Ivory Tower Design

I've told you time and time again that the difference between "power players" and regular gamers is smaller than you think. We don't sit around reading RPG books all day. I personally haven't done that without cause in fifteen years or more. Any time I open a book, it's because I'm working on a game, a character, or a post. It's not a question of IQ or schooling either. For everyone dedicated to PNP games that has a BS or Masters in something, there's probably ten more like me who have no higher education. Dedication and experience help, but what they guide you toward is recognizing concepts and synergies. A healthy background with math and an understanding of how an "average" game is likely to go helps too.

We're talking about one of those recognized concepts today. People who like this sort of thing call it "System Mastery", its more accurate name is Ivory Tower Design. Basically, it's a design choice that places substandard or even bad choices in a system alongside good ones. There's a lot of reasons this would happen. Sometimes(as you'll see below) it's a little necessary and sometimes it's due to simple poor balance in the system, but most popular games that do this do it for a really stupid, minorly insulting reason: to make you feel good when you figure it out. Yes, there is seriously a model of thinking in PNP design that thinks this little of your intelligence.

We're using 3.5e D&D and Pathfinder for examples today. 3.5e is the worst for Ivory Tower Design by far, and Pathfinder still has plenty of this stuff. A small amount of it is a side effect of games with individual stats for weapons and armor. Here, we're gonna do something. I want you to open up a PHB. You can get the same idea from 3.5e but I'm using Pathfinder since it's my gold standard.

Remember, today we're putting roleplay and fluff entirely aside. We're just looking at mechanical effectiveness. I should probably make a whole post about this, but the gist is that using a better weapon doesn't make you a worse RPer.

So open up the equipment section of that book I made you go get. Pathfinder vastly improved weapon selection and now most of them have some sort of reason you'd wield them over others. In the one-handed section, Longsword is better base damage. Rapier and Scimitar are more frequent critical hits. Battleaxe and Warhammer are better crits. Et Cetera. However, there's plenty of weapons on this list that you'd only wield because you didn't have another option. Quarterstaff, Heavy Mace, et cetera. Now look at two handed martial weapons. Greatclub is 1d10 damage, a x2 crit, and bludgeoning damage. Right under it is the heavy flail, which is 1d10 damage, 19-20/x2 crit, bludgeoning damage, and the disarm and trip flags. Even if you're never going to disarm or trip someone, what reason would you have to ever wield a greatclub?

Before we answer, flip to armor, where this is even more obvious. Look at the various armor types and add together its armor and max dex. This isn't perfect, but it'll give you a ballpark of their effective protection value. Breastplate is 6/3 with -4 ACP. Chainmail is 6/2 with -5 ACP. Even if you only had a dex of 14, the breastplate is still better. This happens again in heavy armor with splint mail, banded mail and half-plate.

In terms of equipment? Ivory Tower Design exists partially because not everyone is going to have the best gear. Some things are way cheaper. Sometimes people have shitty equipment because they're poor or part of an organization. Mechanically, this lets a GM shave a few points of AC off or a few points of damage without cheating. This is the only place Ivory Tower Design is acceptable, in my opinion. Even then, you have to be aware of the fact that some choices are substandard.

Because yes, it does get worse. This sort of thing, these examples of choices that are bad on purpose repeat themselves in places where they absolutely don't belong, like feats and spells. 3.Xe even has whole classes and PrCs that are false choices. It sucks when you can't trust a game to play fair, but sometimes this is deliberately introduced to make people feel good about "mastering" a system. If you don't believe me, think about all the times the feats Run or Endurance came up in your game. Or even better, tell me about all the times they would have been handy to have. Chances are, it's very few.

There are more traps than that, and to be fair some of them are caused by developers losing sight of how much something is worth or how often it'll happen in an average game. With Run, it's a terrible feat, true, but that's made worse by the fact that the average game just isn't going to have many people taking the run action at all. Even then, it's possible the extra speed doesn't matter. A normal fighter with run still isn't going to catch a normal monk without it if they both take the run action, even if he's in light armor. You can sometimes see this in how expensive something is versus its usefulness as well. The biggest examples here in D20 games are darkvision and water breathing. With darkvision, the expense is solely because a light source, even a hands free one, will alert people with its shine. How often will that really happen in your game? I'm guessing it'd happen to the rogue a hell of a lot and to anyone else approximately never.

Other times, there are feats, powers or prestige classes which are very good but require you to plan your character very, very far ahead. Most people do build like this in some way, picking out a PrC or far away feat, but I don't think anyone wants to have to plan as far ahead as 3.x D&D sometimes asked you to. The "Higher tier" PrCs like archmage required a lot of strangely specific choices...and then there's the epic level handbook, which makes your choices at levels as low as 5 matter to when you're 21 or higher.

So you can see why Pathfinder made some of the decisions they did. They moved away from prestige classes in favor of base classes and archtypes. They gave you more feats overall and less feats with a laundry list of requirements. It has less instances of Ivory Tower Design and introduces an alternate rule to eliminate its impact entirely.

Yes, it's pretty easy to remove this dumb crap from your game. Simply put, let people retrain. This is a core rule in many games, and an alternate rule in our two biggest culprits, D&D 3e and Pathfinder. Just use that rule. Let people spend gold or time to revise their choices. Even if they end up choosing a different class entirely, which you shouldn't need to do in Pathfinder, I think. Eliminating the fear of making a bad, "trap" choice eliminates Ivory Tower Design's control over your game.

You probably shouldn't assume every bad choice in a game is because of Ivory Tower Design. It's unhealthy. However, it doesn't matter, really, why it's bad. Identifying that a system is inequal or unbalanced is often enough. It puts your guard up. Ivory Tower Design is a ridiculous attempt at making people feel accomplished that only ends up "Gatekeeping" the hobby. My final piece of advice is to help each other out and don't make people wallow in bad choices. That's all you need to do, give new players a leg-up and let even older players revise their choices a bit if they notice they fell into a trap.

Cyberpunk, the Dying Genre

"No wonder you have demons. Everything you ever did is coming back around."


I've wanted to do this topic for a while, and I came across a pretty decent object lesson this week to illustrate what I mean...so here we go. I fucking love cyberpunk. We fucking love cyberpunk. I grew up on Shadowrun, and yes, I love Johnny Mnemonic even though it's one of the stupidest movies known to mankind. I saw that movie and I was stunned with how accurate to Shadowrun it was, even though it was based on SR's grand-daddy, Cyberpunk 2020. Everything was grimy and dirty. Cables ran everywhere. Technology had serious, literal weight to it. There was a guy with a monowhip! Hell, the Black Shakes? You could just call that VITAS.

But there's a bit of a problem. I assume you read the title. Cyberpunk as we know it isn't going to be around forever, unlike other genres. Younger generations simply aren't going to understand it. Today I'm gonna go into why, and I'm going to use two bands to help get my point across. I'm not making any commentary on their music at all: I love them both. I'm also not making any commentary on who "works harder". That's ridiculous, they both put their heart and soul into their music. No, we're just looking at the technology they use. Side note? If you use thematic music in your games, both of these bands need to be on your Shadowrun playlist.


Before we begin, I'm gonna give you a little giggle warning. Yes, our first band is seriously named Fartbarf. No, they're not a joke band. Yes, I'm serious. I suggest a few minutes getting over their name before you go any further. Lord knows I needed it.


Fartbarf - Double Click Me


So, there's no need to watch that whole song. Really, a few good looks will give you the point I'm trying to make. Fartbarf is an analogue synthesizer band, and I want you to look at their setup. Pause if you need to. Nothing they use is fancy or modern. they've got a real set of drums, sure, but look at the rest of their instruments. Big, heavy keyboards. a massive control box with wires all the fuck over it. Some kind of switcher that looks like a 1920s phone board. Dials and big clicky buttons everywhere. Yes, your author is super technical with his descriptions.


The Glitch Mob's Musical Playtime Takeover


Here's our second example, The Glitch Mob. No need to watch the whole video, but in this they actually describe their instruments and kit, please watch that whole segment. The Glitch Mob is, well they make Adventure Dance music, he says it in the clip. Not that I know what that means. Pay attention to what they use to put everything together. Everyone's got those sleek touch-screen displays with hundreds of customizable "buttons" on them. They've got that MIDI controller, which is probably the only piece of tech that looks like it fits in with the stuff Fartbarf uses. They have a laptop controlling everything and piecing it together. Even their DRUMS are some kind of digital.


You probably already know where I'm going with this. In fact, how well illustrated my point is by these two bands is why we're finally having this conversation. The difference is that The Glitch Mob use all the modern technology available, and Fartbarf is (according to their website) resisting a touchscreen future. They are a throwback band using older styles of technology. The sort of things you'd see in the 80s. Fartbarf fits right in to Shadowrun, you can easily picture them playing in some club surrounded by people with mohawks and cyberlimbs. Even down to, and this is a side note, what they're wearing. I could describe that in a Shadowrun game and you wouldn't even blink. Men wearing ape-like masks and NASA jumpsuits. Sure. Glitch Mob, on the other hand? While the music certainly fits the genre, you'd be hard pressed to fit those sleek touchscreens and laptops into the world.

Cyberpunk is speculative fiction stemming from the technology of the 80s. It chooses to cast aside the idea that technology always gets smaller and more friendly. Just like the world has progressed past the technology Fartbarf uses, the world has also progressed far past the level, the pastiche of technology that cyberpunk is built on. It's become harder to understand the limitations of the system and its gear. It's even caused common problems in my own gaming experiences: the book says rather specifically that a Pocket Secretary can't jack into the Matrix, but we're so used to looking up websites on our phones that it's near impossible to remember this fact. Literally, a modern smartphone has a far greater amount of capabilities than a pocket secretary.

Imagine a child who's very young today, 2 or 3 years old. They're going to grow up understanding most technology is wireless. He's going to grow up with touch-screens and the insane convenience of apps like GPSes, Uber, Grubhub and that app that has people going to the grocery store for you. Simply put, they aren't going to understand how cyberpunk is intended to work. The restrictions aren't going to line up with their notions of how things work, and it might be very hard for them to get it. For (most of) us, it's easy. We grew up with 80s technology.

4th edition and 5th edition of Shadowrun do try to re-contextualize and update portions of the genre to combat this. This is positive, because we do have some wiggle room. 5th edition Shadowrun also alters some of the themes of the world to discuss concepts such as omnipresent advertising and digital clutter. Wireless technology is a strong theme, mechanically as well as lore-wise. 5th edition is a pretty good game that still manages to feel like Cyberpunk in a lot of ways.

But something is lost. Obviously. Technology isn't heavy and cumbersome. Twisting cables and wires aren't as ever-present. If Cyberpunk is the future of the 80s, Shadowrun 5e's version is the future of the 2000s. That's okay. This iteration still feels pretty close, and it's easier for us to contextualize. That child we talked about earlier will have no problem fitting right into 5e. But will 6e still feel the same? 7e? As we progress, it's going to get harder and harder to justify and keep Cyberpunk feeling like Cyberpunk. Part of the genre is tied heavily into how its technology feels.

Is there hope? Maybe. Fallout can easily be described as the future of the 50s. We all easily understand how it's intended to work. Maybe our children will be able to look at Cyberpunk that way. Technology-based heroes who have been portrayed over decades have altered to fit a new era without feeling much different. Iron Man has gone from a guy wearing big fuckoff metal plates, rocket boots and the equivalent of a laser gun to a technological marvel packed with everything you can think of, all with awesome holographic displays. So maybe the people of the future will be more able to understand the genre than I think.

I guess I'll tell you in 20 years. I'll keep a DVD of Johnny Mnemonic handy.

Rules Liar

"My name's John Constantine. I'm not the nicest bloke you've ever met. But I do me best."


In Fallout 2, you come from a tribal society. Before you leave on your holy quest, you can do a favor for Hakunin, the village shaman. Clear out the monsters in his garden and he'll make healing powders for you, a super important early game healing item for just one xander root and one broc flower. When he gives them to you, he says "May this be of no use.". I was a kid when I played Fallout 2, so it took me a while to understand what he meant. He meant, "I hope you're never in such a poor situation that you have to use this."

Well, guys? May today's post be of no use.

I didn't typo in the title. Everyone knows what a rules lawyer is, someone who doesn't just want to stick to the rules, but someone who's disruptive with his insistence. Maybe he's even doing it to make sure he gets ahead. Most of the time, though, I find they do it because they're like me, and feel like the rules are very important to the game, that playing "fast and loose" with what's truly the only fair arbiter in your game means you've got a shitty arbiter. They lose sight of how irritating they're being because they themselves are irritated at the situation they're in.

No, there's something else, an opposite extreme. For every ten ridiculous alt-right fascists ruining the good name of conservatives everywhere, there's at least one idiotic leftist doing the exact same for the liberals. We're talking about that person and their related habits today, the Rules Liar. It's a term I made up this week, because this isn't as widespread a problem as its conservative cousin the Rules Lawyer. Rather, it's a more insidious, less obvious one that a lot of people tend to overlook or accept.

Before I go any further, I've got to give you another(yes, another) boilerplate. Yeah, this is inspired by people I've met. No, it's not inspired by one person. Hell, it's not even inspired by a half dozen. If this post starts to sound familiar to you...don't take it so personally. This stuff is everywhere.

If a Rules Lawyer is someone whose insistence on strict adherence to the rules disrupts the game, the Rules Liar is someone who's always seeking to warp them to their own purposes. The Rules Liar is the kind of person who's seeking to constantly change the rules or add house rules, usually in the name of improving the game but often simply to improve their own situation. They often use (sometimes deliberately) faulty logic to interpret or re-interpret the rules. I've touched on this a lot before, but now I'm going to get into the tactics and bad habits used, the meat of why this is bad thinking. Things to watch out for and spot. Honestly, like Lawyers, sometimes these people don't even really know how disruptive they're being. Other times, it CAN be motivated by trying to get ahead or manipulate the "balance standing" to put a favorite person above others. If you run into someone with this sort of problem, I insist you try to talk it out, but have your plan B ready when you show up. This is because the root of the problem is something far worse than just fucking with the rules of a pen and paper game. I doubt you're going to get far. However, I want you to try because while sometimes people know they're doing this sort of thing, but sometimes...they don't. To protect those people who simply have bad habits, this is (almost) the last time I'm gonna judge or even bring up intentions.


Association Fallacy - People will often mishandle and mangle basic logic. An association fallacy is defined as using often irrelevant associations to assert the qualities of one thing are also the qualities of another. A bluntly dumb and obvious example is as follows.

My cat has four legs.
A table has four legs.
Therefore, my cat is a table.

Obviously nobody would ever believe something like that, but pretty often people seem to think insisting two rules should work similarly is okay, even though it's usually an oversimplification. It's very easy to assume pen and paper creators have made some sort of oversight or didn't care to logically balance the system very well, but this idea is a fallacy I could(slash should) probably write a whole post on. No, when you're reading and understanding rules, look for the reasons something is different than a seemingly similar rule. You can't sub out an attack roll for Dirty Trick but you can for Disarm or Trip. This might seem unfair or illogical at first, but if you read how Dirty Trick works and scales, I'm sure you'd find it's a more powerful and versatile option than the other two. When two rules work differently, there's almost always a reason somewhere beyond laziness or oversight. Rules that are just weird or bad DO happen. They do. It's just not as common as people seem to believe.

You should also be wary of using another rule's function as a way to help understand another rule, ESPECIALLY if this is another rule in a different but related system. This happens a lot in D20 and with grappling. That said, even if all you're doing is comparing two rules in the same system that seem to be related, they aren't necessarily going to work the same way. As I said before, there are often deliberate differences placed in a system, and uniformity of any kind can't be assumed.


Fluff Extrapolation - Oh, MAN do I hate this one. In nearly every game I've ever played, the "fluff" descriptions are separate from the mechanics. There will be a pretty prose description of an ability to let you know how it's supposed to look and feel, and then later they'll tell you how the ability functions. Here's the thing. The fluff in a game is mutable. You're intended to alter it to your whim, within reason. That "reason" is usually defined by the mechanics and a basic ability to convey what's actually going on. More on fluff in a different post, but here's what it CAN'T do: It can't inform you of the rules in any way. It's meaningless in this situation. If it contradicts a rule, the fluff is simply wrong. Period.

Let me give you a little story as an example. I've had this argument many, many times over the years, and it's about how the class Monk worked in third edition and its 3.5 update. Flurry of blows is an ability that seemingly mimics Two Weapon Fighting in the way it functions, giving you extra attacks for a -2 to all of your attack rolls. Because the rules description of flurry of blows never states it doesn't stack with Two Weapon Fighting...it does. You can use both, take a -4 to your attack rolls, and basically get a metric ton of attacks by your later levels.

However, arguments abounded because the monk's fluff description states they fight with their whole body, and that meant your "off hand" was already occupied. This may seem an incredibly flimsy and illogical argument to make, but they were emboldened by the idea that the two couldn't possibly work together, because they're the same thing. See "Association Fallacy" above for my answer to that bit. Luckily, when Pathfinder, the objectively better system came out, they solved this argument by directly stating the two do not function together, right there in the mechanical description of flurry of blows.


Example Confusion - I've done a whole post on this one, so I'll be brief. The example does not inform you of the rules. It's to assist your understanding. You have to read the rules. You can't just go right to the example and think you know how it works. In addition to that, sometimes the example is wrong, because they're often an afterthought to developers. In this case, there's still no confusion. The rule is right in every situation.


System Comparison - This is sort of just association fallacy, but I wanted to briefly go over this specific example. Similar systems sometimes work differently. There's a million reasons for this, but usually it's to convey feel and tone. Mutants and Masterminds has no rules for Attacks of Opportunity, partly because you're superheroes and intended to feel highly mobile and free to act without fear. Sometimes even games seemingly using the exact same ruleset like the World of Darkness games have rules that work differently. Before insisting one game should work like another, consider why they are different. In addition, it goes without saying that this is no leg to stand on when talking about how rules work. If you're playing Vampire, bringing up how grappling works in Werewolf is hardly a logical thing to do.


Blatant Lying - I saved the accusatory, non-logical one for last. Sometimes someone trying to manipulate the rules to their favor will state what it is confidently, and when proven wrong will back up to a seemingly understandable excuse like "I must be thinking of an earlier edition". This can also come with a "We've been doing something wrong" preface. Often we accept lying because humans naturally avoid conflict, and an "oops" excuse is an easy out. I can't help you other than to say, if you know someone who's doing this a lot, don't game with them. If you're forced to, counter them bluntly and rapidly by looking up rules in the book the moment they run their mouth. Yes, this makes you a rules lawyer, technically, but proving this person is being manipulative is important to get people they've swayed to their side to realize what happened.


I sincerely hope none of you have to deal with someone deliberately trying to manipulate your understanding of the rules by using false or faulty logic. Using these methods to cheat is still cheating. I also hope you never have to have an argument where someone's unknowingly doing some of this stuff. Some systems are confusing, and we're all probably guilty of misunderstanding something like this at least once. And finally, to reiterate what I've said before? If you have someone in your game using underhanded tactics for any reason, even if it's to "properly balance the game as they see it", you have bigger problems.