My buddy Jared
The Locked Door is an adventure design problem. Let’s play some D&D and have our adventurers run into a locked door. Obviously, the adventure is on the other side of that door. The GM has locked it shut. The thief gives the door a try, but he fails his roll. This could be because the DC is too high, the thief’s pick locks skill is too low, or just because of a bad die roll. Now, the fighter gives the door a try with a little brute strength. Again, he fails to open the door. Finally, the wizard tries to get the door open. Like his friends, he fails.
The adventure is on one side of the door and our adventurers are on the other side. What happens now? The GM has two choices. He can fudge the rules or the adventurers can go home. Either way, this problem–the Locked Door–has resulted in NO FUN.
Needless to say, NO FUN is one place the GM never wants his players to be. However, you can’t exactly blame the GM: he’s playing the game by the rules. Like Mr. Miyagi says, “No such thing as bad student. Only bad teacher. Teacher say, student do.” GMs are trained to present problems to the players in this manner. They’re told, “Locked Door is the best way to challenge players.”
I do not subscribe to this point-of-view. In fact, I subscribe to Jared’s POV: “Locked Door is the WORST way to challenge players.” Every GM falls victim to it. Every GM. Yes, that includes me. Until I knew its name, I did not recognize its danger. But now that I do, I spend most of my time as a GM trying to avoid Locked Door.
The reason I’ve gotten up so early to write this little thing is because I ran into Locked Door last night. My buddy
We’re playing oWoD Mind’s Eye Theater. Now, for those of you who don’t know, MET works like this:
You’ve got a number of Traits, Mental, Physical and Social. Every time you take a test, you risk one of your Traits. If you fail the test, you don’t succeed and you lose that Trait for the evening. If you succeed, you keep the Trait and you get the desired result.
The “test” is a simple rock/paper/scissors game. So, if you want to hit me, you bid a Trait, I bid a Trait, and we play R/P/S. If I win, you lose the Trait, I keep my Trait, and I get to narrate what happens. In this case, I say, “You miss.”
It’s a simple system, but it has problems. The problem I ran into last night–Mr. Locked Door–resulted in the way Mental Tests are handled.
My character is Cornelius Agrippa, the great-grandfather of Western Occultism and one of the chief reasons the west has any science at all. In other words, my character has a ton of mental Traits, a ton of Occult Skill, and enough Background to justify knowing just about anything about everything you’d find in the New Age section of your local Barnes & Noble.
Unfortunately, last night, I was all but useless. That’s because I couldn’t throw rock when the GM threw scissors, I couldn’t throw scissors when he threw paper, and I couldn’t throw paper when he threw rock. And whenver I failed a test, I got less and less capable of making another one. With each failed test, my Mental Traits faded. With each failed test, I tried re-testing with my Occult Skill… and because I failed again, my Occult got weaker and weaker.
Again, this is not the GM’s fault. This is the way the system works. My intent here is not to demonstrate a lack of GM skill–
Ok, now on to the point. Let’s put Agrippa up next to a teenager who’s read one New Age book. The teenager–let’s call him “Bill”–has a 1 Occult.
If we test both of them–Agrippa and Bill–on a simple matter of Occult Lore–let’s say, “What Hermetic element usually corresponds to the Swords suit in the Tarot deck?”–both Bill and Agrippa have the same exact chance of knowing this fact. Remember, Agrippa is the Occult Pimp Daddy and Bill has read one single book. Both of them take the test:
The GM throws rock.
Bill throws scissors.
Agrippa throws scissors.
Both of them fail. Now, because they both have one dot of Occult, they can both spend that point of Occult to re-test.
The GM throws rock.
Bill throws paper.
Agrippa throws scissors.
Bill and Agrippa both had the exact same chance to know this simple Occult truth. It had nothing to do with either player’s abilities or skills. It all came down to a throw of the dice.
There is no mechanic in MET to address this. And last night, when the Sect needed me most, to do the one thing that I do better than anybody else, it all came down to a toss of the dice.
And I failed and I failed and I failed.
So, I gave up. I took off my costume, walked back to the car and went to sleep until the game was over. I was defeated. I wasn’t defeated by the NPC opponents: I was defeated by the system.
I’ve often said that the character sheet is a method of communication between the player and the GM. The character sheet says: “This is what I want. This is what I want my niche to be.” The GM has to look at the sheet and determine what that niche is. If the player wants to be the sneaky guy that nobody can see, then he puts all his points into Stealth. If he wants to be the Hackmaster General, then he puts all his points into Fighting. If he wants to be the Great-Grandfather of Western Occult Lore, he puts all his points into Occult.
Last night, the system let me down. The GMs didn’t. The GMs saw my frustration and fixed it because that’s what good GMs do. And the Sabbat game has great GMs.
But there’s another problem here. That Locked Door problem. See, it has another aspect that a lot of people overlook: the GM wants the players to get by the door.
The Knowledge Character (as opposed to the Stealth Character or the Fighting Character) has a niche. His niche is that the GM tells him things the other characters don’t know. He doesn’t fight the monster, but he tells the Fighting Guy how to fight the monster. He doesn’t get by the trap, but he tells the Stealth Guy how to get by the trap.
Think of Van Helsing (in the book, not the movie). He doesn’t ever fight Dracula, but he knows how to fight Dracula.
Think of Indiana Jones’ father. He can’t get by the traps, but he knows how they work.
When the Knowledge Character makes a roll, he’s rolling for information the other characters can use. Unfortunately, the tradition in RPGs is to give the Knowledge Character hints.
(Okay. Here comes the rant. But, it’s a quick one, I promise.)
WHEN I USE MY FUCKING STRENGTH TO BASH A GUY’S FACE IN, THE GM DOESN’T GIVE ME ANY FUCKING HINTS!
(End of rant.)
The Knowledge Character spends just as many points to be Smart as the Fighter spends points to be Strong. They should both be treated equally. Strength lets a character lift, push and pull a specific amount of weight. If my character can lift cars with little effort, do I have to roll to lift a (willing) person? Fuck no. But when a Knowledge character has a metric shit-ton of dots/points/whatever in Knowledge, why the hell does he have to roll to know the Knowledge equivallent of weight?
I think it’s because GMs see giving out knowledge as cheating. Or even just a short cut. I want the players to figure out this puzzle I’ve got, so they have to do it the hard way.
Well, I don’t agree with that. My character is a 500-year old vampire master occultist who practically invented the whole genre. I’m not as smart as him. And when I spend a Trait to know something, I want to fucking know it. Just like the Strength guy can always lift a certain amount of weight with ease, just like the Stealth guy can always fool some of the people some of the time, I want to be the guy who knows. I don’t want hints, clues, or cryptic bullshit. I want to know it. Then, let me pass my knowledge on to the guys who can do something about it.
I’m coming up with fixes for the problem, but I don’t have them just yet. Give me a day or two and I’ll post ’em up. In the meantime, I’m gonna go read more about Agrippa’s philosophy. Damn, this boy was sharp.