Ultrablamtacular!

I have a very specific question about Ultrablamtacular!  that I will be trying to answer during the next playtest session. Is the game, as it stands, simply too easy?

In order to write an RPG system, you have to have a pretty good grasp on what RPG systems are for. One thing I’m certain of is that the systems are failure generators. Without a system, everyone succeeds at everything, right? Because without rules to adjudicate, how do you determine, except by arbitrary fiat, what works and what doesn’t? You don’t. So everything has  to just work, or you’re not being fair…

Player 1: I blast them with my nuclear wristbands! They vaporize into superheated, radioactive steam!

Player 2: Your cowboy has nuclear wristbands? Cool! My prospector starts digging where his gold-detecting spirits say the richest veins are!

Player 3: You have gold-detecting spirits? Cool! My gunfighter eats spinach and turns into a bulletproof, poisonous duck!

GM: <weeps>

Therefore, the purpose of the game system, of any RPG system, is to tell the players, “No.” This concept came to me in an epiphany one day several years ago. It’s stayed close to me, my own, my precious, until now. I’m sharing it here because it speaks directly to the issue of whether Ultrablam! is too easy.

Once you have a system that says, “No,” what’s the rest of the game for? Why not just flip a coin every time the players try to do something, and say “No,” on tails? Because that’s very boring. And offers no differentiation between character actions. If you imagined a map of all the possible player actions, where the chance of success was indicated by a color between black and white, every place on this map would be a flat grey. The purpose of the rest of a game system is to add interesting shades and textures and even colors to this map. The shapes and shades of the map indicate what the game encourages and punishes, what drives its internal economy, where the sweet and sour spots of circumstance and action lie.

Now that I’ve explained why systems are for failure, and why that’s a good thing, let’s take a look at the way things stand right now:

• A character with any Ability, Concept, or Equipment even vaguely suited to a task can perform it if there’s no hurry, no pressure, and no particular consequence for failure. You have the concept interior decorator and need to drive across town? Sure thing, as long as there’s a car handy and your Weakness isn’t can’t drive. Even though interior decorator isn’t specifically about driving, presumably someone with that job would have to drive around to reach interiors to decorate.
• A character with any Ability, Concept, or Equipment suited to a task can make an Attempt to perform it under hurried, stressful, or dangerous situations. The worst that character’s chances can be is 50%. So, our decorator is trying to drive across a narrow bridge made of ice while machine-gun-equipped pteranodons dive and strafe? Now he can’t do it. Unless his equipment includes SUV or luxurious sedan or something - just owning a car gives him a 50/50 shot.
• Add a little Confidence to the situation above, and the character’s got a 75% chance to succeed.

Ugh. The more I write this, the more I know I’m right - this has to change. I was afraid that I have only one tool to adjust difficulty with at this point, and that it was a sledgehammer. But I was wrong. I have at least two tools, and one is more like heavy wrench. That I could use as a hammer if I needed to. But the truth is, as long as what you have to do is whack something, the sledgehammer is probably the better tool for the job.

So, I’m using it. Next playtest, the threshold of success goes up from 4 to 5. Ugh. That has a few ripples, as seen in the post I wrote on complexities. First and foremost, it changes the number of Complications a Character can carry from 3 to 2. Second, the way Staking Your Name works has got to change to reflect the increased difficulty of the game overall. Those changes have to be reflected on the character sheet, too. The good news is, it’s not really a new rule, it’s more like changing a setting. Turning a dial. So the ripples are fewer, and, I hope, more localized.

If successful, this change will encourage more liberal wagering of Confidence, which is good. It should also create more failures, which, as I disclosed above, is the whole purpose of  a system. It should also create a more interesting map of gameplay, with more textures and more interesting shapes.

And if I’m wrong, there’s still time to go back.