Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance

[Hussar]

Yes, but that's not very helpful, as "game" is broadly defined.

It includes things with well defined rules and set win conditions. (Chess)

It includes thins with well defined rules, but no clearly defined win conditions. (D&D, though sometimes the rules get a little fuzzy)

It includes running around like a maniac in a yard with your friends. (Yes, Calvinball is still a game)

True, but, even within those three things, you still have commonalities - an agreed upon structure for determining valid and invalid actions. Even Calvinball has this, to some degree, since you simply come up with new structures each time.

And those structures are important. Without those structures, you cannot progress any further. Even in things that aren't games, like, conversation for example, you still have agreed upon structures for carrying out that activity - I stop talking when you start, I listen to you when you talk, I don't scream in your face or various other unacceptable things. In an RPG, you have an agreed upon framework for determining the results of actions that are important. Imbalanced rules obviously affect that framework and make progressing in the activity more difficult. Talking to someone who has no idea of how conversation should work is pretty difficult (and anyone who's tried to talk to a two year old can attest to that). Trying to play an RPG with imbalanced mechanics biases results. The more imbalance, the more biased the result.

Take conversation as an example. Let's add an imbalanced mechanic to conversation. Any time I touch my ear, you have to agree with what I am saying. Can we carry out an enjoyable conversation? Well, perhaps, if I only touch my ear after I know that you already agree with my point, but, more often than not, that's going to lead to a pretty frustrating conversation.

RPG's are no different.

 

[Campbell]

Yes, but that's not very helpful, as "game" is broadly defined.

It includes things with well defined rules and set win conditions. (Chess)

It includes thins with well defined rules, but no clearly defined win conditions. (D&D, though sometimes the rules get a little fuzzy)

It includes running around like a maniac in a yard with your friends. (Yes, Calvinball is still a game)

Is there anything in particular that we gain as a community or from a design standpoint by coming up with a particular concrete definition of what is and is not a role playing game? When I sit down to play Apocalypse World, Demon - The Descent, Munchkin, Fiasco, Diplomacy, Magic, Don't Rest Your Head, or any given version of Dungeons and Dragons does it really matter to the play experience if what particular category other people consider the game to fall under? Should designers sit down to create role playing games or should they just design games with a particular play experience in mind?

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that we should stop putting our particular conception of role playing games on a pedestal. Enjoy the games you like. don't play the games you don't. There is nothing particularly special about role playing games, board games, card games, story games, etc. Honestly with the amount of conceptual bleed between categories are the categories particularly helpful?

 

[prosfilaes]

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that we should stop putting our particular conception of role playing games on a pedestal. Enjoy the games you like. don't play the games you don't. There is nothing particularly special about role playing games, board games, card games, story games, etc. Honestly with the amount of conceptual bleed between categories are the categories particularly helpful?

Certainly the line between roleplaying games and board games seems quite useful to some people; when people come to a board game meetup, they expect different things then if they came to a roleplaying meetup. In those terms, one of the major differences between RPGs and board games is that RPGs take at least 4 hours a night and extend over multiple nights and even the longest board games top out at 4-6 hours.* One of my friends specifically likes the concrete nature of board games over the more flexible nature of roleplaying games. And there's not that much bleed between the two in practice; the board games I see played would never be mistaken for RPGs anymore then chess would. Maybe Resistance, but that lacks defined characters--you can't even describe what you look like! (It's less weird in context, since your picture also reveals whether you're a spy or not, but it's quite a hindrance to roleplaying.)

If I were asked whether Dominion is a card game, my response would depend on the context; board gamers might get a flat yes, whereas for Magic or Bridge players I might say that it's more like a board game, because the essential difference between a card game and board game in a lot of cases is deeper then cards versus board.

* Stuff like D&D Encounters take some of the parts of "extend over multiple nights" away, for better or worse; one shots take away all of the "extend over multiple nights", but seem limited to conventions--they're not marketed to consumers much. There's exceptions on the board game front--old-school war games could take weeks to play, with the Campaign for North Africa notoriously claiming 1200 hours for a complete play, and the 12-hour 18OE was successfully Kickstarted last year, but they're currently even more esoteric then single-night RPGs.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Is there anything in particular that we gain as a community or from a design standpoint by coming up with a particular concrete definition of what is and is not a role playing game? When I sit down to play Apocalypse World, Demon - The Descent, Munchkin, Fiasco, Diplomacy, Magic, Don't Rest Your Head, or any given version of Dungeons and Dragons does it really matter to the play experience if what particular category other people consider the game to fall under? Should designers sit down to create role playing games or should they just design games with a particular play experience in mind?

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that we should stop putting our particular conception of role playing games on a pedestal. Enjoy the games you like. don't play the games you don't. There is nothing particularly special about role playing games, board games, card games, story games, etc. Honestly with the amount of conceptual bleed between categories are the categories particularly helpful?

Different types of games are different. Design elements that make a roleplaying game fun, frex, are going to be different than the ones that make storytelling games fun. Conversation will get pretty cumbersome if you always have to list the 83 particular games you're talking about when you're saying "this element is good for this type of game." The downside of course is that people get tetchy when their favorite game is not categorized the way they want.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I thought the article started out making some perfectly fine points. If Wick is interested in playing or designing a game where genre physics matter the most and telling a good story is the result he is after, then sure, worrying less about balance and more about stuff like making sure Riddick smashes skulls with cups, is feasible way to go. He knows what he likes and how he wants to achieve it. That is all good. Where it goes off the rails for me is he then leaps to basically saying that is how all RPGs should be designed and takes it even further by claiming any that don't are not actual RPGs. This takes him to the outrageous conclusions that D&D itself isn't an RPG. I think part of the problem is how he defines roleplaying (where is he is too focused on what is unique to roleplaying games rather than just attempting to describe what RPG means to most people in the hobby itself). Any definition of RPG that excludes D&D is kind of strange because I suppose it means that RPGs were not invented until well after the hobby began. I feel like he starts with a statement that people intuitively will agree with "chess is not an RPG" to get to a conclusion people will intuitively disagree with. Part of the problem may be his line of reasoning where he talks about how no matter what you add to chess, it still remains a board game. I think at a certain point though, if enough people were using chess to RP and it developed in the same way D&D did, then, in an alternative historical timeline, you could see chess BECOMING an RPG in the same way that D&D BECAME an RPG out of its wargaming roots. By the time D&D comes along, it and its enthusiasts are clearly doing something much different than war games.

 

[Manbearcat]

Balance is a paramount concern in any game where the players (GM included) expect for there to be relative parity between participants' ability to affect the outcome of micro-conflicts and impose their will on the trajectory of the game's evolving plot.

Balance can be expressed solely at the outset of the game (the PC build stage for TTRPGs) with power level disparity evolving organically as the game progresses. The system can be organized such that it (intentionally) tightly constrains balance throughout the entirety of the play experience. The system can be organized such that the PC archetypes are unmistakably unbalanced within the shared fiction, but the players of the lower tier characters possess metagame assets which level the playing field. The system might promote, or the GM may him/herself possess, principles which work toward (primarily if not exclusively) framing the PC(s) into archetypal conflicts that they can handle (this becomes more difficult in cooperative group games where noticable PC asset - especially breadth [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] 's primary point - imbalance exists).

If you don't care about these things so much, or you feel the GM has mandate to "impose spotlight sharing" by circumventing the action resolution mechanics thereby dictating outcomes, and/or you have concerns that supersede the priority in the first paragraph, then there are plenty of systems and groups that cater to those interests.

 

[Janx]

Yes, but that's not very helpful, as "game" is broadly defined.

It includes things with well defined rules and set win conditions. (Chess)

It includes thins with well defined rules, but no clearly defined win conditions. (D&D, though sometimes the rules get a little fuzzy)

It includes running around like a maniac in a yard with your friends. (Yes, Calvinball is still a game)

I remember losing that debate. There's a thread in here about the definition of Game.

and as Umbran proved back then, it does not have to have rules per the dictionary definition and example of "childhood games" referring to just playing with blocks.

I think for adults, Game does get re-defined as structured activity for recreation. Pool is a Game. D&D is a game. Hockey is a game. Halo is a game. Games come in boxes or have rules to an adult.

But by the book, darn near anything "for fun" is a game.

 

[Umbran]

Take conversation as an example. Let's add an imbalanced mechanic to conversation. Any time I touch my ear, you have to agree with what I am saying. Can we carry out an enjoyable conversation? Well, perhaps, if I only touch my ear after I know that you already agree with my point, but, more often than not, that's going to lead to a pretty frustrating conversation.

Note, as I say this, that I have already stated that balance can be important to a game, at least for some players. I'm on record as being okay with balance. I am not against balance.

Let's add a balanced mechanic to conversation. Any time anyone touches their ear, everyone else in the conversation has to agree with what is being said.

I submit this won't lead to any better result than the imbalanced mechanic. So, it isn't the *balance* that was the issue with the mechanic in question. In fact, this is not an example of how imbalance is bad, but more an example of how having mechanics for the sake of having mechanics is bad - adding well-defined rules does not a good game make.

 

[Umbran]

I think for adults, Game does get re-defined as structured activity for recreation. Pool is a Game. D&D is a game. Hockey is a game. Halo is a game. Games come in boxes or have rules to an adult.

True. And how many adults playing non-professionally toss out rules in an ad hoc manner when they become unfun? I suspect the answer is "lots". This feeds into the next point....

But by the book, darn near anything "for fun" is a game.

And there is a point to mentioning this, beyond being picayune. Consider the two statements:

1) These extra rules and fiddly bits (like equipment lists and weapons tables) shouldn't be there because it is a ROLE PLAYING game, and those aren't roleplaying.

2) These extra rules and fiddly bits must be there because it is a role playing GAME, and without them it isn't a game.

I submit both are equally false.

Role playing is not an end, in and of itself. Neither are structured rules. Fun, enjoyment of leisure time, is the desired goal, no? And it isn't like one thing is fun for all people. Thus, attempts to theoretically proscribe what is or isn't a game, or role playing, must be done carefully, if at all, because doing so may tromp on fun, which is the real practical goal.

Which is to say, don't worry so much about whether it is role playing, or game - worry about whether it will be fun, and for whom it will be fun.

 

[Celebrim]

Let's add a balanced mechanic to conversation. Any time anyone touches their ear, everyone else in the conversation has to agree with what is being said.

I largely agree with the direction you've been taking your argument in the last few posts, but you accidentally weaken it here with a strawman response to Hussar's strawman example, because your example of a balanced mechanic isn't actually balanced either.

Balance requires both sharing and limits on the utilization of narrative resources, and your mechanic though more about sharing than Hussar's still leads to the opposite of sharing and has no limits. RPGs over the years have developed a lot of ways to balance their mechanics. None ever tried, "Any time anyone preforms some trivial out of game activity they get infinite in game resources.", because it's trivial obvious this wouldn't be balanced. A moments thought about the game you just created would cause you to realize that it would drive a game toward a situation were everyone was holding their ear and arguing about whose statements had priority. This is occurring because there is still a lack of balance. We still haven't arrived a 'fair' game, which I would argue is a pretty good synonym for what is meant by 'balance'.

A closer approximation to balanced control of the narrative might be, "During play, one player is randomly chosen to hold the golden ticket. During any one proposition, the holder of the golden ticket can declare the outcome of the fortune mechanic bypassing normal resolution rules (or set the stakes, or narrate the outcome, depending on the mechanics of the game), but if they do so, they must hand the golden ticket to the player on their left."

Similar mechanics evolve naturally in games if you watch 6 year olds play. They'll naturally develop on their own the notion of taking turns to share the narrative in the hopes that this will lead to balance. Of course, that breaks down because even though it might involve equal sharing, it imposes no limit on how the narrative may be shaped which tends to not be balanced.

Since your straw man mechanic is also imbalanced, you can't really draw any conclusions from the fact that it produces no better result than an imbalanced mechanic. Balance is still the problem with both examples.