Typically these estates are acquired displacing defeated, fallen, disgraced, or obsolete retainers.

Yeomen Vassals, who can serve as hand-to-hand combatants or archers, would gain estates (Wealth: Average), rights and privileges (Status 0: Yeoman) as his sworn man. These is both a reward, a hiring fee, and basic capital for maintenance. In return, this retainer mus render armed assistance and contribute some rents.

Man-At-Arms, who can serve as horsemen are given much larger estates, access to the Character's household resources, or small manors (Wealth: Comfortable) as well as some privileges and rights (Status 1: Sergeant Man-at-Arms).

The Players and the GM should be primarily concerned with the opportunities, and not the conversion of these matters into points.

The feudalistic system is too complicated to be reflected with a rigid set of rules. Once the character is made and is in play, it is better to ad hoc the goals and consequences of his/her actions. Very much like in Real Life, the good and the bad is thrown together and unexpectedly. A character may acquire a loose band of horsemen, orphaned by a fallen lord only to also acquire the debtors and the troubles that come with it. He may acquire a new holding, a village, which is suddenly a center of fomenting unrest and harboring enemies.

With each success, there is that escalation of problems and challenges. The character may clear up the debtors or clean up the fief, only to be called into duty by his lord.

Bowmen (75cp) 2cp or 6cp for an element.

• Heavy Infantry (75cp) 2cp or 6cp for an element.
• Light Cavalryman (110cp) 3cp or 18 for an element.
• Horse Archer (120cp) 4cp or 24cp for an element.
• Medium or Heavy Cavalryman (150cp) 5cp or 30cp for an element.
• Steward (75cp or 110cp) 2cp to 3cp.
• Bureaucratic Team (75cp or 110cp) 12cp to 18cp.
• Specialist (75cp or 110cp) 2cp to 3cp.
• Specialist Element (75cp or 110cp) 12cp to 18cp.
• $4,200 estate ($120 Cash annually)
• $8,400 estate ($240 Cash annually)
• $16,800 estate ($480 Cash annually)
  

Why not Keep the Fief and its rents?

There are interesting economic principles at work when an estate is handed off to a vassal. First and primarily, there is a great loss of value as you convert resources to something more tradable and portable (like in the laws of conversions in Physics). Having someone directly benefit from these resources instead of converting them to lower but more portable valuables is significantly more efficient.

Second, security, efficiency and organization improves by having someone directly benefit from the resources of this fief. A bailif or the estate "manager" can only go so far and there are levels of diminishing returns in one's own stewardships. Even hiring more bureaucrats doesn't improve the efficiency of management because of the level or complexity, medieval bureaucracy is able to take on (especially with expensive paper or parchment; and more of a mess to get away with cheating). Consider also how much an already wealthy lord can benefit from the one additional estate, compared to that of a vassal.

In GURPS terms, it may be a $42,000 estate (wealthy), but of that annual income $12,000 in goods redundant to the Character's own resources and perishable or $1,200 in cash. What would rather have: A Heavy Cavalryman or $1,200. Don't forget that the Characters still has duties to his own Lord, taken from 1/3 his cost of living.

Random Knight Generator
Here is another Random Character Generator, tailored for making Knights fitting 12C Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Land beyond the Sea. I'm hosting it in Google Docs, I had to convert it into a PDF because it was written with columns and the format reverts back badly in google docs.

This is primarily meant to roll up Knight Characters quickly. Just add the medieval load-out packages from previous posts to speed up the shopping process.

Real Monsters: the Psychopath

I began to learn more about them as part of RPG 2 years ago. I admit it was because of a nerd argument that got me to read up as much as I did about them. The forum topic was asking a question: What was considered human. GURPS considered: social bonds, humanity (a natural respect or appreciation to human life), socialization...etc not part of defacto human. Which made the default human (a character with no disadvantages) in the GURPS game: a Psychopath. Although a Mild psychopath (there is no 1 or 0 with psychopaths, there are degrees of psychopathy).

Learning more about Psychopaths is never a waste of time. It makes awesome material for a game and is quite useful when role-playing villains. Since Psychopaths are capable of making opportunistic "random" acts of violence, theft and anything that can be advantageous the knowledge is a pro-active self defense.

Someone I argued against which ended up being a cyber stalker and bully 4 months back exhibited all the traits of a Psychopath according to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. Interestingly, he keeps a blog and anyone who is into philosophy, psychology, or criminology can use come to the same conclusion on their own with their own inquiry. I'm sure I'm not alone in experiencing Psychopaths, as they tend to leave a "wake" of psychological destruction around them.

One of the few things one should be afraid of, is a person who doesn't have the same psychological restraints in harming other people. The material you can dig up about psychopaths in the Internet, in science journals and in crime stories is plenty.

The insight that results from reflecting on one's own behaviors, in light of what defines a Psychopath is priceless. Understanding the differences, and commonalities regular humans have with psychopaths makes for better characterization.

I would recommend to anyone who is as afraid of psychopaths, as any sane person should be, is to read up on: game-theory (BS detection, strategy and tactics etc...), empathy, and learning to be more observant.

Search Terms:
Hyperbolic Discounting
Empathy
Psychopath
Ayn Rand (Bio Shock background story)
Low Empathy
No Empathy

In GURPS some disadvantages that result of a mature psychopath is:
Overconfidence (self control-9)
Selfishness (self control-9)
Callous
Compulsive Lying
Trickery

Wikipedia:
PCL-R items

The following findings are for research purposes only, and are not used in clinical diagnosis. These items cover the affective, interpersonal, and behavioral features. Each item is rated on a score from zero to two. The sum total determines the extent of a person's psychopathy.[27]

Factor 1
Aggressive narcissism

1. Glibness/superficial charm
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
3. Pathological lying
4. Cunning/manipulative
5. Lack of remorse or guilt
6. Emotionally shallow
7. Callous/lack of empathy
8. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Factor 2
Socially deviant lifestyle

1. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
2. Parasitic lifestyle
3. Poor behavioral control
4. Promiscuous sexual behavior
5. Lack of realistic, long-term goals
6. Impulsiveness
7. Irresponsibility
8. Juvenile delinquency
9. Early behavioral problems
10. Revocation of conditional release

Traits not correlated with either factor

1. Many short-term marital relationships
2. Criminal versatility