Technology In Your Game - Running RPGs
Inside the basement you find the stolen Egyptian scroll, as well as an iron tablet that looks like it's got a star chart etched onto its face. I'm going to look at the scroll. Unless you can read hieroglyphics, you'll need to take it to an expert or a library to get it translated. Cool, then what I'm going to do is take a picture of it and text that picture off to Dr Whitmore, and then I'm going to run it through the translator app to see what it says. Um... okay. Well it says where the Temple of Marthot is located, and that the sacrifice must be performed when the stars reach alignment. Speaking of stars, I want to look at this chart. The tablet looks like the heavens as they might have appeared thousands of years ago. You'll need to take it to an
astronomer in order to figure out how to - I'm gonna use the astronomy app on my phone. Uh... The stars reach alignment tomorrow night. Honestly, I thought this was going to take you guys longer. Cool. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to send a text off to Colonel Amat,
telling him exactly where the temple is, and that the cult is going to be there tomorrow night with the kidnapped nurse. Okay... Damn! 45 minutes! That is a record for solving a case. Cell phones make this game so easy. Hello internet. Seth Skorkowsky, and today I want to talk about modern technology in tabletop games. Not technology for the players, like virtual tabletops and dice-roller apps, but technology that their characters use. One of the comments that I regularly get is
from Game Masters who find it difficult to run games where the Player Characters have access to things like cell phones and the Internet, feeling that these modern miracles spoil adventures, making them too easy to overcome. Now this is usually a comment from Game Masters who have moved over from a fantasy setting where there was zero technology, outside of magic that could do those things, and they're having trouble with settings like Traveler and Cyberpunk where technology is just everywhere. Or Call of Cthulhu Game Masters, who might be used to running the game being set in the 1920's, but find setting Call of Cthulhu in the Modern Age just too daunting because cell phones and the like 'destroy all the good plots.' I disagree with that. But I also understand where they're coming from. My first encounter with this was back ages ago, back in college. I was running a buddy through some Cyberpunk 2020, and most of us were pretty unfamiliar with cell phones at the time. But one of my players was familiar with cell phones, and he undid a huge chunk of my adventure in mere minutes because he showed me on his Nokia how he could just check what the call history was. And since it's things like personal locks, they were unheard of at the time - they
didn't have locks on cell phones at the time - the Player Characters pretty much just bypassed a big chunk of my adventure in mere seconds. Now most of my general videos like this are very broad topics, like How to Run Heist, or Making NPCs - things that are applicable to a wide array of games. This one, however, is a bit more niche. It's most commonly seen in Horror and Mystery adventures. Meaning that while several games do fit into this - and I'm gonna try to keep this one general for more than just a single game - most often this is an issue that I find with Call of Cthulhu games. And that's why I almost made this a Call of Cthulhu-specific
video. But since it is also applicable for Modern and Sci-Fi games of other systems, I'm going to go ahead and keep this one General. Modern technology is frequently seen as an anathe storytelling, thwarting all the good plots. Whether that be the invention of the radio,
the telephone, the airplane in days gone by. And now the Internet and mobile phones in the current day. Even TV Tropes has a fun page of classic movies and shows that could have been solved easily with a cell phone. And that's why in the 90s and early 2000s, when cell phones were becoming widely available, screenwriters often fell into the old "I left it at home," or they conveniently lost signal at the right time in order for their stories not to fall apart. And Game Masters, especially coming from settings that didn't have this easily accessible technology, they often face the same issues because they're used to writing adventures for that previous time period. So now they feel that all their cool stories are ruined. However, while some stories are not going to be possible in the Modern Age with modern technology - or might not be as easily possible as they were before the Age the iPhone - many news stories are possible now. Technology creates just as many obstacles as it removes for the players.
So the trick isn't to look at it as what it is that you can't do, but more about what you can do now that the players have this technology. First, let's look at the Internet, where you are now. In addition to porn, cat videos, one-click shopping, the Internet is a vast collection of information. A quick Google search can bring you a ton of information in mere seconds,
bypassing the need to physically go to the library in order to learn about dinosaurs. For whatever reason, a lot of Game Masters consider doing an Internet search being a specific and independent skill. In Modern Day Call of Cthulhu, for example, many Keepers ask for a Computer Use check if somebody's going to be searching for something online, which is silly. This should be a Library Use. After all, libraries now use computers and not card catalogs. The Computer Use skill is for things like programming, writing code, hacking, searching a database for hidden files or programs, or restoring a wipe data core - which is completely different than trying to Google something. That's why Cyberpunk Red gives you a
+2 to your Library Search skill if you're using your agent cell phone, because a library is a database, whether that be a physical database or an electronic one. And like how I treat Library Use being used in an 1920s game, where the characters would have to physically go to a library or Hall of Records, I don't make them roll a Skill Check for basic information. More difficult things I do require them to make a roll. Because despite what movies and TV shows say, anyone that's had to seriously research a subject can tell you is it isn't always easy to find something. A lot of information might be locked behind paywalls or passcodes, but a whole lot of information isn't online at all. Older information, such as Town records prior
to the 1990s, even if their current records are available online, most of the old records have not been digitized yet. So depending on what the characters need to look up, they might still need to go to the physical place and dig through some old archives in the basement, or some small town courthouse, or maybe in an off-site warehouse. Or even if those old records are online now, they're not really going to be in an easy-to-search format. They might still require hours and hours of scouring through them to find the information that the characters want.
So Game Masters, figure out which information it is that the Player Characters can get through just doing a quick online search, and which information is going to require some time, money, or having to physically hunt for that information in a records room somewhere. Next, if the information that the Player Characters want is available to the public online, is that information even reliable? I mean, let's say in our game we're trying to stop an alien invasion. So I Google the best way to battle aliens. I'm gonna find a hundred thousand websites and forums dedicated to wacky conspiracy theories about aliens, but only one or two of those might actually have helpful information about the real aliens that my character is facing. It's a signal to noise ratio. The information that you want might be out there, but the Skill Roll determines how well the character can parcel that good information out from all the useless, if not detrimental, information that they're going to be finding. In the Age of Deep Fakes and cheap digital manipulation, finding reliable information out there, even being believed if you have a legitimate video and pictures of the supernatural, that is going to be a difficult sell. So just because something is out there on the internet,
doesn't mean that it's easy to spot or easy to distinguish the real from the fake. So yeah, the characters can certainly Google something on their smartphone, but the Skill Roll is still going to be needed to figure out which information it is should be believed. Now if there is information that is out there, but it's hidden behind passcodes or on secure servers, that's when we're going to get into the realm of Hacking. That's where we start using other skills - hacking the police database, or an electric company's bills in order to locate a customer's information - that is a possibility. The question comes down to time and difficulty. In a Sci-Fi game like Cyberpunk, it could probably be done in just a few seconds.
But other games, like Traveller, take a much more realistic approach to hacking. Meaning that it could take hours for them to do it. Real-world hacking isn't like it's depicted in most movies and TV shows. It's actually a pretty slow process. So if the characters do have that much time and they do have the skills to do it, sure, go ahead and let them. But depending on the game that you're playing, it might require more time than they have in order to do it. Or it might
require some sort of mini-adventure where they're now dropping USB drives around parking lots, hoping some employee is dumb enough to pick one up and stick it in their work computer. Or they're having to call a place, making Deception Rolls and trying to convince somebody that they're Tech Support and they kind of need their password. But if the Player Characters do want to hack into a building's Mainframe and get access to all the cameras, and the secret records, or just let them walk right in through the front door, then awesome. Hacking has been a Science Fiction staple since Gibson's Neuromancer. But some Game Masters are afraid to allow it because now the hacking Player Characters bypassed all the obstacles and now the PCs are gods and they're completely unstoppable. But if that technology is part of the
Game World, then you should let the Player Characters have access to that technology. So instead, focus on what it takes for the Player Characters to do these things - How secure is this network? Is this going to be a difficult task for them to do? If so, how difficult of a task is this going to be? How long is this task going to take them to do it? The Game Master gets to determine all of that stuff. And if you as the Game Master anticipate this as a possibility that they might attempt doing it, you can then make it interesting to do once they try it. Such as, they're going to
need multiple passwords, or a password and then securing an authorized device or a key fob, making it more than just simply a single roll that bypasses the adventure, but really something that's worked into the adventure itself. Now aside from the Internet, mobile phones are a big problem for many Game Masters. Aside from having the Internet, cell phones have GPS, flashlights, and the ability to call the police or another character for help at any location. A tempting urge that a lot of Game Masters have is the old "Loss of Signal" gag - something that's becoming less and less feasible as coverage is becoming closer and closer to being worldwide.
So unless your game has a specific reason why there is no signal for their cell phones, such as maybe there's a signal jammer, or maybe they're deep underground and they can't get a signal there, I'm not a fan of using that they can't have a signal unless there is some in-game specific reason why they don't have it. It really just frustrates the players that we're going to be taking away their tools for no logical reason. So instead of working against mobile technology and trying to suppress it, simply plan for the mobile technology and try to work with it. Cell phones are great for letting the Player Characters split up, which I've talked about before as being ideal for horror games where you want to isolate the PCs.
And if the PCs do call the police or somebody for help, that doesn't mean the cavalry is going to be arriving in time. If the PCs call the police, you can say, "Well police are going to be there in about half an hour, but this adventure is going to be over in 20 minutes. So the police are going to be arriving to see however this resolved. But you got to do something if you want to be alive at that point." And yes, while modern technology certainly gives the characters a lot of advantages, it comes with a lot of disadvantages as well that you can use against them. Remember, the bad guys, they have technology too. Theirs might even be better than the technology that the Player Characters have. They might be a corporation, or an advanced alien species, or simply be well-funded. They might have
a whole team dedicated to covering their digital footprints and being able to stop hackers that are trying to break into their mainframe. The PCs might get a Tracker App installed on their phone through a virus or worm, and now that bad guys are feeding them misinformation directly, listening on their phones that are in their pockets, diverting calls, and sending kill squads out to the phone's location because some foolish Player Character tried Googling, "Where's the bad guy's secret hideout?" and they got flagged with a bad guy's AI Watchdog. The Player Character's sister, maybe they tagged the PC on their Facebook page. Now
the bad guy knows where their sister is, and now she's been kidnapped or murdered in order to get to the PC. So now the PC's phone rings from an unknown number, and they're getting pictures of their sister with "Back Off" emblazoned across it. And when the Player Character tries checking to see where this number was that it came from, they realize that their tech savvy enemy has spoofed one of the other Player Character's phones, so they have no idea where these things are coming from. Could even have a case where the Player Character, maybe they're hiding in a room from some bad guy, and the bad guy, they're looking for him, they can't find him, so they simply pull out their own cell phone and they call the Player Character's phone, and this ringing or buzzing that's going on in a dark corner, that gives away the PC's position because they just got ratted out by having their cell phone on them. Or if the Player Characters, let's say they do call somebody for help, they don't necessarily know who's on the other side of that line. That friendly 911
operator might be in league with the bad guys. What if the PCs committed a crime? Maybe they burned down a building. Maybe they killed a bunch of human-looking alien monsters - but no one knows that they were human-looking alien monsters? So now the police, they come in, they're investigating all these killings and these burned down buildings, and they discover that the PCs' GPS that's on their phone, those were all at the scene of the crime at the time these murders happened. So now the Player Characters, they're being hunted by the police because they carried their phones on them while they were doing their adventures. Getting away with criminal activity is going to be a lot harder once we have modern technology introduced to the game. We have security cameras they might have to bypass or destroy. But not just security cameras. There's dash cams, body cams, doorbell cams, random onlookers armed with cell
phone cameras, drones, DNA evidence from injuries. Players might need to take all this stuff into account when they're planning their jobs. If a Player Character, they end up taking a couple points of damage while on their job, all of a sudden they're like, "Oh my God! I got blood on the floor," and they have to start cleaning up the blood because their DNA is in that. And that's now something that they have to keep in mind. While in previous eras when they're trying to do this - let's say maybe in the 1920s - they had no way of identifying you if there was blood. They didn't know specifically that was your blood that they found on the floor. A few months back I reviewed the Traveller adventure Islands in the Rift and in it I shared a story how the Player Characters were on a covert mission on a Lower Tech World - Lower tech for them at the time, but still a Higher Tech Level than we are - and there they ran afoul of another group of spies who were trying to sew unrest against the planetary government here. So a couple of these spies tried jumping some of the PCs in order to capture and interrogate them, The Player Characters ended up knocking them out and stole the bad guy's cell phones. And then
using their highly advanced ship's computer and their sensors, they managed to be able to hack the cell phones to pinpoint exactly what the location of where those cell phones had been, and which cell phones those had been in communication with. I hadn't anticipated them doing any of this stuff. But it was a cool plan and it worked. So I told them that the rest of the enemy spies were in a hotel directly next to the starport where they were at the time. And it appeared that those enemy
spies, they knew that somebody was on to them, so they're scrambling and trying to evacuate and get out of that hotel as fast as possible. Now what I didn't say in this review, is how I was wondering what the Player Characters were going to do here. Maybe they were going to try to follow these bad guys, you know trying to get them back to their secret lair - play some sort of spy games, or something like that. But instead of doing all that stuff, they just grabbed a bunch of guns and they charged off to this hotel. So I had them roll a die. If they rolled under a target number, the bad guys escaped before the
PCs arrived. If they rolled over the number, they got there before the bad guys escaped. Instead they ended up tying the roll with me. So I decided when their elevator reached the 9th or the 10th floor, and the elevator doors opened up, they'd see the bad guy standing right there. I was wondering what was going to happen here. Maybe these two groups of foreign spies that are operating on this planet, maybe there's gonna be a silent tension - that sort of stare down - or maybe the bad guys would get in the elevator with them, and they'd all be riding down - this kind of tense scene all together. Maybe there'd be threats, the Player Characters intimidating the bad guys to return to their room and trying to interrogate them for answers. But instead of any of that stuff, the moment the Player Character saw the bad guys they just simply attacked. They murdered him right there in the hall. There was this big shootout. Illegal weapons
were drawn and fired, and it was a savage fight. But the moment that that fight was over, all of a sudden the players remembered that there were cameras - that they're a thing that exist around here - and the hotel was absolutely loaded with cameras. The elevators, the hall. They all captured everything from this. And from the camera's point-of-view, the PCs were just a bunch of randos that charged in this hotel and murdered a group of guests with zero provocation at all. So the Player Character scrambled here. They gathered what they could and they fled.
But they couldn't go back to their ship because they didn't want to lead the police there. So they ended up holding up in a seedy hotel on the far side of town. And there their hacker, using their very advanced computer, then spent the next 30 hours hacking into the hotel security and the police, deleting all these records that they could find in order for them not to be wanted by the law. So they managed to get away with it. But they also never forgot that cameras were a thing that existed after that. So this story - this really long story - is really just to illustrate how players can definitely use technology to their advantage, sending the game into directions that nobody had anticipated. But at the same time, technology creates a potential threat, an obstacle that the Player Characters have to consider whenever they're trying to do some sort of job.
It's also pretty good deterrent for murder hobos. Once they bother to remember that cameras are a thing that exists. Technology also becomes something that they risk losing. That cell phone, for example, if the Player Characters jump off a
boat and into some water, they might ruin their phone, or at least take it out of commission for a while until it fully dries off. That makes jumping into the water a risk that the Player Characters are going to have to consider, maybe something they try to avoid, or something they try to prepare for in advance. Or it can be used as a cost for failure. Like if you're using Failing Forward. Such as the characters are being chased across some rooftops
and they jump to the neighboring building, but they fail that roll by 1 or 2, so you could say how that character, they slammed into the wall but they managed to grab onto the edge of that neighboring building. But when they did so, they felt this crunch in their pocket. So when they managed to grab hold and pull themselves over for safety on the other side of this building, that's when they realize that their phone is toast. Or we can use technology to explain a failed roll. So next time the Player Character, they're trying to hide behind some crates as the bad guys are searching a warehouse for them, but let's say they fail their stealth check here. So instead of saying that the characters screwed up by making a noise or getting spotted by the bad guy, maybe say that their phone went off in their pocket as a scammer took that moment to call them about their car's extended warranty. Or if they fail a roll while they're trying
to get some surveillance footage of the bad guys, the bad guys spot them, not because they made a bad roll - because the red LED light that's on the front of the camera, the bad guy spotted that in the darkness. Or maybe they failed their roll while trying to record some surveillance footage. Maybe say that that was really caused by a technical glitch, rather than any sort of fault of the character themselves. It's not that they forgot to take the lens cap off, or they did something stupid. It's just their technology broke at the time,
and that's why they didn't get that footage that they were trying to get. For every easy solution that technology gives the Player Characters, it's going to bring them one new problem. Now let's talk about some Adventure Examples of cool ways that modern technology can be used in games - specifically horror games here. I've done several game reviews for Modern-Day adventures So you can check out Panacea, where we have a mythos creature that's been hooked up to the net - which not only engages with any hacking attempts, but it runs the building itself. It's fully under this creature's control, meaning that it can lock and unlock the doors, it can watch people through the security cameras, and can talk to the Player Characters through the building speakers. The adventure Viral is a fantastic example of how
social media can be employed in your game - both assisting and manipulating the Player Characters, as well as a different version of an entity that's been connected to the machine. And while I haven't reviewed this one yet, you can see our playthrough of Intimate Encounters, where the monster is also connected through the internet, but it's using a dating site in order to hunt for victims. Also, you can see how our characters employ drones to spy through windows - which is something that the players introduced to that adventure and wasn't something that the adventure had - but it can show how we were able to use technology in a way that the Game Master hadn't anticipated. Another one, and I haven't played this one personally myself yet, but I wanted to show this one, is the Call of Cthulhu adventure Hell in Texas, were one of the initial hooks to get the Player Characters involved in the adventure is through a Reddit Community. Which is something that I like, because online communities are a
fantastic source for adventure hooks, but also a resource among the community members - the PCs can use those. Even a source of new Player Characters if something happened to one of the PCs, they could just get involved in this Reddit community and all of a sudden another member of that community pops up and says, "Sure, I'll join you," and that's where we get the new PC. A few more Modern Day horror seeds include Receiving Phone Calls or Texts from someone that the character knows to be dead, or they discover later on has been dead the entire time.
A haunted video, like in The Ring. Maybe a viral video that shows one or more of the Player Characters dying in this video, and now the Player Characters have to solve their own murder in order to prevent it from happening. Speaking of videos, there's Found Footage stories - where the Player Characters have to scour in order to find the source of some video that they have, maybe verify its authenticity, or discover a missing portion that they don't have. Or in the case of Archive 81 - fantastic series, by the way - the character is charged with restoring a series of damaged tapes. They could be dealing with white noise, or electronic voice phenomenon, where someone or something is trying to communicate with the Player Characters. Maybe through some specialized equipment that they have, or they made. Or maybe it's a broken cell phone that somehow tuned into this signal.
Maybe it's picking up transmissions that they aren't supposed to hear. Maybe somebody's going to try to stop them from telling anybody what they hear. Modern Technology gives us a lot of plot hooks and tools to make some interesting stories, and an array of obstacles that our Player Characters have to overcome now - things that they didn't have to overcome before. And all of a sudden those are things that are in their way, and they have to take into account. Once Game Masters stop dwelling on whatever it is that they can't do anymore, now that modern tech is involved in the story, and all the unfair advantages the Player Characters now have. If they take those new advantages into account, they prepare for them before the game, even applying those same advantages to the bad guys now, because the bad guys might have the same if not better technology, they can start seeing a lot of cool potential that wasn't available to them before - new stories and new challenges for the Players to overcome, and we can have a lot of fun. Hey, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed
the video, please give it a Thumbs Up. If you want to see some more about stuff, such as Game Reviews or How To's, just hit that Subscribe Button. Until next time, amigos, y'all have a great day. You know, I didn't forget about no cameras in the hotels. Just the other players, they had started complaining about how I was always poopooing their ideas and wouldn't let them try them out. So when they said they wanted to charge over that hotel with shotguns, I just kept my mouth shut and let them do it. That's why I was doing look
out in the lobby while they went upstairs and started murdering all those people up on camera. Think they learned a valuable lesson that day, so I regret nothing.
2022-09-26 18:11
