A good GM can save a bad system. I played several new (for me) RPGS this weekend at the Emerald City Game Fest, and I had a ton of fun. In spite of the mechanics. These games had ridiculous off-kilter mechanics, but the GMs kept the games rolling and provided more than enough color to overcome the flaws in the systems.
The first game was octaNe. The scenario was a riff on Big Trouble In Little China, and I gather that's not the usual setting for the game, but it was a lot of fun. Towards the end, the silliness meter cranked up higher than it goes in Big Trouble In Little China (and that's saying something, isn't it?). Ranma and Sailor Moon both showed up in the final scene, a couple PCs got replaced by their evil twins, things just got... odd.
All of which certainly justifies using some light-weight system (instead of, say, Feng Shui, or d20). Yet, I can't say I cared for octaNe. The mechanics were very unbalanced. The pregen I was playing had a Daring rating of 2, and (since the other pregens didn't) that meant I almost always acted first, almost always succeeded at every task, and ended every conflict with more plot points than I started with.
I can't imagine building any sort of dramatic tension in this system, given that on any die roll the PCs have at least a 71% chance of winning... the whole conflict. Because I was going first every round, I was constantly having to reign myself in, force myself to leave something for the other PCs to fight (or do). It was not easy.
I feel particularly bad for one of the players in our group whose best stat was Magic. Magic goes last each round, _and_ you have to pay plot points to activate it. In theory this is somehow compensated for by being broadly applicable and open-ended, but given the level of narrative freedom that any of the other stats already has, I can't imagine how that could possibly compensate for such drawbacks.
To add insult to injury, his second best stat was Charm... which sits in the middle of the initiative order. Ever try to make a social roll in the middle of the round, _after_ you comrades have already killed half the enemies? Oh, sure, on a success the rules let you narrate a sudden peaceful resolution, but it will rarely pass the disbelief test. "After you ambush and behead most of them, I convince the survivors that there are non-violent solutions to our disagreement." Sure.
Painfully bad system. I think the exact same scenario would have been far, far better with Wu Shu, Risus, PDQ, 3:16, F#, or any of a dozen other "fast and fun" systems. I can't think of any reason why I would want to use octaNe's system. Admittedly, I've never read the rulebook, so maybe there's something I'm missing here... but I doubt it.
Honestly, I'd rather just have everyone roll a single die at the start of a conflict and highest roll narrates how the entire conflict wraps up. It'd honestly be better balanced. As it was, I'd always go first, and nearly always had the freedom to end the entire encounter on that one roll, so spreading that around to the other PCs would have had to be an improvement. I have never, ever in my decades of gaming experience, had to fight so hard to keep myself from abusing a system. The flaws in octaNe are so obvious and horrid, it's amazing it ever made it into print (and even more amazing that there are supplements and expansions out there).
And yet we had fun. The GM did a few really interesting things outside of combat that really saved the game from its own conflict resolution system. His previous plays of the system had indicated that there'd be a plethora of plot points sitting unused, so he came up with a way to make them meaningful. He got these really fancy chinese envelopes and stuffed them with "fortunes". Clues, plot hints, solutions to puzzles, revelations of background info, and some real game-changers like "your character is actually a ghost". So, between scenes, we cashed in excess points for clues, and they really helped coax us along several possible plotlines. He also prepped color photos of all the locations alluded to in the clues (and many of the villains), so there was plenty of instant flavor and atmosphere, and a sense that we were "on the right path" even though it was free-form. Without these clever structural cues being available, I imagine our narrative freedom would have imploded the plot before the end of the second conflict scene. Well done, Mr. GM! I may just have to steal your red envelopes for my own future campaigns.
Showing posts with label challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label challenge. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Friday, May 14, 2010
+1, -1, +1, -1 ≠ 0
Yet another post on the interesting dice pools of Warhammer Fantasy RPG 3rd Edition. This time, we'll be taking a look at Fortune and Misfortune dice (the white and black d6's that are half blank, and which represent situational modifiers).
We're going to start this one off with a graph that's not even Warhammer. Here's your standard graphs of normal rolls of ordinary 2d6, 3d6, or 1d20, the cornerstones of many a gaming system.
Now, let's say you were rolling one of these systems, and there were a lot things going on. The GM applies a bunch of modifiers, and they just happen to be an equal number of positive and negative modifiers. Maybe it's an archery roll, and you're shooting a top-quality bow (+1) with a magic arrow (+1) at a stationary target (+4), but it's kinda windy out (-2) and the sun is low on the horizon (-2) and it's beyond your first range increment (-2). What would that do to the graph of your odds to hit a particular target in one of these kinds of systems?
The answer, of course, is nothing. The graphs would look exactly the same, because the equal modifiers balanced out. Despite all these crazy details being in play, it ends up with you having the exact same odds of making the shot that you would normally if none of the modifiers were in effect. In most systems, conflicting modifiers just cancel each other out (sometimes literally, sometimes just effectively, but the result is the same). If a truly complicated situation comes up, you can end up doing a fairly large amount of math only to discover that the end result is the same, or very similar to, the unmodified default roll. I don't know about you, but I find that a little frustrating.
In contrast to that, Warhammer fantasy role-play involves less math, and makes sure the conflicting modifiers actually have an impact. Nearly all modifiers in Warhammer are abstracted out to either one Fortune Die, or one Misfortune Die. It's easy to remember, and the GM is free to tweak it on the fly. If something crosses your mind as a possible modifier, you throw another die into the pool. As you can probably guess from the tone of my description, I'm inclined to like this. I'm a sucker for elegant flexible systems, so I'll acknowledge that bias before going on.
One area I was worried about though, was whether or not these dice would effectively just cancel each other out. I know that in general with normal numbered dice, the more you put into a pool, the steeper the bell curve gets. I was a concerned and suspicious that a big handful of fortune and misfortune dice would just make the average result happen a lot more often.
Much to my surprise, the exact opposite occurs. Additional dice leads to greater variance in the dice pools.
On the right is a simple graph of a very small dice pool (3 Characteristics dice vs 1 Challenge Die). The blue line shows what happens when we add an equal number of Fortune and Misfortune dice to the pool. Odds of basic success and failure barely changed at all. Success dropped 2 points from 59% to 57%, a variation that's hardly going to be noticed. At the same time, however, the chance of scoring the important triple hammer uber-success line of most action cards nearly doubled, shooting up from 6% to over 12%.
How exactly that happened is better illustrated by the next graph,
which also shows the same die pool, but breaks out the possible results a little differently. Instead of showing the odds of scoring a particular result or higher, it gives the percentages for every discrete number of successes possible. Here we can see where those extra results are coming from. The odds of getting exactly one success have actually dropped rather far, but the improved odds of scoring the bigger hits have compensated for most of it.
Extrapolating from the 2 charts, we see that with the Fortune and Misfortune dice added, you're only 25% likely to score exactly 1 success, but you're 32% likely to score 2 or more successes. Without the extra modifier dice, the numbers are essentially reversed, and you're more likely to score 1 success than 2 or more.
Of course, as I noted in last week's articles about the Challenge Dice, looking at successes is only half the equation in Warhammer 3rd. To get the full picture, we have to look at boons. Here's a pair of graphs of a somewhat larger pool of dice. I've graphed what it looks like as an unmodified pool, as well as what it looks like with 1, 4, and 7 sets of matched Fortune and Misfortune dice.
Not that I have any desire to roll a 20+ dice pool that's been loaded down with 14 situational modifier dice (on top of the realistic pool of Stance, Characteristics, Skill and Challenge dice) but since the Warhammer probability tool made it easy for me to calculate those odds, I thought I'd share them. They do make for some interesting graphs.
All the graphs I compiled for all the pool sizes shared a few traits in common. In general, more black and white dice meant more extreme results. They increased the chance of triple-hammer successes, but also the chance of failure. They increased the odds of scoring banes, but also increased the odds of scoring 2 or more boons. Reckless dice (the red d10's) are a little more complicated, and probably deserve a blog post of their own, but the charts shown here are very representative of a wide array of pools composed using Conservative Dice or Neutral Dice. In many of the pools, adding more black and white dice (at least in the quantities likely to be seen in-game) would have almost no impact on the odds of scoring at least one boon, but would pump up the more extreme boon and bane results. I
t would accomplish this by reducing the odds of scoring a "boon neutral" roll where the boons and banes didn't come up, or came up in equal numbers and cancelled each other out. The odds of a single boon goes down at the same rate that the odds of multiple boons goes up.
Ultimately, the amount of variance provided by the Fortune and Misfortune dice wasn't huge. The green lines on these last too charts look impressive, but that represents 14 dice of modifiers being added to the pool. You're just not likely to use enough modifiers or dice to get to the point that the numbers really get interesting.
I find that I'm happy that the dice don't just cancel each other out, and that they lead to increased chance of the more extreme rolls occurring. At the same time, I'm a little let down that it takes so many dice to achieve these effects.
Warhammer 3rds die rolls get interesting because of the Boons and Banes, they provide the subtle nuance of the system, the extra oomph that other rules sets lack. Boons and banes are also more sensitive to large variance. There's very few cases in the default rules where getting 5 successes is functionally better than getting 3 successes (mostly just for first aid and recovery rolls). But, there's often something useful to do with a 4th or even 7th boon, and frequently some horrible side-effect waiting to be triggered by yet another bane. Looking at it from that perspective, there's plenty of reason to want boons and banes to be the most likely result of the Fortune and Misfortune dice. Sadly, they're not. Each such die has 2 Success or Failure symbols, and only 1 Boon or Bane symbol. They're twice as likely to impact success as boons. I see them as a step in the right direction (since a ton of modifiers actually does something, instead of just canceling out), but they strike me as being a little bit of a missed opportunity. If they had it all to do over again, I would encourage FFG (the publisher of Warhammer 3rd) to swap the Boons and Successes ratios on these dice. That way more modifiers on a roll would result in a more dramatically increased chance of side effects stemming from the roll.
One last observation (and this is where I stole the GM tip from for the start of the article): Let's say a PC at your table does something really risky, but which might just pay off. Swinging across a chandelier and kicking an enemy, for example. Throwing themselves against a foe on or near a clifftop. Muckraking and name-calling during a social event. Having seen these numbers, I'd feel pretty comfortable "rewarding" such behavior with both a Fortune and a Misfortune die - the net result will be about a percentage point or two against them, but with a big impact on the odds of making the likely result more extreme either way.
If you want to genuinely reward such behavior, and encourage it in the future, then I'd consider giving 2 Fortune and 1 Misfortune die to the action. That will probably help them out a bit, but also open up a small chance of it backfiring. I think this is a lot better than the example in the rulebook where a PC dives out of a tree at a beastman. In the book, they just give him two Misfortune dice (and no Fortune) because it's tricky and dangerous, which is just going to discourage your players from taking such colorful actions again in the future.
2 Fortune and 1 Misfortune is also fun because it mirrors the effects of being drunk. The "intoxicated" condition card gives 1 Fortune and 2 Misfortune. The subtle difference of these pools shades the distinction between bravery with a side of foolishness, or foolish with a side of bravery. Plus, if a PC is ever drunk, and the player does a good job of hamming it up with outrageous actions, they'd stand to roll 3 Fortune and 3 Misfortune total, which as we've seen does a great job of making something unusual (for good or ill) come out of the roll.
GM Tip: If your players do something crazy in character, that might just work but could also backfire, the proper reward for that is to add 2 white and 1 black die. It's mostly a benefit, but has a small chance of making things fail spectacularly.
We're going to start this one off with a graph that's not even Warhammer. Here's your standard graphs of normal rolls of ordinary 2d6, 3d6, or 1d20, the cornerstones of many a gaming system.
Now, let's say you were rolling one of these systems, and there were a lot things going on. The GM applies a bunch of modifiers, and they just happen to be an equal number of positive and negative modifiers. Maybe it's an archery roll, and you're shooting a top-quality bow (+1) with a magic arrow (+1) at a stationary target (+4), but it's kinda windy out (-2) and the sun is low on the horizon (-2) and it's beyond your first range increment (-2). What would that do to the graph of your odds to hit a particular target in one of these kinds of systems?
The answer, of course, is nothing. The graphs would look exactly the same, because the equal modifiers balanced out. Despite all these crazy details being in play, it ends up with you having the exact same odds of making the shot that you would normally if none of the modifiers were in effect. In most systems, conflicting modifiers just cancel each other out (sometimes literally, sometimes just effectively, but the result is the same). If a truly complicated situation comes up, you can end up doing a fairly large amount of math only to discover that the end result is the same, or very similar to, the unmodified default roll. I don't know about you, but I find that a little frustrating.
In contrast to that, Warhammer fantasy role-play involves less math, and makes sure the conflicting modifiers actually have an impact. Nearly all modifiers in Warhammer are abstracted out to either one Fortune Die, or one Misfortune Die. It's easy to remember, and the GM is free to tweak it on the fly. If something crosses your mind as a possible modifier, you throw another die into the pool. As you can probably guess from the tone of my description, I'm inclined to like this. I'm a sucker for elegant flexible systems, so I'll acknowledge that bias before going on.
One area I was worried about though, was whether or not these dice would effectively just cancel each other out. I know that in general with normal numbered dice, the more you put into a pool, the steeper the bell curve gets. I was a concerned and suspicious that a big handful of fortune and misfortune dice would just make the average result happen a lot more often.
Much to my surprise, the exact opposite occurs. Additional dice leads to greater variance in the dice pools.On the right is a simple graph of a very small dice pool (3 Characteristics dice vs 1 Challenge Die). The blue line shows what happens when we add an equal number of Fortune and Misfortune dice to the pool. Odds of basic success and failure barely changed at all. Success dropped 2 points from 59% to 57%, a variation that's hardly going to be noticed. At the same time, however, the chance of scoring the important triple hammer uber-success line of most action cards nearly doubled, shooting up from 6% to over 12%.
How exactly that happened is better illustrated by the next graph,
which also shows the same die pool, but breaks out the possible results a little differently. Instead of showing the odds of scoring a particular result or higher, it gives the percentages for every discrete number of successes possible. Here we can see where those extra results are coming from. The odds of getting exactly one success have actually dropped rather far, but the improved odds of scoring the bigger hits have compensated for most of it.Extrapolating from the 2 charts, we see that with the Fortune and Misfortune dice added, you're only 25% likely to score exactly 1 success, but you're 32% likely to score 2 or more successes. Without the extra modifier dice, the numbers are essentially reversed, and you're more likely to score 1 success than 2 or more.
Of course, as I noted in last week's articles about the Challenge Dice, looking at successes is only half the equation in Warhammer 3rd. To get the full picture, we have to look at boons. Here's a pair of graphs of a somewhat larger pool of dice. I've graphed what it looks like as an unmodified pool, as well as what it looks like with 1, 4, and 7 sets of matched Fortune and Misfortune dice.
Not that I have any desire to roll a 20+ dice pool that's been loaded down with 14 situational modifier dice (on top of the realistic pool of Stance, Characteristics, Skill and Challenge dice) but since the Warhammer probability tool made it easy for me to calculate those odds, I thought I'd share them. They do make for some interesting graphs.All the graphs I compiled for all the pool sizes shared a few traits in common. In general, more black and white dice meant more extreme results. They increased the chance of triple-hammer successes, but also the chance of failure. They increased the odds of scoring banes, but also increased the odds of scoring 2 or more boons. Reckless dice (the red d10's) are a little more complicated, and probably deserve a blog post of their own, but the charts shown here are very representative of a wide array of pools composed using Conservative Dice or Neutral Dice. In many of the pools, adding more black and white dice (at least in the quantities likely to be seen in-game) would have almost no impact on the odds of scoring at least one boon, but would pump up the more extreme boon and bane results. I
t would accomplish this by reducing the odds of scoring a "boon neutral" roll where the boons and banes didn't come up, or came up in equal numbers and cancelled each other out. The odds of a single boon goes down at the same rate that the odds of multiple boons goes up.Ultimately, the amount of variance provided by the Fortune and Misfortune dice wasn't huge. The green lines on these last too charts look impressive, but that represents 14 dice of modifiers being added to the pool. You're just not likely to use enough modifiers or dice to get to the point that the numbers really get interesting.
I find that I'm happy that the dice don't just cancel each other out, and that they lead to increased chance of the more extreme rolls occurring. At the same time, I'm a little let down that it takes so many dice to achieve these effects.
Warhammer 3rds die rolls get interesting because of the Boons and Banes, they provide the subtle nuance of the system, the extra oomph that other rules sets lack. Boons and banes are also more sensitive to large variance. There's very few cases in the default rules where getting 5 successes is functionally better than getting 3 successes (mostly just for first aid and recovery rolls). But, there's often something useful to do with a 4th or even 7th boon, and frequently some horrible side-effect waiting to be triggered by yet another bane. Looking at it from that perspective, there's plenty of reason to want boons and banes to be the most likely result of the Fortune and Misfortune dice. Sadly, they're not. Each such die has 2 Success or Failure symbols, and only 1 Boon or Bane symbol. They're twice as likely to impact success as boons. I see them as a step in the right direction (since a ton of modifiers actually does something, instead of just canceling out), but they strike me as being a little bit of a missed opportunity. If they had it all to do over again, I would encourage FFG (the publisher of Warhammer 3rd) to swap the Boons and Successes ratios on these dice. That way more modifiers on a roll would result in a more dramatically increased chance of side effects stemming from the roll.
One last observation (and this is where I stole the GM tip from for the start of the article): Let's say a PC at your table does something really risky, but which might just pay off. Swinging across a chandelier and kicking an enemy, for example. Throwing themselves against a foe on or near a clifftop. Muckraking and name-calling during a social event. Having seen these numbers, I'd feel pretty comfortable "rewarding" such behavior with both a Fortune and a Misfortune die - the net result will be about a percentage point or two against them, but with a big impact on the odds of making the likely result more extreme either way.
If you want to genuinely reward such behavior, and encourage it in the future, then I'd consider giving 2 Fortune and 1 Misfortune die to the action. That will probably help them out a bit, but also open up a small chance of it backfiring. I think this is a lot better than the example in the rulebook where a PC dives out of a tree at a beastman. In the book, they just give him two Misfortune dice (and no Fortune) because it's tricky and dangerous, which is just going to discourage your players from taking such colorful actions again in the future.
2 Fortune and 1 Misfortune is also fun because it mirrors the effects of being drunk. The "intoxicated" condition card gives 1 Fortune and 2 Misfortune. The subtle difference of these pools shades the distinction between bravery with a side of foolishness, or foolish with a side of bravery. Plus, if a PC is ever drunk, and the player does a good job of hamming it up with outrageous actions, they'd stand to roll 3 Fortune and 3 Misfortune total, which as we've seen does a great job of making something unusual (for good or ill) come out of the roll.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Filling up the tablespace
Last night I GM'd Warhammer 3rd for 6 players, 5 of whom had never even looked at the game before. It wasn't without its bumps, but overall I was pleased with the way it went.
6 PCs, with all their cards and sheets really eats up some table space. A friend showed up half way through the night, and we really couldn't free a place for him to sit at the table. Even before his arrival, I had to move my GM screen to a nearby empty chair, and I kept track of A/C/E pools in my head instead of with tokens because there wasn't room for them on the table. Likewise, I couldn't use a progress tracker for the beastman's morale like I wanted to, because most of the puzzle pieces ("event" markers in particular) were being used by players, and there wasn't much space to lay anything out.
We didn't get very far narratively, a tiny bit of role-playing followed by one encounter, and then another scant round of role-playing and wrap up after that. That was mostly about time constraints, though. Two of the 6 players had card problems and arrived late. Laying out the character sheets and explaining the rules ate up a big chunk of time after that. So, the actually adventure was only from about 7:45 to 10:00 pm. So while we didn't get far, the truth is that you really can't expect to get a lot done in 2 hours and 15 minutes with 6 players who are learning the new system. Second round of combat went around the table in about half the time of the first round, so it felt like we were getting over the learning curve pretty quickly. I think with a little more familiarity with system and characters, I think it'll run pretty well.
A few observations:
6 PCs, with all their cards and sheets really eats up some table space. A friend showed up half way through the night, and we really couldn't free a place for him to sit at the table. Even before his arrival, I had to move my GM screen to a nearby empty chair, and I kept track of A/C/E pools in my head instead of with tokens because there wasn't room for them on the table. Likewise, I couldn't use a progress tracker for the beastman's morale like I wanted to, because most of the puzzle pieces ("event" markers in particular) were being used by players, and there wasn't much space to lay anything out.
We didn't get very far narratively, a tiny bit of role-playing followed by one encounter, and then another scant round of role-playing and wrap up after that. That was mostly about time constraints, though. Two of the 6 players had card problems and arrived late. Laying out the character sheets and explaining the rules ate up a big chunk of time after that. So, the actually adventure was only from about 7:45 to 10:00 pm. So while we didn't get far, the truth is that you really can't expect to get a lot done in 2 hours and 15 minutes with 6 players who are learning the new system. Second round of combat went around the table in about half the time of the first round, so it felt like we were getting over the learning curve pretty quickly. I think with a little more familiarity with system and characters, I think it'll run pretty well.
A few observations:
- The system is pretty bloody, a direct result of the high success rate on attacks. Our fight lasted less than 3 complete rounds. This is a system where one mistake puts you in grave. None of the PCs went down, but most were within one more hit of being down, despite some great support and defensive actions being used at the right time. All 6 of the monsters went down, including the three who tried to escape.
- Speaking of high success rates, if my count is correct (and I could be off because I tallied after the game instead of during), we had 27 die rolls during the night, and only 6 of them failed to generate net successes. 78% success rate is pretty heroic for fresh starting characters.
- The abstract movement really shined. One of the PCs started the fight by launching an arrow while the others approached. If we were playing a game with a more rigid movement and range systems, his bit of showboating probably would have resulted in 2 or 3 rounds of just him firing arrows while everyone else closed ranks. Instead, everyone that wanted to was swinging swords in the very first round.
- The ratcatcher's SBVD (Small But Vicious Dog) is a total bad-ass. Peter sent the dog in after the main bad guy, and got a good roll that essentially pinned the Wargor (beastman leader) in place for the whole fight. They peppered him with arrows, and then the troll-slayer ran in to finish him off. But that little dog was what kept him from using his best moves. So, while I honestly think the fight would have been a little more exciting if they didn't pull that off, I can't fault the players for identifying their character's strengths and using them to the fullest. They did exactly what they were supposed to.
- The fortune refresh mechanic feels really different with a large group. When there's fewer PCs, you get your points back faster, so you're more motivated to spend them. Plus, the points accumulate based on clever actions and role-playing flourishes. But with a large group turns get long enough, you're less inclined to put those flourishes into your actions. Double-whammy. I suspect it probably works best with 3 or 4 PCs.
- I love the flexible nature of the white and black dice. Being able to throw reward and penalty dice onto actions so freely was sweet. The big nasty Beastman leader had a special battle cry action, and I narrated that it was so loud and nasty, it shattered limbs off of trees. It was total fluff, just trying to put some color into the action. Then I realized I could penalize all actions for a full round with a black die because of branches and pinecones falling on people. That was kinda fun.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Cop-Out on page 173
Savage Worlds is a great system, and Deadlands is a great setting, and both are great games. In general, they're very well written. That said, the sidebar on page 173 of Deadlands Reloaded is an egregious cop-out. I'm gonna give 'em some hell here, because that sidebar really got under my skin. It's the most frustrating part of the Deadlands Reloaded rulebook.
The first three paragraphs of said sidebar explain how they won't make any efforts to indicate what rank of PC while find any particular monster / NPC appropriately challenging. The game has this nice ranking structure for characters, Novice/Seasoned/Veteran/Heroic/Legendary, which corresponds to how many XP advances you've had, and dictates what level of Powers and Edges you have access to. Sure, two Veteran characters are gonna be very different, but they'll both be serious badasses at whatever it is they chose to specialize in, and they certainly won't have a Parry of 2. So the framework is there to have given monsters a ballpark rating. They chose not to use it for the monster section.
They claim it's for mostly philosophical reasons. They say it's more realistic for the Weird West to be populated by variable threats that don't conveniently correspond to the experience level of the party. They thumb their noses at D&D's challenge ratings and balanced encounters. Sometimes the PCs will massacre the baddies, and sometimes the PCs better just turn tales and run.
On one level, I agree with this sand-box approach, as it leads to far greater verisimilitude - the world is unfair and some challenges have no easy solutions. On the other hand, it seems kinda out of place - since so much of Deadlands is about capturing the feel of Western movies (admittedly, flavored with some supernatural evil) and random encounters of variable power is antithetical to that genre. Nearly every damn Western I've ever seen escalates to a gloriously violent climax. The heroes do sometimes get left for dead in scene one, but that's always set up for a revenge tale that ends with a fairer (but still challenging) fight in the final reel. It's never "That random encounter nearly killed us, we'd better not go back for round two!" No Western hero would ever do that.
But, if they really meant to go full-blown-oldschool-sandbox-and-random-encounter mode, I could respect it. Instead, come paragraph four, the sidebar undoes itself:
Oh, sure, I'll get the hang of it, at the cost of my first few sessions being clumsy and poorly balanced. Great. If this preceeded a 4-page monster section, I'd understand that you could eyeball the easier encounters quickly, and something akin to Challenge Rating isn't necessary. But no, the antagonist section it heads up is 77 pages long. Sure, there's several things in there I can push off till later in the campaign by means o' knee jerk reaction to their stat line, but I really don't want to have to read 77 pages in order to start planning my first session.
Why not include a short list of, say, the 6 monsters most appropriate to Novice characters. That would have saved the new GM a lot of trouble, and been pretty damn easy to fit in the book. Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 or 4 paragraphs they could have taken out to shoehorn it in.
The first three paragraphs of said sidebar explain how they won't make any efforts to indicate what rank of PC while find any particular monster / NPC appropriately challenging. The game has this nice ranking structure for characters, Novice/Seasoned/Veteran/Heroic/Legendary, which corresponds to how many XP advances you've had, and dictates what level of Powers and Edges you have access to. Sure, two Veteran characters are gonna be very different, but they'll both be serious badasses at whatever it is they chose to specialize in, and they certainly won't have a Parry of 2. So the framework is there to have given monsters a ballpark rating. They chose not to use it for the monster section.
They claim it's for mostly philosophical reasons. They say it's more realistic for the Weird West to be populated by variable threats that don't conveniently correspond to the experience level of the party. They thumb their noses at D&D's challenge ratings and balanced encounters. Sometimes the PCs will massacre the baddies, and sometimes the PCs better just turn tales and run.
On one level, I agree with this sand-box approach, as it leads to far greater verisimilitude - the world is unfair and some challenges have no easy solutions. On the other hand, it seems kinda out of place - since so much of Deadlands is about capturing the feel of Western movies (admittedly, flavored with some supernatural evil) and random encounters of variable power is antithetical to that genre. Nearly every damn Western I've ever seen escalates to a gloriously violent climax. The heroes do sometimes get left for dead in scene one, but that's always set up for a revenge tale that ends with a fairer (but still challenging) fight in the final reel. It's never "That random encounter nearly killed us, we'd better not go back for round two!" No Western hero would ever do that.
But, if they really meant to go full-blown-oldschool-sandbox-and-random-encounter mode, I could respect it. Instead, come paragraph four, the sidebar undoes itself:
"All that said, the GM should tweak encounters to fit the nature of his party. You'll have a good handle on what your party can manage after a few sessions, without the need for some sort of formula."WTF? So, realism trumps balance, except really you should balance it after all, and we aren't gonna help. I suspect the truth is that laziness trumps realism and balance both.
Oh, sure, I'll get the hang of it, at the cost of my first few sessions being clumsy and poorly balanced. Great. If this preceeded a 4-page monster section, I'd understand that you could eyeball the easier encounters quickly, and something akin to Challenge Rating isn't necessary. But no, the antagonist section it heads up is 77 pages long. Sure, there's several things in there I can push off till later in the campaign by means o' knee jerk reaction to their stat line, but I really don't want to have to read 77 pages in order to start planning my first session.
Why not include a short list of, say, the 6 monsters most appropriate to Novice characters. That would have saved the new GM a lot of trouble, and been pretty damn easy to fit in the book. Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 or 4 paragraphs they could have taken out to shoehorn it in.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
resource decisions in Scion
Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.
Scion has multiple types of resource-boosts, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I really like this multilayered approach that Scion takes to PC mechanical resources, though I have house-ruled a bit to smooth out issue 5. What I'd really like to see is this multilayered method applied to a game system that wasn't so damn fiddly.
Virtues have issue 2 and 5 - for most characters it's better to take the automatic success granted by a Willpower expenditure instead. Also, the successes granted by Virtues are huge at the Hero level, but fairly minimal at God levels.
Legendary ReRolls smack into issue 2 in the early campaign, and issue 4 in the late campaign. A mere Hero-level PC can rarely afford the reroll, but stands to reap great rewards from it when they do. A God-level PC has the resources to spend a legend point to reroll every failure, but finds them to rarely mean the difference between loss and victory.
Legendary Deeds, on the other hand, only trip over issue 5, being a pain in the butt to track between sessions. They scale in power as the character grows, so as to not have the long-term potency issues that the other Scion resources face. Overall, Legendary Deeds are my absolute favorite resource-decision from games I've played or run.
Scion has multiple types of resource-boosts, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I really like this multilayered approach that Scion takes to PC mechanical resources, though I have house-ruled a bit to smooth out issue 5. What I'd really like to see is this multilayered method applied to a game system that wasn't so damn fiddly.
Virtues have issue 2 and 5 - for most characters it's better to take the automatic success granted by a Willpower expenditure instead. Also, the successes granted by Virtues are huge at the Hero level, but fairly minimal at God levels.
Legendary ReRolls smack into issue 2 in the early campaign, and issue 4 in the late campaign. A mere Hero-level PC can rarely afford the reroll, but stands to reap great rewards from it when they do. A God-level PC has the resources to spend a legend point to reroll every failure, but finds them to rarely mean the difference between loss and victory.
Legendary Deeds, on the other hand, only trip over issue 5, being a pain in the butt to track between sessions. They scale in power as the character grows, so as to not have the long-term potency issues that the other Scion resources face. Overall, Legendary Deeds are my absolute favorite resource-decision from games I've played or run.
Graces in Continuum
Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.
Graces in Continuum mimic resource decisions, but don't really count. Either you're doing your part to support the Continuum (and thus have +10% on all rolls) or you're a screw-up. It's like a resource perpetually plagued by issue 4. On the other hand, it falls victim to issue 5 if you piss off the wrong NPC or get fragged too far.
If I ever run a Continuum game again, I suspect I'll house-rule in some way to make Graces a challenge-raising resource-decision mechanic. Not sure exactly what the details will be yet, but it's cooking on the back burner.
Graces in Continuum mimic resource decisions, but don't really count. Either you're doing your part to support the Continuum (and thus have +10% on all rolls) or you're a screw-up. It's like a resource perpetually plagued by issue 4. On the other hand, it falls victim to issue 5 if you piss off the wrong NPC or get fragged too far.
If I ever run a Continuum game again, I suspect I'll house-rule in some way to make Graces a challenge-raising resource-decision mechanic. Not sure exactly what the details will be yet, but it's cooking on the back burner.
Drama Dice in 7th Sea
Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.
Drama Dice in 7th Sea have problem 3. Specifically, the best option was almost always to save the Drama Dice for the extra XP. As a player, it quickly became clear that it was only worth spending them on die rolls if someone's life rested on this one roll.
The GM could easily create situations that you could only solve by spending Drama Dice, and that lead to players feeling robbed of advancement points. Few things suck like blowing the big roll, and then contemplating that the three extra "ones" you rolled could have been +50% XP for the session if you'd held on to them.
The solution I implemented to this was to allow each Drama Die spent to give 1 XP that could only be used for the skill or attribute which you rolled as you spent it. That way, there was a small benefit to hoarding your drama dice (since you could spend their XP on anything that night) but you'd have no regrets when rolling a drama die on a knack that wasn't maxed out. Knacks that were maxed out rarely required drama dice to be successful.
Drama Dice in 7th Sea have problem 3. Specifically, the best option was almost always to save the Drama Dice for the extra XP. As a player, it quickly became clear that it was only worth spending them on die rolls if someone's life rested on this one roll.
The GM could easily create situations that you could only solve by spending Drama Dice, and that lead to players feeling robbed of advancement points. Few things suck like blowing the big roll, and then contemplating that the three extra "ones" you rolled could have been +50% XP for the session if you'd held on to them.
The solution I implemented to this was to allow each Drama Die spent to give 1 XP that could only be used for the skill or attribute which you rolled as you spent it. That way, there was a small benefit to hoarding your drama dice (since you could spend their XP on anything that night) but you'd have no regrets when rolling a drama die on a knack that wasn't maxed out. Knacks that were maxed out rarely required drama dice to be successful.
Spell-Slots in D&D
Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.
Spell Slots in D&D add a lot of mechanical weightiness to the system, making the game very complicated. However, in the process, this largely avoids most issues. All but the weakest spells avoid problem 1. Only "save or die" spells really run afoul of problem 2. The only real resource-decision issue for the classic "Vancian" spell-system of D&D is problem #3: some spells are clearly the best option at their level.
A clever party can avoid issue 5 by resting often. Issue 4 only comes up if the PCs make camp after every encounter, which can be solved by a GM merely creating quests that have deadlines.
While individual spells could use a tweaking, the system as a whole has a certain (slightly complicated) charm. Rumor is things will be revised heavily in 4th Ed.
Spell Slots in D&D add a lot of mechanical weightiness to the system, making the game very complicated. However, in the process, this largely avoids most issues. All but the weakest spells avoid problem 1. Only "save or die" spells really run afoul of problem 2. The only real resource-decision issue for the classic "Vancian" spell-system of D&D is problem #3: some spells are clearly the best option at their level.
A clever party can avoid issue 5 by resting often. Issue 4 only comes up if the PCs make camp after every encounter, which can be solved by a GM merely creating quests that have deadlines.
While individual spells could use a tweaking, the system as a whole has a certain (slightly complicated) charm. Rumor is things will be revised heavily in 4th Ed.
Action Points in d20 Modern
Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.
Action Points in d20 Modern give a larger individual bonus and so avoid many of the problems Cyberpunk luck has. However, the default "points gained by level" option does hit issue 5. Since they give a bonus die, Action Points can sometimes have issue # 2, as well, but the multi-die scaling with character level makes this less problematic at levels 7+.
Perhaps ironically, you could increase the challenge to the player by increasing the rate at which Action Points replenished. A budget of Action Points per session would tempt the player, and empower them to have greater control over which rolls fail and which succeed. I'd suggest Action Points equal to 1/2 your character level (rounded up) each session, but with unspent points being wasted.
Full disclosure: I've only GM'd modern briefly, and it was several years ago. As such, I make no promises that the house-rule above works well with all possible Action-Point powered class abilities.
Action Points in d20 Modern give a larger individual bonus and so avoid many of the problems Cyberpunk luck has. However, the default "points gained by level" option does hit issue 5. Since they give a bonus die, Action Points can sometimes have issue # 2, as well, but the multi-die scaling with character level makes this less problematic at levels 7+.
Perhaps ironically, you could increase the challenge to the player by increasing the rate at which Action Points replenished. A budget of Action Points per session would tempt the player, and empower them to have greater control over which rolls fail and which succeed. I'd suggest Action Points equal to 1/2 your character level (rounded up) each session, but with unspent points being wasted.
Full disclosure: I've only GM'd modern briefly, and it was several years ago. As such, I make no promises that the house-rule above works well with all possible Action-Point powered class abilities.
Luck Points in Cyberpunk 2020
Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.
Luck Points in Cyberpunk fall afoul of issues 1 and (surprisingly) 2. +1 to the roll per Luck point isn't terribly potent, but it is mitigated by the ability to spend multiple points on a roll. However, that advantage is trumped by the fact you expend this limited resource only before rolling. You can be left feeling the point was wasted because of either a particularly good or bad die roll.
The "solution" to this, should the GM wish to increase the challenge to the players, is actually to make Luck Points better by allowing post-roll expenditures. Allowing the players to spend Luck after rolling makes each Luck Point matter. Should I blow three points to succeed now, or save them to potentially make 2 or 3 rolls succeed later in the session?
Luck Points in Cyberpunk fall afoul of issues 1 and (surprisingly) 2. +1 to the roll per Luck point isn't terribly potent, but it is mitigated by the ability to spend multiple points on a roll. However, that advantage is trumped by the fact you expend this limited resource only before rolling. You can be left feeling the point was wasted because of either a particularly good or bad die roll.
The "solution" to this, should the GM wish to increase the challenge to the players, is actually to make Luck Points better by allowing post-roll expenditures. Allowing the players to spend Luck after rolling makes each Luck Point matter. Should I blow three points to succeed now, or save them to potentially make 2 or 3 rolls succeed later in the session?
observations re: Mechanical Decisions
Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge.
Those two posts discuss the need for challenges in RPG scenarios, and what does or doesn't constitute a challenge. This post addresses some observations regarding one sub-set of challenge: the Mechanical Decision.
Here's five inter-related observations/criticisms, in regards to mechanical and resource decisions:
Those two posts discuss the need for challenges in RPG scenarios, and what does or doesn't constitute a challenge. This post addresses some observations regarding one sub-set of challenge: the Mechanical Decision.
Here's five inter-related observations/criticisms, in regards to mechanical and resource decisions:
- Resources that grant only a small bonus rarely generate much fun. +5% or so is weak enough it doesn't feel like your choice really impacted things much. As discussed previously, the bigger the decision, the more fun it tends to generate.
- Resources with randomized effects (especially those with the possibility of granting no advantage) do not add to challenge and rarely add to fun. Spending the resource and getting nothing makes you want to shy away from similar decisions in the future.
- Resources with multiple affects or options, provided they aren't balanced against each other, face a similar issue. Over time you'll find a "correct" use for them, and rarely divert from it.
- Resources that replenish too easily offer little challenge. The correct decision is almost always to spend them, as you'll get them back very soon.
- Resources that replenish too slowly offer heightened challenge, yet do so at the cost of fun. If you're regretting the expenditure for multiple sessions, you'll probably be gun-shy next time.
Decisions = Challenge
This is part two of a thought. First read Dice ≠ Challenge for the groundwork of why challenging the players is important in RPGs, and why simply making them roll dice doesn't cut the mustard.
What challenges a player is forcing them to make hard decisions. There's multiple ways this can occur and two main categories such decisions fall into.
The first category is flavorful decisions. Do I work towards the group's goals, or strive at cross-purposes? Should I fight to the bitter end, or flee? Do I ask the hard questions, or let him off easy? Frontal assault, or sneak in under cover of night? The Lady, or the Tiger?
These are fun story-driven decisions, and the bigger the impact of the decision, the more fun it tends to generate. Deciding what your character had for lunch is only fun under specific narrow circumstances. Deciding how your character will confront the villain is almost always fun and exciting.
The second category is mechanical decisions. Here I'm mostly talking about Force Points, Luck Points, Drama Dice, Legendary Deeds, etc. These are resources a player can expend to influence die-rolls, or make events occur. Things like spells and powers (that can be used a number of times per day or per session) also fall into this category, though they are sort of a hybrid between the two. As with flavorful decisions, these mechanical ones generate more fun the bigger the impact the decision has on the game.
While almost all roleplaying scenarios allow for flavorful decisions, not all RPG systems incorporate mechanical decisions.
I prefer lighter rules-systems myself, but experience has shown me that most players get great enjoyment from mechanical decisions. The game that first opened my eyes to this was 7th Sea.
What challenges a player is forcing them to make hard decisions. There's multiple ways this can occur and two main categories such decisions fall into.
The first category is flavorful decisions. Do I work towards the group's goals, or strive at cross-purposes? Should I fight to the bitter end, or flee? Do I ask the hard questions, or let him off easy? Frontal assault, or sneak in under cover of night? The Lady, or the Tiger?
These are fun story-driven decisions, and the bigger the impact of the decision, the more fun it tends to generate. Deciding what your character had for lunch is only fun under specific narrow circumstances. Deciding how your character will confront the villain is almost always fun and exciting.
The second category is mechanical decisions. Here I'm mostly talking about Force Points, Luck Points, Drama Dice, Legendary Deeds, etc. These are resources a player can expend to influence die-rolls, or make events occur. Things like spells and powers (that can be used a number of times per day or per session) also fall into this category, though they are sort of a hybrid between the two. As with flavorful decisions, these mechanical ones generate more fun the bigger the impact the decision has on the game.
While almost all roleplaying scenarios allow for flavorful decisions, not all RPG systems incorporate mechanical decisions.
I prefer lighter rules-systems myself, but experience has shown me that most players get great enjoyment from mechanical decisions. The game that first opened my eyes to this was 7th Sea.
Dice ≠ Challenge
A thought regarding RPG theory: Without a challenge, you're not playing a game. Instead you're probably just socializing. Not that there's anything wrong with socializing - I've even been known to cancel entire game sessions so we could all just chew the fat instead.
While people play games for a variety of reasons, one common reason is for the intellectual challenge. Another common reason to play is the sense of accomplishment that comes with triumphing over a challenge (whether intellectual or otherwise).
That said, dice do not equal a challenge. I've always more-or-less believed this, but running the MOC sequel the other night really drove it home. As entertaining as the game session was, the dice had nothing to do with that. Simply setting a high difficulty number does not challenge a player (or even the PC they play). You end up rolling, and luck (or fate) determines your success or failure. There is no challenge to the player unless there's something they could have done to alter that die roll. It's not a challenge - it's barely even an event.
It doesn't matter how high you set the target, if the player can't chose to do something to increase the odds of them succeeding, that roll does not provide a challenge. Some folks get a kick from rolling, but rolls without challenge eventually grow tiring. Rolling and getting the only result that would let you accomplish your goal gives the illusion of a challenge, and thus the fleeting illusion of a victory - but the other 9 or 19 or 99 results where you were robbed of victory (and could do nothing about it) just feel hollow.
Applying big consequences to a die roll may feel like a challenge, but that's an illusion. If the player is powerless to mitigate those consequences, it's not a challenge, it's just a random and arbitrary "act of god". Dice alone are not enough. It's easy to lose sight of that when designing adventures.
While people play games for a variety of reasons, one common reason is for the intellectual challenge. Another common reason to play is the sense of accomplishment that comes with triumphing over a challenge (whether intellectual or otherwise).
That said, dice do not equal a challenge. I've always more-or-less believed this, but running the MOC sequel the other night really drove it home. As entertaining as the game session was, the dice had nothing to do with that. Simply setting a high difficulty number does not challenge a player (or even the PC they play). You end up rolling, and luck (or fate) determines your success or failure. There is no challenge to the player unless there's something they could have done to alter that die roll. It's not a challenge - it's barely even an event.
It doesn't matter how high you set the target, if the player can't chose to do something to increase the odds of them succeeding, that roll does not provide a challenge. Some folks get a kick from rolling, but rolls without challenge eventually grow tiring. Rolling and getting the only result that would let you accomplish your goal gives the illusion of a challenge, and thus the fleeting illusion of a victory - but the other 9 or 19 or 99 results where you were robbed of victory (and could do nothing about it) just feel hollow.
Applying big consequences to a die roll may feel like a challenge, but that's an illusion. If the player is powerless to mitigate those consequences, it's not a challenge, it's just a random and arbitrary "act of god". Dice alone are not enough. It's easy to lose sight of that when designing adventures.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)