Lockpicking and trap disarming with the help of lockpicking tools.
Since the weekend, I'm back to another batch of work on the rules and
systems in my own tabletop RPG project. Yesterday, I covered riding and
driving skills, it was pretty fun. Still needs a few additions, but I'm
pleased with the write-up, especially with keeping things simple.
Do you know what cliché in RPGs (whether tabletop or CPRGs) annoys me to
no end ? Constantly breaking lockpicks. In some titles, even constantly
breaking weapons. I'm sorry, but if something breaks with that
frequency, it might as well be made from a breadstick or something...
Curiously, I've seen this cliché a lot less or not at all in various
stealth games, regardless of how different they were from each other. I
suppose the breaking of lockpicks is meant to add tension, but in my
honest opinion, it comes across as more of an annoyance to players than
anything actually immersive. (As for weapons, though I like the idea of
use wearing weapons down and a lack of maintenance potentially causing
serious faults and failure in weapons, I also find them easily breaking
after a short while to be even less believable than lockpicks. It's
important not to be overzealous about these sorts of "immersive ideas"
and avoid extreme depictions that aren't realistic or believable in the
slightest.)
The way I've dealt with designing lockpicking for my system and my setting is that the probability of them outright breaking is very low and happens only very rarely. If the player happens to have absolute rotten luck during lockpicking, in every factor that... erm, factors into it... then there's a high probability it might bend severely or just break. But in all other cases, the player's lockpick should be safe from damage that extreme. An extremely worn lockpick or a very cheapo one made of inadequate material might be a better candidate for outright breaking, but an at least half-decent lockpick made of steel breaking makes no real sense. In my setting, locks are mostly in the 15th to 17th century mold, so lockpicking tools are accordingly sturdy and robust to avoid getting bent or otherwise damaged.
The way I've handled lockpicking is to keep it simple, have it be based
around the correct choice of specific tool (different locks requiring
different combinations of specific lockpick types) and around the player
character orienting themselves purely via sound and tactile feedback.
Of course, the GM equivalent (I call him the Narrator in my particular
project) provides the description, i.e. whether a lockpick seems to be
fitting inside or not, and once the lockpicking itself begins, on
whether the player can feel any vague feedback in their hand, through
the lockpick itself (and its behaviour inside the lock), as well as
whether the player is hearing any sounds that might indicate the lock
mechanism being loosened with the lockpicking tools.
Since you have to keep certain things reasonably game-y, I present it
in-universe that certain types or styles of locks emit certain types of
specific sounds, depending on whether the player's lockpicking is
getting closer to outsmarting a tumbler (or other internal mechanism) or
isn't anywhere close. As an aural indicator, there's some four or so
"levels" of " getting closer" sounds for each type of lock. With tactile
feedback described by the Narrator, it's even more straightforward,
directly indicating whether certain sensations are felt in the hand
holding the lockpick and doing the lockpicking.
A small touch to the rules that's both game-y and fairly realistic (I
suppose) is that your character can remember from personal experience
what types of lockpicks tend to work on what types or styles of lock,
and he or she can keep using that newly-gained knowledge in future
lockpicking. Few locks will match each other directly, but there will be
some traits to them that a player character can keep in mind or write
down for easier differentiation/orientation later. I feel this slight
degree of consistency is a bit more believable than everything being
presented as "you might as well be starting over again, you have no
idea", which would also kind of defeat the point of roleplaying and
gradually gaining experience, whether in lockpicking or other areas.
There's not much to a lockpicking mechanic if it's either too easy or
too convoluted or even useless, and if you have the feeling you're never
progressing in it, not even marginally and within reasonable limits.
And I consider lockpicking to be one of the (pun intended) key
exploration skills in my project, so it's not a feature that's there for
show or out of tradition, but an essential feature available to player
characters.
----
It also wouldn't make much sense in my project and my setting, because I
consciously set out to create an RPG that's heavily narrativist,
heavily focused on exploration, social skills, etc., rather than the
proverbial "murder hobos wandering around and fighting something every
other minute". While I have prepared a fairly deep and varied combat
system for the project, the way things are set up, both in gameplay and
in-universe, is that you should avoid fighting if you can, and try to
outsmart adversaries instead. Using the fighting route as a solution for
problems is far less rewarded than dealing with things cleverly and
skillfully, and even gets the player in increasing trouble if used
often.
So, there's actually a built-in de-incentivization for the player
character to prefer using violence over other skills, and there's even
in-universe justifications of why going the fighting route is not the
right solution in the vast majority of situations. I'm not going to
include combat and write "pretty please don't fight, I don't have any
other reason for asking you not to". If I approached it like that, of
course they'd gleefully go for combat and violence at the slightest
opportunity. (I feel it's better to tell people, "We're playing it like
this, because X and Y and Z are your believable motivations in-universe
for why your characters are not all-powerful and why combat won't solve
everything in this RPG.".) Combat in my project is also focused mostly
on a player's self-defence, or the defence of a team member, ally, or
bystander. The world doesn't revolve around the players, they instead
have to learn how to exist within the world. The way combat is set up in
particular, you have basically zero chance getting into a solo fight
with 10-20 people and not getting killed or taken prisoner. Players are
therefore encouraged to be good at exploration, stealth, talking,
diplomacy, good at being cunning and reasonably inventive, and if
necessary, using non-lethal tools at their disposal.
Being a clever player gets you far in my overall system, focusing on violence and being a munchkin gets you nowhere and only gets you frustrated. Tellingly, one of the social skills you can use on both sapients and animals is... "Compassion". Not a lame skill at all, it can earn the player a lot of friends over time, especially if the PC is being sincere in their actions. My NPCs not being dumb as boxes of rocks and the player's interactions relying on a "Trust" and "Reputation" meter of sorts, there's only so many occassions of the PC being superficially nice, until the NPCs start catching onto that behaviour.
----
Copyright
(C) 2017, 2019 - 2024 P. Molnár
(C) 2017, 2019 - 2024 Knight-Errant Studios
Žiadne komentáre:
Zverejnenie komentára