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May 10, 2013

God Machine Chronicle System Review

Review: God Machine Chronicle (system)
Rarely do we see a top-tier RPG system go through a change so candidly as we have just seen,
as the new World of Darkness Storytelling system has updated to the God Machine Chronicle
(GMC). The free rules update includes honest and reflective comments explaining some of the
reasons the systems have changed. The free PDF can be found here. The full God Machine
Chronicle book is available here.
Generally, the changes show a very self-aware tabletop RPG system. It
is honest with players and wants players to be honest with themselves
and the GM about what they want. I highly recommend it.
Ill describe a few of the major changes. Most have been improvements
on already-strong systems, but Ill identify a few areas where the rules
are weak or poorly designed. I think the benefits outweigh the
drawbacks, and GMC would be an ideal system for a horror game.
The good

Flaws are the new Experience Points

First, this is the World of Darkness, which I have lauded as a pioneer of the idea of flaws. In sum,
a flaw (to use the old word its now called a persistent condition) is a mechanical trade off for a
player making an inexpedient decision.

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The mechanical trade-off gives a player social permission to cause his character to screw up,
suffer, or even harm his teammates by rewarding him with a game-mechanical benefit. Remember,
the game table is a social contract, and players taking inexpedient actions that affect the group for
no trade off would feel like a violation of that contract. The evolution of Flaws shows a twenty-year
growth from a character flaw trade-off (play a flawed character, please well make it worth your
while!) to a behavioral trade-off (let your character flaw inconvenience you, please youll get a
bonus in exchange!) to the entire experience point system in GMC. Yes, now all character
advancement is tied to the mechanical trade-off of screwing over your character in exchange for
beats.
The system terms have changed, so bear with me: A beat is 1/5 of an Experience. One
Experience buys a Specialty or Merit dot or Willpower dot. Two buys a Skill dot. Three buys an
Integrity dot. Four buys an Attribute dot. This is a static progression (new for WoD) so its just
the cost listed no more. This fixes the exponential cost system they had before, but while it
fixes a problem, alone it isnt innovative.
How you gain Experience is the innovation. A wallflower player will never get much Experience.
You get 1 Experience for every 5 Beats. You get a Beat for the following things:

You get 1 Beat when the game session ends. Thats 1 automatic per game session.

You get 1 Beat for good roleplaying, character development, smart strategy, etc.

You get 1 Beat when you achieve an Aspiration. An Aspiration is an out of character
goal the player has for his character, though player and character goals probably align a
lot, such as find out who killed the professor. An aspiration can also be a negative goal,
based on your expectations of the game to come, such as get wounded in combat or
get caught breaking into the mansion. Regardless, aspirations should be things you, as
a player, would like to see happen. The GM is supposed to read them all and try to make
them happen for you, at a gradual rate of about one per game session (on average). You
keep three at a time, replacing them as theyre fulfilled (or rendered irrelevant), and Ideally
you should be able to accomplish at least one of these Aspirations per game session
(p151)

You get 1 Beat when you intentionally take a Dramatic Failure. If you fail a roll (or are

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made to fail a roll due to a Condition), you can choose to make it a Dramatic Failure and
take a Beat. You can get this Beat only once per scene. One example in the book
involves fixing a car, so it doesnt have to be an epic scene. This also keeps the GM from
handing out too many pointless rolls, because if Im a player and a roll seems pointless, it
might as well earn me some XP!
You can get a beat from certain Conditions (temporary status effects that sometimes
reward you for playing well). Not all Conditions provide Beats, but they can cause you to
fail rolls, which you can then turn to Dramatic Failures, and therefore you can get a Beat.
You can get a Condition beat only once per scene. Flaws are now persistent
conditions and can provide a lot of Beats.
You get 1 Beat when you take enough damage to have a wound penalty (leaving you only
0-2 health boxes before you go down).
You get 1 Beat when you get a Dramatic Success or Dramatic Failure at a Breaking
Point. More on this later.
You get 1 Beat if you surrender in combat. More on this later.

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So you see, Flaws have evolved into a whole system to encourage players to torment their
characters in exchange for system rewards. GMC is a horror investigation game, similar to Call of
Cthulhu. Giving the players the opportunity, encouragement, and rewards to have their characters
make mistakes and screw up greatly enriches the game.
Word of Warning!
Now, I have a few responsible players in my social circle who are creative, smart people who
contribute to the story well but they tend to fade into the background during the game and speak
up rarely. A whole scene can go by without them saying a word, and theyre happy to do that.
These types of players will suffer in the new Beat system.
Under GMCs rules, these players are going to have a little more motivation to step forward. In
order to keep things equitable, the GM will have to take more of a facilitator role, helping garrulous
players to know when to step back and soliciting contributions to help the wallflower players step
forward.

Combat is Now Self-Aware

The new combat section opens with this sentence:
These rules supersede some of the combat rules presented in the World of Darkness Rulebook,
providing a lethal focus to fighting along with a unified system of conditions and reasons for
characters to stop fighting before the other guys only fit for the morgue. (p195)
The new combat system has multiple options! Ive strongly advocated for alternate combat
resolution multiple times here, and I think they delivered!
First, everyone in the combat states their intent a sentence starting with I want If one side
gives in to the other side, they get Willpower and the other side gets their Intent. No combat
required! There are rules for what happens if some surrender and some dont. Characters who
surrender take a Beat and get a Willpower. Once again, theres a reward for losing.
The next step is that the combat can be run as a single opposed die roll, if its not a dramatic
scene where tactics really matter. The book strongly suggests using it either for cutout mooks or
for exceptionally badass combat PCs. I can imagine using this rule for scenes where being
attacked is a clue, but the actual combat isnt really interesting; or for when PCs plan to jump
NPCs who they can easily defeat (arresting a corrupt lawyer whos trying to run away, for
instance).
Theres an optional Beaten Down condition, where anyone who takes [Stamina] in Bashing
damage or any lethal damage at all has to spend a Willpower to attack (but not to dodge or run
away). It is not clear when GMs should turn this rule on and off. I cant imagine using it in most
combat scenes where the blow-by-blow tactics are interesting enough to run it turn-by-turn.
The Beaten Down optional rule lets the GM turn on (and off) the sort of combat where one side
drives the other off or tries to achieve a goal other than kill everyone on the other side. This
optional rule can be turned on and off within a session to reflect different types of scenes, so the
best advice I have for you is to turn the Beaten Down rule on (explicitly of course) when none of the
combatants declares an Intent that could possibly involve killing their opponent.
If you do get down to rounds and initiative, youll like the changes in GMC. First, merits with
multiple attacks are gone. In my direct experience, these could be broken. Second, weapons no
longer add dice to attack pools. In the original nWoD rules, a rifle added 4 dice, so you would never
miss, but only do about 1 more damage than a fist. Now a rifle deals [successes]+4 Lethal
much better! This makes guns relatively much more powerful than melee combat (since you still
dont get your Defense against ranged attacks), except the merits theyve added make disabling
opponents in melee a realistic option. Building a grappler, or a cop with handcuffs, or a called-shot
attacker is pretty effective, and disabling or knocking out enemies doesnt cause Breaking Points
like killing does. Its still easy to build a combat bad-ass. Its going to cost you a lot of Merit
points, but youre going to be really dangerous.
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If you want a good tactical combat game, play 4e D&D. GMC is not meant to be a perfectly
balanced game for battles. In the new Integrity system, you make a Breaking Point check every
time you kill a person, regardless of why. If the GM ran a game with a lot of fights, you would run
out of Integrity very fast. This is not a game where a gunfight happens every session. Its very
interesting that firearms combat is incredibly effective, but killing people is not actually going to be
your goal most of the time you get in a fight.
The list of Environmental Tilts is odd. There are Tilts for fighting during an earthquake but not for
fighting in concealment (mist, fog, darkness) or tight quarters? Mist and fog are covered under the
Concealment penalty, but still... I would assume dark, smoky, tight quarters are a lot more
common in horror games than earthquakes and floods.

Integrity is a Great Sanity System

The update ditched the Morality system and replaced it with an Integrity system. The old
hierarchy of sins model for Morality was based on the old Vampire: the Masquerade Humanity
system, where you had a crisis point for committing an act, and if you failed, you grew more
monstrous and callous. The lower on the scale you went, the more inhuman acts you had to
commit to reach a crisis point. A vampire who didnt care if she accidentally killed the victims she
fed on, but tried not to do it intentionally at least would hover around 4 Humanity, rarely ever risking
dropping below that. The Morality system worked a lot like that. A brutal thug who wanted to
avoid a murder rap, but didnt care if he beat someone to within an inch of his life would hover
around 4-5 Morality, no matter how many people he worked over.
The new Integrity system has no such hierarchy, and its tailored to the character. Some acts
always trigger a Breaking Point (like killing). The Morality system triggered a loss based on the
characters behavior. The Integrity system can trigger a Breaking Point based on experiences that
a character has even witnessing atrocious acts committed against other people. And it varies by
the character: If a teenage skater finds a rotting corpse, hes likely to have a Breaking Point, but a
Medical Examiner might not. If a gateway to hell opened, both would suffer a Breaking Point. In
that way, the system works like Sanity in Call of Cthulhu.
Also unlike Morality, Integrity loss speeds up the lower you go. Its also like Call of Cthulhu that
way. You start with a bonus to Breaking Point checks, and as your Integrity drops, you lose the
bonus and get a penalty. In reality, people dont get hardened by a traumatic experience, without
a lot of time and coping work (the difficult but rewarding process of coping and growing as a person
that many trauma survivors have is represented by spending Experiences for Resolve, Composure,
Willpower or Integrity dots). Also like Call of Cthulhu, Breaking Point checks put Conditions on
characters that cause them to act frightened, desperate, or shaken immediately after their
experience.
Like the rest of the system, die pools can vary greatly PCs roll Resolve + Composure at a
breaking point, which varies from 2-10 dice, and it is modified by a bonus from the characters
Integrity and a modifier given by the GM based on the trauma of the situation. Watching someone
get kidnapped from a Starbucks window might cause a check with a bonus (after all, at least its
not me; theres no blood; no supernatural, etc.) while being attacked and maimed by a wolf-man
might be a check with a large penalty. I think this system was designed to make outcomes
heavily determined by the GM, to make players feel relatively powerless when a Breaking Point
occurs.

The bad

Extended Actions are still Crummy

Extended actions get a little improvement. The intent is clearly to create a situation where a task
takes a lot of time, and characters feel the pressure between rolls, and can see that things may
not be going well. The problem is that with the wildly varying die pools in the game, its almost
impossible for GMs to pin the right modifiers and target numbers of successes onto the scene to
make it likely to go how he envisions.
Worse, they still didnt give us good rules for multiple characters working on an extended action
together, which is almost always how its going to work in practice at the table. The original nWoD
Teamwork rule remains: The assistants all roll first, then, [a]ny successes collected from
assistants are added to the primary actors dice pool as bonus dice. Theres not much motivation
for the assistants to use Willpower, because it doesnt have enough impact on the ultimate
success or failure of the joint project in this case. I guess Im hoping for a system closer to a 4e
Skill Challenge, where everyones participation is potentially equally helpful or hazardous.

The New Social System Sucks

My biggest complaint about every World of Darkness system to date is that they seem to conflate
having lots of rules for social stuff with being a game that stresses the importance of social
interactions. They seem to think more social rules -> more social game. What game mechanic
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systems do is simulate a real world situation with approximated probabilities, using dice to
generate an abstraction of success or failure. Social systems do just the same thing: They
abstract all of the cool manipulation and intrigue of the story into a die roll. Thats not always a
bad thing. There are three reasons to do it, in my opinion.
1.

Players want to play characters whose social skills are different from their own. Either
their character is awkward while the player is confidant; or the character is suave while the
player is hesitant.
a. This motivation is common among simulationist players
b. This goal is satisfied by having any social system at all even an old school
D&D Reaction Check Modifier satisfies this. Dividing social skills into a few
different, commonly used types is a slightly more complex, but still effective idea.
c. A more detailed system does not improve the realism the system adds to, it
reduces it by interrupting the role-play.
2. GMs want to turn a social scene into a mini-game, with risk/reward trade-offs.
a. This motivation is common among gamist players
b. In order for this goal to be achieved, the system needs to present opportunities
for risk (making consequential decisions with limited information) and clear
rewards for it. The 3rd edition D&D Intimidate system does this well, for example:
Intimidate gets an NPC to act Helpful for now, but future reactions will start at
Unfriendly (if not Hostile).
c. By their nature, social scenes often involve risk and rewards under constrained
conditions and limited information without involving system: A mysterious figure
offers you a deal. Do you take it? A powerful man is offended by your
accusation. Do you backpedal or double down? The priest is telling you
something shocking but is he manipulating you?
3. In order to tempt players to have their characters make bad choices or screw things up,
a system needs to stop the action and let those other systems come into play.
a. If system doesn't stop the action and intervene, the players and GM will just talk
it out, and the system of Beats and Persistent Conditions, Vices and Virtues, etc.
will not get involved. Naturally some system should get involved occasionally to
pause the action.
b. Pausing for system gives a player a chance to trigger these rules. But it only
needs to pause the system about 4-5 times to give every player a chance to
involve his Flaws.
The Social Maneuvers (SM) system creates a kind of extended action, where you have to break
down Doors, and each Door takes a certain amount of successes on social rolls to break down,
and the time between rolls is based on the Impression the NPC has of the PCs. The problem is
that the GM cant really control things like bad die rolls, so a social scene that is supposed to
resolve in a few hours during a party could get shifted to a week-per-roll scenario with a bad
Impression. Or a character with great stats could jump-start a one-roll-a-week slow con situation
where the GM planned to have scenes interspersed with the social persuasion, so that the whole
thing is achieved in a few hours. All of these factors are manipulated by a highly simulationist
system that reflects character relationships and skill levels and successes rolled.
So where the simulationist objective is satisfied (even over-satisfied) by the old nWoD Storytelling
System, the GMC version doubles down on system complexity. The other two creative
agendas are not much advanced.
From a gamist perspective, the SM system gives you the same two strategic choices you had
before: You have the choice to blow Willpower to do better (which you had before) and you have
the choice to go soft or go hard (which you also had before).
From a narrativist perspective, the SM system stops the action for system intervention at regular
intervals. This is a tiny improvement over what we had before, where the GM stopped the action
and called for a die roll whenever he saw fit. Some GMs would stop the action frequently; others
never at all. So the new SM system organizes things so that the GM creates regular opportunities
to influence an NPC. But it also knocks puts more weight on dice than on the best way to tell a
dramatic story. The dice determine when a persuasion succeeds.
I would recommend totally throwing out the Social Maneuvers system and house-ruling any Merits
that refer to Doors and Impressions to give large bonuses to social skill rolls. For instance, the
Sympathetic merit could change from eliminate two of the subjects Doors to reflexively make a
Persuasion or Empathy roll into a rote action once per Chapter/Session. Its an easy
modification. Just make sure to stop the action every ten or fifteen minutes to call for a roll, so as
to make the system and character stats relevant; and to give opportunities for players to involve
complications from Conditions and Vices, etc.
Overall Assessment
Ive got a lot of experience with the nWoD tabletop system. The new God Machine Chronicle
improves it a good deal. Its still not a fine-tuned and well-balanced tactical system. Players can
break the game pretty easily. But no matter how optimized a fighter you are, a vampire has a
major advantage you cant compete with easily.

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Horror RPG systems have a hard balance to strike. They have to give players narrative control
enough that they step back from their characters and feel comfortable letting their characters make
mistakes or suffer defeat. If the players get too close to their characters, they will have a hard time
doing this. But if the players get too much narrative control, the effect of horror isnt well
transmitted. Horror relies on powerlessness, and for the players to feel powerless, you need to
write a system that can occasionally make the players feel powerless over the course of events in
the story. I think GMC does this well.

Posted by Mediaprophet at 11:58 AM

+1 Recommend this on Google

Labels: Flaws, Game design, Review, Rules, Social System, World of Darkness
6 comments:
Benjamin Reinhart 5/10/2013 12:53:00 PM
I like that you brought up the participation issues with the new Beat system. I find
myself a bit uncomfortable with the idea that I'm compelled to inject my character
just to keep parity with the rest of the cast. This probably isn't an issue in a straight
World of Darkness chronicle, but I can see it causing problems in games like
Vampire and Mage, where experience translates to access to powers and therefore
greater player agency.
Reply

Mediaprophet

5/10/2013 03:35:00 PM

Indeed. There's really no way to house rule Beats to be more equitable without
drastically accelerating XP progression or killing all the sub-systems that reward you
with Beats.
Give 1 XP per session, instead of 1 Beat, and then keep the other Beats, so that the
difference between wallflowers and active players is much lower. (Almost doubles the
XP gain rate)
Give 1 XP per session, and ignore the Beat rules. (Kills all the sub-systems that
reward actions with Beats)
Actually, I can think of ONE way:
Audit character sheets at the end of each story (6-20 hours of play) and give
everyone the same amount of Experience as one less than the character with the
most Experience. Example: Andy, Ben, Claire, and Dave have just finished a scary
murder mystery story, the third Story in the Chronicle. Andy has gained a total of 20
XP over the Chronicle so far, Ben has gained 22, Claire has gained 21, and Dave has
gained 25 (he's the active one). Everyone advances to 24, so Andy gets 4 free, Ben
gets 2 free, and Claire gets 3 free to catch up. Nobody's current total of Beats
changes. That way the less active players only fall a little behind, then mostly catch
up.
Or you can play the Blue Shell. Start making the more active players' Dramatic
Failures and Persistent Condition problems really bad, but go easy on the
wallflowers.
Or, as I suggested, just be a good facilitator. Give the wallflowers more spotlight time
with personal plots, etc. to draw them out. Have the guts to signal active players to
step back and try hard to draw the less active players out. Naturally, not every GM
can do this all that well, so you might need some house rules.
Reply

Kirt Dankmyer 5/10/2013 04:01:00 PM

"I think this system was designed to make outcomes heavily determined by the GM,
to make players feel relatively powerless when a Breaking Point occurs."
I'm kinda unclear why this is a good thing, Jon. :)
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Mediaprophet

5/10/2013 05:16:00 PM

A limited feeling of powerlessness is what makes horror work.

Reply

Val Condrious 11/28/2013 08:05:00 PM

I find that games that try to have meta rules for insanity and horror always end up
taking away from it in the end.
I've played a lot of CoC and that the insanity rules were just frustrating, every horror
scene simply came down time dice roles, and failures usually just took control of
your character out of your hands. The weakness of the human spirit overplayed until
it's nothing but a joke.
The best horror scenes I've ever had were in games with either no system at all, or
system that only covered the physical side. Allowing you to determine how your
character reacted. If people were unable to roleplay their character well, then they
usually didn't have fun in that sort of game, and they played something else, leaving
you with people that really enjoyed the horror genre and played it well.
I liked the WoD system because most of it was about just about if your character
could actually get something done. The morality systems gave a guidline for how
your character would react, but rarely got in the way of a good scene.
The new Integrity system feels like its trying to control every interaction of how your
character reacts, and having so many dice rolls interrupt the flow of the game I think
will only make for a worse game. I might as well hand control over to the GM in those
scenes, or just follow a boolean script.
After purchasing and reading through the rules, I have been recommeding against
them to my friends and fellow players. If the new games they bring out offer no way
around these systems, then I will be moving onto a different game line I'm afaid,
White Wolf will have lost my interest.
Reply

Shannon 1/04/2014 11:07:00 PM

This is a really good review of the system and it's helped me a lot to wrap my head
around the game and the decisions made inside it.
Reply

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