On Extraneous Information in Games
2013-Dec-01, Sunday 11:12Today I was correlating a list of the thaumaturgical rituals in Exalted for a possible game (about which more later), and when I was flipping through all the books and looking for every ritual I could find, I saw this one:
On the other hand, no PC would ever take that, especially if they're Exalted. Even in a God-Blooded or mortals game where one of the PCs is a village healer or wise woman... Well, I guess they might take it for backstory--I've spent XP on abilities or skills that I knew I wouldn't use because it was reasonable that I would possess them because of my character's previous history--but otherwise, even at only 1 XP, it'll probably never be bought. It's just a hunch, but I expect that the number of GMs who called for Stamina + Resistance rolls from the children in the characters' village to resist Bonebreak Fever is as close to zero as makes no odds.
I'm still glad it's there, though. Even if it isn't ever going to be bought by a character, its existence implies that NPCs have it and use it, and helps explain how the world works.
As another example, take Mass Effect (1, because that's the only one I played). As you're traveling around the galaxy, one of the sidequests you can do is scan planets for usable resources and survey them, and then send the data back to Earth for later use. Some of the planets let you land on them and roam around in a tank looking for minerals, but a lot of them you just scan them and check spectrographically for minerals or valuable gasses and then leave. The thing is, all the planets have an entry in the codex, even if it's just a paragraph. There's even a summary of planetary conditions for each planet, with entries like atmospheric pressure, orbital period, orbital distance, surface temperature, and so on. Here's an example:
There's also the fact that occasionally as you're surveying planets, you find ruins, or a layer of glass several meters down over the entire habitable surface of the planet, or overlapping rings indicative or massive asteroid bombardment. Here's one:
How do you feel about content like this? Is it wasted space that should have been spent on rituals that the PCs would be likely to take, or more development time that should have been devoted to making the Mako sections more interesting? Poll included!:
[Poll #1945980]
First Greeting (1, Perception, 1, five minutes): This simple ritual is practiced in countless Threshold communities to name newborns. It must be performed within one day of an infant's birth. Beseeching the Maidens for their wisdom, the thaumaturge intently examines a newborn child, attempting to discern the name that would most fit the plans destiny has laid out for it. While it is debatable whether Heaven cares what any individual mortal is called, success on the ritual‟s activation roll grants the practitioner a flash of insight and a name. If that name is granted to the infant, the child enjoys a +1 bonus on all Resistance rolls for its first year of life.On the one hand, that's fantastic. Assuming your generic child has Stamina 1 and no Resistance, then a five-minute ritual of prayer doubles their resilience against disease or other calamities. Even counting rampaging gods or man-eating dinosaurs, that means that the infant mortality rate in Creation is probably a lot lower than it was in pre-industrial Earth, which explains why the population can be approaching one billion even though the technology in most places is still bronze or iron level.
On the other hand, no PC would ever take that, especially if they're Exalted. Even in a God-Blooded or mortals game where one of the PCs is a village healer or wise woman... Well, I guess they might take it for backstory--I've spent XP on abilities or skills that I knew I wouldn't use because it was reasonable that I would possess them because of my character's previous history--but otherwise, even at only 1 XP, it'll probably never be bought. It's just a hunch, but I expect that the number of GMs who called for Stamina + Resistance rolls from the children in the characters' village to resist Bonebreak Fever is as close to zero as makes no odds.
I'm still glad it's there, though. Even if it isn't ever going to be bought by a character, its existence implies that NPCs have it and use it, and helps explain how the world works.
As another example, take Mass Effect (1, because that's the only one I played). As you're traveling around the galaxy, one of the sidequests you can do is scan planets for usable resources and survey them, and then send the data back to Earth for later use. Some of the planets let you land on them and roam around in a tank looking for minerals, but a lot of them you just scan them and check spectrographically for minerals or valuable gasses and then leave. The thing is, all the planets have an entry in the codex, even if it's just a paragraph. There's even a summary of planetary conditions for each planet, with entries like atmospheric pressure, orbital period, orbital distance, surface temperature, and so on. Here's an example:
An enigmatic terrestrial planet, Zayarter has a hazy atmosphere of nitrogen and argon. The surface is scorching hot, and mainly composed of calcium with deposits of sodium. Three times in the last century, ships stopping to discharge at Treyarmus reported geometric patterns of lights on the dark side of Zayarter. Attempts at further investigation proved fruitless; the lights disappear when ships approach the inner system.Pretty much useless in the scheme of the game, since you can't land on the planet and certainly can't investigate the lights. There was no need to write blurbs like that for most of the planets, and surveying would have worked just as well without them, because that's how it worked in Star Control II. But having them makes the world feel more real.
There's also the fact that occasionally as you're surveying planets, you find ruins, or a layer of glass several meters down over the entire habitable surface of the planet, or overlapping rings indicative or massive asteroid bombardment. Here's one:
Helyme is thought to be the homeworld of the arthenn, a spacefaring species that disappeared approximately 300,000 years ago. Precisely what happened to Helyme is still under debate. It appears a global extinction occurred, wiping out all native animal life forms more complex than zooplankton. Plant forms were not affected, but the lack of oxygen-breathing life caused oxygenation of the atmosphere. Plant life was reduced after lighting storms ignited global wildfires.Like Helyme, the examples always occur in multiples of 50,000 years, but it's probably just a coincidence.
How do you feel about content like this? Is it wasted space that should have been spent on rituals that the PCs would be likely to take, or more development time that should have been devoted to making the Mako sections more interesting? Poll included!:
[Poll #1945980]