Problem of Crafting solving every problem

Technology and the industrial revolution have been an unprecedented boon to the global standard of living. With them, we escaped the Malthusian trap and have achieved things that were inconceivable before. However, what would applying a similar scale of progress do in an RPG?

In our Princes of the Universe Exalted game we explored a high-scale, high-power game that involved a character that hyper-specialised in Crafting. By mid-Season 2, they were able to create basically a post-scarcity utopia city in the middle of the desert, complete with climate control, automatic food dispensers, crafting facilities, Big Brother-style AI, etc. Basically, everyone could live your entire life there in luxury and not have to lift a finger, everything was provided for them. Things only escalated from there.

After awhile a lot of problems could just be hand waved away with Crafting. Resource shortages? Throw automated mining at a mountain. Food problems? Automated farms. Money problems? Start selling perfectly crafted luxury items and dominate each and every market out there. Military problems? Create automated drones, power armour, a fleet of airships, etc.

While in Exalted if you wanted to focus on the minutia of Crafting it would boil down to a lot of rolling, in systems like Godbound (which Princes of Universe eventually adopted) such large-scale changes are ingrained into its Dominion system. Heck, in vanilla Godbound you can even make new worshippers to boost yourself even further...

Solving every problem

But back to the topic at hand. Just like technology has solved basically every problem that plagued our civilisations in the past, so too can high-end Crafting solve pretty much every problem a system might have. This is pretty similar to the Quadratic Wizards Problem (where in games like D&D warriors' powers grow linearly, while wizards' power grows quadratically and inevitably they dominate everything) - if there is no balancing factor, Crafting can make anyone else obsolete. A warrior might train a hundred elite monks, but a Crafter might bring a machine gun to a knife fight.

Moreover, if anything can be solved with Crafting, you can run into the Paradox of Plenty - if you don't need people to extract natural resources, till the fields, make things, etc., what good are they?

Sure, you can have them create art, engage in science and philosophy and do everything else that's not manual labour. That can work if you don't push automation too far, but I'm yet to see an RPG where the art output of a nation would be a factor (sounds like a pretty neat concept).

In the end the only thing that's the limit is the setting. In Exalted, pretty much the only thing you couldn't automate was prayers - you needed actual souls for those to work. This was ultimately the use for humans in our game - to generate worship for the demigod player characters.

It takes something from the man

While in real life having a post-scarcity fully automation powered society would be an undeniable good, in RPGs it can "take something from the man" (or the setting) so to say. It takes away a lot of the strife from the setting - you don't have to choose whether sending people to war would mean your civilisation would starve if they didn't return for the harvest, or whether to farm cash crops to pay for a civic project, or food crops to feed the populous. If a single character can solve any problem with Crafting / technology, characters that are not Crafting-focused feel inferior in comparison, and if Crafting can start making other player characters obsolete, the game can just feel bad to play.

This touches on the idea of hard magic systems, where while magic can be awesome, it also needs to have some limits, and it's those limits that make the magic system interesting.

For example, in Godbound, a lot of the high-end Artefact creation requires the use of Celestial Shards, parts of the Engines that run reality. Obtaining them is always an ordeal, and using them essentially always means you are letting the broken world stay broken rather than try fixing it. Similarly, every player character has access to the same ability to change the world with Dominion even if they are not a Crafter, so you don't feel like you're that lesser at fixing problems with your powers.

Technology as corruption

In most games, especially scifi ones, players will almost never not want to get their hands on some cool gadgets, shiny toys or useful gear. Whether that's through looting places or making their own if they can, they will want to get some tech. However, some settings have introduced a counterbalance to the wonders of technology.

The Fading Suns universe is built on the remains of a post scarcity corporate techno utopia. However, the current setting is a space feudal empire built around the Universal Church, whose central doctrine is that technology makes your soul impure and leads to the stars fading. While PCs will fall under the various factions that are given indulgences to use technology for the good of the people (an inquisitor using a spaceship will save more souls than it they couldn't use a spaceship for example), a lot of the setting will carry a stigma attached to the excessive use of technology. So while you could build be more machine than man and run robotic farms, you will be shunned by the peasants you displaced and the church might extradite you all the while keeping a close eye on what other heresy you might be committing.

This kind of thing would of course require some buy-in from the players and a balanced touch from the GM not to be a party pooper, but it can provide an excuse why you can't just rely on technology to solve all your problems in the setting.

Modern thinking

Another interesting topic relating to Crafting and technology solving a lot of problems is that it is a very modern way of thinking. We know where technological progress leads, so we may want our characters to start pushing the setting towards modernity by inventing / reinventing even such simple concepts as basic sanitation or an assembly line. However, we have to remember that sometimes it took forever for new technologies to be created. The first steam engine was first described in the 1st century AD, but it still took 17 centuries for the Industrial Revolution to start. It's fine to work within what the setting is and not having to push it to modernity.

Conclusions

If taken to extremes, Crafting, innovation and technology in RPGs can be setting-changing. On one hand that can be a pretty awesome feeling of bringing a world from the dark ages to a post-scarcity society as a result of one's character's actions, but on the other hand it can detract from the game if people wanted to engage in the sword and sandal fantasy rather than going into scifi territories. 

You can try addressing the problem by choosing a system that balanced Crafting vs other professions or sets some limits on what is possible. Alternatively, you can actively try avoiding the problem by choosing not to have a focused Crafter in your game (we did that with The Living Years, where it was the more challenging way to play, and our motto almost became "if we only took Artifice...").

Like with anything, it's good to talk about your game's vision before the game starts. If you want to turn the setting from fantasy to scifi and people are onboard, go for it. If a game starts getting exponential and snowballing because of Crafting or something similar and you don't want to do that, you can ask people not to do that, etc.

Winning the game in Session 0 with Learning and Teaching...

What do you do? What do you want to accomplish? Why do you do it? Three core questions for PC actions

A good part of any RPG session revolves around character actions, asking questions like "a goblin jumps out of a bush with a sword, what do you do?". However, what might be overlooked at times is that there is more to character actions than just what they are literally doing, often it's more important to ask the players what do they want to accomplish, as well as why are their characters doing something?

In general, any action would focus on "A character does an Action because they want to achieve an Outcome in service of their Goal or Belief". An Action is what the character does - "I punch him". An Outcome is what the character wants to accomplish - "I want to intimidate this guard into running away by punching him". Their Goal or Belief should be guiding their actions - "I need to get to the palace to do X, therefore I will intimidate this guard into running away by punching him".

The problem arises when there is a disconnect between these parts. When a pacifist gets the case of a goblin brain and decides to kill someone for no reason, when the characters get too caught up in the turn-to-turn action and lose sight of why they are doing something, or when a desired Outcome is not communicated clearly and say, instead of rolling to intimidate with punching you break out the combat rules to track individual HP, the session can start suffering for it.

In a good deal of older games, it's up to the GM and the players to figure these things out and call for rolls appropriately.

There are some games that focus on the Outcomes more explicitly, such as Burning Wheel or Mouse Guard, where both sides in each conflict have to explicitly state what they want to achieve if they win. Similarly, many Powered by the Apocalypse games like Fellowship codify actions into Moves that provide the players with outcomes that can guide them into choosing the correct Action to take.

Few games that I've come across seem to focus on asking the characters "why do you do it?". Often they come up in a form of characters having explicit beliefs that should be invoked and challenged regularly, such as in the case of Burning Wheel or Star Trek Adventures. These either give mechanical advantage to a roll, or give the character XP for reflecting on them after they are challenged in pursue of their immediate goals.

You will also often see the difference between Action and Outcome focus when comparing lighter systems with something more crunchy. Comparing Exalted with Fellowship for example, in the former you can attempt to dodge or parry an attack, while in the latter you would Overcome it, aka avoid the damage by whatever narrative means you need. Similarly, in Exalted you can try hurting someone with Brawl, Archery, Melee, or even Athletics, while in Fellowship you would just Finish Them with Blood to kill them. The former focuses on the Actions, while the latter - on Outcomes - "I don't want to be hurt", "I want to hurt them".

While often things are very simple - "I want to kill the goblin, because the goblin wants to kill me and they are what stands between me and the loot" - when things get muddled it's often good to pause and make sure everyone is on the right page before going deeper into the weeds.

If you are a GM and the players seem to go off the rails in some weird way, maybe it's time to ask them those magical questions - "What do you do? What do you want to accomplish? Why do you do it?". It can help players ground themselves and explain their logic so that the adventure can resume with everyone knowing what's going on.

The Goblin Brain in RPGs

Every now and then, each tabletop RPG group will come up with a solution to an issue so bizarre and appalling that will leave the GM gobsmacked in horror or in laughter. Not sure if there is a proper term for this, but my group calls it the Goblin Brain.

Goblin Brain

Goblins don't think like people. They are ruthless, direct, and have no moral qualms about anything. Finding the simplest, most direct solution to a problem, consequences be damned, is the way of the Goblin, and this frame of mind is the Goblin Brain.

There are many stories out there about Goblin Brain's way of thinking, some are even cannon to the RPG sourcebooks. Let me tell you a few of them.

Puffin Forest's goblin brain in action - a student figuring out a peculiar way to solve an issue...

Heists, fire and heads on sticks

Recently, my group has decided to play a one shot using San Jenaro Co-op's The Roleplayer's Guide To Heists preview. We were playing a scenario about stealing a priceless movie reel from a cinema event. The theatre was heavily guarded by mob goons, the display was under constant surveillance by 4 guards, under a bulletproof glass dome and secured by an electronic security system that locks the entire room down instantly. We had only two players playing the game, so we had to punch way above our pay grade in order to have a chance of pulling off this hit.

In preparation for this scenario, our Goblin Brains kicked in. Some of our plans included burning the place down, chloroforming the entire room, kidnapping people, killing all the guards and anyone else who might be in the room, locking the cinema down and smoking people to death, etc. All very direct and horrible methods of solving the issue. In the end, we figured out some less gruesome way of solving the issue, but some fire was still involved...

We glanced at another scenario in the preview - one where you have to steal a space shuttle. After figuring out that pretending to be the astronauts with visors down would be suspicious the Goblin Brains kicked back in and said "what if we kill them, put their heads on a stick and walk in their suits holding their heads up so nobody would notice?". That's when we knew we had to stop ;) .

Exalted and Dragonblooded Breeding Camps

Exalted is a game about playing mythic sword and sandal heroes. There are two main types of Exalted heroes in the setting, Celestial Exalted (Solars, Lunars, Sidereals) which are directly empowered by gods, and Terrestrial Exalted, aka the Dragonblooded, which derive their power from the five elements and a strong lineage. The former have a fixed, limited number to them, the latter don't - hence why they are called the Ten Thousand Dragons.

So, how do you make an army of Dragonblooded, heroes that are born from a strong lineage? Well, the Goblin Brain kicks in and your answer is "breeding camps!" - make the strong blood multiply and create more Dragonblooded this way. You can bet this idea came about soon after the first Exalted book was published and has remained an infamous meme in the community ever since...

Vampire the Requiem and the Hungarian Marriage

In Vampire the Requiem there is a vampiric Covenant called Ordo Dracul. They are essentially transhumanist vampires looking for ways of overcoming their vampiric weaknesses. Rites of the Dragon even describes how two weaknesses are pitted against one weakness to overcome it. With this practice, they have developed the Coils of the Dragon, rituals that transform the vampiric bodies. In the 1st edition specifically, under the Coil of Blood you had the power "Perspicacious Blood", which let you gain more blood points than you drank from someone else (you get 3 points per 2 blood you drink from a mortal, or 2 per 1 for vampire blood). The power is simple enough, letting you feed more efficiently, but then the Goblin Brain kicks in...

In the Ordo Dracul book the writers describe a practice known as the Hungarian Marriage. You would have a pair of vampires with the power feeding from one another to produce infinite blood points. However, those that know their Requiem already realise there are two problems with this - Vinculum and blood addiction. Blood addiction means that a vampire drinking other vampire blood gets addicted to the sensation and may crave it more and more. Vinculum on the other hand is a blood bond forming in someone that has drank from the same vampire repeatedly, making them a thrall to the vampire. This would result in a lot of strong, conflicting feelings in those two vampires that may cause problems to a lot of other people around them. Needless to say, this practice can be severely punished, such as by throwing the two "lovers" in a metal coffin into the sea while they remain awake and able to feed off one another in perpetuity...

Slave worship and making your own followers

Once again in Exalted - in the setting, gods derive their power and wealth from being venerated. The bigger the god's cult the more prominent figure they become and the more money they have to bribe other celestial bureaucrats with. On the flip side, a god that doesn't get any prayers loses power and can even go insane.

Here is where the entrepreneurial Guild comes in. As any world-spanning merchant organisation it seems, they deal with slaves. So their Goblin Brain says - what simpler way of making easy money than to sell the gods the service of being worshipped by the slaves? Coincidentally, a player's Goblin Brain might also chip in analysing how much money can you make laundering prayers and conclude that a person worshipping for a whole day produces more wealth than one working all day, hence all the economy is a sham.

On a similar note, in our Godbound game, Evicting Epistle, we had a god of Artifice and Fertility. Since in that system you get more Dominion points each month based on the amount of people that worship your character, the simplest Goblin Brain solution was to make more followers. So the character went ahead and created a race of Units, smallest creatures capable of having a soul and producing worship, then putting them in a life-sustaining cell where they could worship them all day, every day for the rest of their lives. The cells were self-replicating too!

Rick and Morty's Microverse Battery, used as a literal prototype document for the Units' enclosure

I could be going on and on about more Goblin Brain examples, but I think you get the point by now...

Conclusions

When players come up with the most blunt, straightforward solution to a problem that would be appalling to a normal human being, you know they were thinking with their Goblin Brain. It can be fun to theorise, sometimes it can be fun to actually carry out, but keep in mind that a Goblin Brain might not be thematically fitting for all sorts of games.