A Triplet of Triplets
I’m finally putting together something that I’ve been working on for a long time, thanks to some commonplace genius from AMONG CATS AND BOOKS, I suppose via DIY & dragons.
If you’ve been around the block, or bothered to read either of the previous links, you’ll be familiar with the idea of Landmark, Hidden, Secret. That taxonomy is widely accepted and praised, as it should be, and forms the backbone of how many in the OSR space approach the idea of Information. There is information that is readily available, offered to the players for free via conversation. If they ask about it again, it is given again, freely. Then of course, there is information that is certainly given, should the players be willing to pay the cost. That cost can be tangible or meta resources, time, or even danger. This information is hidden behind some sort of obstacle, but that obstacle is generally obvious. There is of course a cast range of costs to uncover this information, from simply opening a desk drawer, to spending eternities studying the origins of the universe. Finally there is information that is not guaranteed. There is always a cost, and the cost is likely quite high. There is always some element of chance, that decides whether the information is given or not, regardless of the cost. Perhaps spending more increases the odds of success, but if it can guarantee it, the information is not truly secret.
Then of course, taking those ideas, AMONG CATS AND BOOKS, inspired by a post by Random Ape Encounter, proposes a framework for not just the physical spaces that the player explores, but also the presumed or played experiences of the character. Characters are often made of aspects like Class, Background, “Race”, and perhaps has experiences with other Items, Locations, Factions, or whatever else. They are things, and have experienced things. As such, it can be presumed that a character would know the basics about the things they’ve experienced for free, and without cost. Then of course there is information that is guaranteed, but at a cost. Knowing where to find it, or knowing who to get it from, but not having the information. Then of course, there is the ever-costly, and never guaranteed information. Perhaps you can’t afford the cost to make the acquisition certain. Finding information in a rush, pulling favours above your relationship, or perhaps gathering it from a bad crowd. These things require costs, and they require rolls.
That’s a solid background on these two articles, but of course, there is far more wealth in their original authorship than my measly summaries. It is important to understand this framework before I wow you with the most obvious conclusion, that you may already be working towards. Study up, and I’ll wait.
Alright here it is.
What if this is just how the game works? The game, by default, exists in conversation mode. The GM will describe a scenario, giving out the Landmark information, describing the difference between the last game state and the current. Players will ask any clarifying questions, and any Landmark information is clarified freely. Then, the players must choose what action to take. In each of the main game contexts, in which we are keeping strict time records, such as Combat, Location Exploration, Wilderness Exploration, or Downtime, among any number of others, the time Cost of anything Hidden is assumed to be the unit of measure for that given time granularity. There may be other costs, but the time cost is generally assumed, or there is some way to break down that time into types of actions, like Movement, Bonus Actions, etc. If you, for example, were to spend your movement to travel 30ft, it would happen. Sure there may be other known or almost known costs, like opportunity attacks, difficult terrain, or whatever, but they are still available to the player to make decisions. In the Wilderness perhaps you spend a day’s ration and a literal day to travel whatever amount of distance you determine you can move in a day. Between simple conversation, and certain-cost Actions, that should cover almost all of any game’s gameplay. Whatever is left falls to the land of the Secret, where costs are high, and there is most certainly a chance of failure. Combat tends to lean in this direction, as the question is rarely “can I make contact with this enemy in 6 seconds with my weapon”, but instead a question of “within 6 seconds, am I able to find an opening to deal damage to this enemy”, followed by “how well do I take advantage of that opportunity”? Any action with any fail-state should only be used in the context of Secret.
Another relevant angle here are some ideas that are touched on implicitly in the description of the Landmark, Hidden, and Secret framework, and map very nicely with some core concepts that I’m sure everyone is familiar with in at least some capacity. I’m sure there’s a nice name for it somewhere, maybe a decent research paper, but the internet is so slopped up I can’t find anything beyond AI-generated marketing pages, but what I’m looking for is a triangle, with Price, Quality, and Convenience in the corners, or probably some synonym of those words. The idea is you can’t have something that is free, perfect, and immediately available. You can pull really hard towards one, be pretty good at two, or completely mediocre at all three. With that in mind, we can map all of the different kinds of circumstances a game can be in, and map those to appropriate resolution mechanics. The three variables for us, instead of Price, Quality, and Convenience, will be Cost, Effect, and Time. And for devising scenarios, I want to approach this from a position of evaluating what is constrained.
The first scenario is when none of Cost, Effect, or Time are constrained. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no Cost, Time spent, or that the Effect is negligible. It may just be that the Cost is some order of magnitude less relevant than that of the availability to the players. Tossing an urchin a few coppers isn’t worth noting for most characters on their sheet. Usage Dice play into this, removing the need to track individual ammunition for example, when any individual ammunition is not a relevant fictional risk. But, I would argue that this scenario would not involve any amount of risk to a Usage Die. Then, on the topic of Time, the same can be said. On the scale of a Downtime Action, having a conversation for 10 minutes isn’t worth noting, but in Combat, it most certainly would be. 10 minutes is not a constraint at that granularity of Time. And finally for Effect, if the goal state at the end of an Action is well within the realms of likelihood, to the point of being essentially certain, then there is no constraint on Effect. Asking for directions to the Castle in your Downtime is Landmark, it’s Free. It doesn’t matter if you toss a few coppers around, take an hour, and get some shoddy directions at best. It’s a castle, easy enough to spot when you’re close enough anyways, you’re in no rush, and what’s a couple coppers to an adventurer? It just happens.
Then, we have the trio of scenarios where one Element is constrained. We’ll start with Effect being constrained. A player asks to do something a bit above and beyond their immediate certain capabilities. Maybe they captured an enemy, have them stashed in a safe-house, have access to all of their resources, and don’t have anywhere else to be that day. It’s not as simple as just asking for the information, since they’re the enemy, and don’t want to give it to you. So if you want to get the desired Effect, you’re going to have to find a way to fork over enough Cost or Time, to make it happen. If you commit to doing nothing else that day, you probably get the information. You might have to take a Reputation hit for loosening them up a bit, but it just happens. Then we have a scenario where Time is restricted but Cost and Effect aren’t. Maybe you’re trying to make a raft to get across a Dungeon lake. There tends to be a built in Time constraint in Dungeons, that being the Random Encounter. So let’s say you want to build it, and get out on the lake before some monsters might arrive. Maybe you’ve got some wood, and the players have enough skill between themselves and their characters that making something buoyant is pretty certain. The question then becomes either “how many additional resources are you willing to use” or “how much quality are you willing to forgo”? If the players can make the answers to those questions even enough with the time constraint they have, it just happens. Finally, we have the Cost constraint. Maybe a character broke their leg in a combat, but are otherwise safe. The party wins, and they begin to care for their injured comrade. However, they’re out in the woods. Obviously they want the leg to be perfectly cast, and they don’t really have a time constraint from a danger perspective, and I’m certain they could apply something before the danger of being unset applies. But, they don’t have a doctor, or a proper cast, so they’ll have to make do with what they have. Maybe they can send someone ahead to get a cast from an upcoming village, or maybe they can find some straight enough sticks to make do for now. They either take more time, or get a lesser effect. Or, a little bit of both. That’s what Hidden is, re-adjusting the equation until it balances out.
Now the hard part, and where most systems spend their time, often indicating a level of relevance that isn’t exactly true. When two of those aspects are constrained, then we either have to be prepared to make a drastic change in the unconstrained variable, or allow for the cruel hand of fate. Say for example, Effect and Time are constrained. A classic example of this might be a Poisoning, or a Bomb. The Bomb is going to go off any minute now, and well, you’re not a bomb expert, and you don’t have one hanging around. Maybe you can be satisfied having somewhere else blow up, and you might not have enough time to escape? That’s the whole Dark Knight and the nuke scenario. Some dice were definitely rolled, and the bomb did still go off, so who knows what the Cost ended up being. But he had to settle with Gotham proper not being nuked. These kinds of situations are always higher stakes, but for something less catastrophic, maybe you stumble across a potions lab in a Dungeon, and you want to make some kind of potion that would help you in your Dungeon turn before a Random Encounter might happen. You’re no potion-master, so you’re kind of just either stumbling across a helpful recipe, throwing some stuff in and seeing what happens, or realizing it will just too long. If you decide to settle on just “something that vaguely smells bad” or “something that seems flammable”, well, that would be more likely, but if you want “something that would make me invisible”, I would imagine those odds are much slimmer. This should feel like comfortable territory for most GMs, and probably where you currently spend most of your time. Judge the odds of success, set a target, roll. Lets do another, this time with Effect and Cost constrained. This one maps remarkably well to learning a skill, or improving a skill. “I’m a broke recent-grad with a non-STEM degree, I want to learn how to program”, is the first example that came to my head. In that scenario, someone is probably going to have to accept a lower proficiency, an uncomfortable cost, or an obscene amount of time. All of those answers could be true. I’ve taught kids “how to program” in a day. Their parents paid some summer camp like $100 a day to teach their kid to program, and I did that. If they paid for a $500 per day camp, they probably would have gotten a much better instructor, much smaller group sizes, and probably an actual curriculum. If I had them for the whole summer, I probably could have taught them a lot more. If I had them for years, I could probably teach them all I know. But, if they’re fine with that level of “knowing how to program”, I would say most of those kids got that. Still some dice to be rolled, but much better odds there. The last double constraint is Cost and Time. For example, the “I want to win the building-a-bridge-out-of-just-paper-and-tape contest”, and you’re not an architect or an engineer, and the competition only lasts an hour. I’m sure an engineer, or even a kid with a whole day could come up with something much better, or if you handed over some bricks and cement, I’m sure every bridge would be better than the ones made by the non-experts in an hour. The question of “how good can I do”, in this scenario, that’s best solved with the dice.
And I guess there is one last option, and often the hardest to adjudicate. That being when the players want to much, can’t/won’t offer enough, and don’t have enough time. This is also solved in conversation, and is a muscle I fear the modern GM, including myself, does not train enough. In those cases, the answer is simply no. Pick a thing to remove the constraint, ideally two, and then we can talk.
So Landmark, Hidden, Secret deals with physical space, and it’s inseparable partner Time. Common, Recalled, Obscure deals with the idea of reasonable, or the fictionally probable Effect. I suppose that just leaves me with inventing the Taxonomy of Cost. Perhaps Irrelevant, Expected, Costly? I hope that whatever three words come from this thought are the least important part of this post.
For me, as I continue to work on the game of my own design, I’ve been caught up in which mini-games, or procedures, I want to compose my TTRPG. I love how the board game Vantage handles obstacles, and I think it is ridiculously OSR. It is so very abstract, and yet grounded in the literal. Your character is the sum of their items. For a game about crash-landing on an unfamiliar planet and trying to make do, that makes perfect sense. You traverse Location Cards, and of course you retain your memory of your gaming experiences, all of those composing your Landmark information. You know what directions you can head, and most of the time you know the risk of going there. You know what actions you can take on any given Location, and you know that you will always succeed at doing any given action, the question is simply “will you be able to withstand the consequences”? Since the game controls the actions by listing them on cards, almost everything in the game is either Landmark, or Hidden, and the costs being your ability to sustain the three types of Damage, or spending coins, or tokens, or any number of other costs. It’s a dice pool system, and instead of counting successes and failures, you’re counting each type of damage, and trying to soak it with your equipment, or taking it to your “face”. But you always succeed, should you still be alive. More risky actions have you rolling more dice, but the better you are at certain kinds of actions, the more damage you can soak, so it evens out, and in fact, taking riskier actions that you’re good at, can often help you progress faster and more effectively. I love this system for Hidden information, and I plan to yank as much of it as I can. In fact, my biggest struggles is coming up with a system for Secret information that I like. I feel like I’m leaning towards a “Roll Under Blackjack” system, where you’re rolling a d6 under your current value for that ability, but above some standard value. That means the better off you are in the relevant attribute, the more likely you are to succeed, but the harder the task, the less likely you are to succeed. Modifiers can be made to the attribute and intuitively make sense (positive in good, negative is bad), and allow for some finer nuance. Permanent Cranial Damage, and the subsequent Errant (definitely one the most inspiring TTRPG texts for me) boiled down lots and lots of theory into that idea, and I really don’t have any additional thoughts. So if I can essentially run almost all of my games with conversation and Vantage, and then use Roll-Under Blackjack for the rest, that’s basically a game?
All I have to do is figure out whether there is a constraint, how many, and on what, and apply the correct resolution mechanic. Hand out Landmark information freely and regularly, negotiate the Risks for Hidden information, and negotiate the Risks and Odds for Secret. Effect, Cost, Time. Until next time folks!