Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)

Edit: here is the link -- http://pulsiphergamedesign.blogspot.com/2014/06/game-design-interesting-decisions.html


I thought this phrase deserved a topic of it's own. Most of the problems people raise on these boards are hypothetical with regards to my own games. I just don't have those problems. Over the years though, a few times, I've ran into players who seem to me to be seeking wish fulfillment and are not really that excited about interesting decisions.

So let me define how I am interpreting the terms.

Interesting Decisions
1. Campaign choices including interactions with significant NPCs. The idea of seeking goals outside the dungeon.
2. Tactical choices while inside combat. The proper use of various abilities and powers.
3. Strategic choices. Picking when and where you want to fight your battles. Setting up an enemy prior to battle. Laying traps.
4. Puzzles & Traps. Players actively trying to solve mysteries and puzzles. Keeping notes about history and legends found in the dungeon.
5. Resource management. Thinking about the usage of scarce resources. The proper planning and packing for an adventure.

Wish Fulfillment
1. The pleasure of seeing your enemies destroyed in spectacular fashion.
2. Being viewed by the inhabitants of the setting as a great hero. Given respect.
3. Choices driven more by flavor and effect rather than tactical or strategic importance.
4. Handwaving stuff that is often kept off camera in a high cinematic movie.


I'm far more concerned in my own game with the former than with the latter. My players always start out as nobodies in the grand scheme of things. Even at 20th level, they've just entered the ranks of the first order, they are not the sole dominant force in the setting. It's kind of like the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. Even if you are a 20th level character, there is still Tensor, Mordenkainen, Elminster, and so forth.

My players do draw satisfaction as they advance up which is part of the wish fulfillment idea so it's not 100% mutually exclusive. They get there though by a very hard road. They are tested as players to the limits of their imagination and resourcefulness. So my game tends to be very hard. Most of my players think other games are easier. I'm not a killer DM though. I'm just hard and my players are able to meet the challenge. For me that is part of the fun of the game. It is for many players too.

Those players I mentioned above though do not want the "stress" of fighting for their lives even in game. They don't mind combat but they really just want to demonstrate their prowess and use their powers and look cool. It's a different ethic I think and I've mostly over time avoided those players because I don't think I'm giving them what they want.

Thoughts and discussion?




P.S. Hard in my book does not equate to unfair or inconsistent for the record.

Why can't you have both? Why can't the former lead, at least some of the time, to the latter?

It seems completely fake and silly to pretend there's a real "versus" in there. It's a blatant false dichotomy, to me, at least. I can see an individual group trending one what or other more, but that's because there's only a limited amount that can happen in any given setting. Certainly I know that my game definitely offers both.

I'm not sure what the "sole dominant factor" stuff is about. That doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything.

EDIT - I will be very honest and say that I straight up don't believe you when you claim that your game is "very hard". Every time I've seen a RPG campaign where the DM or writer claimed that, it wasn't actually true, because RPGs are RPGs, not pure games. All the ones I've seen fell into:

A) Unfair/Killer DM-style stuff (like Tomb of Horrors - not actually "hard", merely very lethal, which is quite different).

or

B) Fiddly/complicated/tedious/lengthy/demanding of note-taking, but not actually challenging.

or rarely

C) Fair but highly lethal play which borders on the "Killer DM" realm, but doesn't involve as many "GOTCHAS!" (though it probably will involve some). It's not actually hard though.

RPGs in general just are not something that is easy/hard, and approaching them as if they are tends not to be fruitful, IME.

I also don't really buy that there are players who totally don't want to be challenged. I do buy that were are groups where the players don't like to see TPKs frequently and are disinterested in scenarios where their PCs have a high chance of dying, but that doesn't align with hard/easy. You can have something that's very simple and straightforward, and even fair, and yet ultra-lethal and thus no fun to them, or you can have something where the chances of death of PCs is absolute zero, but the chances of failure at what they are doing is extremely high unless they play it very smart (trying to thwart someone who probably can't kill them, but does want to achieve something that they oppose, for example).

Ruin Explorer said:

Why can't you have both? Why can't the former lead, at least some of the time, to the latter?

It seems completely fake and silly to pretend there's a real "versus" in there. It's a blatant false dichotomy, to me, at least. I can see an individual group trending one what or other more, but that's because there's only a limited amount that can happen in any given setting. Certainly I know that my game definitely offers both.

I'm not sure what the "sole dominant factor" stuff is about. That doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything.

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Most of these versus are not either or but rather emphasis. I'm certain as I said above that my players enjoy some wish fulfillment. I do see though a potential for conflict. There are people who do not want to struggle mightily but instead mostly want to appear heroic in a grand style without that much effort. So in those cases, forcing interesting decisions on those people blocks them from their wish fulfillment.

Let's be clear here we are talking about wish fulfillment in terms of character concept. If you wish your game had interesting choices and you get interesting choices that is a form of wish fulfillment but not the one I'm talking about here. The terms as in most cases are imperfect.

Emerikol said:

Most of these versus are not either or but rather emphasis. I'm certain as I said above that my players enjoy some wish fulfillment. I do see though a potential for conflict. There are people who do not want to struggle mightily but instead mostly want to appear heroic in a grand style without that much effort. So in those cases, forcing interesting decisions on those people blocks them from their wish fulfillment.

Let's be clear here we are talking about wish fulfillment in terms of character concept. If you wish your game had interesting choices and you get interesting choices that is a form of wish fulfillment but not the one I'm talking about here. The terms as in most cases are imperfect.

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I instinctively don't buy it. I mean, I know about half my group loooooves to appear heroic, but if there wasn't any effort involved, they're not particularly excited by it. The other half particularly love tricky decisions and particularly in-combat tactics, but also enjoy being heroic.

Together they loooooove a challenge that INTEREST them, they don't necessarily enjoy a challenge that BORES THEM TO DEATH. Examples, for my main D&D group:

1) A detailed and fiddly word-puzzle where they have to wander a dungeon, get words together to work out clues and finally solve some sort of wordy nonsense.

One of the players will love this. The rest will be asleep and drooling on their character sheets (at best). The difficulty isn't the problem. They're all high-paid problem-solving professionals who deal with far harder mental challenges on a daily basis. The boring-ass nature of the challenge is most assuredly a problem.

2) How are we going to rob this highly-secure magical vault in this bank in the centre of town (for good and justice! )?

They will all love this. Doesn't matter is it's really tricky to work out how to do it. Doesn't matter if even I can barely come up with a solution. They will engage with it and love it.

Similarly with fights. An easy, boring fight, in which they get to demonstrate how awesome they are (like most 2E fights, in my experience). Yawns all round. A hard, complicated but extremely interesting fight, they'll love it. A tedious, technically-hard wear-down fight that doesn't really challenge them but their dice and their mental endurance? Nope.

You see what I'm saying here? I don't think that it's really easy/hard that's the issue, it's interesting/boring. I think you've confused boring and challenging.

I think it's also relevant that wish fulfillment is relatively easy, but interesting choices can be hard for the DM to create. Especially if you're writing an adventure for publication as opposed to your own players.

And then, of course, there's the DMs who do neither.

Savage Wombat said:

And then, of course, there's the DMs who do neither.

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Oh god they do exist, don't they?

Usually it's because they're doing wish-fulfillment for themselves, in my experience.

As for easy, I think the problem is that whilst wish-fulfillment is easy, if you just keep doing it, without anything to leaven it, the game is likely to get very boring very quickly! Interesting choices can indeed be hard, especially as players often entirely subvert the choice you've set up. I tend to try to set up an interesting, complex, fluid situation and let it roll (D&D is definitely NOT the best game for this, in any edition, but it's manageable in 2E and 4E and probably 5E - in 3E it's doable but require so much prep that it breaks my soul).

There is also the variant of the DM who is looking for wish fulfillment and not so interested interesting choices... (edit, just ninjaed)

Most players probably bring some of each to the table. I can even think of one who brought a lot of each...but yes, sometimes there is a tension when a player just sort of wants or asserts something, and doesn't really get that it has to come sort of naturally in game. I do see that this perspective highlights something I have dealt with as a DM over the years.

Sounds like a re-hash of CaW vs CaS. Which is to say, nothing more than broadly implying that anyone who doesn't play in the OneTrueWay is a spoiled child.

I'm all about bringing on wish fulfillment as a result of interesting choices.

Tony Vargas said:

Sounds like a re-hash of CaW vs CaS. Which is to say, nothing more than broadly implying that anyone who doesn't play in the OneTrueWay is a spoiled child.

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Seriously? You couldn't think of a way to phrase that without trying to start a heated argument?

And I don't think it sounds like a re-hash of CaW vs CaS at all.