The Black Swan

 

There was a 5e game my buddy Andy was in that he told me about with great amusement. One of the other players was interested in telling a deep and complex story; everyone else was playing 5e. They got into a situation where actual morality and thinking was required. Andy watched as this new player tried to apply just those two things... in a 5e game. 

Of course it didn't work! Rules are setting; you are defined in large part by the system you operate in. And 5e does not reward thinking; it rewards killing things and turning your brain off. There is utility in this type of game, although I find it less useful the older I get.

Rules. Are. Setting.

What is Setting?

Setting, as I define it for this article, are the unconscious rules you take in. These are the things you just take for granted, like gravity, death, taxes, the slot machine that is social media, etc. You just accept these things and work within those assumptions. And make no mistake, you are molded by these unconscious rules. The folks in that 5e example had internalized these unconscious rules, much to the chagrin of the player who wanted to do something different, which the the world itself would never reward. 5e's rules create a world where killing was normative.

So what is a Black Swan? And why did I just spend all that time trash-talking 5e? And telling you that a lot of social media is intentionally designed like a slot machine?

I'll answer the last two questions first. I'm cantankerous, think 5e is hot garbage and still bitter about the fact that the most famous RPG in the world is now a shell of its former self. And frankly the thought that social media, particularly Facebook, is designed with slot machine mechanics in mind is terrifying to me, as I have almost no impulse control to speak of. My environment is something I find I must constantly tinker with in order to remain someone I recognize.

That aside aside, what the hell is a Black Swan?

The Black Swan is what's outside your expectations, which were molded by your setting.

A Black Swan, as defined by Nassim Taleb, is a highly improbably event that, while not random, was not expected and thus appears random. Black Swans are entirely a matter of perspective: you cannot entirely know what you do not know. There is a gap between what you know you don't know and what you don't know you don't know. And that gap is where Black Swans come from. 

It is of note that, in the entirety of Taleb's book, he never once, not once, shortens Black Swan. Given Taleb's temperament it is not accidental.

For those of you who caught it don't tell. Just chuckle.

It is important to note it again: Black Swans are not random, they are inevitable, you can't see the actual event coming. Taleb, when he talks about how to deal with Black Swans, suggests that the solution is not to predict the Black Swan, which is impossible, but to shore up fragilities in your systems so that they cannot be exploited. You wouldn't predict if someone is coming to break in, you look at your house and realize it doesn't have a security system. If you're in a nice neighborhood and decide to not put the security system in your house it's a lower risk, but do not think it's not a risk. If you're in a high risk neighborhood you know what the risk is, you just can't necessarily see when and how it will happen.

And maybe the underlying problem of gang violence will result in a gang war that no one saw coming, because everyone thought that had been taken care of! How were they supposed to know that the two eldest children of the rival gangs had been in a secret relationship.... until one of them killed themselves over the other? And now all bets are off! To the vast majority of the world that is impossible to see coming, and is thus a Black Swan. Their Setting seemed stable. So they didn't look.

One only has to look at the bodies in the street to see how that turned out.

So, as I was reading this a few things jumped out at me:

1) This was a part of my worldview I'd never been able to articulate. Setting is not stable. You just want it to be.

2) I'm not aware of a story game modeling this on purpose, and yet Black Swans are incredibly important to history and people. My favorite literature could not exist without it. The OSR is filled with random tables and with a joyful acceptance of Black Swans, but from what I've seen in the story games department there is a dearth.

So I decided to put it into Crescendo.

My first model came from my worst instincts. I built a Black Swan Counter. The player could push off failures and make checks easier by hitting the counter, increasing it by 1 each time. And then the GM would roll a dice to see if a Black Swan went off.

Now, the thing was that I didn't want Black Swans to be "consult a table". The whole point of a Black Swan is that it's outside your context, which means that the twists need feel like they come from outside the game. 

Which is when I remembered the consultation of the Aeneid.

Most people think of the Bible when you bring this up: open up to a random page, put your finger down, and that's the answer to... whatever it is you have questions about. But the Aeneid did it first, because Virgil was regarded as the poet, and therefore the lens to see reality through. So I thought, "why not?"

So I decided upon a mechanic called Hitting the Books. The GM brings the Aeneid, while the players bring their favorite narrative work. Whenever Hit the Books is declared everyone opens up to a random passage and reads it aloud. The GM then takes the pieces provided and comes up with a new new plot idea, one that goes right at the PCs. The GM would determine randomly which plot element was affected by the Black Swan.

So I threw these things at James, my hapless player/test subject. And you know what? Surprise surprise, he hit the counter almost every time, because the dice rolling system I'd come up with was punishing. So I lessened up the pressure... and James hit the counter 75% of the time. Still way too much. Crescendo is not directly about Black Swans, it's about deciding what you believe in a world that changes you just as much as it changes itself. Characters get sick, they get tired, they have to rest, they can have mental breakdowns that take months and years to get over....

The Black Swan only aids that process so far.

So I decided to dial it way back. You roll to see if a Black Swan happens at the end of every session, and whenever a player advances (or tries to advance early) a Skill, Save, or Potency a Black Swan is definitely going to happen. Both of these are outside the session, giving all players the time to process. I will probably need to make a way for players to remove certain setting elements from the list, possibly even allowing them to dictate how certain setting elements improve in the face of a Black, because they saw it coming. 

Obviously I'm still tinkering. I like what this mechanic does so far: it removes the GM from mucking about from the game too much, allowing him to just focus on what's right in front of him, with the Setting itself being impossible to entirely pin down. I usually prefer it when a fantasy world is impossible to entirely pin down. 

The world is larger than all the players, especially the GM. I think it should feel like it. 

More as I have it.