The Big E

I've already taken a few posts to talk about approaching alignments among the player characters and their world, but what about supernatural alignment?

While the Rifts setting has lots of room for moral grey, there's also been tons and tons of big, black evil. Supernatural Evil. Cosmic Evil. The Big E.

Which is something that has never really sat well with me. For one thing, Supernatural Evil has always struck me as "evil for evil's sake," or "mustache-twirling evil," the sort of thing that works on Saturday morning cartoons but doesn't really hold up under inspection. If your villain every says anything remotely like "I love being bad!" I'm going to have a hard time respecting them.

That's how I see most of the Evil Intelligences of the Rifts setting. Some of the things they do in pursuit of evil are cool, but their sole reason for doing anything is to be evil and show everyone how evil they are. I'm not trying to suggest that every Evil Intelligence has to have a tragic backstory. Just that they have goals and motivations that are understandable.

(Yeah, I know the Evil Intelligences are supposed to be from dimensions beyond our understanding. Then why are they all inherently evil? Why not just let them be amoral, adhering to moral codes that are, like themselves, beyond our understanding? They can still be horrible and destructive, but they do it because they don't care or don't appreciate what it is they're destroying. Which is actually how I understand Lovecraftian cosmic horror to work.)

The other thing about supernatural evil is that it implies the existence of supernatural good, which is notably missing from the Rifts multiverse. I admit to not having every Rifts book, but what I do have features a good number of demons and deevils (Which always makes me chuckle. I'm sure it started as a typo, but then it probably became an excuse to tell the Religious Right "See? Our game has deevils, not devils!") and I'm having a hard time spotting anything resembling a good divine entity.

I've got Dragons & Gods for Palladium Fantasy, which does cover both good and evil dieties in the Palladium Fantasy setting. But in terms of divine servitors (being more likely to interact directly with mortals), demons and deevils again dominate.

There are a couple of understandable reasons for this that I can think of.

1) The PCs are supposed to be the heroes. If supernatural good were as powerful as supernatural evil, there would be little need for the PCs to go rushing off to thwart demonic schemes.

2) God is supposed to be a mystery in the "Real World." Fantasy worlds can have fantasy gods out the wazoo (and many do), but once you start encroaching on the real world (like far future Rifts Earth), talk of dieties goes vague, quiet, or both. This is probably a holdover from the Satanic Panic of the 80's, but it does also respect the potentially deeply held beliefs of some players.

Even though it has its reasons, it still has the ability to rub me the wrong way. Like the Coalition War. One of the justifications for the Coalition winning over Tolkeen is that Tolkeen summoned demons and was therefore morally corrupt. The problem is that they didn't have much choice. Not just in the "needed big fighting power quickly" sort of way, but also because they never had the option to summon good creatures, or even neutral entities to fight for them.

All of this does bring up the question of how supernatural good and evil will be presented in the BTR setting.


Gods: Are there gods in the setting? Are they gods that we know about and have worshipped on Earth? Do they grant divine powers of any kind? Or do we go with something a bit more "ancient astronauts"? i.e There are entities out there that inspired our myths and legends, but they're not exactly as advertised.

Angels, Demons, and Elementals: What sort of spirits and entities exist in the setting? Can they be summoned by magic? Where do they live when they're not in normal space? Do they have an inherent morality to them? Why? What are their goals and motivations?

Getting a Re-Alignment

My last post on alignments got some interesting comments that got me thinking. Which is good. I want a well-thought out system.

So what does a good alignment system need?

1) It should be descriptive, not proscriptive. That is, it should represent what a character actually is or does rather than what they should or shouldn't be. And there's nothing to D&D's alignment system that really forces it to be one way or the other. It's just that all of the horror stories of gaming paint alignment as a tiny inflexible box that your character has to live in.

2) It should include a carrot more than a stick. Rather than punishing players for breaking alignments, reward them for sticking to them. FATE's Aspects and Burning Wheel's Beliefs, Instincts and Traits do this by awarding the player with a metagame cookie when they stick by their statements.

3) The carrot should not be exclusive to the metagame. One of the hallmarks of an old school game is that there is very little separation between the meta-level (where the players and GM are playing a game) and the narrative level (where the characters live). Some games have even gone so far as to incorporate ideas like classes and levels in ways that lets players talk about them in-character.

4) It should be open to change. One of the things with my media examples from my last alignment post was that they demonstrated a character growing and stretching outside their particular alignment "box" without shattering it completely. So an ideal alignment system should allow us to see characters grow and change in outlook as they're also growing in power.

In the comments on that post, Tedankhamen mentioned the Stormbringer RPG, which I happen to have on my shelf. It fits all the criteria listed above. Rather than telling the player what they can or cannot do, the Stormbringer rules instead provide something of a journal of their accomplishments. By courting one Power over another, characters gain cool abilities from that Power. And these Powers exist in the universe presented in the setting, so the mechanic is not meta at all.

The only downside to the mechanic is that it is functionally overseen by the gods of the setting (as played by the GM). I'm not planning for there to be major divine influences in the BTR setting (though the possibility does intrigue me), so I'm probably looking for something a little more mundane.

I'm thinking of a reputation mechanic. But not just a simple measure of fame or infamy. When you advance your reputation, you create one or more narratives about yourself. I might go with specific categories of reputation, or I might allow players to choose epithets for themselves (i.e. Choose between being Sir Robin the Brave, Sir Robin the Coward, or Sir Robin the Terrible). I kind of like the epithet thing because it would encourage player to make their reputations simple, clear and punchy.

Just like everything else in the system, make it percentile based. So if you have 1 reputation point, you have a 1% chance of being recognized, and it will be for whatever you got your reputation point for. If you have, say, 10 points being "Sir Robin the Brave" and 10 points of being "Sir Robin the Terrible", you have a 10% chance of being known for bravery and a 10% chance of being known for atrocities. To make it a little smoother and quicker, let's build a little reputation "mini-table": 1-10 "Brave" 11-20 "Terrible" 21-00 No recognition.

But what happens if you get 100 point of reputation? In that case, it seems that everyone has heard about something you've done. What happens if you're at 100 and you do something else awesome? In that case, whatever reputation you earn "squeezes out" a point of some other reputation. So if you picked up some "Coward" reputation early in your career, you can apply a newly earned point of "Brave" to increase your "Brave" total and reduce your "Coward" total so everything stays at 100 points total.

What do you think?

Classes and Stuff

I'm looking over my Rifts Core book (The original, not the Ultimate Edition) trying to get a sense of how the classes are balanced. And I'm realizing that there are some interesting balancing factors involved.

One of them that is of particular interest to me is the use of stuff as a balancing factor, as in having classes that are designed around items. The Glitter Boy is an obvious example, as the primary feature of the class is the unique and special Glitter Boy powered armor. Juicers and Crazies are also in this category, as their powers are more or less purchased.

On the one hand, this sort of thing doesn't seem worthy of a class. There's nothing that really says "This is my guy and this is what he does." But if you want to prevent players from piling stuff onto their characters, putting them in mutually exclusive classes is an effective way to do it.

I'm designing BTR to be a classless game, so the ability to incorporate that sort of pigeonholing is rather limited. So how do I go about letting one guy be the big mecha guy without letting everyone be the big mecha guy?

1) Money. Even if the options aren't mechanically mutually exclusive doesn't mean that players really can have them all. Your starting money might be enough to purchase a badass set of power armor or the Juicer upgrades, but not both. Or you can be a dude with a really big gun, or a Crazy with a smaller gun.

2) Make it part of their character. Even though all this stuff is technically gear, it is also part of the character. So find a way to give it a cost in terms of character ability, skill picks or whatnot. While there's a temptation to make this a generic rule (trade x skill picks for y credits), I think it should be reserved for specific cases. Just to prevent a player who trades in all of their skill picks for gear, tools and computer-assisted systems that compensate for their lack of ability in any area. Also, what items can be acquired with skill picks should set up the flavor and feel of the setting.

On the subject of power armor and mecha, one thing that's bugged me with the current Rifts system is that there's no system for creating your own mecha. I'm not saying you can't. I'm not saying people haven't. I'm just saying that there's no system for it

To my understanding, that makes it unique in the mecha genre. While a mecha RPG will generally include some "standard designs" that are intended to mesh well with the setting and get you playing faster, the rules that were used to create that design can usually be found in that book.

But this is par for the course when it comes to Palladium. Whenever stats for something are needed, they are generally pulled out of thin air. While there may be some attempt at internal consistency ("This thing is tougher than a Glitter Boy, so make sure it has more MDC than that."), it's never really consistent.

If You Have No Use For Alignments...

...then I have no use for you.

This is not really a discussion about alignment systems or other personality mechanics. It's about the people who think they don't need them. "Alignments are for people who don't know how to roleplay" and all that twaddle.

Because I think what those players are really trying to avoid is accountability. They don't want to be bound to any hard and fast rule about who their character is. Maybe it's so they can freely crap all over their GM's world. Or maybe they want to be open to whatever plot hook the GM throws their way.

But by avoiding making statements about your character's inner life, you lose a lot of opportunities to actually roleplay. Even if alignment is a straightjacket, the character always keeps a key under their tongue. It's the moments that you break your alignment that make the game interesting.

A prime example is the movie "Hot Fuzz". Simon Pegg's character is a by-the-book "supercop". Since we're talking alignment here, it's fair to call him "lawful good."

The turning point of the entire film is the point when he realizes that his alignment was holding him back and the only way to beat the bad guys is not with paperwork and warrants, but good, old-fashioned, cliche-ridden violence.

For a slightly more geeky example, look at the Original Series Star Trek episode "The Galileo Seven." Spock, a Vulcan, and therefore eminently logical, leads the crew of the shuttlecraft Galileo as they try to escape the planet that they have crashed on. By the time they are able to repair the Galileo and achieve a weak orbit around the planet, the Enterprise is forced to leave the star system on another mission. Spock then comes to the logical conclusion that he must do something desperate if he wants to get back to the Enterprise, so he ignites the remaining fuel to act as a flare that Kirk can see.

In both cases, the defining moments of these stories are not when the main character plays strictly to type, but the moments that they realize that they need to break out of their boxes in order to reach their larger goals. And that's what alignment and similar mechanics can enable in your game if you let it.

Skeleton of the System

I've been away for a while, but I'm still alive, I still exist, and I'm still thinking of things.

Some people have been wondering what sort of progress I'm making on the system and how far I've gotten. So here's an overview of the decisions that I've made so far and some of the decisions that I still need to make on this project.

Attributes

A character will have 8 Attributes: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Speed, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charm and Savvy, rated on a scale of 1-30. Players can roll 3d10 8 times to generate them, though I think a point buy method should also be available.

Skills & Milestones

Starting characters will start with 10-15 skill picks. Each pick gives a 10% bonus to a skill. Skills are based directly on stats now, so putting a pick into a skill means you start with stat + 10% in the skill. You can put multiple picks into a single skill.

Skills improve by being used. Every time you fail a skill roll, you get a skill point. 5 skill points raise your skill by 1%. So skills will grow quickly, then reach a plateau.

I don't have a skill list in mind, because a lot of how things will work will depend on how nicely it plays with the milestone system. You see, every time you gain 10% in a skill, you get a milestone, which is basically a D&D-style feat. (Even the first 10%, so a starting character will get a milestone with each skill pick they put into a skill.) So every skill needs hooks for milestones; It needs somewhere to go. Skills that don't go anyplace will usually find themselves merged with other skills until there are enough milestones to make it interesting.

There will probably be quite a few combat skills, because there are lots of places to go with combat. but science skills will probably be squished into relatively few skills, with specialties being represented by milestones.

One of the challenges of designing the milestones is that I want to keep things from being too artificial. I want players to be able to say "I want to do X" and not have the GM point to some milestone and says "You can't, you don't have the milestone." In some cases that's appropriate. For things like magic and stuff. But if a character wants to try something wacky and difficult, but physically possible, let them try. Maybe put in milestones to make things easier, but avoid creating the idea that "you must be this tall to ride this ride" where it doesn't belong.

Magic & Psionics

I've mentioned before that I want magic to be specialized, while psionics will be crude and powerful. Here's how I plan on implementing that.

Lets say you have the Telekinesis skill. The basic power would be, let's say, spend 1 Magic Point (As I've explained earlier, magic and psionics are the same force with different applications) to lift 1 pound for 1 turn. The next time you pick a milestone, you can increase the amount you can lift or the duration, or some other factor. A maxed out telekinetic might be able to lift tons, carry the weight all day, or make 10 objects dance around each other and pick your pocket without looking. Or some combination of this.

The typical magical skill is a "spellbook"; A list of thematically linked spells. A character can cast every spell in a spellbook they know using that spellbook's skill. Depending on the complexity of the spell, this roll will have a penalty (a Light spell might have a -10% penalty, but a bigger spell might have a -50% or even more). The default milestone will allow you to buy off this penalty for specific spells, so even if two casters have the same spellbook, they can be focused in different spells (Not sure if this will also give you more Magic Points, or if that will be a separate milestone). If you put an extra 10% penalty cancellation (it never turns into a bonus) the spell can be cast with no roll at all. (Since spells in Palladium are cast without a roll, I wanted that as an option, but it still had to engage with the advancement mechanic in order to, you know, advance.)

Combat

Most of my thoughts on the mechanics of combat are here. The big wrinkles to sort out are armor and damage scaling (AKA Mega-Damage).

One of the few mechanics that I genuinely like from the Palladium system is how SDC works for armor. It not only added a dose of realism to the system (as compared to D&D anyway) in that armor will not last indefinitely. Attacks that don't beat your armor's AR are held against your armor's SDC until it is gone. Puny little goblins who keep attacking your armor are eventually going to get through to the creamy nougat center that is your hit points. This also made for interesting decisions on the part of a player. "I know this attack isn't going to get through my armor, but should I try to parry or dodge in order to protect my armor's SDC?"

The problem that comes with Rifts is that there's no longer the choice between hit points and armor. Unless you're a Juicer, your hit points will never survive a MD hit. So your armor is your life. So once you hit MDC scale, it seems like your character's gear matters more than the character does. Unless your character picks the right race or class to become innately MDC, at which point it becomes a slightly different arms race, but still an arms race.

Technology and Setting

One of the main things I want out of both the setting and the technology is that they be livable. Rifts Earth as it stands is designed for the convenience of wandering adventurers. The GM trying to run a "stationary" campaign, where the characters have jobs, obligations and roots has their work cut out for them. I want a setting that not only allows for, but encourages a number of approaches.

In terms of technology, I'd like to do a little more extrapolation regarding how the various cool technologies interact with the world. Atomic Ray guns and jet packs are cool, but what about atomic toasters? One of the things that I feel is important in a sci-fi setting is defining what "normal" means. That's how you measure exactly how awesome something really is. If everyone in the setting dressed like they were in an '80's hair metal band, it's Mr Suit who is shockingly different.

I know I've made some posts about a Magical Space setting, and I am planning on using it, but the universe is a pretty big place. Do I put my focus on space itself, making it a fantasy space opera? Or focus on a frontier world with a more Old West feel? Or do I go to one of the homeworlds of one of the races, humans elves, or whatever else I come up with?

Magic and Science

One of the things that makes talking about science and magic and how they interact is that people often mean different things when they say "science." For the most part, they're talking about 3 different things which I will call Science, Technology, and Physics. The words may not be technically accurate, but they'll do for discussion purposes.

Science: By Science, I am not referring to our bulk of scientific knowledge (that's covered in the other two areas), but instead the scientific method. The method of poking and prodding at some phenomena or other in order to learn more about the universe we live in.

Technology: Technology is specifically the plethora of devices that we create utilizing scientific principles. From the electric can opener to the Large Hadron Collider, this is what I'm talking about.

Physics: By Physics, I'm referring to the physical laws of the universe and how we perceive the physical world to work.

For the most part, I believe that magic should respond to Science. Even if it doesn't bow to the same physical laws, it does follow some rules. Especially if we are trying to encapsulate it in game rules. If magic doesn't make sense, or is overly capricious, no player would ever use it.

Magic does not have a special relationship with Technology, anymore than it does Science. Some designers and novelists like to invoke the idea that magic and technology are not compatible, having one or the other start to fizzle out in the presence of the other. Usually magic frying technology, but I have seen instances of magic fading in the presence of technology. But I don't see a strong need to reinforce this. One of the fun parts of a gonzo setting is taking all the varying bits and seeing how they fit together.

Magic and Physics are where things get tricky. Especially when finicky players try to incorporate their knowledge (or at least strong opinions) about Physics in order to get some extra effect out of a spell. Ultimately, I want to design the magic rules for BTR so that they will stand up to that kind of scrutiny, while at the same time allowing for the Roger Rabbit Effect ("Do you mean to tell me that you could have slipped out of that cuff at any time?" "Not at any time! Only when it was funny!").

The Spock Effect

Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch coined the term "The Spock Effect" while discussing the psionics rules for GURPS. Specifically, his reasoning for the significant revisions to those rules for the 4th edition of GURPS.

The Spock Effect, bluntly put, is when a character or character type has significant abilities or powers that are supposed to be balanced by behavior restrictions or other elements of characterization. While it works fine in a story, it tends to be a real pain in a game. Because all the upsides are things that show up on a character sheet as things that a player can use (and expects to be able to use) while the downsides of the character type generally don't show up on a character sheet at all. (While GURPS actually gives points back for taking a mental or social disadvantage, none were required to use psionics in previous editions. So the balancing elements that they were relying on didn't really exist.)

The standard fantasy paladin is actually a good example of this. Lots of cool powers predicated on the character maintaining a particular alignment. And we've all heard the stories of the player of the murderous and otherwise evil paladin, who wanted all of the power but none of the responsibilities of being a paladin.

A couple of the major character types in Rifts also grant awesome power with some fairly minor or avoidable costs. Juicers are a pretty good example of this. Incredible physical abilities balanced by a fairly limited lifespan. I wonder if anyone has ever actually had a Juicer character end up dying of natural causes. Between GMs that might not keep strict calendars, campaigns that don't last that long, or all of the other things that are trying to kill you on Rifts Earth, I can easily see this 5 year limit as no big deal.

Dragons are another example of this sort of not-really-limited power. As near as I can tease out, the primary restrictions on dragon characters are that they are supposed to be really young and therefore played with a touch of naivete, and also the fact that the Coalition is anti-magic and even in human form a dragon would set off all sorts of magic detectors.

Here's what I'm looking for from the peanut gallery: Are these "soft" downsides actually useful in your campaign? Any horror stories of characters ignoring the restrictions and running roughshod over your campaigns? Have you strengthened any of these restrictions to give them more weight (I read somewhere about a GM who required Juicer characters to have to continually replenish their drug supplies)? Or you ignore them entirely with no ill effect on your game at all?

The Role of the GM

For the majority of my gaming career, I've been a GM. I'm sure a number of you have been in the same situation. Everybody wants to game, but no one wants to GM. So one guy gets stuck doing it. And that guy has usually been me.

It doesn't help matters that I like a lot of different games. So even if one or two other people I know are willing to run D&D or some other game, if I have a new game I want to try out, I'm the one who has to run it.

And with all those games, I've read a lot of GM advice. A lot of it is the same, so you are forgiven if you skip over the GM section in the games that you buy. But I find it continually useful. At very least, it gives me a broader perspective on the various jobs that a GM is called upon to do. Tips for running different genres, writing adventures vs. building a sandbox, and so on.

One of the other things I find useful is that, especially with the more indie-style systems, the designer takes the time to talk about what they want you to get out of their game. Not always explicitly, but it's there.*

Then I contrast this with how the Rifts line supports its GMs. The Rifts Main Book dedicates less than 8 pages to the Game Masters Section. Most of it is a compact bestiary with quick-roll monster tables and simple pre-generated opponents.

The Rifts Game Master Guide fills most of its pages with a comprehensive index of rules. Races, classes and equipment from every Rifts book available at the time of publication. A useful thing, to be sure. With the astonishing breadth of the setting, having all of that stuff in one place can be darn handy.

If there's a theme here, it's that these materials presume that you already know how to run a game. So they skip past the old "How to GM" stuff and go straight into providing things to help a GM turn their ideas into action. And I do want to reaffirm that there's nothing wrong with that.

My big question here is: How much support does a Rifts GM need? Do they get it? Is there some bit of GMing advice that you wish was in one of the books, but isn't? Was there something you wish you had been told when you first started running a Palladium game? Would a "How to GM" section of the book have been useful, either to show you how to run a game (as a beginner) or to tell you how to make the Palladium system sing (as a more experienced GM)?

One of the things that I strongly believe in as a GM is The Power of No.  Even if something is in the book, even if the designers claim that it's balanced. If it's something that I don't want in my campaign, I will not include it.

*I know there's a camp out there that says "Who cares what the designer wants me to get out of their game? Once it hits my table, it becomes my game to do with as I please." I'm not going to stop them from having fun playing games their way. But as a designer and a guy who believes that System Matters, I'm only going to speak for myself on this one.

RAW/IMC

When talking about most RPGs via the internet, players generally focus on the RAW or Rules As Written. Since every game table is different, focusing on the one thing all players share, the rulebooks, makes a lot of sense.

The Palladium system is a bit different. Because nobody truly plays with the Rules As Written. In some cases, it's because the mechanics are broken, poorly explained, or both. In other cases, the rules and setting don't mesh as neatly as they should. And then there are the times when the books are oddly silent on certain subjects.

What you get instead is a lot of IMC, or In My Campaign. For those times when the books don't have an answer, individual GMs and players step up to the challenge. Sometimes it's simple tweaks or filling in minor details. Other times, entirely new races, occupations, or even subsystems emerge at the table.

I've been wrestling with this mostly as I try to understand the economy of Rifts Earth. You see, the prices in every Rifts book I own are given in credits. So my assumption is that this is a standard currency throughout the setting. But every time I get into a discussion with Rifts players on the topic, they tell me how silly that assumption is.

And they're right. It's a silly assumption. A balkanized world like Rifts Earth would not have such a unified economy that a single currency would be accepted everywhere. But nowhere in the RAW (at least what I've seen) is this contradicted. So individual GMs have stepped up and devised their own currencies and conversions.

Gold and other precious metals work rather well as "universal currency" in fantasy games. Unlike paper (or electronic) money, gold is valuable in itself. It doesn't matter whose face is stamped on the coin, as long as it's gold. Without that intrinsic value, the only thing that gives paper money worth is the face printed on it. And that only goes as far as people trust that face.

The other issue I find is that there are very few mundane prices. I know Rifts is about having awesome adventures and dialing everything up to ELEVEN!, but giving me an idea of what it means to be a normal person in this setting is valuable. For one thing, it helps me be aware of exactly how awesome I am. When I have a million credits, is that equivalent to having a million dollars or a million yen?

It also opens up other campaign options. Rather than assuming that the PCs are a party of wandering adventurers, let's say I want to do a stationary campaign. The party is a band of locals who protect a small town from the predations of the Coalition and/or the Xiticix, or maybe it's near a nexus and Rifts spill out trouble like a bar at closing time. Or maybe my game is "D-Bee Hospital" and the party is made up of Cyber-Docs and Body Fixers who treat anyone who comes through their doors.

Suddenly, the PCs aren't foraging to survive, but are drawing steady paychecks for their labor. They have bills to pay. A GM who wants to run that sort of campaign doesn't have a lot to go on. Now Rifts GMs are notoriously industrious (and mad props for that!), but it would be nice if the game were better able to support them.

The big question is: How did things get to be this way? A few things jump out at me.

Excessive familiarity with the material. If you've been playing a game for a long time, there comes a point where you know the rulebook by heart. If you've been publishing and writing for the same system for a long time, your eyes glaze over as the rules pass before your eyes. You become less critical of critical portions of the rulebook because it's all stuff you've seen a million times already. So stuff slips by.

Gamer elitism. RPGs, especially in the old-school era, had a reputation for being obtusely written. Gamers took special pride in being able to decode the rulebooks. (One letter to Dragon magazine during the development of 2e D&D urged the designers to retain THAC0 and descending AC to ensure that only smart people would be able to play it.) If some of that decoding required filling in some blanks, so be it.

And none of this is to say that Palladium games are unplayable. Many people do play them and have fun doing so.

I think a big chunk of the reason that there will never be a proper Rifts 2e is that the community surrounding the game is as balkanized as Rifts Earth. Everyone is basically playing their own version of the game. And they've been doing it their way for so long that they don't want a serious revision telling them that they're doing it wrong. (Because they're not.) Those who do want a serious revision are similarly stymied as they try and decide which revisions to make. So many players want their tweaks and revisions to become canon that it can be difficult to choose.

Comments are open.

Game Imbalance Is More Fun!

I've been doing some thinking on the role of game balance in old school play. That's when I realized that part of the point of old school gaming was game imbalance.

I've written before about the old school ideal of immersion and how it's facilitated by the lack of rules. The other thing that facilitates immersion is game imbalance. Specifically, power imbalance between the PCs and the opposition. In old-school D&D, a first level character was a nobody, little better than his 0-level brethren. With single-digit hit points, magic users wielding 1 spell per day, and a bonus to hit only if you're lucky, that first level party can't count on the numbers to save them. They need immersion to give themselves every tactical advantage if they wanted to survive to second level.

KS tries to sell Rifts and other Palladium games as "thinking man's games", and that's true to a degree. I can readily imagine some early 90's Palladium gamers who's GM just bought Rifts. Up to that point, it was a fantasy campaign, or maybe Heroes Unlimited. They've got a few levels and are killing orcs/beating up thugs with alacrity. Then they find themselves on Rifts Earth. Suddenly, their SDC-level abilities don't matter for much. That super-tough guy with the scads of SDC and armor and stuff? 1 or 2 hit points on the MDC scale. 3 if he's lucky.

Suddenly, those characters who thought they were top dogs have been knocked down a notch. Time to start thinking. Time for immersion. Time for roleplay.

All well and dandy until the surviving party members (and the native characters that wound up replacing the dead ones) get their hands on MDC gear. Once they level the playing field, now the GM has to up the ante yet again. It's kind of telling that the first Rifts Worldbook details creatures that are functionally immune to MD.

So what does this mean for BTR? Does this mean that I'm throwing out all notions of game balance? No. Balance between characters is one of my priorities. The ability for every character type to be awesome and relevant is very important to me. But one thing I am definitely not including is a method of encounter balance. And I can definitely see putting some advice in the GM section advocating putting the players out of their element in order to keep them on their toes.

Something Old, Something New

Okay, now that I've laid out some of the major differences between old school and new school gaming the question becomes: What am I designing for: Old school or new school?

The simple answer is: New school, while keeping respect for the old school. One of the big criticisms that has been leveled at Palladium is that they are no longer competitive. Not just in terms of the rate that new material is produced, but also in their ability to keep up with the rest of the gaming industry. Say what you like about "forsaking the old in favor of the new and shiny" or "keeping up with the Joneses of gaming", it is costing Palladium customers, and it's that customer that I'm trying to catch with BTR.

The new school "web" approach also helps us avoid one of those old-school traps: The spot rule. I talked about this briefly last month, when I mentioned "rulings that become rules." Along with the inconsistency I mentioned last month, these rules tend to turn up scattered throughout the various books whenever the designer thinks they should apply. There's a spot rule for muscle atrophy under the Glitter Boy OCC in order to justify forcing the pilot out of the Glitter Boy every now and again. The entire set of Crazy Hero tables from Heroes Unlimited (a game I found surprisingly limited) were reproduced as part of the Crazy OCC.

The old school concept of "fair play" makes it very difficult to talk about game balance. Because real life is not fair, the claim goes, there should be no expectation that the game world will be fair either. I would like to point out at this time that real life is also not fun or optional. Since most people have a choice regarding what they do in their free time, they will tend to focus on things that are fun.

And I'm not going to say that randomly rolled stats aren't fun. I think some of the most fun I've had has been playing a Paladin with randomly rolled and not terribly great stats. Although D&D these days lets you place stat rolls where you like, a Paladin character has a lot of bases to cover and something had to give. I wound up putting my low rolls in Strength and Intelligence. That character was a blast to play and it's a shame that the campaign fell apart when it did.

What I will say is that there's a big difference between rolling an 8 or an 18 for PS and playing an SDC or MDC scale character. Especially since the latter is a player choice. The reason that Glitter Boys and Juicers are so popular that they wind up getting new variants and books devoted to them (as opposed to Vagabonds or Rogue Scholars) is because those classes are powerful enough that players are going to pick them over most others.

The other case that people try to make against game balance is that it attempts to make everyone the same. And that's just not true. Game balance thrives on difference. Even D&D4, the most rigorously balanced game to call itself an RPG, was built around a party composed of characters with different specialties (Striker, Controller, Leader, Defender).

A useful definition of game balance is: A game is balanced when every character has an equal and fair chance to participate in the game's primary activity. But in order for that to be useful, we have to discover the game's primary activity. In a game of Vampire: The Requiem, the primary activity is sucking blood and making moral choices.  In D&D, through all of its editions, it is fairly easy to pick out the game's primary activity: Combat. Each class in the game is built to ensure that it has something to do in a combat scene.

The Palladium house system, as a fantasy heartbreaker, shares this feature with D&D. While it is significantly expanded from its roots, the focus on combat has not changed. Much more print space is given to weapons, armor, and vehicles than other items of utility or interest. So naturally, those character types that are more able to kick ass in various ways are going to be more strongly favored.

A slightly more "indie" variant of the definition of game balance is: A game is balanced when every character has an equal and fair chance to be awesome. The value of this definition is that is doesn't assume a "primary activity." In fact, in many of the more indie RPGs, players can choose or create the primary activity for their character and have the means to be awesome doing it. White Wolf's Exalted RPG as well as Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century both allow players to choose powers (Charms for Exalted, Stunts for Spirit) that can amplify any skill a player chooses to a point of epic awesomeness. Even skills like Bureaucracy or Art can be elevated in this way.

So part of the mission of BTR is not just to mitigate the power of the physical powerhouses, but to make character types like the Rogue Scholar fun to play.

Fans and Critics

The buzz has surely died down by now, but I wanted to take the time to make a well-thought out comment (part of why you read this blog, I hope).

Right about 2 weeks ago, KS posted an "informal survey" that he had conducted among fans and varying employees about the how the company was doing. Since the general vibe of this was "Keep on keepin' on, KS!" many people in the gaming community (including members of the Palladium forums) cried foul. The two main complaints seem to be that KS only asked people with a vested interest in keeping him happy, and that the survey was so informal and unscientific that its results could not be relied upon.

The official response to this doubt must be read to be truly believed. He opens with befuddlement. I can almost imagine a cat macro with a kitten looking piteously into the camera "Y U no Liek gud nooz?" Then it shifts into betrayal rage at all of the people who he thought were fans (including one uber-fan whom he calls out by name) who clearly aren't because they had the temerity to doubt his survey.

He also details some means that Palladium is supposedly looking into so that they can finally experience some growth. My guess is that these moves are just like the Palladium fan page on Facebook: Something they were trying to avoid as long as possible while pretending to "work on it" but ultimately got shamed by the fans into actually doing.

So as much as the "fan" numbers were telling him to "keep on keepin' on", the actual fans want him to be doing more to promote and advance Palladium as a company.

Watching this play out both on the Palladium Forums and RPG.net makes me want to take a slightly closer look at fans and critics. Because the Palladium "party line" seems to indicate that you have to be one or the other. You can't be both.

Now, I'm a publisher, too. I don't talk about my published work because it's not often germane to the things that I'm talking about over on this blog. It's a neat little indie thing that is designed for an entirely different demographic than BTR is. Check it out!

Speaking as a publisher, I consider my critics to be some of my best friends. Firstly because they are people who are not me who are talking about my game. Free advertising is worth its weight in gold. Really. Secondly, critics tell me what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. For example, my game has gotten a couple of reviews that pointed out that the magic system didn't really work (They loved the game otherwise, so I think I'm doing okay). So I looked, and sure enough, the magic system was missing a key rule. So I updated the PDF versions of the game (both the one that I sell direct to customers and the one that I have printed into book form) and released an errata notice via the blog for that game.

One poster on the RPG.net thread made a very interesting point: In order to criticize, especially with the vehemence that Palladium critics do, you have to care. And the other posters seemed to confirm this. Several of them, in fact, were ex-fans. Some of them were introduced to gaming via Palladium products, but then found other games that did what they wanted more easily. Or some other action on the part of the company made them decide never to give the company money ever again. (Like the infamous Cease & Desist policy on fan publication.)


I think that if Palladium is going to grow and thrive, it needs critics at least as much as it needs fans. It needs criticism and it needs to listen and learn from that criticism rather than using it as an excuse to circle the wagons even tighter. Especially since the circle is so small there's not room for everyone within it.

Old School vs. New School

Let's face it: Rifts is an old-school game. It was a response and improvement upon old school D&D/AD&D. And because it hasn't seen a significant revision (although plenty of minor ones) over its life, it retains a lot of that old-school vibe.

One of the big mantras of the Old-School Renaissance is "Rulings, not Rules." And this approach does have its benefits. When a new school player finds an old game, they find the lack of rules as a flaw. "If there isn't a rule for it, then you clearly can't do it," they think. But in actuality, when an old-school GM is faced with a gap in the rules, he looks at his player and says "There's no rule that says you can do that, but also no rule that says you can't. Give me some reasons I should let you do that."

The end result of this process is immersion. Because your ability to imagine and describe the scenario is what allows you to succeed. In large part, this is what an old-school gamer means when they talk about roleplaying. When they say, "Yeah, I defeated that wizard purely through roleplay" they generally mean that they used their own wits to probe their GM for the information they needed to defeat the wizard. The drama and characterization that a new-school player would consider roleplaying might be there, but there's no real guarantee.

The popular example of this is the "Search check." A new school player has a skill or stat on their character sheet and the ability to say "I rolled a 21. What do I find?" The old-school player asks their GM "What's in this room? Is there anything that looks like it could be used as a lever? I knock on the statue. Does it sound hollow?"

There is a trap to this, and it's one that Palladium has fallen into. Ironically, it's can be directly blamed on their success. Especially in a long running game (or game line), it is very easy for those rulings to become rules. And since they are made at different times to cover different situations, they're not wholly consistent.

The new-school counter to this is a "web" of rules. While old-school gamers may decry the fact that modern games have rules for "every little thing", that's not necessarily the case. Most modern systems, no matter how "light" or "crunchy," spin a web of rules designed to catch as many cases as possible. The advantage to this is that rules can be more consistent; Rather than having to devise a new rule off the cuff to cover this instance, you simply take a more general rule and refine it to cover your special case. Combat becomes an extension of the skill system, for example.

The downside is the tendency to reduce everything to dice rolls. So when an old-school player tries to roleplay his way through a situation, he is a bit stunned when the GM then tells him to "roll for it." Especially since he likely built this character on the presumption that he would be rolling for certain things and roleplaying the rest, just like he used to.

Another big difference between new school and old school gaming is the definition of "fair play." In old school games, the GM was a neutral arbiter of the world. His job was to make unbiased rulings regarding player actions in their world. One of the reasons that so many old-school games include random tables is to heighten this impartiality (at least in appearance). Players have less ammunition to claim that the GM is hosing them if the horrific event was rolled randomly on a table.

In the new school of gaming, "fair play" is about giving players the opportunity to strut their stuff, being awesome and, generally, successful. Drama Points of varying descriptions enable players to seize success from the clutches of failure and make their successes even more awesome. Encounter balancing tools are provided to ensure that your monsters are just tough enough to be interesting, but only going to trounce the party if you really want them to,

The best example of this difference is a first-level party chasing down rumors of a deadly dragon. A new-school GM is likely to have several responses to this.

1) Make sure the dragon is far enough away and make sure that the party has enough adventures that they will be of a proper level to face a dragon when they arrive.

2) Make the dragon a baby, or perhaps some other sort of encounter that the party can handle.

3) The dragon is there, but not hungry. It will laugh off attempts to slay it, and will banter or parley with the party.

The old-school GM, on the other hand, will simply allow the dragon to be there in its full draconic glory. It will talk or eat the party depending on how they approach the situation and potentially a roll on a reaction table of some kind. But if you piss off a dragon, you had better believe that it will eat all of your tasty hit points and you'll be rolling up a new character.

Shifting Gears

I got distracted over on my other blog, so I haven't updated in a while. But here's a teaser of the sort of things I'm thinking about in terms of BTR.

On thing that many people complained about regarding earlier editions of D&D (Anything before 4e, that is) was its tendency towards Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards(Warning! TVTropes Link!). And it's true, if all you're looking at is the class tables in the PHB. A wizard constantly gets new abilities, while a fighter's power is only slowly doled out (and is nowhere near as cool).

But what this comparison fails to account for is gear. Equipment. Weapons, armor and all that jazz. Fighters may not get a lot of power from their class, but they have much better opportunities to improve themselves with gear. +1 flaming ax? Fighter loot. +2 plate mail of spell resistance? Fighter loot. Scroll of fireball? Okay, the wizard can have that one. So while the wizard is building a "golf bag" of spells, the fighter is building a "golf bag" of specially enchanted weapons and armors.

Gear balance is equally important in Rifts. Actually, it is absolutely vital. Many critics will point out how great a divide it is between the SDC and MDC tiers. Put a dragon up against a Rogue Scholar, and it's very clearly a curb stomp battle. The dragon wins because it can deal 100 SDC on a hit even if it rolls a 1 for damage. That poor SDC wimp doesn't stand a chance.

But what they fail to notice is that the MDC gap is one that be readily bridged. That Rogue Scholar is very likely to have access to some sort of MDC body armor. The most protective armor in the core Rifts rulebook (not counting powered armor) is the heavy Dead Boy armor with 80 MDC. Just by slipping that puppy on, our Rogue Scholar just made that confrontation a bit more fair. Add an MDC weapon of some kind, and this fight suddenly becomes interesting.

If there's a balance problem here, it is that a Rifts character is overly reliant on MDC gear to compete. Rather than the game being about the character underneath all of that weaponry, it can readily become a contest to see how much stuff can be piled on a character.

BTR Design Goals

Okay, I've been sharing bits and pieces of what Project BTR is about for a long time now, but haven't really given you a real overview of what sort of changes I want to make to the system and setting of Rifts as I design.

1) Eliminate classes and levels. As much as Palladium may pride themselves on the realism of their system, classes and levels strike me as unrealistic. Especially the narrow sort of classes that Rifts features around 10 of in every book, each with their own experience table.

2) Mitigate Mega-Damage. My view on this one has softened somewhat. I started out as a typical hater and pointed to the concept of MD as "proof" that the Palladium system was broken. I now see it as an attempt to create a feeling that the PCs are Big Damn Heroes and empowered to fight evil that no one else can face. But I think that as the game line progressed, the PCs stopped being treated by the designers as "Gods among Men" but simply "Gods" (metaphorically speaking, anyway).

3) Consistency and elegance. The Palladium system has grown mostly via agglomeration, the accumulation of small rules patches and adjustments over a long span of time. Many of these rules are not only spread out among the multitudes of books that have been published, but also not necessarily consistent from book to book. One of the reasons I'm opting for a ground-up approach is so that all of those special cases can be looked at and designed for at the beginning, rather than having to kludge them later.

4) Tame the tech porn. Big guns are cool. Giant mecha are cool. But between all the new guns, mecha and other toys, there's not much room for setting. I don't need every detail of the setting, but I'd like a reason to care about why I'm trying to protect this world from the eldritch horrors that are trying to eat it. But instead, I get a picture postcard version of a setting followed by page upon page of stuff to fight things with, followed by page upon page of MDC critters to kill.

This Island Earth

In my last post, I mentioned one of the things that really turned me off about the default Rifts setting. Namely, the prevalence of the Coalition. On the one hand, it does mean that your money is good wherever you go in the world, because everyone wants to do business with the Coalition. On the other hand, in this war-torn post-apocalyptic world, how are they able to establish and maintain the economic links that allow this to be practical?

But that's not the only thing that bothers me. Here are a few more.

It doesn't matter that it's Earth: Not only is the setting Earth after an apocalypse, but Earth having experienced a Golden Age of technological advancement and then an apocalypse. Which makes the main reason to insist that it's somehow the Earth we all know and love is so that they don't have to come up with a new map (Much like many fantasy heartbreakers included settings that were redrawn maps of medieval Europe). While earlier material left some room for Gamma World-style "relics of the present", the focus rather quickly switched to stuff from the rifts and advanced military technologies. Finding a reference to "Old Earth" these days becomes more of a Planet of the Apes-type reveal ("Everything's so different, but it was Earth all along!)

It also saves on that pesky little thing called "research." Because Rifts England doesn't care about whether or not Buckingham Palace or Big Ben survived the apocalypse. It just recreates Arthurian myth with an MDC veneer. How is this new King Arthur related to the existing royal family? There's no extrapolation of the modern world, just whole cloth fabrications justified by the rifts and the Rule of Cool.

It Comes From The Factory: We all know that our cheeseburger used to be part of a cow, and that our paper was once a tree. But with many other manufactured goods, we follow its origins back to the factory and stop there. And the way that manufacturing is discussed in the setting material, I wonder if KS actually believes that things work that way. There is much talk of factories and manufacturing techniques, but incredibly little on resource gathering.

With all of the advanced technology in the setting, it is conceivable that raw materials could be created from thin air in a process similar to how a Star Trek replicator causes food to materialize. But it's never mentioned, or even implied.

And resource gathering adds so much story potential. Rather than attacking an enemies' fortified bunkers or munitions plants, why not attack their supplies of raw materials? Can Free Quebec keep manufacturing Glitter Boys without the materials to make their special, laser-resistant alloys?

Here's my current plan to address those issues in my own setting design.

My initial setting will be a world colonized by Earth and one or more of the other galactic powers (the elves and dwarves and such). Since it's not Earth, no one can be particularly upset with me if I don't mention or include certain details or if I just make stuff up. And because the world is a fairly recent colony, it's easy to justify a fairly high level of economic unification. Even the hermit who hasn't spoke to anyone in 10 years and eats bark was on one of a fairly small number of colony ships and wandered away from one of the few settlement sites on the planet.

It allows for the world to be largely uncivilized, but with fairly advanced humans (and other races), just like Rifts Earth.

And once I'm done exploring that world, there are other worlds in the universe to explore. Maybe explore something more civilized, or with a different mix of races (an elven world where dwarves are forbidden and humans are begrudged a small embassy).

Fantastic Racism

One of the issues that has plagued the Palladium system has been balance between the races. Well, balance in general, but we're taking baby steps here.

For the most part, races seem to be either overwhelming or underwhelming compared to humans, with very few of them hitting that sweet spot of simply being whelming. Overwhelming is practically a Rifts trademark. Underwhelming is generally the province of Palladium Fantasy, but it does have some exceptions.

As I'm designing BTR, the question comes up: How do I balance races against each other?

Balance everything against humans: Since most of our real life experience has to do with humans, this is the "default" race in most games. So fantasy and alien races are often compared against that standard. Under this scheme, most of the races will only have an advantage over humans if they have some balancing detriment.

Balance humans against everything else: This is the route that most modern versions of D&D use. Every race gets something cool, even humans. The downside is that this requires that humans get something. But while the bonuses that elves get are intended to make them feel more "elvish", it's damned difficult to come up with bonuses to make humans cool. Because there's that need to treat them as "generic" so whatever they get has to be completely flavorless.

Give the races a cost: Many point-based systems do this. Being human costs 0 points, while other races must pay for their abilities. So non-humans will have abilities or bonuses specific to their kinds, humans have the advantage of spending all of their points on personal abilities.

Palladium has currently given little thought to balancing humans against other races. It's not as bad in Palladium Fantasy, where the bonuses that the other races get are not so overwhelming, but it can still be an issue. In old school D&D, humans could take any class and ascend to the maximum level within that class, while non-humans were limited in classes and levels. When Palladium Fantasy did away with these restrictions (which many people considered an improvement), they failed to offer another way to make humans a compelling choice for PCs, leaving them somewhat behind the curve.

Rifts does try to make humans a compelling choice, but does so in a rather ham-handed way. The Coalition's paranoia regarding non-humans and supernatural powers means that anytime your party has to do business with the Coalition, they have to send in the human. So in order to make humans a compelling choice for players throughout Rifts Earth, the Coalition has to be everywhere. (It also makes sure that your money is good wherever you go) Which is one of the most unrealistic elements of the setting: The idea that this upstart government in this post-apocalyptic world has such a vast influence.

My current plan is actually "A little from Column A and a little from Column B". Each race will have a modest set of bonuses at character creation, and will also have advancement options to give more flavor to their race. Race specific milestones, spell lists, and such.

It's The Little Things That Matter

The good news is: it seems that I am able to resume my monthly schedule.

The bad news is: That means that I'm going to have to start coming up with some actual content here.

While some of the bigger ideas are flowing, one thing I'm realizing is that some little things still need settling before things can begin taking shape.

15 second melee round: While it allowed for finer detail than OD&D's 1-minute combat round, other games have since eclipsed it. D&D 3.x used a 6 second combat round, the D6 System uses a 5 second round, and World of Darkness uses a 3 second round. GURPS takes the cake with a 1-second round.

I'm sure there's a contingent out there that doesn't care. As long as the round is long enough for them to do their thing, they're okay. But the ability to convert an abstract unit, like a round, into a real unit, like minutes and seconds, does have its uses.

The Metric System: Palladium started publishing back in the '80's, when there was a push to convert the country to the metric system. We tried it for a while, but never fully made the move to metric. So apparently Palladium's style guide is frozen to the time when "dual-statting" measurements was the (experimental) standard. (Yes, I know the food industry loves the metric system. That way, they can get people panicked over grams of fat who don't have a solid idea of what a gram is.)

Do any Palladium players care about the metric system? I do seem to recall a push toward the metric system in science-fiction games in this same period. It was likely an attempt to create a more "scientific" feel to the game. Most of them were games I'd never play anyway, so it's hard to say.

The Hit Point

As I've mentioned at other points on this blog, the Palladium system is an advancement and refinement of old school D&D. One of those advancements was in the field of hit points. You see, before the 3rd edition of D&D all hit dice were rolled, even the first one. Which meant that if you were unlucky, it was possible to enter the dungeon with only one hit point.

Palladium starts you off with hit points equal to your P.E. score +1d6. Then gives you physical skills that can improve P.E., offer S.D.C. upgrades, and so on. Then armor provides its own pool of SDC (or MDC) to protect you. This means that your character has a better chance of surviving first level, which is good. But it also means that characters can very quickly wind up with unrealistic amounts of durability.

Stories circulate around the Palladium community of players exploiting this superhuman durability in interesting ways. Shooting themselves with assault weapons to intimidate a foe. Leaping on a grenade and expecting to walk away with only a small portion of their SDC gone. If you've got a fun story to share, feel free to drop it in the comments.

The important thing to remember is that, in D&D, hit points are an abstraction. They don't represent actual injury. D&D characters really only have one hit point (their last) and all their other hit points represent the character's ability to defend the one that matters. A friend of mine gave this concept a very clever name: "Ablative Awesomeness." When you make a successful attack, you're not hacking away at the other guy's spleen. You're hacking away at his ability to defend his spleen from later attacks. This is why experience (generally gained from fighting) grants more hit points.

The Palladium system doesn't seem to believe in Ablative Awesomeness even as it looks for ways to add more. The description of SDC in the main Rifts book describes a character taking an injury, but shrugging it off. The justification for increasing hit points as the character levels is that the character actually got tougher. Taking a hit in combat is apparently all about being a manly badass.

But with characters having all of these hit points and damage absorbing resources, the things that are supposed to kill them suddenly aren't scary enough. So you make up new stuff that is scary. In Palladium Fantasy, this is magic weapons, going all the way up to rune weapons. In Rifts, this is MDC.

But MDC adds a new wrinkle to this arms race. In Rifts, your MDC armor is your hit points. Without it, you are a 1 hit point mook. So as the weapons get scarier, you look to buy more powerful armor. Once you get more powerful armor, the GM has to look for tougher monsters and tougher weapons to fight you with. Leading to a little thing we like to call "power creep."

My current plan for BTR does include the potential for increasing hit points but nowhere near to the generous levels that Palladium provides. They will be available as a milestone attached to a character's combat skills. This should provide a balance, as there will be many other combat milestones to acquire as well. Playtesting will tell.

Magic & Technology

I touched a little on the way I want magic to work in the setting of BTR while talking about elves. But after reading a couple other blogs, I want to go into a little more depth on this subject.

There seem to be two major schools of thought regarding how magic and technology (specifically science) would interact.

1) Magic would supplant science & technology. Since spells can do wonderful things that medieval technology can't, everyone who wanted to do something cool would learn magic rather than science.

2) Magic would accelerate science & technology. Magic is an extra set of tools for discovery and experimentation.

So which option am I choosing? Both, really.

My current concept for elves fits rather closely to #1. They are highly proficient with magic, to the point where magic is their technology. But this doesn't mean medieval stasis. They have developed a starfaring culture and have colonies and outposts on several worlds. But they did it all using magic that could do what science can't or won't do easily. (For one thing, I'm thinking that they use stargates that are actually giant teleportation circles for FTL travel)

Humans fit in #2. Recall a few posts back that I used the word technomancer. While the Rifts setting does include Techno-Wizards, I'm actually thinking of something a bit different. Techno-Wizards seem oddly limited. Their main gimmick seems to be the creation of Techno-Wizard items, or converting technological devices to run on magical power.

That's cool and all, but they don't strike me as very techno or very wizard. While they can learn spells, these spells are reduced in effectiveness unless they are using them to power a device. Their techno side is limited as well, since they have a hard time picking up the skills that actually let them play with technology.

To me, a technomancer is a character that either uses their magic to do science or uses their science to do magic. Like casting a spell to detect radiation, or enchanting a Geiger counter to detect magical emanations. Maybe in later supplements, Techno-Wizards get something that is like this, but the main thing they seem to get in the core book is flying skateboards.