Manage your game's mental load

A concept I don't see discussed often when it comes to RPGs is that of a "mental load". To put it simply, there is a limit to how many things a human mind can keep track of, and the same is true for RPGs. Once that limit is reached, you tend to either forget things you should be doing, or slow down considerably. Ideally, you want your game to work under that limit, where you can reach the flow state.

Lets break things down into a few categories.

First of all, complicated rules take up a lot of our mental limit. Remembering all the rules for something like Contact would take a lot of effort, so you're most likely be going over it step by step each time you engage in combat. Fewer special cases, exceptions and so on are much less strenuous on the players and GMs alike.

Secondly, more rules means more mental strain, understandably. You can either start off with a system that has a lot of rules for everything, or gradually build up as PCs gain more powers and abilities (which often come with their own little special rules as discussed last time). An example of that from our group would be Exalted, where after a few seasons of Princes of the Universe our character sheets turned into character booklets, with everyone having too many incremental charms to use effectively. This problem was solved when we switched to Godbound where powers were bigger in scope, but smaller in number.

Just one of many of Exalted's charm trees.

Most of those nodes are incremental powers, a small rule to remember...

On a similar note, letting players have limited access to a really large pool of powers can also lead to choice paralysis and increased mental load. A good example of this would be the power Brilliant Invention from Godbound. It's a power that lets you mimic any Lesser Gift from almost any Word. That's over 300 different Gifts you can conjure at a moment's notice - good luck trying to remember the best thing to use for any given situation off the top of your head (then again, 90% of the time you just use Purity of Brilliant Law with this one and call it a day)...

You can use 60% of all Gifts.

Hope you remember them all!

Thirdly, GMs have to juggle more things than players, so it's easier for them to reach their limit. When it comes to NPCs, you ideally want them to be much simpler than PCs. Fellowship handles this pretty well - NPCs only have one to two powers that also serve as their HP. They are much simpler than PCs that take up at least two pages of stats, powers and what have you. It's much easier on the GMs.

Fourthly, context switching can help to compartmentalise the rules and alleviate the mental load. While trying to say, hold 50 different powers in mind at one time can be hard, having 5 distinct and separate game systems each with 10 different powers can be much simpler. You don't need to remember rules for investigation or hacking during a shootout, and bulk trading rules don't apply during space combat. Being able to switch context and only consider a smaller subset of rules and powers can let you handle bigger things. For example, in our Stars Without Number game we use the Suns of Gold expansion that features a big trading system. It's not the easiest thing to use, but since when we are doing the trading there isn't anything else going on, everyone can focus on just this one thing and it flows pretty smoothly.

Fifthly, game aides can help a lot. It's much easier to remember rules when you've trimmed off all the fat and put them on a simple cheatsheet. Having all the rules you need for something on one sheet is ideal - you can context switch to that single page whenever you need to use those rules and follow along to make sure you're not missing anything. For example, while playing Mage the Awakening, having a printout of the Spellcasting Quick Reference pages really made the magic flow, rather than getting bogged down whenever we'd try to engage with the core system of the game.

Page 3 of 4 of MtA's Spellcasting Quick Reference

Sixthly, changing numbers doesn't increase the load. As discussed last time, RPGs usually have powers that come with their own little rules, and stats, which just alter the numbers you roll. Changing the stats doesn't really change your mental load for dealing with them (unless you have to deal with some weird dice mechanics). So if you want to balance your own mental load in a point buy system like Chronicles of Darkness, you can do so by buying powers when things are too simple, and stats when you are reaching your own limits. It can be an interesting way to balance the system without hampering character growth.

So all in all, there are many ways a game can manage the mental load of their players - by keeping its rules simple, avoiding too many small extra rules, keeping things simple for the GM, segmenting systems from one another, providing concise game aides, and letting you buy into more powers or stats to adjust your own load.

Meat and potatoes of RPG powers

When it comes to character progression in RPGs, you generally rely on two kinds of upgrades - boosts to stats, and new powers. The first one is simple, you get your +X to some rolls, HP or other things you need. These are your potatoes of the mix - a bit bland, but filling, they get the job done.

The second is a bit more complicated, with each power having its own little rule or condition attached to it. These are your Moves in Fellowship, Charms or even Merits in Exalted, or Foci in Stars Without Number. Those are the meat of things usually - something flavourful and interesting.

However, sometimes those powers are very bland, amounting to nothing more than a to-roll bonus under certain circumstances, essentially turning into conditional stat bonuses. It's important to keep this difference in mind when designing an RPG.

To illustrate this point a bit more, let's talk about some examples.

City of Mist - heavy on the stats

Our first kind of powers are essentially stat boosters - something that modifies some specific roll for your character. They can give flat bonuses to rolls, change the odds of a roll, give some conditional re-roll, or something to that effect.

Stars Without Number's Specialist Focus,

a good example of a bland power.

One of the more prominent examples of a game that is heavy on the stat powers that I've come across is City of Mist. It's a Powered by the Apocalypse game about being a super-powered person in a mysterious city. You build your character by choosing their themes (Mythos - magical powers, and Logos - mundane experiences) and picking power tags from those themes. For example, if you had a Divination Mythos, you could pick "Sense minute earth tremors" and "can hear a pin drop".

Power Tag questions and answers

Now, knowing that this is essentially a Powered by the Apocalypse game about being superheroes, one would expect the characters to have some cool, unique powers to play with. But no, most of the system is just the core moves everyone has access to. If you want to attack someone, you "Hit With All You've Got", roll your dice, and then add +1 for every tag that's appropriate. So if you have "fast as lightning", "predict a foe's next move", "see in complete darkness" and they apply to the situation, you roll with a +3.

The powers you have don't change what you can do, only reflavour how you do it. Someone with an Adaptation Mythos could throw lightnings, one with Mobility Mythos would strike fast, while one with Training Logos would punch them like a boxer, but the roll and the rules are the same in either case. Almost every power you get in the game is just a conditional +1 stat.

There are some other mechanics at play in the game of course, how if you specialise in one Move you can roll well and have some more interesting Dynamite effects, how your powers define who you are and if you neglect some aspects of yourself you get a replacement Mythos / Logos, etc. The core of the game, however, relies on powers that give you just stats.

Chronicles of Darkness - when quantity turns to quality

One asterisk that one could perhaps add to stat-heavy powers is that sometimes given a large enough shift in the stat, the game could feel vastly different. For example, in our Creepy Rashomon Marine Buffet game of Vampire the Requiem, my character had a Dynasty Membership Merit that let them become Tasked and give them an 8-again quality on rolls (basically - you could snowball your successes a lot easier, meaning you were more likely to get exceptional successes). This combined with some high dice pools meant that for a very specific goal my character turned into a hyper-focused, hyper-efficient machine akin to T-1000...

Nothing can stop a Tasked vampire! Exceptional success!

So eventually, given a power that shifts the probabilities of your rolls a lot, or otherwise helps your rolls a lot, even a bland stat boost power can feel amazing for a time.

Magic - mostly powers, few stats

While I couldn't think of a system that relies mostly on unique powers without much in the way of stats, one aspect of games that usually falls in this category is the magic system. Even in D&D a good number of spells each come with their own rules and special systems unique to that spell, and spells themselves take up about 1/3rd of the Player's Handbook.

Even a simple Alarm spell adds something unique to the game

Stats vs powers

So, on one hand of the spectrum we have bonuses to stats (numerical increases or other special but simple modifiers, rerolls, etc.), and on the other we have powers that each come with their unique rules attached. One is not better than the other, however.

Stat powers are easy to add and test. You can predict what changing a stat by +1 would do to a roll.

Powers that come with their own mechanic have to not only be tested by themselves, but also against and in combination with other mechanics and powers. Each is a special use case and an exception, possibly bloating the game (how many "harm someone" or "heal someone" spells do you really need?). Adding more and more special rules can also be a burden when you have to remember to use them, unless they are well segregated into their niches (you don't need to think about special hacking rules during a shootout, and your battle spells aren't needed during a conversation).

Ideally, you'd want a complimentary mix of both in your system - powers that rely on stats to perform better and better, and stats that are varied enough to cover the basic rules without having to resort to powers for everything. Chronicles of Darkness lines are a pretty good example of this.

Manage your "screen time"

I've been listening to stories from various RPG groups, and I've noticed an infrequent trend that hasn't been discussed much - that of managing your session's "screen time".

The situation usually comes up as a player complaining that they aren't having a fun in a game because the GM is describing everything in too great a detail, or the story is getting nowhere due to infinite distractions, or perhaps someone is hogging all the limelight.

An example of GM not respecting players' time

by creating long sidequest with nothing but dead ends

(among many other things...)

The situation can also be caused by the system not respecting players' time with a high crunch:

If each time a combat starts you lose 2-4 hours of game just rolling dice,

this better be a lot of fun, otherwise you might be wasting time...

All of those scenarios are a matter of managing your screen time. Essentially, a good RPG session is like a good episode of a TV show - a balance of action, drama, progressing the story, etc. Also like with a TV show you have to manage how much of your limited screen time you devote to each component - you might have 4 hours of footage you'd want to show, but with a 30 minutes runtime, you have to cut some things down or out.

With that approach, you (both the GM and the players) can start saving and spending that screen time where it suits the story and your game the most. Describing a pretty mosaic on the floor? You probably only need a short establishing shot rather than devote 10 minutes to it. The PC explores a dead end of a side quest lead? You could have a quick montage, rather than spend an episode on it. PC's nemesis shows up? Now it's time to slow things down and focus!

Don't forget that you are also your own audience, so make sure everyone is engaged in at least most of the story. If one character gets a solo scene, either make it short, entertaining to listen to, or be sure to switch to what other people are doing from time to time. Doing 3 solo scenes for 3 characters each lasting half an hour is more manageable if you switch between the plots every 5-10 minutes, rather than leaving someone twiddling their thumbs for an hour waiting for their go. Perhaps borrow a page from Fellowship and try swinging the spotlight between characters on a cliffhanger - when they get into danger, when some big twist happens, or just whenever enough time has passed and you come to a natural "scene cut".

You can apply similar principles when it comes to mechanics. If a player wants to knock out some minor NPC to show off you don't have to bust out the full combat engine - just decide everything in one simple roll, or wave away the need to roll entirely. You can handwave a thief stealing pocket change to pay for their drinks, a fighter roughing someone up, etc. to save screen time when it's not important, giving you more time to spare on the meat of the session.

On a higher level, you can start tailoring your RPG systems for your games. Be critical of the systems and every now and then make sure they work for the story you have at hand. For example, we moved away from Exalted 3rd edition for our Princes of the Universe game because the game would slow down to a crawl whenever combat would start. In our last session that used that system we had a one-on-one combat where one turn would take over an hour of rolling. Not two episodes later when we switched over to Godbound, we had a 5 PCs fight multiple armies and multiple generals and the whole engagement took less than that one duel. By cutting out the grindy mechanics we gave ourselves a lot more screen time to spend elsewhere.

In the end what constitutes a good investment of screen time is up to your group. If you like a grindy combat, by all means, focus on the grindy combat, but make that decision consciously. Have a chat with your group and figure out which parts of the game are fun for you, and which you'd rather hasten up, if any.

Languages in RPGs are never fun

A lot of RPGs, from Dungeons and Dragons, through Chronicles of Darkness to Stars Without Number just to name a handful, feature a language mechanic of some sort. Unfortunately, those mechanics usually don't add much to the game.

How languages usually play out

The main problem with the language mechanics is that they usually clash with two unspoken rules of role play games - keep the plot moving (aka, don't grind the game to a halt because the players can't figure something or don't have something they need, the idea behind concepts like fail forward), and don't be exclusionary to the characters.

Here is how from my experience the language situation usually plays out in-game:

First option - everyone speaks some common language or use some sort of babel fish-like device. Everyone can understand everyone else, the language mechanics are ignored because nobody put their points into it. The plot must move forward, and this is the simplest way of doing it.

Second option - one character translates for everyone. This often ends up being like the first option, except with the added step of one character actually having the correct language skill. You don't want to exclude most of the party from some important NPC, plot or other things, but you also don't want to waste double the time of the linguist in question actually repeating everything being said for the sake of brevity.

Third option - an NPC conveniently knows your language. If the entire party ends up not knowing the local language, the GM will usually introduce an NPC that conveniently knows the party's language to soften the penalty. At best they have their own agenda and will twist the truth to suit their needs (the players won't have any meta knowledge of what the other NPCs would be saying anyway after all...), but at worst they act like an in-between for the party and we go back to option two and one...

Fourth option - language is a barrier. If you don't speak the local language, expect to have to think on your feet. At its worst, this can potentially derail an adventure if at least one PC decide they are bored trying to speak to the locals, start using their goblin brain and start some violence just for the fun of it. Barring that, the GM and the players would have to be clever in how they advance the plot with this approach.

No game is really stuck with one of these options permanently. The situation can shift from one town/country/planet to the next and change as the plot demands it.

All in all, it seems languages mostly exist to punish the players, rather than be a new cool tool for them to use. There might, however, be a few interesting ways to make the situation more interesting.

Interesting ideas for languages

Here are some interesting ideas for using the language mechanics that might spice up some games.

The first and perhaps simplest approach to languages would be to make them a soft punishment, rather than a hard punishment. Everyone could communicate and interact with NPCs just fine, but if you didn't have a given language skill, you would suffer some penalties to all of your social rolls. This is perhaps a simple mechanic, but at least it makes the language skill useful for those that want to take them, without making them a hard punishment to impose on everyone.

On a similar note, as discussed last time, in our game of Fellowship we had a player use the Angel playbook that created an air breathing mermaid problem for our game. That character had explicit powers for being able to be understood by every alien, animal and the like, which meant other characters did not have that universal ability to communicate as was the staple for all of our other games. This shifted our game from option one, to option two essentially, with the Angel being the translator for everyone. However, there is an interesting twist to this playbook - the Angel can only be understood by everyone, they themselves cannot by default understand everyone else. That is, without an extra piece of gear - the Ancient Dictionary. This lets them understand every language, but they can only use this gear if they have time to carefully consult it. This in turn can give the GM opportunities to add twists to the situations - the player can communicate freely when there is no danger, but as soon as there is a time limit and the action picks up, it changes the rules of engagement. Suddenly if you need to decipher some ancient ruins, you can't do it automatically. This perhaps is a neat way of transitioning between how big of an obstacle a language barrier can be.

Another way languages could be an interesting mechanics would be taking a page from Cultist Simulator and how it handled languages.

Cultist Simulator, where languages are a stepping stone to the dark arts

Cultist Simulator is a game about, among other things, learning the dark arts. Those unfortunately are not taught in a cultist school, so you have to consult the books. Old books, ancient books, foul books. The problem with these is that first you have to acquire them through potentially illegal means, and then they are often written in old and obscure languages. You have to translate those text before you can study them, and that takes language skills. The first basic ones like Latin and Greek you can pick up from some tutors and books from your local antiquarian, but eventually you stumble onto dead languages that you have to acquire by finding a Rosetta Stone of sorts (which would let you, say, learn Egyptian by knowing Greek already), and even further still you have to use those ancient languages to speak with spirits to learn even more primordial languages.

As such, the pursuit of languages itself is a project that you use to further your other knowledge. You could build entire campaigns around it. In more practical terms, those kinds of languages would be used as tools in character downtime, rather than being something active that comes up during a chat with an NPC. You could similarly use this during encounters - if characters find an old tome or stumble on an old library without the necessary linguistic knowledge to understand them, they couldn't use the knowledge right there and then, but they could either acquire a tome for later translation, or have to go back once they learn the languages themselves. Alternatively, they could get help from some other linguist, but the NPCs might start asking questions before long if the book they have to translate has a human face on it... Better learn those old tongues yourself and keep a lower profile!

If you want to further complicate the task of learning a language, take a book from Heaven's Vault and make the PCs have to acquire multiple manuscripts in order to even start learning the language ;).

Conclusions

Languages are often a binary system in RPGs - either the players are punished hard by not knowing them, or there is a way to avoid the issue of languages altogether. As simple as those options are, I unfortunately can't think of any system that has iterated much on this approach...

The Air-Breathing Mermaid Problem

Every now and then when playing RPGs you stumble upon a mechanic that solves a problem you didn't know you had. This situation is called the Air-Breathing Mermaid Problem, based on a meme that goes something like this:

A game has mermaids, they are introduced in the core book. The entire book makes you believe mermaids can breathe both air and water - there is nothing to contradict this assumption. However, when a supplement comes, you suddenly discover that you have a new power that lets mermaids breathe air. You were just given a solution to a problem you didn't know you had.

The same problem can manifest itself in different ways. You could have a poorly checked book that only lists offhand penalties to using a weapon in an ambidextrous merit that removes said penalties, or come from a specific character focus that brings a mechanic to a focus that would otherwise have been glossed over by the GM.

In our recent game of Fellowship, we had a character playing the Angel playbook. One of the core powers of that playbook, is that it can speak with the language of all things, and with some equipment, it can also understand any spoken language. Since our game is about exploring space and talking with aliens, was it not for this move, it would be a default that we can communicate with the aliens through some sort of babel fish or what have you, but with the powers that playbook introduces, either only that player can talk to most aliens, they translate for everyone and we mostly ignore that rule, or we ignore that rule and everyone can speak freely.

While this example is pretty specific, it could be similarly applied to any system that features a way to learn languages - if one player invests heavily into being a polyglot, it can either punish everyone else for not speaking the language, or punish the linguist for wasting so many points on languages.

In most other situations, it's rather uncommon to come across the Air-Breathing Mermaid Problem, but it could be a good design decision to try avoiding small mechanics and extra powers that solve very specific problems. Sure, being ambidextrous can be fun, but are offhand penalties important enough to warrant their own exceptions to the rule? Is it important that a mermaid can't breathe air? If the answer is no, maybe it's best not to solve problems nobody is having...