Most RPGs are based on the trait theory of psychology. Because of this they all carry with them some of the basic flaws of that theory. I once heard that this was true of wargaming as well, when we copy, we repeat someone else's mistakes. Well, this has been going on in RPG5 for the last 20 years, so I decided to try a different approach--the cognitive pyramid. Cognitive pyramid role playing is not based on trait theory. It instead is based on Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" theory. This is a theory that was developed in the 1940s to explain the order of problems that a person must solve to survive. These problems are organized in a hierarchy because if one does not figure out how to find food, then worrying about "fulfilling one's potential" really isn't important! Here is the pyramid hierarchy of needs as Maslow saw them... SELF ACTUALIZATION NEEDS ESTEEM NEEDS LOVE AND BELONGING NEEDS SAFETY NEEDS PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS Huh? (Most of you are saying). What does this mean? ... A good question. I had to learn this stuff in grad school, but if you did not, it can look a little arcane. Here's how it works. Before a person can worry about the top of the pyramid, he has to first "solve the problems" of the lower part of the pyramid. Starting at the bottom, we work our way up. The bottom of the pyramid are Physiological needs eating, sleeping, breathing, having a steady metabolic rate, etc. This basically means a person has to be alive before he can worry about living! The next type up consists of safety needs. This consists of having shelter, being safe from attack, fending off threats, maintaining dominance and status, etc. This means that once a person is alive they have to stay alive to worry about living! The next type holds love and belonging needs. These are about being around people, establishing close working relationships, and not having to fight to get a place at the fire. Most RPGs seem to miss the boat in regards to love. I think it is a word that makes most of us men a little nervous. Anyway the point of this type is that unless one can figure out how to be around people without anyone getting killed then one need not worry about fulfilling one's potential. The next type is of self esteem needs. At this point, Maslow begins to get all warm and fuzzy. These are the "feel good about yourself" needs. So if a person has a self concept like "I am a piece of shit. Everyone hates me, including myself!" this person is unlikely to take the risks required to get ahead in the world (In fact, this person probable needs counseling!) The top of the pyramid are self actualization needs, the fuzziest and most difficult to pin down one of all. At this point a person is trying to fulfill his "human potential" (what ever that is). Some people want to be famous actors, others want to be holy hermits, whatever rocks your boat is okay here. In fact, a person is likely to only rise as far as he has set his self actualizing goals. This is why people who think they are not good, don't self actualize. They set their goals far below their actual potential and remain frustrated underachievers rather than becoming brain surgeons. This is all nice and fine, but what has it got to do with role playing. Well, nothing yet, but with the addition of one little idea from Siggy Freud, it all comes together. Siggy thought that one could analyze the structure of a person's thought (id, ego, super ego). If we look at Maslow's hierarchy as a structure of a person's thought then the cognitive pyramid Is ready for use. Most RPGs have characters have physical characteristics, and skills. These are both associated with die rolls that a player must score under to succeed in doing a task. A person may try out any of the skills he possesses in short order without any thought to the fact that it takes time for us humans to remember. Standard RPGs, ignore the structure of a character's state of mind. I believe that a persons frame of mind is more important in determining what they can do than any number of skills. Consider the following. Sherlock Holmes and Watson are exploring a crime scene. Holmes has on his mind his kean perception (physiology); his knowledge of science (how he earns his living - safety); his single mindedness when confronted with a task (a love need - if I do it right, people will like me); his knowledge that his is the world's greatest detective (self esteem) and his desire to solve more and more complicated crimes (self actualization). Contrast this with Watson's mind set. Watson is thinking about how hungry he is (physiology); his worry that they will be attacked in this dark place (safety need); his desire to not look or say something stupid in front of Holmes - as he always does (belongingness need); how he is just a humble doctor who should have stayed in the army (self esteem); and finally how he really just wants to get married and have a family (self actualization needs). Given these two frames of mind, which one is more likely to find clues? Analyzing the above two "cognitive pyramids" is easy to do. If a person is thinking about something he can use that skill. If he is day dreaming or thinking of some skill that is unimportant in the persent context then he will not do very well. This cognitive pyramid forms a "gestalt" of what that person is thinking - their mental structure. If the gestalt fits the situation, the the person should have good success rolls, no matter what their skills are. On a 2d6 scale, a referee might Judge a players pyramid to yield the following success numbers ... Pyramid is exactly what the context calls for! 11 or less Pyramid is close to the context. 9 or less Pyramid sort of fits the context. 7 or less Pyramid doesn't really fit the context. 5 or less Pyramid is in another world and the referee is kind. 3 or less Holmes probably has an 11 or less roll to find clues while Watson would have a 7 or 5. Now if they were attacked (i.e. the context changed) Watson would probably have a 9, since he is worried about such events. Holmes would have a 7 or 5, and we would see why it is useful to keep Watson around. SIMPLIFIED PYRAMID For my purposes, Maslow's pyramid is more complicated than I need. I use the following pyramid ... SELF ACTUALIZATION NEEDS SOCIAL NEEDS SURVIVAL NEEDS This can be broken down even further into skills and self descriptive phrases (ala MGs) ... SELF CONCEPT SOCIAL SKILLS SURVIVAL SKILLS Imagine that this pyramid was broken down into a mental matrix like so ... Self Concept elements Social Skill elements Survival elements So a person can have 3 survival skills in mind at once. They can have 2 social skills in mind and only 1 self concept going. Using this format, Holmes and Watson might look like the following ... Holmes: "I am the greatest detective in the world." Concentration Counting Coup Perceptive Science Streetwise Watson: "I am a humble army doctor." Nervous Socially Aware Gun Skill Melee Skill Strong Obviously Watson is more prepared for a fight than Holmes. Watson is also likely to be more open to any social cues that are going on. But Holmes is still more likely to find clues, and see through any social facades that people put out. The elements used by players to form their mental pyramid come from a "matrix" of elements that are their repertoire of skills. A player has 5 self concepts or find sets to choose from, 10 social skills, and 10 (or 15, if your want to work a little harder) survival skills. So, Sherlock Holmes' repertoire might look like the following ... Sherlock Holmes Mind sets: 1. I am the greatest detective in the world. 2. Obsessed with the truth. 3. Morose and depressed. 4. Forget it, drive on. 5. The thrill of the chase. Social Skills Survival Skills 1. Concentration 1. Perceptive 2. Count Coup 2. Science 3. Play Violin 3. Streetwise 4. Disguise 4. Gun Skill 5. Social Graces 5. Melee Skill 6. Knowledge of London 6. Collect evidence 7. Know Scotland Yard 7. Oriental Drugs 8. Know the Underworld 8. Trance 9. How to avoid women 9. First Aid 10. Now to Insult 10. Gardening 11 - 15 If one chose to do so. As the game progresses the player can change his cognitive pyramid at will. But when a critical moment arises, the player may only change one element at a time. This makes It take time to get mentally right with whatever one is doing. I ran a cognitive pyramid game around 8 years ago in which the players were WWII soldiers who were infiltrating the German Front line in France 1944. At one point, the came across a shed. Their scout went to investigate. This player's whole mind set was geared towards perception and taking in everything that he came across. He opened the shed door. I looked at the Pyramid and told him that he was hit by a smell, fell back out of the shed and began to vomit. This was all involuntary, because his mind set did nothing to prepare him for what was there - In fact being so open caused him to retch. The next player to look in had as his mind set "The are all hunks of meat." This prepared him perfectly to be unmoved by the massacre that had happen inside the shed. In another game I had an civilian engineer trapped on Guam after the Japanese had taken it in WWII. The engineer had a repertoire created for peace time, so he was not at all prepared for the type of problems he was about to face. Not only that but we decided that he was an alcoholic (one social skill dedicated to hard drinking), a womanizer (one social skill to that), and prejudiced against the natives (one last social skill to that). Needless to say he had problems. Instead of using a complicated wounds system. The cognitive pyramid uses pain. When wounded, a player has one of his areas of the pyramid blotted out by pain. If untended to, the pain grows worse and can overwhelm one. Pyramid slots can also be blotted out by fatigue, mental confusion, sleep, etc. So the character's state of mind really is the most Important consideration out there. As a game progresses the players are allowed to change their cognitive repertoire, to reflect the things they have learned. Now in most RPGs, a character's repertoire of skills only gets larger over time. Not so in cognitive pyramid games. A character's repertoire never gets bigger than it is at the start. So a soldier who has played in 50 games is not godlike when compared to a green replacement. But the experienced soldier is likely to have a repertoire of skills and mind sets that best prepare him for war. So what happens when peace comes? Say we look at the player whose character saw everyone as "hunks of meat." When the war ended, what would he do with a mind set like that? He could go into organized crime, or more likely he would become a lawyer! Other characters would not have as easy a time of readjusting. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is very much a problem of readjusting to non wax life. As when playing war - cognitive repertoires change only slowly when back at home. CHARACTER CREATION Cognitive pyramid characters do not have statistics like other games have. Instead, a player makes up a character by his repertoire of cognitive elements. As with Matrix Games, players make these up. To start off with, the player decides what type of character he wants to make. This lets the player know roughly what goals the character has in life. These goals form the basis of the Mind Set or Self Concept repertoire. The player chooses five of these. They are short pithy phrases that briefly explain how the character is thinking. For example ... "They are all hunks of meat." "Fuck It, Drive on." "I hate Turks." "I want to be creative and productive." "I am what I am." (or better yet - I yam wad I yam) Next a player chooses 10 social skills or attributes to go in the character's social repertoire. Most of these skills can come from the ubiquitous skills lists found in so many games. I do not feel bound by such list, though. It seems okay to me if a person makes up all his skills, so long as they make sense, and are explained. He might try the following... Chivalry (i.e. a chivalry code) Streetwise Drama Horsemanship or anything else that a person could do socially! Finally the player chooses 10 (or 15 if you like) Survival skills. These skills consist of how a character makes his living and stays alive to enjoy it. Again one can pull them from a pre-made list, or make them up. For example ... Farmer Accounting Horsemanship Social Work Combat Rifleman or anything else that is vocational or combat oriented. As a game goes on, players may alter their repertoires one element at a time. Generally it is best if they add in elements of something they have tried in the game or that they are working on outside of the game (in a inter game MG for instance). The referee can also change the players repertoires in light of game developments. For instance, he can give a character psychological problems, physical pain, or fatigue. Keep in mind though that People generally lose their social skills and self actualizing goals before their survival instincts. COGNITIVE PYRAMIDS: A PRECURSOR OF MATRIX GAMES In retrospect, cognitive pyramid RPGs are a precursor to MGs. I worked on this approach for only a few months in around 1985. But the emphasis on words is there. The flexibility, and make it up as you go along quality is there, and the use of gestalt is there. My interest now is in what this weird idea might lead to now. One might try it out in a generalship game to judge how a general reacts to incoming information about the battle. It could also be used as a peace game to play out the actions and psychological development of military officers clawing their way up through the ranks during peace time - then suddenly thrust into the Crimean War! It works well for modern wars, or even spy games. What else? I don't know. Feel free to try it out as you will. Back to Experimental Games Group # 17 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com