Taking Action

While a large portion of gameplay occurs within a narrative conversational context, inevitably player characters and NPCs will need to take action. In an abstract sense, determining when exactly something a character does represents the kind of action that requires additional structured gameplay mechanisms is not always clear-cut. Typically, in tabletop RPGs, the breakpoint between narrative action and gameplay action hinges on that action's capacity for failure and the weight of said failure. While in theory a game designer could create a system wherein every described action has a requisite roll to be performed, playing such a game would likely be a tedious experience — as would be designing such a game¹. Instead, we ascribe some points of delineation past which an action is considered to be no longer "simple" or "purely narrative".

Consider for a moment the experience you might have while playing through a videogame. In this hypothetical game, your player chatacter has an inventory and while going around the various environments you explore, you can pick up objects to store away for later. In normal gameplay, this is not an action you can readily fail. You simply walk up to the object, focus your camera on it until a little text display appears telling you what button to press in order to pick it up, and press the button. No pass-or-fail mechanic occurs in the background or foreground, the object is simply stowed away. Now suppose that later in the game's story, your character is required to pick up a specific important object while some circumstance of time pressure is in play — for example, grabbing a power core out of an alien spaceship's laser canon before it destroys your home planet. In this circumstance, the game might add additional capacity for failure to the interaction, perhaps in the form of repeatedly pressing the "grab" button to yank it from its socket. The addition of possible failure for what is an otherwise simple action at such a critical moment underscores the weight of failure within the greater context of the narrative. Suddenly, what was once trivial becomes life-or-death — under normal circumstances, removing a power core can take as long as a player theoretically needs. Even if their grip on the core's handle were to slip, the character could just grab back on and try again without issue. Now, however, failure spells catastrophe. This is admittedly a rather clear-cut example — most actions a player could take do not have nearly as dire a consequence of failure. Critically, however, the concept of weight of failure is highlighted here.

In Warped World, when an action is taken for which the skill required is non-trivial; the stakes of that action's outcome have clear narrative weight; or that action is performed under significant stress, we introduce additional structured mechanics to represent this weight in the form of difficulty checks by way of dice rolls. The mechanical details of dice rolls are described elsewhere; the rest of this section is intended to describe the kinds of action a player may or may not be able to take.

Specialized Actions

While players are welcome and encouraged to take actions their characters might not have a high skill capacity for, certain kinds of action require specialized knowledge to even attempt. Diagnosing a medical problem with no medical knowledge whatsoever, for instance, is a fairly futile effort in most cases. Likewise, attempting to perform thaumatology with no prior knowledge of how thaumatology works would, in all likelihood, result in nothing more than wasted time. In contrast to this, a player character with no knowledge of thaumatology might easily be able to stop a working from being performed, as the visual cues for sabotaging the action might be more clear.

Generally speaking, actions that anyone can perform or attempt are those for which the performance is relatively common knowledge or intuitive. Picking up a very heavy object is more a matter of strength and form than arcane ritual. The stakes for failure might be high — attempting to lift something far too heavy with poor form, even for a bodybuilder, can easily result in long-term injury or worse — but the action is at least intuitable.

On the other hand, actions which only certain characters can perform are generally those which require one or a combination of specialized knowledge, innate ability, or specialized equipment. Attempting to perform specialized actions without the prerequisite knowledge, skills, or abilities will typically result in little more than wasted time. However, in some cases the outcome may be far worse. For instance: it is generally a pretty bad idea to have someone with no surgical training attempt to perform surgery. The result of failure in such a circumstance is fairly clear: at best, nothing happens, but in the majority of cases the character taking the action will cause additional harm or even kill the "patient".