Occams Razor

As mentioned in closing ceremonies at the last event, we're looking to revamp the Research system in response to some player concerns. We've come up with a number of options and are giving them here as a poll. Please select as many options as you like.

Also, I want to take this time to reiterate: Research is not the same as down time actions. There seems to be a bit of confusion about that. For things to be OR Canon, they have to happen during the course of a sanctioned event. Research is meant to provide information of various kinds to PCs, not to act as an avenue to perform actual actions between events.

Anyway!

The options have limited text space, so they're written in short hand. The full descriptions are here:

1) Research will never unlock production recipes, only information. Production recipes will be restructured to be released through hidden headers and the like.

2) Each individual researcher can only ever ask 1 question. The number of points at their disposal will determine the quality of the answer they receive.

3) Research questions will be assigned a difficulty--likely 1 for Common Knowledge, 5 for Obscure Knowledge, and 10 for Secrets. While no partial credit would be given for insufficient expenditures, anybody who contributes to a successful research will get a full and complete answer.

4) Genre will no longer be applied to Research Points--they will treated as entirely fungible and anyone can combine any set of points.

5) Research will never lead to mods. Ever. This would make sure that while the game is still a conspiracy game based on information, people without research skills won't be left behind in terms of mod finagling.

6) Researchers will be able to have a "common sense" check on research questions.

7) Status quo--leave things as they are.

I have some questions about the options before I can vote.

2) Say we research the same question twice in a row, hoping to add to the information we already have. Does the quality of the answer improve?

3) what if we don't have the resources at the time to put a full 5 or 10 points into a single bout of research? is the information received like option 2 until we devote the full amount of research to the question?

6) I don't understand what this means

7) How do things work now in contrast to the options to change?

Answers:

2) Probably not.

3) No. That's what friends are for--one thing we keep trying to do is encourage people to put more points into fewer questions.

6) People would have some way of bouncing a question off of staff before committing to it to spare themselves a "That skill still doesn't work that way" type of answer, or wasting time on a non-starter line of inquiry.

7) Well...there have been a couple Research primer posts...

2) Would we have an idea of what would be worth a question vs. not?

3) Would we know the value of the question we are asking beforehand? Or would it be possible to get an estimate on complexity and then start pooling? I really like this option, but I am worried about accidentally asking a more secretive question than otherwise suspected and wasting upwards of 5 research points.

2) I think that has to do with the "Common Sense" option.

3) While the values are locked down yet, I think the variable would be "Can you look it up," "Can you look it up if you try real hard," and "Is someone actively trying to hide this information."

That's one of the reasons we're trying to revamp the system. One facet of the equation, though, is that we don't want to hand hold people in a setting that's meant to be dark and treacherous.

We want the rules to be friendly and easy, but the decisions you guys make are in your hands. Part of this is squaring the two.

I like the professor's analysis.