Art of Artifice: Wager Engine

On occasion, I come up with an idea for a dice mechanic or other bit of game design that I think would be interesting. Rather than save it on the off chance that someday I will design my own game and get it published, I have decided to share them here.

The Conception

This idea came to me while I was thinking about the GUMSHOE dice mechanic. In GUMSHOE, your (non-investigative) skills function as a pool of points that you may spend to add a bonus to a die roll. Once the point is spent, it remains spent until the next time you have a chance to recover your resources.

This is quite different from how skills tend to function in game systems. In most games, a skill is more-or-less constant. If the skill is a modifier to a die roll, you always add the full skill; if it's a dice pool system, you roll a die for every point in the skill. In games like GURPS, your skill acts as the target number for your skill check.

GUMSHOE does away with this, treating a skill instead as a resource. It allows something many other systems don't: a character can become exhausted after an extended period of exertion.

So there I was, thinking about GUMSHOE, and I wondered what else we could do with skills. That's when it came to me: where GUMSHOE allows a variable die roll bonus, we could use a skill as a variable dice pool.

In a standard dice pool system, you roll one die for each point in your skill (sometimes with another component equal to a stat, or something else). For this idea, the skill instead acts as the maximum number of dice you can roll. You don't have to roll them all.

Why wouldn't you just roll all your skill dice with every check? We could do as GUMSHOE does, and treat the skill as an expendable resource: once you roll a die, that die is spent until your next recovery. Instead, however, I had a different idea. What if there were some risk to rolling more dice?

The Rules

The Wager Engine is a press-your-luck style dice pool mechanic, using six-sided dice. The GM tells you how hard the task will be, and you decide how hard your character will try to accomplish it. The harder you try, the more dice you roll, up to a maximum number equal to your skill rating. Any die that results in a 5 or a 6 is a success. Most tasks require only one or two successes, though harder ones may require more.

On the other hand, any die that results in a 1 represents strain. Your character has pushed himself too hard and suffered some fatigue.

A character has four attributes. In order from most physical to most mental, they are Physique, Endurance, Reflexes, and Intellect. Physique is your raw muscle; Endurance is a mixture of resolve and stamina; Reflexes is a combination of physical coordination and mental reaction time; Intellect is your ability to think through a problem.

Each skill is linked to one of these four stats. When rolling a skill check, any die that rolls a 1 results in damage to the linked attribute. When damage brings an attribute to 0, the character is exhausted and unable to perform any tasks linked to that stat. A Physique of 0, for example, is a result of exhausted muscles, while an Endurance of 0 could be coughing and wheezing while trying to catch your breath.

Mitigating the Risk

As-is, this system would actually punish a character for having higher ranks in a skill. The solution is simple: once a skill reaches a certain level, the character could ignore one result of 1 per skill check. Effectively, at a certain point, the character gets one risk-free die per use of that skill; her training allows her to push herself harder than the uninitiated. However, if a pool rolls two or more 1s, the appropriate attribute still suffers damage for each 1 after the first.

At an even higher skill rank, the character could ignore a second result of 1, effectively soaking two damage on each skill check.

For clarity, I'll call the ability to ignore a 1 "Mastery". Mastery 2, similarly, means ignoring two 1s.

Fiddling with Numbers

This idea would require plenty of playtesting to determine appropriate values for stat and skill maximums. My instinct is to say that skills range from 1 to 10, and a stat is the sum of all skills linked to it. For example, say Adam is playing a character with Climbing 3, Jumping 4, Lifting 2, and Brawling 3, all linked to Physique. His Physique would be 3+4+2+3, or 12.

The right skills would vary from setting to setting. Some games may require more mental skills (Intellect) than physical (Physique), or have almost no Reflex skills. The beauty of this method of calculating an attribute is that the value remains appropriate no matter how many or few skills it requires. If your game focuses more on Intellect and Endurance skills and less on Physique, characters will have higher Intellect and Endurance and thus be able to attempt more tasks associated with those attributes before succumbing to exhaustion.

Additionally, we have to determine at what value a character achieves Mastery. Crunching some numbers tells me that, when you roll four dice, the odds of getting at least one 1 exceed 50%. It seems appropriate, therefore, that when a skill reaches rank 4, you gain Mastery for that skill.

We have two options for the second level of Mastery. The odds of rolling two 1s doesn't exceed 50% until you roll 10 dice, so you could give the character Mastery 2 at skill rank 10. Alternately, we could go for the simplicity of doubling 4 to reach Mastery 2 at rank 8. Personally, I favor giving Mastery sooner rather than later, so I would give Mastery 1 at rank 4 and Mastery 2 at rank 8.

Using the Wager Engine

A friend pointed out that the system would work rather nicely for games in the horror genre. The fact that a character is slowly worn down over time, added to the fact that (almost) any action could result in increasing levels of fatigue, combines to build a sense of desperation and danger. It works significantly less well in games of high action, since a character is less likely to risk a large dice pool to achieve incredible successes when a smaller dice pool carries less risk.

We could build upon the mechanic in a few interesting ways. Rather than having a separate measure of "hit points", counting down the damage a character takes until unconsciousness or death, attacks could deal damage directly to one of the four stats. A nasty gash in the arm could damage your Physique, while a blow to the head could damage Intellect. This brings an added risk to combat: not only are you taking a chance that your character could die, but you're also losing valuable resources for accomplishing tasks later on.

Additionally, in games with magic systems, the stats could also be the resource you expend to cast your spells. Maybe a simple force arrow costs you a point of Intellect damage, and a fireball costs three Intellect. This is more organic than having a separate "mana points" number, since taking stat damage genuinely portrays the strain magic places on your body.

Alternately, you could determine the cost of a spell in dice rolled. That fireball spell might instead require you to roll five dice, taking Intellect damage for each 1 that turns up. Or it could be variable, with the damage linked directly to how many successes the spell roll nets, so that you need to weigh the risk on how many dice you're willing to chuck for that fireball. Spell Mastery could function similarly to skill Mastery.

Other things might be linked to this mechanic. Rather than keeping track of exactly how many gold coins your character is carrying, she might have a Wealth score and roll against it in the same way she rolls against skills. In this instance, 1s would measure large expenses that drain your coffers until your next windfall.

Give it a Try

Do you have any suggestions? Ways to improve upon the idea, or new ways to use it? Feel free to post them in the comments. Any feedback is welcome.

And if you try this idea out at your table, leave a comment telling me how it went!

Failure and Consequences

Typically, failure is not fun. Sure, occasionally it results in a more interesting story, but often the player who rolled a 1 feels frustrated or humiliated. He is supposed to be a hero, but in this moment he feels like anything but!

Some games advocate different ways to handle failure. Some say that failure shouldn't really mean failure, but instead be a chance to introduce a complication; other games prefer the simplicity offered by a "yes or no" approach to situations. Both have their merits, but that is not what this article will be about.

Often, when discussing "failing forward", another major component of skill checks is ignored. Regardless of the result, every action taken by the characters in your game should have consequences.

What's the Difference?

Consequence is not the same as success/failure. Regardless of how it goes for you, lying to a guard in order to convince him to let you pass will result in consequences when that guard eventually learns the truth. Failure tends to move up the timetable on consequences, but success doesn't entirely eliminate them.

Take the common example of a locked door barring the party's passage. There are several ways to get through that door: pick the lock, break it down, knock and politely ask to be let in... the list goes on. Without consequences, it does not matter how the party seeks passage; all that matters is whether they wind up on the other side of the door. Essentially, the choice is rendered a non-issue; you may as well just pick the highest number every time.

Consequences breathe a sense of verisimilitude into the game. In our above example, each approach results in further complications beyond opening the door. Picking the lock is the subtlest but it takes time, tools, and skill; however, in addition to being the least likely to give away your presence to anyone who may be on the other side of the door, it also leaves the door and the lock intact, so that the players can then close it behind them. Breaking down the door is quick and dirty, requiring nothing more than brute force; it is also loud, and gives any enemies plenty of time to prepare if the door doesn't go down on the first hit. Knocking and asking to be let in may seem ridiculous, but in some situations it is the best approach; perhaps the characters are great at impersonation, or learned a password earlier in the adventure. In each case, success means the party winds up on the other side of the door, but the circumstances surrounding them are vastly different.

Now imagine the party must get past a guard. Once again, there are several options: maybe they forge authorization and bluff their way in, maybe they try to sneak past unnoticed, or maybe they knock the guard out. Maybe they try to bribe the guard, or try to befriend him so he'll let them in as a favor. Without consequence, it comes down to which approach has the most favorable numbers; though the players may still choose to roleplay, the GM is declaring through her actions that this session is more about the metagame than the story.

Now imagine how she introduces consequences. While it is likely the hardest, an attempt to befriend the guard is least likely to come back and bite the party. Lying may be easy, but eventually the truth will come out and then, at the very least, they will have made a new enemy. Sneaking past circumvents any interaction and allows a chance at anonymity, but means not having a safety net if they're caught where they don't belong. And so on.

Get On With It!

The good news is, most of us already introduce consequences without thinking about it. It comes naturally as part of imagining the world of the game; sneaking past the guard in our example means you have to stay hidden, while forging authorization and bluffing your way past means you can work out in the open... at least for a little while. Some consequences are obvious extensions of the triggering action.

The bad news is, it's not always quite that easy. Sometimes, the consequences can be greatly delayed and thus are easy to forget or unintentionally ignore, such as our door example: breaking it down means the party's passage is obvious when an enemy patrol wanders by an hour later. The more often consequences go unmentioned or unnoticed, the more the GM reinforces the mechanics of the game at the expense of the story.

That's not to say that every single action needs to carry a consequence. Sometimes a cigar can just be a cigar; if the party sleeps at the Red Dragon Inn rather than the Chartreuse Cow Cottage, they may wind up attracting the attention of the Coalition Against Generic Names, or maybe they just get a night's sleep and continue on through the story the following day. At the end of the day, it's all about what makes for a better story.

But if you're going to ignore potential consequences for an action, do so intentionally and knowingly.

So What About Failure? The Title Says...

Fair enough. There are three general camps on how you can handle failure.

"Failing forward" means that, rather than bring the pace to a halt because Lady Luck is giving the players a cold shoulder, use a failed check as a chance to introduce a complication while still allowing the obstacle to be circumvented. Rather than failing a Lockpicking check resulting in a still-locked door, the rogue manages to pick the lock... just in time for a patrol of monsters to round the corner and notice them.

This keeps the game exciting by keeping the action moving, and also mitigates any hard feelings a player may have when he has a bad night with the Dice Gods. The problem is, it can lock a GM into thinking that consequences and complications are only the result of failure, and thus avoid using them when the action succeeds.

The second approach is to not roll the dice when an obstacle positively has to be overcome. After all, if a failure brings everything to a screeching halt, why even allow that failure to happen in the first place? If a locked door bars the only route forward in your environment, then the rogue automatically picks the lock when he tries; it's as if the door isn't locked at all. A similar approach is to allow unlimited attempts, letting the player re-roll until he finally succeeds.

The advantage with this approach is that the pace is never at risk. The obvious disadvantage is that it renders the player character skills less important; if the character is always going to succeed when it matters most, then why even bother putting points in the skills necessary to accomplish such tasks? Essentially, "why bother learning to pick locks if every door is unlocked?"

Finally, you can let the dice fall where they may. If a skill check fails, the character fails. The rogue breaks his lockpick off in the keyhole, the door remains locked, and no further attempt can be made.

This grants actions a sense of gravity: you'd better roll well, or you're not going to accomplish what you want. It does, however, carry a risk of stymieing the story's pace, or even shutting it down altogether. The GM has to design things in such a way that there are always alternatives to try, whether different paths to take or multiple approaches to each obstacle. Nonetheless, on those rare nights when Lady Luck isn't even answering your calls, even the best-prepared game could wind up stuck after countless failed rolls.

What Do You Recommend?

There is no one right answer: it depends on the situation.

Sometimes, the risk inherent in a check isn't about whether it will succeed or fail, but lies in external circumstances; in this case, "failing forward" is probably the way to go. It's only a matter of time before a character with the right tools can set fire to something flammable, but if the cops have received an anonymous tip about an arson attempt, and are coming to investigate, you'd better hope you succeed your Pyromaniac check, lest you get caught red-handed.

When an action is mundane, or there is no imminent danger, it's probably better not to call for a die roll at all; it would just serve as an unnecessary loading screen.

If the GM has several strong ideas for potential consequences for a variety of approaches, or if the path taken by the party has a severe impact on how the story progresses, then it's best to let failure be failure. The party can always regroup and find another way around the obstacle.

So That's It Then.

That's it then.

How do you handle failure in your games? Do you have any stories about a night when you just could not roll for the life of you? Leave them in the comments.

Declassified: Inquisitor

This article will cover my personal design of the Inquisitor class for use in the 5th edition of D&D. The design may be found here. It is based on the Pathfinder version of the class, which can be found here.

WHAT IS AN INQUISITOR?

So what are the core features of the Inquisitor class? It is a spontaneous divine spellcasting class. It focuses on tracking down and killing enemies. It has the ability to augment itself with the Judgment feature. And it has a subtheme of Teamwork feats.

Spellcasting in 5th edition D&D is quite different from how it functioned in 3.5. However, the spontaneous/prepared dichotomy remains alive and well: some classes learn a limited list of spells, their "spells known", where other classes prepare from a large spell selection. As a spontaneous spellcasting class, Inquisitors fall into the former category, so it will have a list of spells known.

Several disparate features build to create the second category of Inquisitor abilities: tracking and killing. The class will need at least one feature that makes it better at hunting down enemies, at least one feature that makes it better at damaging its enemies, and at least one ability to recognize its enemies when they are hiding. We will keep this in mind continuing forward.

The Judgment feature is an interesting one. In the Pathfinder version of the class, It lasts until combat ends, and allows the Inquisitor to choose from, and change to, a variety of options. D&D 5 designs typically limit durations to either 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 8 hours, or 24 hours. Effectively, a duration of one encounter is now marked as "1 minute". Furthermore, many of the Judgment abilities no longer function well in 5th edition, which avoids excessive +1's in favor of keeping things simpler. We will have to heavily modify this ability, going forward.

Finally, the Pathfinder Inquisitor has a theme of Teamwork feats. Feats are drastically changed in 5th edition, but we can salvage the teamwork theme in other ways.

These four concepts will be the foundation of our Inquisitor class.

HIT POINTS AND PROFICIENCIES

It is easy to directly translate weapon and armor proficiencies from Pathfinder to D&D 5e. The same goes for hit points. We have a class with a d8 hit die, able to wear light and medium armor and wear shields, and use a variety of weapons.

For skills, Pathfinder grants the Inquisitor 6 skill points per level. This makes it a medium skilled class, so we translate this to a choice of three proficiencies. The list includes all of the investigation-based skills the Inquisitor needs: magical knowledges, social skills, stealth skills, and perception. We also select Wisdom and Charisma as the two saving throws: Inquisitors excel at foiling others' attempts to magically manipulate their minds.

SPELLCASTING

As the Inquisitor is a hybrid spellcasting class, with a list of spells known, it is similar to the core Ranger class. We start it out with two spells known at second level, and ramp it up to eleven by twentieth. The highest spell level our Inquisitor will learn to cast is fifth.

The Inquisitor in Pathfinder uses Wisdom as its spellcasting trait. However, as I see the Inquisitor as a replacement for the Paladin for certain styles of campaign, I change this to the Charisma attribute. Feel free to use Wisdom instead, if you wish.

The spell list, included at the end of the class description, draws heavily from the Paladin list. A decent amount of healing, plenty of weapon-combat enhancing spells, and the addition of a few tricks for the investigative side of the class. I also translate a spell from Pathfinder, Confess, to give the Inquisitor something wholly unique to the class.

HUNTING ENEMIES

We decided, early on, that our Inquisitor would need a feature that lets him track enemies, a feature that lets him pierce disguises, and a feature that lets him deal extra damage to enemies. We accomplish this with several abilities, scattered across all levels.

Monster Lore is a more-or-less direct translation from Pathfinder. Eschewing bonuses for Advantage, our Inquisitor is better-equipped to track and recognize creatures. However, for thematic purposes, I limit the feature to only work against fiends, undead, monstrosities, and fey. Otherwise, the Inquisitor would be an even better tracker than the Ranger, which seems inappropriate.

We replace Pathfinder's detect alignment, which doesn't exist in 5th edition, with Divine Sense, drawn from the Paladin class. It fills much the same role.

We replace Pathfinder's bane feature with Divine Smite, also drawn from the Paladin class in 5th edition. At 14th level, the Pathfinder Inquisitor also gets Exploit Weakness, which allows it to ignore resistances on a critical hit. In translating this, I have changed it from triggering on critical hits to triggering every time Divine Smite is used; this may prove to be too powerful, in which case it could be returned to a critical trigger.

Finally, as an Inquisitor will often have to question creatures or people with a habit of lying profusely, Pathfinder gave them the ability to cast the discern lies spell. I replace this with an aura, in keeping with a theme that I'll discuss later, that functions as zone of truth and has a duration of 1 minute.

JUDGMENT DAY

Perhaps the most interesting translation from Pathfinder to D&D 5e is the Judgment feature. The new edition has no real analogue for most of the aspects of the Judgment feature, and furthermore it tends to limit such features to prevent the bog-down in combat from having to decide exactly which feature is best used every round.

We select the Cleric's Channel Divinity feature as the base upon which to build our new Judgment feature. Rather than a selection of immediate effects, which doesn't fit the Judgments from Pathfinder, we make each Judgment an ongoing buff to the Inquisitor with a duration of 1 minute. Rather than growing more powerful as the Inquisitor levels, which is typically something D&D 5e avoids, we base the buffs our Judgment provides on the Inquisitor's Charisma attribute. There is one exception to this rule, Shelter, as resistance in 5e merely halves damage, rather than reduce it by a fixed amount.

In keeping with Channel Divinities, rather than throw every Judgment option at the player up front, we divide the options among the different class archetypes. Each Inquisitor has access to Purity, which provides a bonus to saving throws. All other Judgments are split among the three archetypes.

TEAM PLAYER

In place of Pathfinder's Teamwork Feats, our 5th edition Inquisitor utilizes the Paladin's auras, customized to better fit the theme. In addition to Discern Lies, the Inquisitor gets Stalwart Aura, to protect allies from fear and charms. The Oath of Valor archetype includes another aura as well.

Finally, mixing Judgment with Teamwork gives us the ultimate feature and aura of our Inquisitor, the level 20 ability, True Judgment. Whereas a Judgment effect normally only affects the Inquisitor herself, with True Judgment all allies within range gain the same benefits. Sharing is caring.

SACRED OATHS

The three Inquisitor archetypes map to the three main focuses of the Inquisitor: investigation, teamwork, and hunting. Each provides ten oath spells, which are added to the inquisitor spell list and may be learned whenever a new spell is learned. Additionally, at appropriate levels, the Inquisitor automatically learns one of the two oath spells for that level, without it counting against her spells known.

The Oath of Conversion provides new spells and abilities to protect the Inquisitor from harm while she is trying to sway enemies to her cause. She can magically influence or control enemies, rebuke those who do her harm, and gains new skill proficiencies to help her sway others to her cause.

The Oath of Valor focuses on teamwork, helping the Inquisitor to be an example to his allies. It brings features that keep the Inquisitor and his allies alive, from more healing spells to a new aura. Its Judgments provide healing, and make it easier to strike one's foes.

The Oath of Vengeance focuses on, you guessed it, vengeance. With Judgments focused on damaging enemies, an ability to pursue those who flee, and a chance to instantly kill an enemy once per day, those who follow the Oath of Vengeance excel at bringing the pain.

THE INQUISITOR DECLASSIFIED

So that is the Inquisitor class.

What do you think? Would you play this class? What changes do you suggest? Let me know in the comments.

Keep It Simple

Yesterday, I was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In it, the Enterprise crew had to learn to communicate with an alien species who was “unintelligible”. The problem was, rather than communicating with the standard “subject, verb, object” language, they communicated solely through reference to historical and mythological events. Without understanding the context of their culture, the Enterprise crew had no way of understanding their attempts at communication.

Ignoring the absurdity of this method of communication, the episode raised an interesting point: without at least some shared context, communication is impossible. This is a topic that is just as applicable to game masters as it is to galactic explorers.

Adrift in a Sea of Imagination

It is all-too tempting for a worldbuilder to make something new and wholly unique. A world that is actually a moon to a gas giant, sentient life being vegetable rather than animal, with cities built at the bottom of lakes, and a culture focused on aggressive humility. We strive to make something completely different from everything we've ever seen before, equating different with interesting.

This can be a fun thought exercise, but it will rarely equate to a fun game or a good story. The audience will struggle to find something, anything, to grab onto in an attempt to relate to the setting and characters, but with every aspect being alien, there is nothing familiar to serve as a foundation.

In many fantasy and science fiction stories the author includes a character who is unfamiliar with the setting, in order to serve as the audience surrogate. Harry Potter was raised by muggles; Philip J. Fry is from the year 1999; Frodo Baggins lived a life isolated from the wider world. By injecting a character who is as confused by everything around him as we are, we as an audience can latch onto that character and grow familiar with the setting alongside him.

This is much more difficult to accomplish an a tabletop RPG. In a novel or movie, only one of the characters need be a surrogate, with the others filling the role of teaching him about their world; at the game table, every main character belongs to a player, and thus will have as much (or as little) knowledge of the world as she does. With every character disconnected from the setting, it becomes much more difficult to bring them into the fold.

Compounding this problem, there is already plenty for the players to keep track of. While reading a book or watching a movie, the audience need only keep track of the events occurring in the story, passively absorbing information about the setting, characters, and plot. At the game table, players also have to track the game rules. They need to keep in mind their character's backstory, motivations, and personality in order to properly portray her. Players in a game are not only the audience, but also the actors portraying the roles in the story, and people playing a game besides.

The wider the gap between the game setting and the tropes with which the players have familiarity, the harder their job becomes.

Finding Solid Ground

It is important, therefore, to make the game setting feel familiar to everyone at the table. The world as close to our own as possible, with day-night cycle roughly 12 hours each in length, and relatively normal environments.

Where departing from reality, we employ the well-worn tropes of our chosen genre. Most everyone is familiar with elves and dwarves, so they become the standard for fantasy races. Magic is new and exciting, but its impact on the world is limited in comfortably familiar ways. Alien worlds in space operas are “desert world” and “arctic world”, with alien monocultures. We have seen these in countless stories, and it is easy to sink in and immerse ourselves.

This may all sound cliché, but things become clichés for a reason. Repetition breeds familiarity, familiarity creates comfort, and comfort fosters immersion.

Another option is to set your game in an established setting. Whether this be a setting created for games (such as Greyhawk, Eberron, or the Sixth World) or a setting from your favorite novel, video game, or television show, the important thing is that it is accessible to everyone at the table. Ideally, a majority of the players are aware of the setting so that they can play mentors to the “stranger in a strange land” players who are learning the setting as they play.

This is not to say that you should never mix things up a little.

One Big Change

Many game masters find joy in creating their own settings. This might be because they haven't yet found a world that does everything they want to do, or simply for the thrill of creating something all their own; whatever the reason, we all feel the itch to create, eventually.

The easiest way is to work with an existing setting. We begin with Greyhawk, and create our own city and surrounding area, populated with unique characters. This is fairly easy to do, while still providing an outlet for creativity and a means of control that worldbuilding brings.

Other times, we start from scratch. Maybe we want to create a mash-up of two genres (space opera western), or have an interesting idea for a magic system. Maybe we pose a question (what if the dark lord defeated the hero?) or maybe we are interested in exploring a different culture. Whatever reason guides us, we begin to create.

When all you're doing is tweaking an existing setting, you don't have to worry too much about losing shared context. The players can still learn most of what they need to know by studying the original setting. Unless you change things up too much, your setting remains relatable.

When building from scratch, you have to keep context in mind. It is often best to pick only one or two major changes from the standard for your genre. If you want your world to portray what impact resurrection magic would have on a society, maybe you should stick to the standard fantasy races. If you wish to explore the impact of life on the moon of a gas giant, perhaps keep the technology level relatively modern.

This not only ensures that the audience – your players – can relate to the setting on some level, it also keeps the focus on whatever you find most exciting about your setting. While too many changes can lead to confusion, one big change will cause people to gravitate towards it out of curiosity.

My World is a Unique Snowflake

As a creative individual, you may find it difficult to conform to the norm. Being told to color inside the lines, to follow the established tropes of your favored genre, just strengthens your resolve to create something utterly new. Yet, when we completely ignore the lines, often our pictures become unrecognizable; rather than an expression of our individual creativity, it becomes a mess. By using the lines as guidelines, those times we stray from the ordinary path become much more noticeable.

Verisimilitude and Immersion

Verisimilitude and immersion go hand-in-hand. Any time verisimilitude is violated, immersion suffers, and as long as the audience is in the grips of immersion, it is easier to maintain verisimilitude. But how do you, as a GM, achieve a sense of verisimilitude and immersion in your game? What do those words even mean?

Understanding Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude is related to realism, but the two are not synonymous. Where realism implies “as close to the real world as possible”, verisimilitude can be achieved in a setting that is wildly different from ours. The key is consistency; it is okay to violate the laws of reality, as long as you do so in a consistent way. If, in your setting, dragons are able to fly by riding waves of magic in the air, then those same dragons should crash to the ground if they enter an area without any magic. If, on the other hand, dragons fly solely through the use of their wings, then finding a way to paralyze a dragon's wings should prevent it from staying aloft.

To achieve verisimilitude, everybody at the table must have buy-in. The GM should make it known how the world works in her game, and the players have to accept it. After that, it is on the GM to make sure to follow those rules. The fastest way to remind your audience that your setting is fictional is to present it behaving in an inconsistent way.

That's not to say that events in your world have to be consistent. If you wish, you can create a setting where, once a week, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. However, you must have in mind a reason for this strange behavior.

The tricky thing with verisimilitude is that the depth of explanation required varies from person to person. While many people will be more than happy to accept that your world has three moons, some may be pulled out of the setting when the tides behave exactly the same as they do on our world of one moon. Verisimilitude is personal. These people are not wrong for wanting the tides to be different, nor are you wrong for not caring to go into that level of detail.

Nonetheless, problems arise when people have different levels of verisimilitude at the table. How do you address these problems? There are three ways.

1. Put in the Work

The first solution is to make your setting as consistent as necessary for the strictest standards at the table. If one player needs the presence of magic to have an impact on the setting's economy, then you can sit down and think it through. You can even seek that player's help, if he's willing, and work together to come up with a solution that he feels comfortable with.

For some GMs, this is an enjoyable process. Such GMs often have the strictest sense of verisimilitude at their table, so they rarely have to deal with players being jarred out of the setting. For the rest of us, however, this is a lot of work. It may also lead to an “info-dump”, where the GM overloads her players by presenting the setting in excruciating detail. In the latter case, it's important to note that the audience doesn't need to know the reasons behind everything, just to know that there is a reason. Whether that reason becomes known as the story progresses, or remains a mystery, is up to the individual group.

2. Hand-wave it

The second solution is to sweep the problem under the rug. You can pretend that there is a reason, even if there isn't, or even fall back on the old favorite “a wizard did it”. This is the simplest approach, requiring the least amount of work for an already-taxed game master. It is also the least satisfying, and potentially the riskiest.

If you never come up with a justification for why things work the way they do, you are increasingly likely to violate the unwritten rules of your setting. If your players have the same attitude toward verisimilitude that you do, this won't ever be a problem. For those of us unlucky enough to have players demanding more out of the setting, the hand-wave approach is playing with fire.

The tricky part is, the human mind loves to find patterns. Even if you do not explain why things are the way they are, the players are likely to come up with their own theories. When you inevitably violate those expectations, they will either adapt their theories to the new data, or they will rebel. The more they have to adapt expectations, or the less consistent the rules of the setting are, the more likely the players are to rebel. This could lead to a premature ending, but even if it doesn't, there are now people at the table who aren't having as much fun as they should be.

Use the hand-wave approach with caution.

3. Be Up-Front About it

At the end of the day, tabletop roleplaying is only a game. If it ever becomes a dreaded chore, it's time to step back and re-examine your priorities. If you genuinely don't want to put in the requisite time to create a perfectly-consistent setting, it is perfectly acceptable to be honest with your friends.

As long as everyone at the table knows what to expect, nobody should be disappointed. If your only code is the rule of cool, let everybody know that. Not everyone will be satisfied with this approach, but they can temper that dissatisfaction when given forewarning, and if it's too much for them, they can bow-out of the game before becoming invested.

Verisimilitude and Immersion

So why even bother attempting to achieve verisimilitude in the first place? It is a necessary component of immersion.

What is immersion? It is a deep investment in a setting. A player is immersed when he and his character become one being, when the walls of the gaming room fall away and he steps wholly into the setting. This does not mean that he genuinely believes he is his character (Blackleaf, no!), just that he can take on the role of someone new for the time being, to use the character as a means to explore another aspect of himself.

In order to become so deeply invested in a setting, there must be something to invest in. This is why verisimilitude is important: if the setting is inconsistent and blatantly fictional, it is almost impossible to immerse yourself in it. Rather than thinking “what would my character do in this situation”, you find yourself instead wondering why the world is behaving so strangely.

Why even bother with immersion? Because it is fun. If you find enjoyment elsewhere in the game, that's perfectly acceptable; there is no wrong way to play. For those of us who play these games as a means to explore different personalities, immersion is a blast.

How to Achieve Immersion

This is possibly the most difficult question in gaming. Immersion is, by its very nature, a deeply personal experience and thus varies greatly from individual to individual. However, there are a few means to maximize the chances for the players at the table to become immersed. The first has already been discussed: verisimilitude. What follows is a list of other tactics to employ; this list is by no means complete.

Use Props

For a player, it often helps to have something physical that is tied to her character. This could be a piece of jewelry such as a talisman or ring, a prop such as a wand or stuffed animal companion, or anything else she can imagine. It gives a physical signal to both the player and everyone else at the table that she is in-character.

The GM can also use props to aid immersion. Rather than narrating the players finding a letter, he can hand them a physical piece of paper to read. The more the events at the table mimic those in the game, the easier it is to achieve immersion.

Speak In-Character

Rather than saying “my character does this”, say “I do this”. Better yet, act it out (when reasonable). Referring to your character in third-person establishes a roadblock between you and your character, making it less likely to step into her shoes.

For the GM, referring to the players by their character names can be helpful. It also helps to speak as the NPCs, addressing the players as their characters. This establishes a precedent that pulls players into acting as their characters.

Be Descriptive

Compare “I move to the goblin and attack” against “I charge the goblin, axe raised overhead, and bring it down to cleave into the goblin's skull.” It is almost always better to describe the actions as they would be seen in the game. That way, not only is everyone imagining the same thing, but they are more likely to see the setting as a living, breathing thing.

Descriptions don't have to be flowery or long-winded. Typically, simple and straightforward is better. Make the action exciting, but keep the game moving.

Rolls Equal Actions

Rolling the dice can pull a player out of the setting, reminding him that he is playing a game. This isn't to say that the dice should never be rolled.

The trick is to only ask for dice rolls when the roll directly maps to something the character is doing. Rather than “roll to see if you know the dragon's weakness”, save the dice rolls for active efforts. Walking down a hall doesn't call for a perception check; use Passive Perception. Walking down a hall actively searching for traps or secret doors, that can be a perception check.

This won't entirely eliminate the game-factor, but it will mitigate it. By linking rolling the dice to character actions, the line between player and character becomes slightly blurrier, allowing greater chance at immersion.

Are You Immersed Yet?

Verisimilitude and immersion vary greatly from person to person. This has just been my take on the subject. Do you have different views? Other tactics for increasing immersion? Leave them in the comments!