Disco Elysium left the home game for the Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TRP). Therefore, the video game retains some of the attributes of tabletop role-playing games: randomness is represented by dice, modifiers are calculated, critical failures and successes are added. And one of the additional quests introduces the closed developers of the analogue of D&D in the world of Elysium
Therefore, there is a request for a reverse transformation. “Make the video game Disco Elysium an NRI again” is what it sounds like. I was one of the people who responded to it.
From code to paper
On the Internet, I saw three ways to transfer Robert Kurwitz’s universe into analog form: on paper sheets, marker mats and behind the screen of the Game Master.
The first way is to go from the opposite direction. If a video game doesn’t go with a board game, then a board game goes with a video game. Take a ready-made role system and lightly polish it. Change the number and names of some skills, shift the emphasis, and you’re done.
This doesn’t mean the product will be bad. Perhaps the author is not attracted to the entire medium of Disco Elysium or another universe, but only one or two topics from there. Then he takes a mechanically radically different desktop system and works with the matter that he likes.
Such variations include “Death in Disco Style,” based on the “Man Died” system (yes, there is such a thing). From Disco Elysium it extracts the existential drama and gives it a new arrangement. As a result, players end up with a different experience, but with a familiar aftertaste.
The second option is straightforward. He takes the skill board from the game, adds it to an A4 sheet of paper along with the Health and Morale indicators, and suggests playing. If you search for "Disco Elysium TTRPG", one of the first results will be a post on Reddit with a link to this character sheet:
The third option is hybrid. He analyzes option two, looks for its shortcomings and offers solutions. And other role-playing systems inspire these decisions. This is what I tried to do, and the entire subsequent article is a presentation of my thoughts on this arrangement.
Player skills – played out by the narrator
There are passive skill checks in Disco Elysium. They occur in three cases:
Before choosing the next cue as advice. Sometimes this is a hint at one of the already presented options, and sometimes a completely new option appears.
Appear as author’s monologues. Calls to communism, discussions about the age of the GG, just atmospheric chatter – this is their content
Using skills in this way gave life to very abstract entities in the detective’s head. Awe, Police Wave, Conceptualization, Inland Empire, Encyclopedia – the identity of all of the above is based on passive interaction, and not on active checks with dice rolling.
But it all works digitally. Let’s switch to analogue and replace the pre-recorded narrator with a living person. What will happen?
On the part of the Game Master, this requires either virtuoso improvisation skills, or tons of prepared materials, most of which are not even useful. At best, the presenter will only have one of two. Therefore, the quality and/or quantity of passive checks decreases.
This also affects the Player’s side. If there are no quality passive checks, then the point of using skills that rely on them is lost. The focus is shifting towards active checks, and coming up with one for “Conceptualization” is disproportionately more difficult than for “Rhetoric”. And it’s especially difficult to make this check affect the plot of your game.
As a result, Inland Empire can only be used twice in a four-hour session to talk to the bathroom faucet. And even these checks can fail because of snake eyes.
The solution I’ll propose solves another problem of transferring Elysium to NRIs, so I’ll talk about that first.
Netaku detective club
Tabletop role-playing games are like tango. Requires at least two. In our case, the Game Master and the player. D&D, VtM and similar systems usually require four players as a quorum. But for Disco Elysium we will reduce this number to 2-3 detectives. The setting is more intimate, and the conflicts are not on a universal scale.
With a leveling system taken directly from the game, we will be faced with a situation where players will take bread from each other.
The best situation is when we have two players and this doesn’t happen. But to guarantee such a result, you need to provide them with communication in advance. And this doesn’t always work out. And when this fails, we may have several equally strong strongmen, equivalently intelligent wiseguys, or commensurately strong-willed mediums.
The problem with the uniqueness of detectives also arises during the campaign. When an investigation takes more than one meeting, players may begin to tire of their characters. To prevent this from happening, you need to periodically give them new tools. That is, introduce a progression.
In the video game, progression is implemented as +1 to the skill modifier per level or +1 slot in the thought locker. That’s all.
+1 to the modifier is not enough to freshen up the feeling of the game. If we take into account the intolerance of passive checks, then the influence of this unit goes only to the active check. This is a homeopathic supplement.
In the same D&D, plus one to a characteristic is both an improvement in a skill and an improvement in saving from trouble; this is a determination of how many spells you know and how deadly they will be.
The Thought Locker is a great role-playing element in the game. But it works because we play as a pre-written character with amnesia. He is a blank sheet that gets painted as he passes.
When we come to the table, we have already painted the character in advance. Our task is not only to develop it, add details, but also to not disturb the already created image.
At the same time, thoughts, giving bonuses for a certain line of behavior, can be used not as characteristics of the character, his important traits, but as a way to abuse the game system. This trivializes a topic important to Elysium lore and reduces it to the pornography of mathematical character optimization.
So I decided to clean out the thought locker altogether.
Tabletop role-playing mishmash
During this and the previous Nonukcasinosites.co.uk/review/mr-q-casino/ sections, we identified the following problems with skills and their progression: imbalance of skills in terms of usefulness and satisfaction from them, small number of character builds, same type of progression.
To solve these problems, I transferred the skill point pool mechanics from the Gumshoe system to Elysium and supplemented it with analogues of disciplines from Vtm.
How the skill pool works? In Disco Elysium, your abilities determine maximum leveling up the skills of this branch. Motor 4 means you can invest up to 4 skill points into all yellow skills. Each invested skill point paints one diamond, the remaining available ones will remain empty.
In my processing, invested points are a replenishable resource. It can be used in the following ways:
First way to use. The player submitted an application, successfully passed the test and wants to improve the result. He temporarily crosses out one point from the skill pool, and for this the presenter enters an additional detail.
This spending is an option, not a requirement. With or without spending, the information received should be sufficient to respond to the player’s initial request.
An example of such a check is below:
Resource management – a way to play with the player. Spend it now or hold it just in case?
The second way is to activate discipline. The player spent a lot of effort developing the skill. At levels 4-6, it unlocks special ways to use it. To do this, he spends a point from the pool and says what he does.
These abilities increase the variety of character builds and revive the "passive skills" mentioned above. For example, the fifth level perk of the Awe skill is called “Pantograph” and allows you to eavesdrop on calls and radio conversations simply by being near communication lines and antennas. This gives the skill a clearly defined function that the player can use at their own discretion.
The same applies to other skills like Awe. Inland Empire brings objects to life and turns them into non-player characters, Police Wave makes it possible to share health or willpower with a colleague, Conceptualization turns a crime scene into a painting by Malevich or Kandinsky and allows you to analyze it like an art critic. And draw the right conclusions.
Combined checks. This mechanic is best covered in the next segment, as it interacts with the number of dice the player rolls.
The last thing worth saying about the pool system is how to restore it. There are two ways:
The character needs to rest for a long time: sleep, take up a hobby, and so on. This way he will restore all pools of all skills at once.
Number of cubes / Amount of modifiers
Up to 7 indicators are involved in passing Disco Elysium checks.
Ability level. Indicators of Intelligence, Mentality, Physiology and Motor Skills. Cannot be less than one. The main modifier that is increased only by consumables.
Clothes modifiers. Can give advantages to some skills and disadvantages to others. Up to 8 such items can be worn.
Circumstance modifiers. Reward the player for finding additional evidence and details, completing additional story branches.
Effects of consumables. In exchange for one point of Health or Morale, you receive an increase in ability.
Of these six indicators, only one is a random variable. The rest are a direct improvement of the result. As a result, there are a number of situations where two hexahedrons affect the result only in case of critical failure, i.e.e. when two units are rolled.
Let’s take a grotesque example from the last third of Disco Elysium when you have to make a Difficulty 20 Awe skill check. This seems like a lot, but along with this you can swing so much that your calculations will look like this:
2d6 + 6 from Physiology + 6 from leveling up a skill + 1 from a Signature skill + 3 from clothing: patrolman’s raincoat, scented scarf, T-shirt “The Man from Helmdall” + 3 from the thought “Pantograph” + 17 from circumstances + 2 from drinking with the chosen ideology of nationalism.
Total: 2d6 + 38. Even without +17 due to circumstances it is still 2d6 + 21. The modifier is already more difficult.
For a computer Disco Elysium this is even good. When random variables are determined behind the scenes, failure seems undeserved and manipulated by the developers. My friend during the passage believed that if the probability of success is more than 60%, it is always a success, and vice versa.
But for a Tabletop Role-Playing Game, failing checks is also part of the game. If you’re trying to avoid failure at all costs, then you don’t believe the game can be fun when you roll low.
For a video game this is often true. An unsuccessful throw permanently or temporarily cuts off some of your content and says a strict “No”. But when playing NRI, the approach to failure is to say “Yes, but” or “No, but.”. Disco Elysium also has such moments. For example, when playing pentak. Both good and positive results give interesting consequences.
At the same time, some modifiers simply cannot be transferred.
The thought locker has already been mentioned above.
But why can’t you move clothes?? In the game, any cast-offs are unique cast-offs with unique modifiers. But when transferred to the tabletop, this uniqueness becomes banal: all characters with an emphasis on “Suggestion” will wear sailor’s uniforms, and all smart people will put a “Faln” cap on their heads. This takes away a tool of narrative influence from players.
Therefore, any playful influence of clothing should either be eliminated or severely limited. How to limit it? Give modifiers and bonuses only to certain clothes. This could be a rarity, like ceramic armor, or an item closely related to the character and his story. To determine such items, close interaction between the leader and the player is required.
In addition to altering clothing, I suggest shifting the balance of checks towards randomness of the result and removing some modifiers. What does my calculation formula look like:
Circumstance modifiers. In our case, it is recommended to write them down to the Game Master so as not to forget.
Everything seems clear except the last one. How does a combined check work??
A combination check is a check where a player adds another skill to a check and gains an advantage for it. In this case, the application for a combined check must be justified and approved by the narrator. Adding Brute Force to a Shadow Intimidation check to lift a suspect off the ground is an example of a valid combination check. The use of the combination of “Encyclopedia” and “Reaction Speed” will be rejected if the player does not specifically explain how the second skill helps the first in a given situation.
Electrochemistry + Coordination = Masturbation. Useless but original. And it’s very strange, please don’t make such requests
In mathematics that’s all. Now we have a maximum of five parameters and 3 out of 5 are random. The sixth parameter will occur relatively rarely, so we remove it from the equation.
But changing the math isn’t enough. If we, with a different scoring system, demand players to jump to their previous values, it will be unfair to them.
But that’s why we have a presenter. The GM’s job is to correctly calculate the difficulty of the checks when running the adventure. How to adjust your balance?
Circumstance modifiers. This requires the presenter to think in advance about what exactly will help the players and in solving what problem. But the ability to undergo checks again and again should be left within 2-3 times. Because with endless re-rolls, experienced players will be able to hose down any test of their ideas until it dies. Make some checks automatically succeed. The “Detective” system adheres to the following principle: “Player characters are professionals. And if they know their stuff, then any “standard” checks for that skill automatically succeed.”.
“Standard” tests are the use of a skill in a standard environment to solve a standard problem. It is possible to analyze the trajectory of a bullet when it broke a window, remained in the corpse, and the corpse was not touched with automatic success. And if the corpse was dragged and there is no bullet in it, then this will require verification.
Simplify complex checks. Since the results of rolls have become more random, it has become more difficult to jump over high difficulty levels. Therefore, it is worth reducing the maximum possible complexity of checks to, for example, 18. But the leader can do this during the game, taking into account other factors.
As a result of all the transformations, the rolls become more random, and they are influenced by the character’s personal possessions, creative combinations of skills and the group’s desire to get under every stone.
Archetype: Glass Bottle
When a character in a game does a lot of damage but dies easily, he is called a "Glass Cannon".
Disco Elysium has the Glass Bottle archetype instead. It lies in the fact that you can die from a kick from a box or from being cursed at by a small red-haired scat. And in return you get nothing. You’ll just die.
My first run at Disco Elysium was on the Thinker archetype. "I’m new here. I’ll take the most classic type of detective – the one who is very smart,” I thought. And of the three pre-prepared archetypes, he is the weakest: he has 1 point of Fighting Spirit and 2 points of Health. As a result, if you don’t have magnesium in your pocket, your determination blows away like dandelion seeds and your detective collapses in a panic attack.
It’s best not to transfer this experience to a board game where there are no saves. We need a fuse that will prevent characters from dying immediately just because the player decided to assemble it the way he did.
There are two vital indicators in the game: health and morale. The first is equal to the value of the Fortitude + Physiology skill, the second is equal to the Willpower + Psyche indicator. That is, for some detectives one or both indicators may be equal to one. Conversely, there will be cases when vital signs go to ten.
We solved the second problem above when we remade the skills. Investing experience points now expands the pool of points, but does not increase its value. Therefore, the levels of vital signs depend only on abilities.
But what to do with "Glass bottles"? I took the minus health mechanic from Detective.
In the original version it works like this. Below zero on your vital sign scale there are minus bars, down to -12. If your health is between 0 and -5 you get +1 to the difficulty of checks and complications in movement and other actions, between -6 and -11 you are near death and only at -12 you die completely.
How to adapt it? Since we have a maximum life indicator of six, we will also reduce the death scale to six divisions. At marks from 0 to -2 the player also receives +1 to the difficulty of all checks, at marks from -3 to -5 – incapacity is added to this. And minus 6 is death.
Now the survival rate of our detectives has increased, and they may not rely so much on jars of magnesium and blisters with tablets.
Minus health also provides an opportunity to expand the narrative. Sending a character into a coma, introducing a new character trait to the victim – these are some of the many ideas that use the dying state.
But this is all in theory
This article is not exhaustive documentation. Before a full-fledged tabletop role-playing system, there is not enough specificity in the sections already announced, and new chapters in the chapters “equipment”, “combat system” and others.
The point I wanted to get across is: when moving from one medium to another, adapt. Always question the performance of a system in new conditions. And find new solutions. Or don’t find it if everything works like that.
One of my Character Sheet sketches. Even some of the changes I described here are not shown here. Made: long ago.