Consequence and Reward in RPGs

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I like to compare trends in the game industry as a whole with individual segments, such as RPGs. Often what’s happening “out there” will turn up in the individual segments, if it hasn’t already.



The most striking trends in hobby games is the movement from games of consequence to games of reward. Players in hobby games in the past have been expected to earn what they received, but more and more in hobby games we’re seeing games that reward players for participation. This is a general trend in our society, where schoolkids expect rewards for participation rather than for achieving excellence, and in fact excellence is sometimes not allowed!

Reward-based games have always been with us via party games, and to a lesser extent family games. Virtually no one cares who wins a party game, and all of these games tend to be very simple and fully accessible to non-gamers. Mass-market games are much more reward-based then consequence-based. Hobby gamers might call them “not serious”.

A reward-based game is more like a playground than an organized competition, and the opposition in reward-based games tends to be weak/inconsequential/nonexistent.

Home video “save games” have always tended to make video games a “you can’t lose” proposition. We’re moving beyond that.

With free-to-play video games dominating the mobile market and a strong influence in other markets, designers reward players so that they’ll play the game long enough to decide to spend money in it. We see players who blame the game if they fail, who expect to be led around by the hand, even in games that people purchase.

Tabletop RPGs generally involve an unspoken pact between the players and the GM, so that the players can have fun and not have to worry too much about losing. But the game tends to be more enjoyable when there’s a possibility of failure - the triumphs are sweeter. The co-creator of D&D (Gary Gygax) put it this way in one of his last publications (Hall of Many Panes) "...a good campaign must have an element of danger and real risk or else it is meaningless - death walks at the shoulder of all adventurers, and that is the true appeal of the game."

Classic games involve conflict. Many so-called games nowadays do not involve conflict, and there are role-playing "games" that are storytelling exercises without much opposition.

Reflections of this trend in RPGs often involve abundant healing and ways to save characters from death, such as the ridiculous Revivify spell, usable by a mere fifth level cleric in D&D Fifth Edition, that brings back the dead on the field of battle.

35 years ago, a young player GMed his first game for our shared-characters campaign. He really wanted to ensure the players had a good time - so he gave out lots of magic items. We wanted players to earn what they received, so myself and the other lead GM waved our hands after the adventure and most of those items disappeared.

I’m a senior citizen, in my roots a wargamer, and I prefer games of consequence. But that's not where the world is headed.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

 

[pemerton]

We are discussing D&D here, not a completely different games. You're bringing in oranges to a discussion about apples. The stat differences I mentioned affect game difficulty in D&D. It's entirely irrelevant if a completely different game is more or less difficult.

You've completely missed my point. The system maths of 3E is utterly different from 3E. Hence the idea that players have an easier time of it because their PCs have higher stat bonuses makes no sense.

Stat bonuses are higher in Moldvay Basic than in OD&D - does that in-and-of-itself make Moldvay Basic an easier game? Comparing stat bonuses without comparing the whole of the system maths is just silly.

In first edition your typical fighter probably didn't have a 15+ in Con, so didn't even get a bonus to hit points.

<snip>

The 1e fighter probably didn't do extra damage (a 15 being +0)

You are positing a 1st ed AD&D fighter with no better than 15 STR and no better than 14 CON. I posit that this is an atypical AD&D fighter.

 

[S'mon]

Generally I'm following along with your posts, and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s - but just like there are bits of his where I differ, likewise here I only kind-of agree. It depends on "fail", at least in part - overall I think it is more common in contemporary RPGing to have non-death failure conditions, and these don't necessarily make the game easier.

And then there are also non-die-roll-based failures...

I was just using death as an example of failure. And I was only addressing the case of death/fail
by random roll, not other causes of failure, because that's what Hussar was talking about. He said that games where random death/fail was likely weren't harder, and I disagreed. They feel subjectively harder to me.

Hope that helps.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], thanks for the reply.

 

[Lanefan]

Heck, you want to see the easiest way to show all this? Take any 1e module. Straight up convert it to 3e - same monsters and same number of monsters, and then run a 3e group through it at the suggested levels for the 1e module. It's a death trap. You will TPK the party every single time. 20 kobolds in a single encounter in a 1e module for 1st level becomes an instant death encounter for any 1st level 3e party.

20 kobolds would wipe out most 1st level parties in 1e as well assuming the party only had 4 characters a la the typical 3e party.

But - one thing to note is that the expected party size in 1e was about double that of 3e.

As the levels get higher you become more correct - an adventure for levels 5-8 in 1e would probably wipe out levels 5-8 in 3e on a direct conversion. However, a direct conversion does the 3e characters a disservice in that where 1e effectively has about a 10-level range or so (other than Tomb of Horrors there's not much published for levels beyond about 10) 3e has at least a 15-level range and is designed for 20. Thus, a 5-8 party in 1e is well over halfway through the range while a 5-8 party in 3e hasn't really got to halfway yet.

3e can be nasty in terms of simply killing characters. I don't think that's really in dispute.

Where 3e is not as nasty as 1e-2e is in level drains, item loss or damage, spell interruption, and some other things that while they maybe don't kill a character can make its life much less pleasant. And while 3e is quite good at killing characters, revival is automatic (no resurrection survival roll) if the character (i.e. player) so desires and the funds can be found.

Lan-"4e went back more to relying on monsters having some strength in numbers, and 5e kept going this way"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

You've completely missed my point. The system maths of 3E is utterly different from 3E. Hence the idea that players have an easier time of it because their PCs have higher stat bonuses makes no sense.

Uh... [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] - there's something a bit wiggy about that middle sentence there...how can 3e be different from 3e...???

You are positing a 1st ed AD&D fighter with no better than 15 STR and no better than 14 CON. I posit that this is an atypical AD&D fighter.

Depends on rolling method (any take-'em-in-the-order-rolled method, for example, can easily give numbers like these and far worse) and-or racial adjustment. A Dwarf or Part-Orc Fighter with Str 15 and Con 14 would be a rather pathetic specimen but those numbers look pretty good on an Elf. On a Human...I've seen many worse, but 16-15 would probably be a better average.

Lan-"I'm playing a Dwarf War Cleric right now (as in, I just got home from the game) with Str 16, Con 15, and Wis 16 rolled using a much more generous system than the 1e DMG has, so it can happen"-efan

 

[Libramarian]

No one is denying that it existed though. We know that it existed. What's being denied is that this was the only way that games were played back in the day and that now we only game to participate, rather than be challenged.

You (and [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] and [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION]) were in several posts pursuing the claim that classic gamist D&D doesn't exist as an internally consistent and functional way to play.

As I said earlier classic D&D has many interesting analogies with the game of poker, which I hope you agree has a significant skill component. The skills stressed can broadly be called risk management and adaptability. If you turtle, you're jeered by the other players and you get fewer XPs and magic items. But if you're rash, you bust and have to start over. You play the hand you're dealt as best you can to tilt the odds in your favor. This involves a little bit of mathematical calculation, metagame knowledge, a feel for the fantasy subgenre informing the game, reading the DM and coolness under pressure. It certainly feels challenging and some are certainly better at it than others.

The purpose of randomness in D&D is just as it is in other games, to present the players with unexpected situations so they have to pay attention and adapt rather than get into a rut of using the same strategy over and over. You would be amazed at how closely classic D&D players pay attention.

In my games if I describe the temperature as being unusually cool in an area, the players know that's a bad sign that must be considered before deciding to explore further. In a Tekumel game it could be the smell of cinnamon. This being more than just flavor text requires a game system with relatively "unbalanced" monster encounters. Otherwise it doesn't really matter how the players respond to this clue and an opportunity to distinguish by player skill is lost.

Random chargen is like being dealt a hand in poker. No one is going to give you unearned props for being dealt a good hand. The purpose is to provide an interesting wrinkle to your early game decisions. A player of mine once commented that they almost don't like rolling a really good new character, because of the extra pressure to be cautious and keep them alive. Similar to someone going "oh crap" when they're dealt a pair of aces. With a complicated, deterministic chargen system, most gamist players just look up the good builds online (that's certainly what I do). Totally boring from a gamist perspective.

I think usually players who want to reduce randomness really just want a situation where if they win, they can act like they've earned it, but if they lose, they can blame the DM or adventure designer for setting them up for failure by not following the encounter building guidelines or the treasure by level rules or whatever. This kind of win-win play I think can fairly be said is to gamism what participationism is to narrativism.

 

[Libramarian]

I guess my bottom line is that there is more than one way to make a RPG require more than just participation, and the likelihood of irreversible PC death is only one of those ways.

I can agree with that.

But I think you were exaggerating earlier as to the gulf between the classic D&D style and typical contemporary D&D play. There's tons of dungeoncrawling in the WotC APs and my sense is most groups play to "beat" them in a basically gamist way.

 

[pemerton]

I think you were exaggerating earlier as to the gulf between the classic D&D style and typical contemporary D&D play. There's tons of dungeoncrawling in the WotC APs and my sense is most groups play to "beat" them in a basically gamist way.

My thoughts on this probably suffer from too much spectating at a distance, but I'll share them anyway - it's a messageboard, right!

I think that there are two salient differences between contemporary AP play and the "classic" style.

(1) The idea of "story" plays a much bigger role now than it once did, which creates pressure towards completion (and hence designing for being able to be completed), which puts pressure on the system - both mechanics and GMing techniques - to reduce lethality vs PCs.

One manifestation of this I remember discussing with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] a while ago (and in my memory he agreed with me, but maybe my memory has some bias in it!), is when the tactical challenge becomes something like a suduko - "Given that this is beatable by a standard party, and we're a standard party, what's our optimal resource deployment configuration to beat it" - which I think is pretty different from what Luke Crane describes.

Milestone levelling would be another. Yet another is building in failsafes for clues and other info to make sure the "plot" doesn't become derailed. Some of this will take the form of "success at a cost" (if you need the GM to feed you the clue, you suffer for it or get some weaker version of it), but personally I find "success at a cost" as an alternative to failure (whether classic "blank wall" failure or indie "failing forward") to be a rather insipid device.

(2) The actual process of play, I think, involve less exploration and less exploitation of fictional positioning. So the idea of making one's own luck has less purchase. (Passive perception scores would be just one marker of this, and by no means the most significant.)


As I said, these are an outsiders' views, so maybe wrong in part or in whole. But that's how it looks to me.

 

[pemerton]

You would be amazed at how closely classic D&D players pay attention.

In my games if I describe the temperature as being unusually cool in an area, the players know that's a bad sign that must be considered before deciding to explore further. In a Tekumel game it could be the smell of cinnamon. This being more than just flavor text requires a game system with relatively "unbalanced" monster encounters. Otherwise it doesn't really matter how the players respond to this clue and an opportunity to distinguish by player skill is lost.

This prompted three thoughts in me.

The first was to remind me of Luke Crane's rather critical remarks about Expert D&D and AD&D compared to Moldvay Basic. The basic point of his criticism is that, as the "world" gets too big and rich, the capacity of the players to extract meaningful clues out of the GM's narration (eg coldness, the smell of cinnamon, etc) becomes increasingly lessened.

The second was to make me think of all the "silly" D&D monsters - not just the plain silly ones like mimics and ear seekers, but the meta-silly ones like pseudo-undead and gas spores. This sort of set up is just primed for the GM to play those sorts of expectation-thwarting tricks, and yet if they're taken very far at all they disrupt the conventions on which their place as tricks rather than outright abuses depends. The traps which trigger when the square 10' in front is pressed are analogous. Is classic D&D inherently liable to (which is not at all to say "desined to") a spiral into meta-driven instability?

The third was to remind me of why I'm not that good at, and don't really enjoy, this classic playstyle. I don't find it interesting enough to maintain the requisite attention, either as GM or player. (Needless to say that's an observation about me, not remotely a cricitism of the style.)

 

[S'mon]

My thoughts on this probably suffer from too much spectating at a distance, but I'll share them anyway - it's a messageboard, right!

I think that there are two salient differences between contemporary AP play and the "classic" style.

(1) The idea of "story" plays a much bigger role now than it once did, which creates pressure towards completion (and hence designing for being able to be completed), which puts pressure on the system - both mechanics and GMing techniques - to reduce lethality vs PCs.

One manifestation of this I remember discussing with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] a while ago (and in my memory he agreed with me, but maybe my memory has some bias in it!), is when the tactical challenge becomes something like a suduko - "Given that this is beatable by a standard party, and we're a standard party, what's our optimal resource deployment configuration to beat it" - which I think is pretty different from what Luke Crane describes.

Milestone levelling would be another. Yet another is building in failsafes for clues and other info to make sure the "plot" doesn't become derailed. Some of this will take the form of "success at a cost" (if you need the GM to feed you the clue, you suffer for it or get some weaker version of it), but personally I find "success at a cost" as an alternative to failure (whether classic "blank wall" failure or indie "failing forward") to be a rather insipid device.

(2) The actual process of play, I think, involve less exploration and less exploitation of fictional positioning. So the idea of making one's own luck has less purchase. (Passive perception scores would be just one marker of this, and by no means the most significant.)


As I said, these are an outsiders' views, so maybe wrong in part or in whole. But that's how it looks to me.

I would agree with you.
One big problem with the standard adventure style you see from Paizo etc is that it is set up as tourism plus challenge; where the penalty for failure is death and an early end to potentially a 6 volume £90 Adventure Path. The players are expected to send their PCs through the tour, a kind of richly detailed pre written story, defeating each challenge which comes up.

When they fail to defeat a challenge the story ends and everyone loses. But if the challenges don't threaten defeat then they feel pointless.

Whereas in classic DnD play the players are free not to engage any particular challenge and defeat is just part of the game and the unfolding narrative - another adventurer group will be delving Greyhawk soon enough.