Design Discussion: Barriers to New Player Entry for T2k

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Fair point, but I reckon that the segment of the RPG market with hands-on military experience is considerably smaller than the one without.

Any game designer that intentionally markets its product primarily to ex-military consumers risks losing out on a much larger market. That doesn't seem like the best long-term strategy for sustaining sales.

And a game that actually favors real-world experience that isn't universal sort of self-imposes barriers to players that lack said. For T2k, some potential players may not want to play with military vets because they don't want to feel ignorant, or be patronized by players with more applicable real world experience. I played with and Ref'd for the same combat vet and he could be a bit of a know-it-all at times. Although I appreciated some of his knowledge and wisdom, the "well, actually..." bit got old really quick.

Add in IG rank, and a game could end up getting pretty un-fun pretty darn quick.

With fantasy or sci-fi games, assuming no one has more experience with a giving setting or rules system, everyone pretty much starts out at the same starting point.

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Originally Posted by CDAT

This I think is one of the issues with my local group. Most of us are Veterans, but we can not make our skill sets accurately in the game. For example we have one of our guys who was an Airborne Combat Engineer, I started as a Tanker, but finished as EOD. We both have Demolitions training, but our skill sets are VERY different, EOD is the military subject matter experts in Demolitions, we spend a year in school learning about them, up to and including Nuclear weapons, but we do not clear minefields, drop bridges and stuff like that. Engineers (as much as they might like to say they can) can not disarm explosive devices safely. So if we were to try and make someone who mostly fit what we did, he could sort of do it (no real option for airborne if other than infantry). But I was left with the Support Arm, and it is just about useless to try and make any real life MOS skill set. So I guess what I am seeing is that most of the guys I know want to play something that looks at least somewhat like there experiences, this was even worse if you make someone not ground based (the Navy vets in our group none of them ever fired anything larger than a M14, or fixed stuff for there job, but get Heavy Weapons 2, and Mechanic 1).

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

That’s why I prefer a points buy system for character creation. If you have a pool of points that you can spend on any skill set that at least partly addresses the sort of issues that you’re referring to, up to a point at least. Another option is the specialisations that they had in 2013 that allowed you to focus on a specific area.

WRT how much of an impact IG rank and OOC military experience have, personally I think this depends on each individual's gaming group and whether you’re playing face to face or playing by post online. Face to face I’d imagine it’s probably not an issue - everyone knows each other, presumably gets on with each other, and can read each other’s body language.

Online it’s not always like that. You’re bringing together a random group of people who may not all know each other at the start of the game, and while the GM can lay out his vision of the game, not everyone hears the same message. As I said earlier, when it's done well rank doesn't cause any problems. But when it's done badly - usually when one player thinks they are somehow entitled to tell other players what to do - it can wreck a game pretty quick. In general I don't think most gamers want to play a game where they're told what to do all the time. If people's perception of a military game (any game with a hierarchy really) is that that's what's going to happen then I think that's a barrier.

There are several factors that are always going to impact verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief.

There are always ways to create house rules to address perceived errors or shortcomings in the RAW.

There aren't, however, ways to normalize the real world experience (or lack thereof) of the players. Even when two players may both have the same former background, they're individual experiences may be vastly different.

My own experience? two different classes of submarines as a reactor operator. Both of them going into decommissioning, with one Westpac, an augmentation to go to schools during an Eastpac, one ORSE, one TRE, one TWP, and a POMCERT, plus a bunch of local ops. Port visits in Chinhae, Guam, Sasebo, Brisbane, and America Samoa. Swim call in the Panama Canal. During the Eastpac, when I was back in Pearl Harbor going to schools, other guys in my division were doing port visits in Nanaimo, San Diego, and other spots on the west coast. I missed those experiences. Other guys started back during our Westpac and missed those experiences.

How do you gel that into a consistent overarching framework for an RPG? I think you can look at the chargen and allow some customization, with the packages of skills being the baseline. If I were to try and build a version of me using the RAW, it would be very difficult to do so with any semblance of reality. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions.

When someone who is a veteran does the "yeah but..." thing, it's going to have to be a matter of mutual agreement in how to get over the difference of their past reality vs a shared pretend reality. One could even do the same thing with civilian professions. Guys in my gaming group besides me: light rail train conductor, police officer, and a former air force police officer now in nursing school. The two cops? Vastly different experiences - one dealing with urban decay as a state transit cop and the other in charge of security of aircraft that he could neither confirm nor deny were our weren't armed with specials... But - get them in the same room, and you can see the similarities. We once spent half a gaming session as the two of them debated the merits of each other's service pistols - the transit cop passing around his (confirmed unloaded) new issue sidearm (and the subsequent "Wow, you just violated *every* rule of firearm safety" after the train conductor handed back his pistol...)

I think *that* is the key. Find out how your players can all relate to their characters, even if the reality is different from the game. If all in agreement, then using house rules should study 6 those with the experience while those without won't be the wiser.

My example of the M16A2 vs M16A1? We house ruled in V1 based upon real world cyclic ROF. We averaged the cyclic ROF at 825 rpm for the M16A1 and 800 for the M16A2. As a result, we assumed M16A1 could fire 13.75 rounds per second, which is 4.58 "shots." So, we upped the ROF for an M16A1 to 5, with the M16A2 at 4.4 "shots" which rounds down to 4.

Everyone was happy - the player who has actually fired an M16A2 gets a better understanding of the rules intent, while also satisfying his need for differentiating from the M16A1. That also allowed another player who was playing a ARNG character could be outfitted with an older M16A1, representing the typical ARNG and reservist use of older outdated gear as compared to active duty army...

[unipus]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I've worked as a military contractor and on a number of training systems/aids over the years. I've worked with a lot of SMEs on a lot of topics; everything from doctrine-level down to CQB and vocab on radio calls.

Difference between a good, smart SME and a bad one? The smart ones would say right away "Look, everyone has their own way of doing this and they're all going to tell you it's the only way."

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by unipus

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I've worked as a military contractor and on a number of training systems/aids over the years. I've worked with a lot of SMEs on a lot of topics; everything from doctrine-level down to CQB and vocab on radio calls.

Difference between a good, smart SME and a bad one? The smart ones would say right away "Look, everyone has their own way of doing this and they're all going to tell you it's the only way."

As a SME (apparently my customers consider me to be one, even though I'm constantly trying to improve), I concur...

The problem with people who are considered experts is two-fold. First - the bricklayer's fallacy usually pops up.

The second one is that expert opinion is almost always flawed when taken out of context or misinterpreted by the layperson.

I guess it will depend on just what level of detail all the players are interested in. My opinion is that you really need players who are closer to the bean-counter end of the player spectrum of you want to keep track of what should be incredibly scarce resources. The average D&D player isn't going to be able to handle that type of "configuration management" (even though they'll do it while counting their gold and detailing out the requirements for a magic item or spell...) Lots of players don't get that the tedious list of items packratted away in the stryker or MRAP is actually their treasure horde...

[CDAT]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

There are several factors that are always going to impact verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief.

There are always ways to create house rules to address perceived errors or shortcomings in the RAW.

There aren't, however, ways to normalize the real world experience (or lack thereof) of the players. Even when two players may both have the same former background, they're individual experiences may be vastly different.

My own experience? two different classes of submarines as a reactor operator. Both of them going into decommissioning, with one Westpac, an augmentation to go to schools during an Eastpac, one ORSE, one TRE, one TWP, and a POMCERT, plus a bunch of local ops. Port visits in Chinhae, Guam, Sasebo, Brisbane, and America Samoa. Swim call in the Panama Canal. During the Eastpac, when I was back in Pearl Harbor going to schools, other guys in my division were doing port visits in Nanaimo, San Diego, and other spots on the west coast. I missed those experiences. Other guys started back during our Westpac and missed those experiences.

How do you gel that into a consistent overarching framework for an RPG? I think you can look at the chargen and allow some customization, with the packages of skills being the baseline. If I were to try and build a version of me using the RAW, it would be very difficult to do so with any semblance of reality. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions.

When someone who is a veteran does the "yeah but..." thing, it's going to have to be a matter of mutual agreement in how to get over the difference of their past reality vs a shared pretend reality. One could even do the same thing with civilian professions. Guys in my gaming group besides me: light rail train conductor, police officer, and a former air force police officer now in nursing school. The two cops? Vastly different experiences - one dealing with urban decay as a state transit cop and the other in charge of security of aircraft that he could neither confirm nor deny were our weren't armed with specials... But - get them in the same room, and you can see the similarities. We once spent half a gaming session as the two of them debated the merits of each other's service pistols - the transit cop passing around his (confirmed unloaded) new issue sidearm (and the subsequent "Wow, you just violated *every* rule of firearm safety" after the train conductor handed back his pistol...)

I think *that* is the key. Find out how your players can all relate to their characters, even if the reality is different from the game. If all in agreement, then using house rules should study 6 those with the experience while those without won't be the wiser.

My example of the M16A2 vs M16A1? We house ruled in V1 based upon real world cyclic ROF. We averaged the cyclic ROF at 825 rpm for the M16A1 and 800 for the M16A2. As a result, we assumed M16A1 could fire 13.75 rounds per second, which is 4.58 "shots." So, we upped the ROF for an M16A1 to 5, with the M16A2 at 4.4 "shots" which rounds down to 4.

Everyone was happy - the player who has actually fired an M16A2 gets a better understanding of the rules intent, while also satisfying his need for differentiating from the M16A1. That also allowed another player who was playing a ARNG character could be outfitted with an older M16A1, representing the typical ARNG and reservist use of older outdated gear as compared to active duty army...

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

That’s why I prefer a points buy system for character creation. If you have a pool of points that you can spend on any skill set that at least partly addresses the sort of issues that you’re referring to, up to a point at least. Another option is the specialisations that they had in 2013 that allowed you to focus on a specific area.

WRT how much of an impact IG rank and OOC military experience have, personally I think this depends on each individual's gaming group and whether you’re playing face to face or playing by post online. Face to face I’d imagine it’s probably not an issue - everyone knows each other, presumably gets on with each other, and can read each other’s body language.

Online it’s not always like that. You’re bringing together a random group of people who may not all know each other at the start of the game, and while the GM can lay out his vision of the game, not everyone hears the same message. As I said earlier, when it's done well rank doesn't cause any problems. But when it's done badly - usually when one player thinks they are somehow entitled to tell other players what to do - it can wreck a game pretty quick. In general I don't think most gamers want to play a game where they're told what to do all the time. If people's perception of a military game (any game with a hierarchy really) is that that's what's going to happen then I think that's a barrier.

I agree at least on the skill side (have made characters for 2013, but never played it) and feel that 2013 made better characters, and totally agree that different people will have different experiences. As I said I started in tanks, and ended as EOD, but in between them for a few years I was bounced around some needs of the Army, one of which was as a combat engineer (if you ask me worst job in the world), my buddy and I were even in the same unit (at different times) but our experiences are totally different. But at least we are for the most part able to say what we think should be more or less. As for the rank issue that has never really been an issue with any group I have been with (but can see how it could be easy), however as I said most are prior service and/or LEO so already somewhat used to chain of command. Then also we were much laxer with it as went kind of with the "you are on your own" was your discharged, so you can only command me as far as I am willing to let you. It is not like you can call in the MP's to arrest me, added to that most of the time we were mixed groups different branches and often some foreign and/or civilian (most LEO) mixed in. So who really is in charge? On some of my real life deployments I was attached to the State Department, so was never in uniform (was in the RSO "Uniform") so most of the military that I ran into thought that I was a federal agent, we were bossing around full birds as Sergeants (E-5/6's) as when an "Agent" told them to do something they jumped to it. I do not know officialy who would be in command, but in practice the Agents were, and can see cases that could be made to put the civilian in command (non-combat at least) depending on who they are or what they do, some of these might help with player rank/command issues?

[Raellus]

Our forum community seems pretty evenly split between those with at least some first-hand military experience and those without.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread....y+service+poll

I have a feeling that most game fan demographics skew much more veteran-lite/civie-heavy.

I wonder what it is about T2k that attracts veterans. In a bit of an aside, I'm really curious why a combat vet would want to RP being a soldier in a military-themed war RPG. Like, how many plumbers want to spend their free time RP'ing being a plumber in a home repair RPG?

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[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Our forum community seems pretty evenly split between those with at least some first-hand military experience and those without.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread....y+service+poll

I have a feeling that most game fan demographics skew much more veteran-lite/civie-heavy.

I wonder what it is about T2k that attracts veterans. In a bit of an aside, I'm really curious why a combat vet would want to RP being a soldier in a military-themed war RPG. Like, how many plumbers want to spend their free time RP'ing being a plumber in a home repair RPG?

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I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of us only remember the good part. "It sucked but I had a good time" is fairly common when I talk to other vets. Shared misery and a sense of accomplishment that most people miss when they get out or retire. I certainly don't miss scrubbing bilges or 4/4/4/8/8 vulcan death watches during ORSE workups, but fondly remember our port visit to Brisbane. And the shenanigans (I think the statute of limitations have passed by now...)

Luckily, I work in an industry that is veteran-heavy where people of my generation are "work the job, not the clock" types who have a sense of urgency in what we do. That culture can rub off on people - employees who've never served end up either that they "get it" or they move on to a job that requires less of them.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I wonder what it is about T2k that attracts veterans. In a bit of an aside, I'm really curious why a combat vet would want to RP being a soldier in a military-themed war RPG. Like, how many plumbers want to spend their free time RP'ing being a plumber in a home repair RPG?

I think it was one of the 2013 design team who described it as wish fulfillment: an environment where the PCs had all the toys without any administrative duties or chain of command.

- C.

[CDAT]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Our forum community seems pretty evenly split between those with at least some first-hand military experience and those without.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread....y+service+poll

I have a feeling that most game fan demographics skew much more veteran-lite/civie-heavy.

I wonder what it is about T2k that attracts veterans. In a bit of an aside, I'm really curious why a combat vet would want to RP being a soldier in a military-themed war RPG. Like, how many plumbers want to spend their free time RP'ing being a plumber in a home repair RPG?

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I am not sure, but when I was deployed in 03-04 with our down time, we spent a lot of it playing Conflict Desert Storm on the original X-Box. We thought it was funny at the time, still do.