Review- Synapse: Part III, Controlling the Player

Continuing the review of Synapse (Part I and II), the next section of rules I want to talk about is what I consider the most interesting.

There are found in Chapters 3 (Culture), 4 (Life Experience), and 5 (Personality) that in total create the values for the character's Motivations. There are 22 Motivations, each in the end to be rated from 1 to 10. These include things like Revenge- a person who wants paid back for wrongs done him, to Nurturance (I don't think that's a real word)- the drive to take care of others.

How are these used? Let's quote an example from the rules on page 111.

For example, lets assume the Hero whose motivations are listed below has come across one of her long-time rivals, who is hanging off the edge of a cliff on a rope. A quick glance at the major motivations of this character reveals two motivations that are strong and would apply to this situation; Nurturance and Revenge. Abasement and Achievement are strong motivations for this character, but it does not relate to the actual situation so they are ignored here. The motivational setup for this Hero indicates that she would want to help them (Nurturance) more than she would want to punish them for past misdeeds (Revenge). Therefore, all things being equal, the character should want to help her rival get back up to safety.

What we have here is a another in a long list of mechanics called Personality Mechanics, i.e. mechanics that determine the decision making of characters instead of players. D&D alignment is a version of this, although the form was greatly expanded in games like Pendragon.

The most common reasons for systems like this are:

1. The designer and/or GM thinks that the players are playing their characters wrong- and they turn to mechanics to 'improve' role-play or to enforce conventions of the genre. Judging from a number of posts on the designer's game blog, this is a major goal for him.
2. The players who are so boring that they can't role-play an interesting character on their own- so they need a crutch. Something to remind them that- hey, there's suppose to be a person here...

Both are rather sad reasons. And in the end both are doomed to failure except at the most shallow level. But those reaching for systems like this tend to only think in shallow terms, so it fits and in its own way even works. For the designer/GM they enforce 'correct' play, and for the player it removes the burden of role-play which was something they likely didn't want to do in the first place.


With that in mind, the method in Synapse isn't bad at all, given what such rules are attempting to do. Here the complex creation system that so dragged down the skill system (take culture, life experience, plus extra points and get your totals for each Motivation) is almost welcomed. After all, if you can't role-play your character you may at least have some detail to determining what he's going to be.

It does suffer from the same 'this impacts you in the way the game says it does'. For example you could take a life experience of Sexual Abuse which drops your Sensuality by 6 points and adds +2 to Rejection. I don't think one would need to think very hard about how such an experience may in fact reverse those types of modifiers. But much the same can be said about any mechanic of this type.

Synapse offers two methods for overriding the mechanic.

One is for the player to present an argument for the decision that the GM agrees with (this is still meeting item #1 above for having these rules in the first place, and so is all to the good in allowing the GM to control the role-playing of his players).

The other is something called a Motivation Boost, which is a die roll against Eccentricity that costs the character mental stress upfront and risks perhaps undesired changes in your Motivations. Oh wait, they would only be undesired if you were actually role-playing instead of just using the mechanics.

All in all, this section of the rules aren't bad for what they are. Better than most in fact.


Lastly for this part of the review let's look briefly at the section on Morality. The pitch for the game says it goes far beyond good and evil, and then it says on page 108 that it's too complex of a subject and that only very general guide lines are going to be offered.

Those guidelines come out some PC book about moral systems that makes the most general comments possible. For example: people react to things as either person, animal or object. There's even a chart for it. Yes, it's a boring as it sounds. Like a freakin' text book by a bad author.


More importantly, why is this section even here? Shouldn't the Motivations handle all this in normal play?