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

 

[Maxperson]

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.

The math is not utterly different. It's only somewhat different. fighters in 1e have their ability to hit an AC get better by one per level. Fighters in 3e have their ability to hit an AC get better by one per level. Orcs in 1e have an AC of 6. Orcs in 3e have an AC of 13(AC 7 in 1e). Already it's 5% easier to hit an orc in 3e.

All that's left are stats, hit points and damage. A 16 strength for both and a 14 con for both, which are reasonable stats to roll in both systems. 4d6 drop the lowest being the same in both systems. This gives the 3e fighter +3 to hit and damage and the 1e fighter +1 to damage only. Now the 3e fighter is 20% more likely to hit. But wait, that's not all! 3e fighters have feats and weapon focus is staple. Now he's 25% more likely to hit.

Let's look at hit points and damage next. The 3e fighter with the 14 con will have 12 hit points. The 1e fighter with the 14 con will have 1-10 hit points, averaging 5. The 1e orc will have 1-8 hit points, averaging 4. The 3e orc will have 2-9 hit points, averaging 5. The 3e fighter using a greatsword will be doing 2d6+4 damage, which is guaranteed to kill the orc if it has average hit points WITH a minimum damage roll, and will kill a max hit point orc with an average roll. The 1e fighter has a to roll a 3 better with a two handed sword to kill an orc with average hit points, and will fail to kill an orc with max hit points with an average roll.

On the flip side of things the 1e orc is far more likely to take out a 1e fighter with a single attack roll. An average amount of damage from a 1e orc is 40% likely to take out a 1st level 1e fighter. An average amount of damage from a 3e orc cannot take out the 3e fighter, even if we remove his con bonus.

One on one, a 1e orc is far more dangerous to the 1e fighter than vice versa.

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.

Only if you are cheating. 4d6 drop the lowest is not likely to give stats much better than that. In fact, it's more likely to give stats worse than those., than better than those, which STILL leaves the 3e fighter with bonuses.

 

[billd91]

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.

The trends toward less final lethality has been ongoing since well before the APs. And it happens in homegrown campaigns as well as published module campaigns. Players become attached to their PCs - in D&D more than any other RPG I've personally played - and want to keep playing them. Sometimes it's because of their story, but I've noticed since 3e came out, it seems to be because of mechanical concept at least as often. When it started to become en vogue to plan out a build over multiple levels, that also put some pressure on the game to allow that player to actually play out that advancement and that has absolutely nothing to do with story.

I think this may ultimately have a lot more to do with the ultimate conceit of D&D right from the beginning - that this is more than a war game, more than just a game that enables a player to play a single token on a game board, but a game in which the player plays a distinct PC with their own values and agendas. The ability to improve in the first place fosters a sense of connection between the PC and the player whether it's via better gear, wealth, or XPs and levels. All of those encourage a player to play the game longer, to achieve more with their play, and that alone will spark the trend toward being able to keep going with that same character and amass new achievements. Games, particularly casual computer games, have developed that to a pretty sophisticated science.

 

[Ratskinner]

Not quite. People still game to...well, just game. The changes I'm noticing have come from the other end, at the design level. Possibly said changes have been driven by external societal influences (which is what the OP seems to want to say without really saying it) but I more suspect they've been driven internally, by designers listening to player complaints about bad events - death, level loss, item loss, etc. - happening and then removing or mitigating said bad events from the game without looking far enough to realize that it's the bad events that make good events stand out as anything special.

Lanefan

IME All such "difficulty" factors have lain in the hands of the DM. I have met and played with killer DMs in every edition but 4th (but that could easily be from lack of data in 4e). I also met and played with "story" or "soft" DMs in every edition. For that matter, have played with more than one DM across multiple editions and variants. The things we are discussing all seem to go with the DM, not the system. Occasionally, they will change by campaign, even within the same system.

I submit that it is not a difference in the rules sets, but rather a simple and profound change in the culture/population of players and DMs and what they are looking for in an RPG experience. I don't see anything in 5e that would or could stop me from running an ultra-deathly fantasy Vietnam game. I also don't see many people who would want me to runit that way.




Sent from my LG-TP450 using EN World mobile app

 

[Hussar]

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.

That's not quite what I meant.

Obviously in a game where you have a higher random chance of dying, then the game probably feels harder. Fair enough. I'd agree with that.

What I disagree with is the notion from the OP that increased random deaths somehow equates to better play - which is what the OP is saying. That we've gone from award based play where players are awarded for excellent play, to reward based play where you accrue your benefits simply from participation.

Random effects can certainly increase difficulty, but, like the "winning the lottery" analogy, doesn't have anything to do with play being somehow inferior (which is what the OP is positing) to how people played in the past. There are far too many examples of players being rewarded for blind luck to be able to say that previous games "awarded" play.

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.

I won't speak for anyone else, but, if that's the impression I gave, I'm sorry. That is very much not what I meant.

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.

See, that's the trick. The purpose of randomness in D&D is to increase difficulty. Fair enough. But, since it's random, it cannot be completely accounted for (and sometimes not at all) and players are rewarded or punished for doing nothing. Remember, the point of this thread isn't to poop on old school play. I loves me some old school play. But, the point of this thread was to claim that new games aren't challenging.

Which isn't true.

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.

But, again, remember the context of the thread. The OP is claiming that players are "earning their awards" in old school play. What, exactly, did your player do to "earn" that fighter with an 18/54 strength and it's attendant 10% XP bonus?

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.

And, now, we get to the heart of things. The dismissive condescension towards other play styles. Nice. Reducing randomness means that you just "act" like you've earned it? Snort. I'll tell that to every Chess champion I meet. The funny thing is, the gamist in me LOATHES random chance. How is that a test of your skill when random chance sends all your skill wahoonie shaped? Sorry, but, for me, in a truly gamist game, it's a test of my SKILL, not a test of my dice fapping skills.

 

[Hussar]

The math is not utterly different. It's only somewhat different. fighters in 1e have their ability to hit an AC get better by one per level. Fighters in 3e have their ability to hit an AC get better by one per level. Orcs in 1e have an AC of 6. Orcs in 3e have an AC of 13(AC 7 in 1e). Already it's 5% easier to hit an orc in 3e.

All that's left are stats, hit points and damage. A 16 strength for both and a 14 con for both, which are reasonable stats to roll in both systems. 4d6 drop the lowest being the same in both systems. This gives the 3e fighter +3 to hit and damage and the 1e fighter +1 to damage only. Now the 3e fighter is 20% more likely to hit. But wait, that's not all! 3e fighters have feats and weapon focus is staple. Now he's 25% more likely to hit.

Let's look at hit points and damage next. The 3e fighter with the 14 con will have 12 hit points. The 1e fighter with the 14 con will have 1-10 hit points, averaging 5. The 1e orc will have 1-8 hit points, averaging 4. The 3e orc will have 2-9 hit points, averaging 5. The 3e fighter using a greatsword will be doing 2d6+4 damage, which is guaranteed to kill the orc if it has average hit points WITH a minimum damage roll, and will kill a max hit point orc with an average roll. The 1e fighter has a to roll a 3 better with a two handed sword to kill an orc with average hit points, and will fail to kill an orc with max hit points with an average roll.

On the flip side of things the 1e orc is far more likely to take out a 1e fighter with a single attack roll. An average amount of damage from a 1e orc is 40% likely to take out a 1st level 1e fighter. An average amount of damage from a 3e orc cannot take out the 3e fighter, even if we remove his con bonus.

One on one, a 1e orc is far more dangerous to the 1e fighter than vice versa.

Only if you are cheating. 4d6 drop the lowest is not likely to give stats much better than that. In fact, it's more likely to give stats worse than those., than better than those, which STILL leaves the 3e fighter with bonuses.

Funny thing is, you're STILL ignoring a lot of factors. That 3e PC you are talking about, has at best (since you've given him a 16 strength and 14 Con, a what, 12 Dex? So, +1 AC to his Scalemail armor of 14 (no shield since you've given him a two handed weapon). So, he's got a 15 AC. Mr. Orc has a +4 attack bonus (and crits 15% of the time) meaning he hits 50% of the time for 2d4+4 damage.

Now, our 1e fighter has banded and shield (since you gave him a longsword) and, let's be honest here, likely at least a 14 Dex (since you gimped his Str and Con, 6 shots gives him a pretty decent chance of at least that), giving him an AC of 2. Mr. Orc has a THAC0 of 19. He hits on a 17 or better for a d8 damage.

So, 1e orc hits half as often for half as much damage. While it's true that the 3e fighter likely has more HP, he doesn't have FOUR TIMES as many HP. True, the 1e orc can drop the fighter in one round. But, that orc has to get incredibly lucky. He's got a 20% chance of hitting and he's only got a 50% chance after he hits (presuming our fighter only has average HP). Our 3e orc is hitting 50% of the time, with a 15% chance of critting. And, his crit deals 4d4+8 points of damage - more than enough to drop our 1st level 3e fighter.

IOW, the 3e orc has just about the same chances of one shotting our 3e fighter, and a MUCH greater chance of dropping the fighter over time.

Put it this way. Over ten rounds of combat, the 1e orc hits twice, pretty much guaranteeing dropping the fighter but only just. Over the same period of time, the 3e orc hits 5 times, once with a crit - meaning our 3e orc, has effectively hit six times. Not only killing the fighter but probably killing his buddy too.

So, no, your analysis doesn't really carry a whole lot of weight AFAIC. You're ignoring all sorts of details, and massaging the situation.

 

[Lanefan]

IME All such "difficulty" factors have lain in the hands of the DM. I have met and played with killer DMs in every edition but 4th (but that could easily be from lack of data in 4e). I also met and played with "story" or "soft" DMs in every edition. For that matter, have played with more than one DM across multiple editions and variants. The things we are discussing all seem to go with the DM, not the system. Occasionally, they will change by campaign, even within the same system.

I'm not talking about what individual DMs do to the system, whatever edition they might be using. I'm talking about how the system/edition functions and what it does or doesn't do when run purely stock, by RAW, in the way the designers intended (which can usually be gleaned from their commentary/forewords/etc. in the rulebooks).

I submit that it is not a difference in the rules sets, but rather a simple and profound change in the culture/population of players and DMs and what they are looking for in an RPG experience.

Where I posit that this change - which I agree has happened - has been driven from the design side rather than the consumer side. The culture has changed from the top down rather than the bottom up.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

I'm not talking about what individual DMs do to the system, whatever edition they might be using. I'm talking about how the system/edition functions and what it does or doesn't do when run purely stock, by RAW, in the way the designers intended (which can usually be gleaned from their commentary/forewords/etc. in the rulebooks).

Only trick with that is, as far as AD&D goes, is that AD&D is so schizophrenic in how the game was presented. Was it all Mega-dungeons or heavy plotzy games? Well, it depends entirely on how someone game into the hobby. As I said earlier, Dragonlance is pretty much just as old as Greyhawk.

And, let's be honest, virtually no one runs AD&D by stock, by RAW, in the way the designers intended. It's nearly impossible to do so.

Where I posit that this change - which I agree has happened - has been driven from the design side rather than the consumer side. The culture has changed from the top down rather than the bottom up.

Lanefan

Whereas I posit that no change has actually happened at all. All that has happened is that the design side has recognized different consumer sides and instead of telling people how the game "should" be played and trying to enforce play styles onto the hobby, they've largely stepped back and simply presented a system and put it back in the hands of the consumers as to how the game should be played.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm not sure what you mean.

I think of clever exploitation of fictional positioning as one (important) aspect of RPGing, but that view is contentious (see, eg, this thread).

And I'm not sure what you have in mind by "extra steps"? Which steps? And additional to what?

To me, "clever exploitation of the fictional positioning" sounds like an over complicated way to say "role playing". Because the way I've always played and learned to play through multiple editions was to make the most of what you were given in order to come out with the best possible outcome. Since that by-and-large meant using skills, setting knowledge, gained information to best utilize the terrain, NPCs and overall situation we were in in a complete and whole manner via our character, it sounded a lot like what I consider "role playing".

That is, something you do before you roll the dice in order to sway the situation in your favor.

 

[Sunseeker]

You (and @shidaku and @prosfilaes) were in several posts pursuing the claim that classic gamist D&D doesn't exist as an internally consistent and functional way to play.

Woah there man I never said that. I complained initially about the "back in my day" basis for the argument. I didn't even address what sort of gaming does or does not exist, if it existed in the past or if people who once played like that are still playing like that.

My only real contribution to the thread was to suggest that the dice themselves are vectors to overcoming challenges, not themselves challenges.

 

[Hussar]

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.

This stuck in my head a bit and I thought I'd pull this out for a bit of extra examination.

How is this not pure gamism? You are making decisions base on what will give you greater chances of success. It has nothing to do with the story of the game nor does it try to simulate anything. It's a purely gamist decision. Now, you might not like it since it makes the game "easier" than you feel is necessary. Fair enough. But, it's no different than someone watching Texas Hold'em tournaments to learn better ways of playing. Or reading strategy guides to make them a better poker player.

Are you saying that someone who takes the time out of the game to learn how to be a "better player" (in the sense of increasing their odds of success) is somehow an inferior player? That they aren't "playing right"? That the only real way of being a better player is making all the mistakes yourself? I'd argue that while there's nothing wrong with "learning from your mistakes", learning from other people's mistakes is also perfectly valid from a gamist perspective.