This Feature is part of my long-running series about advanced adventure and encounter design for tabletop roleplaying games. It’s called True Scenario Designery. If you haven’t been following it from the start, use the True Scenario Designery Course Index to catch up.

This specific installment is part of a several-part section of the series about planning and outlining roleplaying game scenarios that the players can play, win, and lose like actual frigging games. Crazy, right?

Inertia: Fighting Failure

Winter break is over, kiddos and kiddettes. Angry School is back in session. Sit down and shut up.

The topic is still True Scenario Designery. It’s still designing roleplaying game adventures and encounters the way real — good — game designers design actual gameplay experiences that empower the players to win — or lose — based on their skills and choices rather than math rocks and ass-pulled bullshit.

I’ve been taking you through the major conceptual game design… uhh… concepts… that truly separate the… uhh… True Scenario Designers from the Mere Adventure Builders. Editing Note: Remove the repeated words from that sentence before publishing. So far, I’ve taught you the basics of Goals, Challenges, Outcomes, and Context. I’ve also shown you how the interplay between Goals and Outcomes put the ideas of Winning and Losing in the players’ hearts and heads. I’ve touched on how the fractal, cyclical Structure of gameplay feeds into this crap with a concept I call the Quest Structure. All of that shit will get you a pretty good tabletop roleplaying game scenario. If you actually remember, understand, and apply it all, which I ain’t putting any actual money on, but I get paid to teach whether you actually learn or not, so I don’t actually care.

But I ain’t here to teach you — and you ain’t here to fail to learn — how to make pretty good tabletop roleplaying game scenarios. This is about true mastery. Today — and next time and the time after — I’m introducing two huge ideas that, more than any other, separate the True Scenario Designer Men and Women from the Mere Adventure Builder Girls.

Today, I’m introducing you to Inertia. Next time, I’ll tell you about Momentum. Then, I’m gonna pull them both together in some kind of practical example thing.

Inertia Defined and Undefined

I’m gonna make this simple…

Inertia — the game design idea — is a force that constantly pushes a game — a scenario or encounter or whatever — towards a loss.

Alternatively….

Inertia — the game design idea — is a game’s — a scenario’s or encounter’s or whatever’s — resistance to being won.

Basically, Inertia means that all else being equal, the players are always losing. Or, at least, they’re always not winning.

You might wonder why I gave two different definitions; I hate ambivalence. You might also wonder whether those two different definitions are really different. They are and I will explain the practical difference between the two. I will also explain, later, why you need both definitions. I just wanted to get both definitions out there and acknowledge that I’m calling the first one Strong Inertia and the second one Weak Inertia.

If a game’s constantly pulling itself toward a loss while you play it, it’s got Strong Inertia. If the game is merely resisting or undoing your efforts to win it, it’s got Weak Inertia.

You also need to know that in most games that make good use of Inertia — especially Strong Inertia — the Inertia’s got an Elastic quality to it. The longer you play the game and the harder you’re winning, the more the game resists your efforts. Well-used Strong Inertia is like the artificial intelligence in the Mario Kart games. The longer and better you play, the faster and better your opponents race. That ain’t an accident, by the way.

So, Inertia is a game’s resistance to winning. It comes in Strong, Weak, and Elastic kinds. Got all that? Good. Now let’s talk about what Inertia isn’t.

Play Dynamics, Not Game Mechanics

You dumbasses love to conflate game design concepts and ideas with Game Mechanics. Remember, for example, when I went all squeeing fanboi about Attrition a year ago and posted a 5,000-word marriage proposal to Attrition in Dungeons & Dragons? That thing you all frigging hated because of how dumb you are? Well, after I posted it, all y’all started talking about Attrition Mechanics. “Give us examples of Attrition Mechanics!” “Spell Slots are an Attrition Mechanics!” “What other mechanics aside from Attrition Mechanics can we Mechanics instead?”

Attrition ain’t a mechanic. There’s no such thing as Attrition Mechanics. Same with Inertia. Same with Momentum. They ain’t Mechanics. There are no Inertia Mechanics or Momentum Mechanics. I’m not just being obnoxiously, nitpickily pedantic here. This is important. You have to grok this shit.

Most of these design concepts — even Winning and Losing — are actually Play Dynamics. They arise from the gameplay as the players play the game. They come from Game Mechanics rubbing against the players and players rubbing against Game Mechanics and also from Game Mechanics rubbing against Game Mechanics and players rubbing against each other and rubbing against you too.

Editing Note: Probably just rewrite that whole paragraph for obvious reasons.

Game Mechanics include things like Hit Points and the amount of damage monsters do and how much damage player-characters can heal and how many limited resources player-characters have access to and how they recover them. Damage, Hit Points, Spell Slots, and Resting are Game Mechanics. That feeling of constantly dwindling resources the players experience and how it changes the choices they make as they play? That’s Attrition. It’s a Play Dynamic.

Game Designers — at both the System and Scenario level — design Game Mechanics. They decide how much damage attacks do and when player-characters can rest and what the costs of resting are and how much the characters recover. Smart designers design mechanics such that the players will always feel like they’re running out of something and consequently, will have to make choices between pressing forward or losing progress to rest and recover.

Spell Slots, Hit Points, Damage, and Resting contribute to the Attrition Dynamic, but that’s not all they do. Good Game Mechanics do lots of different things to the Play Dynamic so you can’t call them Attrition Mechanics.

Inertia and Momentum are Play Dynamics, not Game Mechanics. They arise from all the complex interactions between the players and the Game Mechanics.

This Ain’t a Physics Class

You dumbasses love to show off how much you know about things other than Game Design. Half of you are trapped in an endless game of Smartest Dude in the Room. Whenever I use a term that also means something in some other esoteric field — like physics — someone’s going to try to infer a bunch of shit I didn’t say from what they know about other things. It’s almost always to show off to everyone how smart they are.

You’re never going to be the Smartest Dude in the Room if I’m there. So stop trying. And stop confusing yourself and everyone else by bringing physics into the discussion of Inertia and Momentum. I’ve already had to humiliate a few of you dumbasses over this crap in other channels. Game Design Inertia isn’t Physics Inertia. It’s not a game’s resistance to acceleration. It doesn’t mean that, once the players start winning, the game will keep moving toward victory at a constant speed unless acted upon by an unbalanced, outside force.

Inertia is a game’s resistance to victory. Don’t try to add anything to that because you remember half a high school physics class.

Inertia Isn’t Challenge

This is going to be rough. Remember way back when I admitted that using the word Challenge to describe a gameplay obstacle was going to cause problems later, but that I was using it anyway because it was the best, most meaningful word for the job? This is where the first problem arises and it’s why I have to keep capitalizing my terms.

You’re probably asking yourself, “Didn’t we cover this crap already? A game’s resistance to being won? Isn’t that what Challenges are?” And the answer to that is, “No. That’s stupid. You’re stupid.”

Inertia is one of the things that makes a game challenging. Consequently, it contributes to the Challenge Aesthetic and satisfies Challenge-Seeking players, but Inertia isn’t Challenges and I really don’t know why it’s so hard for you to keep this shit straight.

In True Scenario Designery, a Challenge is an element of the Scenario the players overcome — or avoid or fail to overcome or fail to avoid — on their way to the Scenario’s Goal. Challenges include individual, isolated chunks of gameplay like combat or social encounters or adventures to recover the Sword of Satan Slaying and also include diffuse Macrochallenges that spread across bigger segments of gameplay like navigating a puzzling dungeon or building resources in town to strengthen yourself to face Satan. Challenges are things the players face and resolve somehow.

Inertia can’t be resolved. It’s always there. Inertia is a force of physics. Except it has nothing to do with physics. It’s a force of gameplay.

Imagine you’re running an obstacle course but you’ve got this harness on with an elastic band that ties you back to the starting point. The obstacles on the course are Challenges. If it’s a time trial, there’s also a Macrochallenge. The elastic band is Inertia. It makes it harder to get over the obstacles, it slows you down, and if you ever stop to rest, it drags you back toward the starting line. There’s nothing you can do about that. You just have to fight it.

Actually, the elastic band is Weak Inertia. Strong Inertia is a Battle Royale collar with a time bomb. Especially if it’s weighted and gets heavier as it ticks down. Better hustle.

Pandemic: A Frustratingly Awesome Example of Inertia

Months ago, I told you to get to know Matt Leacock’s 2008 board game Pandemic published by Z-Man Games because I was gonna discuss its design in several future lessons. Well, the future is here. Pandemic is a great exemplar of everything I’ve said above about Strong, Weak, and Elastic Inertia and how Inertia is a Play Dynamic and not a Game Mechanic.

Did you learn it? Did you play it? Because I couldn’t have made this shit any easier for you. I gave you months of warning and I purposely chose an extremely popular game that’s been around for a decade, is still in print, and is reasonably inexpensive as board games go. So I’m not wasting a thousand words explaining the game.

If you still don’t know it, go play Pandemic on Board Game Arena or at least check out the Watch It Played walkthrough on YouTube. No, reading the rules is not good enough. Why can’t you dumbasses grasp this whole Play Dynamic thing?

There are a few relevant Game Mechanics to call out that contribute to Pandemic’s amazing Inertia Dynamics.

First, there’s the Player Deck. Each player has to draw from the Player Deck every turn. That’s how they get the resources they need to fight and ultimately cure the four diseases ravaging the globe. The problem is that if the Player Deck ever runs out of cards, the game ends and the world becomes a disease-ravaged hellscape. Drawing through the Player Deck gives rise to a sense of Strong Inertia. It’s a turn counter. A time bomb. But it ain’t correct to call the Player Deck — or even the rule about the game ending when it’s empty — an Inertia Mechanic. The Player Deck provides both resources and a timer. It’s got some booby traps in it too. I’ll get to those in a minute.

Next, there’s the Infection Deck and its Mechanics. Every player ends each turn by drawing from the Infection Deck and placing Disease Cubes in the corresponding cities. That happens even if the players have cured a specific disease. Until they eradicate a pandemic completely, it can keep popping up. At a minimum, the players will place two Disease Cubes on the map every turn. A player without certain special abilities who starts their turn in the right place in or adjacent to a fully infected city can remove a maximum of three Disease Cubes in one turn if they use up all or most of their actions. More commonly, a player can use all or most of their actions to remove two Disease Cubes in one turn. Doing so means making no progress toward actual victory. In other words, the game will usually undo all of the players’ efforts to contain the spread of the diseases every turn. That gives rise to Weak Inertia; the game is countering the players’ progress every turn.

Note, again, that the Weak Inertia isn’t just about the Infection Deck and its Mechanics. It’s also about how the player’s available resources — actions — balance against the number of Disease Cubes placed to ensure the players can rarely do more than tread water, but they’ll usually end up losing ground if they aren’t very careful about how they use their resources. Play Dynamics, not just Mechanics.

Also, if the Disease Cubes ever run out, the players lose.

Now let’s talk about the Outbreak Mechanic. Cities can only hold three Disease Cubes. If an infection hits an already over-infected city, Disease Cubes appear in adjacent cities. That can lead to more Outbreaks if more cities hit their infection limits. Now, that sucks, but controlling the Disease Cubes is really more Challenge than Inertia. What pushes this into Inertia territory is that there’s also a limit to the total number of Outbreaks the world can stand before its global healthcare infrastructure collapses. Eight Outbreaks and it’s game over.

What ain’t obvious from the Game Mechanics in the rulebook is how this gives rise to an Elastic Inertia Dynamic. The more Disease Cubes there are on the board, the more likely Outbreaks are to occur and the more likely they are to cascade, right? At the beginning of the game, Outbreaks aren’t likely and they rarely chain together, but the longer the game’s been going on — especially if the players aren’t managing the Disease Cubes well — the more likely infections are to cause Outbreaks and the more likely they are to cascade. Thus the Inertia gets stronger the longer the game continues.

Finally, there are the insidious Epidemic Cards hidden semi-randomly throughout the Player Deck. Sometimes, players don’t pull resources from the Player Deck, they draw Epidemic Cards instead. Not only do they not get any resources, but they’re forced to place more Disease Cubes on the board and then shuffle all of the discarded Infection Cards and place them back on top of the Infection Deck. There’s a genius Dynamic here because it means the same cities tend to get infected over and over. After an Epidemic Card has been resolved, Disease Cubes are likely to get placed in already infected cities, increasing the odds of an Outbreak or, worse, a cascade. Ultimately, the Epidemic Cards create a sudden surge of short-term disaster and then, because each Epidemic Card also increases the total number of Infection Cards drawn every turn, it also accelerates the long-term placement of Disease Cubes. What a great surging and accelerating Inertia Dynamic, right?

It’s important to note that the Epidemic Cards aren’t purely an Inertia Mechanic because they also help the players in a very subtle way. They do more harm than good, but they ain’t purely about Inertia. Because the same cities tend to get infected over and over and because it’s rare to draw all the way through the Infection Deck, the Disease Cubes tend to appear in the same places over and over. Usually, nearby at least one player because players tend to chase the Disease Cubes. Movement costs actions and actions are the most valuable resource the players have so this Localizing Effect does help keep things a little more manageable. Especially for playgroups that don’t have special powers to enhance movement.

See why I picked Pandemic for this? Apart from the fact that it’s accessible, ubiquitous, familiar, and inexpensive that is? It’s a really great example of Inertia Dynamics; it’s masterfully designed. So am I expecting you to pull off this kind of shit in your roleplaying game scenarios? Yes, actually, I am. Kinda.

Pandemic lays it on a little thick. It’s also a board game and so can get away with fiddly mechanics and cubes and cards and bullshit like that. You wouldn’t want to do that kind of thing in a tabletop roleplaying game adventure or campaign. But you still need to think about the different Inertia Dynamics that’ll arise as the players fight your scenario. If any. Because, as we’ll discuss later, not having any is an option. Kinda.

We’ll get there. Don’t worry.

Getting Help From the System Designers

Board games are great for analyzing game design because, compared to tabletop roleplaying game scenarios, they’re pretty simple and self-contained and they don’t have to hide their mechanics behind the smoke-and-mirrors veneer of a living, breathing world. It’s way easier to see what’s going on in Pandemic than in even a simple adventure module for a basic tabletop roleplaying game system. This brings me to another reason why board games make it easier. Board games are the complete package. Each is a self-contained, complete gameplay experience in a single box. Mostly. Tabletop roleplaying games have this weird issue with complex game engines and generalized mechanics that get assembled into and implemented in individual scenarios. This means there’s a question of what the System Designers are responsible for and what the Scenario Designers are responsible for. Whose job is it to make sure Inertia happens in that D&D adventure you’re writing? Is it your problem or is it Jeremy Crawford’s?

The thing is, Inertia is a Play Dynamic and so it’s closer to the Scenario Designer than to the System Designer. But the System Designers’ jobs are to create adventure-building toolkits, right? That’s what roleplaying game systems are supposed to be. They should thus build mechanics that ensure certain gameplay dynamics will emerge. After all, they’re the experts; they shouldn’t demand every adventure-building Game Master and independent creator be as brilliant as Matt Leacock or me. At the very least, they should arm Scenario Designers with tools they can use to deliberately create a sense of Inertia, right?

And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass hopping.

There are Game Mechanics built into every system that help create a basic Inertia Dynamic. If you want to be a True Scenario Designer, you’ve got to know what they are in your system du jour of choice, and you’ve got to know how good they are. That’s part of your job as a Scenario Designer.

So what Game Mechanics exist in a game like, say, Dungeons & Dragons that give rise to an Inertia Dynamic or that empower you — the Scenario Designer — to churn up some Inertia yourself? That’s a great question and one I’ll deal with in detail much, much later. But I want to bring it up today for two reasons.

First — and I guess I should put a spoiler alert here because it ruins the ending of any future analysis I provide — first, Dungeons & Dragons has very few system-level tools for any kind of advanced Scenario Design at all. This is a shame because, as systems go, it’s also got one of the best adventure-building toolsets of any roleplaying game system ever. This is why there are so few good examples of truly great scenario design. As I’ve hinted, True Scenario Designery hinges on more than just stringing challenges together into event-based and-then… adventures or encounter-based labyrinths and gauntlets. Macrochallenges, Inertia, and Momentum are really important parts of True Scenario Designery. That’s why modern D&D is such a pain in the ass to write good adventures for. Except for pretty much every other system that exists, it’s literally the worst for adventure writers.

It’s great for players though. Frigging players.

Second, I bring this up because I mentioned a dirty little word above that definitely sounds like it should be useful for creating an Inertia Dynamic and you probably already noticed the overlap. Isn’t Attrition a kind of Inertia? The quick answer is, no, not in D&D, not anymore. Once maybe, but nowadays, you can’t count on Attrition to be the Inertia you seek. To explain why, I’d need a few thousand words and I’d be wandering really far afield.

I’m willing to write those few thousand words though. Let me know if you want them.

Beyond all that, though, you’re just gonna have to accept that if you want True Scenario Designery done right, you’re gonna have to do it yourself. Don’t expect the System Designers to help you. They’re too busy selling players subclasses and ancestries or whatever.

Next Time: Momentum

This is the part where I quickly summarize everything I tried to crowbar into your thick-ass cranium today. Except I’m skipping that part; I’ve got a different plan. See, Inertia actually has an evil twin… or a good twin… a mirror universe twin — you can decide which one has the goatee — called Momentum and I’m gonna discuss that next time. Then I’ll review both ideas together in a separate lesson that leans heavily on some proper tabletop roleplaying game examples.

So… I guess… look forward to that? Coming soon? Maybe get in a few rounds of Pandemic while you wait?