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?

Review- Synapse: Part II, Skills

It's been a bit since the last update. Life is busy and all.

Let's pick up with the part of the review of Synapse. The Part I was about my first impressions and what goals the game appeared to be aiming it. IMO, it failed on both accounts (I wasn't impressed, and the goals seemed both unobtainable and frankly not desirable). But first impressions can be wrong, and sometimes worthwhile things are found even in attempts at the most foolish goals. So let's play around with the mechanics some. Here' we're focus on skills, often the core of any system.

Character generation takes up pages 16 through 172 and is broken into eight sections: Brain Chemistry (I swear, this one section header by itself will cause most people to trashcan the book right there), Biology, Culture, Life Experience, Personality, Connections, Skills and Possessions.

The concept is to... 'naturally' grow your character in a fashion that he is the sum of... all they things modern lay psychology says he's the sum of.

I'm afraid the rules weren't well written with important information all over the place. For example you don't know what effect your Attributes (from the Brain Chemistry section) has until you reach 'Making a Skill Roll' on page 174. Just for reference, here we find that the game becomes Shadowrun 4th Edition and you roll a number of dice equal to the ruling Attribute (1 to 8, 3 is average) plus an extra dice if you have the linked talent then plus 0 to 4 dice for your training. Rolling a 5 or 6 grants a level of success. So a 'average' guy would have an attribute (natural talent as I'd call it) of 3 and if trained to the level of 'trained' +2 dice for a total of 5 dice for the typical skill test.

It's at this point that the wheels of the primary game goal come off depending upon the viewpoint of user. Do you personally think that success in an activity is more governed by natural talent or by training? Does this reflect a better view of how characters exist and interact with the world?

If you think training is more important than natural talent, the core design of the system disagrees. I'm afraid I fall into this camp, believing that natural talent only determines the upper limit of what training can provide. To put this into perspective- my version of this system would say that the attribute governs a skill cap. Thus training would provide all 5 dice if the attribute allowed it.

Another problem, do you believe that there is only a single way of thinking that can get you results in any specific area? For example the game says that Lock-picking is solely based upon Spatial and is modified by the Dexterity talent. Do you agree? I don't. Because I don't think someone excellent at lock picking is automatically as good at unarmed combat. Synapse however says this is the case. Further I think a person could pick locks by using Cognition, i.e. determining by analysis how the lock works and thus how it could be defeated.

The final result of all this is that Synapse suffers from the same simulation problem that all games do. Real life is very complex and game systems must be very simple. By attempting to define things like Brain Chemistry and the resulting building blocks thereof that in the end create skill- Synapse is highlighting that disconnect between reality and games instead of concealing it. The result can be disrupting to anyone who thinks differently on any number of matters than the game designer himself.

Thus by it's very design, Synapse is aiming for a very small target- people who think the mind works like the designer says it does.


One last comment on this part of the rules.


Synapse is designed to give you an end result that is common in RPGS: A Skill Roll. It does this by showing all (according to the game) the building blocks of what makes up a skill.

The typical RPG just gives you a Skill Roll (using any number of methods). And lets the player define what aspects of his character was the building blocks for that result.

Which do you think offers the most diversity in character design? Which method would you like to create characters in?