Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[Alzrius]

I'm of the opinion that the "illusion of accomplishment" (though I'm not sure I'd call it an illusion) is largely fed by the reward-system in RPGs.

To be sure, this isn't always the case. Simply achieving a success in a situation of "success versus failure" (whether on a single die roll, or on a larger scale such as a combat encounter) brings with it a sense of satisfaction. However, I think that more often, an accomplishment is measured by the amount of reward a PC gets.

In D&D, a character commonly gets rewarded in both meta-game and in-character mannerisms. Meta-game in the form of gaining experience points which directly translate into greater power and ability. In-character in the form of items and money (to purchase items) that directly translate into greater power and ability. People feel a sense of accomplishment when they do something that's worth something - the reward not only justifies the action, but also quantifies it.

This is one of the major reasons behind complaints of bad role-playing - players have their characters doing what's most rewarding for the player wanting to power-up their PC, rather than doing what makes the most sense from an in-game perspective.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Briefly, I think that concrete examples would really, really help here. I tried to provide one, by way of comparing it with Morrus's recent thread re: conditions and players' participation. Because that's not what you're talking about, could you please be more specific as to examples of this trend in game design?

As far as I can work out, Celebrim is comparing a permanently dazed character with only one tactical option who misses every round with a character who is at or below 0 hitpoints and doesn't roll a 20.

It's a bit of a wierd and manufactured scenario. I don't really know why he's doing it, because his overall point seems to be that games where success has a high likelyhood are bad games.

You are comparing a character who is stunned with no save (ie - stunned until end of next turn by a foe who has a large supply of such powers) with... well... anyone else.

Your argument is that a game with less participation is a worse than a game with lots of participation.

I'm not quite sure why Celebrim is conflating participation and success though. Maybe he's continuing on some fragment of an earlier conversation?

I'd have to say I agree with both of you: stun kills fun, and so do easy wins. So would having only one viable tactical option, being permanently dazed and always missing.

 

[Celebrim]

But, that's not ALL you do on your turn. If you are sleeping, you make one die roll and you're done. If you are up and about, you move, make your attack, possibly perform a third action, possible use an action point to perform another action, possibly are granted another action by another player, possibly perform an Opportunity Attack, and, to top it all off, you can talk in character at any point in time.

However, while that is true, it is not true that on every round you have or take all of those options. On many rounds, moving makes no real sense, you have no useful third action to perform, you don't have or don't want to spend an action point, and you aren't granted an action by another player nor does an oppurtunity attack present itself nor does anything really novel and interesting spring to mind to say IC. That all those things are true would not be unusual. Many rounds, you have a single attack to make and thats really all you have useful to do. On those somewhat frequent rounds, the level of participation you have in the game when you make an attack and fail is exactly the same as when you take no action because you failed a saving throw. In each of those rounds, the key act of participation was rolling a dice, and the net outcome of that participation was nothing.

I've been playing for a long time. I don't have alot of experience with 4e but I feel pretty safe in thinking your hypothetical round where you take 5 or 6 actions on your turn such that failing your attack is a small loss is a lot rarer of an occurance than a round where you straight up slog and where, if you miss your attack, you might as well have not done anything.

Certainly I know that that in all earlier editions a 'slog round' is fairly common, and certainly I've got enough 'sense motive' to know that the guy experiencing a run of bad luck in the big fight where he can't hit anything is just as frustrated if not more so, than the guy who can't even move at all because of some status effect or other circumstance. Both find themselves unable to get that moment of payoff in the action/reward loop.

So, no, the two things are not equal. On one hand, you make a single die roll and pass to the next person. On the other, you take a full turn, plus other actions as well.

And, in many cases that 'full turn' is a euphemism for 'single die roll and pass to the next person'. This is true regardless of edition.

Therefore it follows that there is nothing inherently worse about being stunned than having a round where your only productive action is to make an attack and then missing. Both suck equally. Both involve the same amount of participation. Therefore, a game that had to ban the unfun of being stunned on the grounds that it was annoying to ever 'miss a turn', would soon have to ban rounds where your only productive action hinged on a single die roll. Because failing in that action involves missing a turn.

And in fact, that assessment wasn't contriversial to the OP in the other thread. If I may quote Morrus:

Alot of them are almost "miss a turn" statuses (often more than a turn), or "do nothing fun" statuses; and the players in question get really agitated by the situation. Even those which aren't actually "miss a turn" (like stunned, petrified, unconscious) can often mean "your turn is irrelevant" (like slowed if you're 5 squares away, blinded, etc.)

- emphasis added

Morrus is making the natural observation here that any DM whose watched players can make and that anyone who has been that player can relate to.

It is not like I've suddenly invented the observation that having nothing productive to do or being crippled to the point that your actions have virtually no chance of success is functionally identical to losing your turn. This is a common observation that has been made across the whole spectrum of gaming, from RPGs to CCGs to board games. It is a fundamental tactic of many strategic games to steal actions in this manner from your opponent by forcing them to lose rounds of development making useless moves. It freakin' ridiculous that I should even have to argue something this basic and widely observed.

 

[The Shaman]

Daddy drinks because you cry.

Ouch.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Doug: I'm really not sure where Steel Wind draws the line between 'casual gamer' and 'lifestyle gamer', and I suppose we should ask him for a precise definition lest we risk misunderstanding him too much.

Lifestyle gamer:

Any individual who meets ALL of the following criteria:

• has been playing roleplaying games for more than three years;
• is no longer a fulltime student attending high school or university/college for an undergraduate degree;
• plays RPGs at least once a month; and,
• spends more than $100 a year on RPG games and accessories

If you meet this test, you are a "lifestyle gamer". My guess is that the large majority of ENWorlders meet this test, and of the ones who do not meet that test but are members on ENWorld, the reason they don’t meet it is due to their age/educational stage. Otherwise, those tendencies and interest are why we are all here, after all. Problem is, we tend to project this identity upon others and assume that most gamers meet this test. In fact, the vast majority of gamers do not. The vast majority of gamers are, instead, casual gamers (those who do not meet this test.)

Why apply these requirements for the definition? Because marketing data collected by the industry (principally WotC in the wake of the purchase of TSR) determined a few key indicia of who their customers are, when they start being customers - and when they stop being customers.

That process is called "churn" and understanding customer churn is vital to understanding the RPG business.

It turns out, according to Ryan Dancey and based upon information collected ten years ago, that the vast majority of gamers who play RPGs play them for three years or less, usually commencing in high school or university. They play as "casual gamers", having played RPGs and spent some money on them - but do not yet meet the test for "lifestyle gamer". They are casual gamers because they are overwhelmingly expected to become "lapsed" gamers and to exit the hobby through player churn when they move and leave their adolescent / young-adult social circle in their late teens and early 20s. Dancey threw around the numbers of "close to 80% leave after three years". I have no idea if that is still true - or if it was ever true - but I expect Ryan Dancey is not in the business of misleading people and he had access to the data at the relevant time. I expect that he was telling it the way it is.

Pay attention to that number. That means that 80% of the people who buy the Core Rules of the D&D edition of the day are not going to be playing RPGS three years from now. That reality has a PROFOUND impact upon the design and marketing decisions of a game publisher.

Why casual gamers leave the hobby varies from individual to individual to individual, but the biggest reason marketing research identified was that the individuals moved and left behind their previous gaming group. That event more than any other has been identified as how people "churn out" of the hobby. They don't leave because they can't find a DM. They know *exactly* where their DM is; he's hundreds (or thousands) of miles away -- and as a consequence, he's no longer their DM at all. Same thing as concerns the rest of their social circle they gamed with. And at that point, that usually means the player becomes a "lapsed" D&D/RPG player.

If all you had to do was "train DMs" it would be easy. But that's not what you have to do. You also have to steer people together and enable them to meet up not only with a DM - but with an entire group of people. That's not easy to accomplish. In fact, it's quite damned hard to do, even with the Internet. And even when they meet up - they have to "click" together as at least "gaming friends", and preferably out of game friends too. That's not an easy thing to accomplish.

That's what D&D Encounters is all about -- and it is what previous organized play sessions conducted by the RPGA is all about, too. It's not about teaching people to play D&D -- that is a wholly secondary misison. It's about getting people together with other like-minded people who want to learn how to game so as to enable them to either form a group toegether outside of organizedp lay (usually) or otherwise attach themselves to an existing gaming group (less usually). Once those social bonds are forged and you have a group to play with - the hard part is over.

Not only do you have a DM - you have an entire gaming circle. You're up and running - until you up and move, that is.

Moving away from a gaming circle is most likely to occur in the years following high school and university. Once that stage has passed and you are still playing regularly - the chances of you leaving the hobby diminish sharply. In short, that's the point where Darth Hasbro proclaims "I have you now".

Bam - you are a lifestyle gamer. Doesn't mean that you will not stop playing at some point and become "lapsed", but the chances of that occurring are MUCH less than they were if you lost your gaming group after you moved and relocated in your early 20s.


Other life disruptions can cause a gamer to stop gaming of course. They are various and sundry, but GFs/wives, children and jobs will all take their toll. So will competing leisure activities (Hello WoW/golf/fishing/*whatever*)

Player churn still occurs through all stages of life. I would caution, however, on relying upon the analysis that Ryan Dancey has mentioned frequently over the past years when it comes to spending habits tied to age. I am not saying that his data is wrong. I think his data was spot on when it was collected. But that data is examining a demographic at a particular point in time (ca. 2000) and as such, that data is expected to change over time, too. I think the data Ryan Dancey has mentioned on spending habits among gamers who are older than 35 was accurate when it was collected - and is now DEAD wrong.

That's just me. I may be DEAD wrong, too.

 

[pemerton]

Celebrim, I agree with you that there is a deep divide. I disagree that it turns on "ego gamers". Rather, I think it turns on attitudes to what counts as fun in playing a game.

I also think that this is central to your discussion with Obryn about success vs participation.

I think the more modern sorts of RPGs are designed for players who want to play the game by (i) engaging the game mechanics, and thereby (ii) changing the imagined ingame situation. Hence the particular irritation for those players of mechanics which deprive them of actions - because they lose the chance to engage the mechanics.

But such players may still be quite willing to endure PC failures - it's just that those failures should be ones which open up new opportunities to engage the mechanics and thereby affect the gameworld. Examples would include being taken prisoner, or being driven out of town by an angry mob. This sort of PC failure is also a player failure in one sense - the game didn't go where you were trying to take it - but not in another sense - I'm still playing the game I want to play by engaging the mechanics and thereby affecting the gameworld. But the latter doesn't strike me as ego-gaming. It's just a particular preference about what I look for in a game.

A game like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth has no real equivalent to D&D status conditions, but it would be strange - in my view, at least - to describe either as an RPG aimed at ego gamers. Both are games that let the players continually engage the mechanics to affect the gameworld - even relationships and equipment are brought into the sphere of game mechanically mediated character abilities. I think it would be correct to describe both as RPGs that would not satisfy a player with traditional Gygaxian preferences. (4e is a funny game in the way that it deliberately mixes old and new style - and it has some problems as a result, especially in the skill challenge mechanics but also in the way it puts a large burden on the GM to handle monsters causing status effects with care. Rolemaster, with its need to call an OB/DB split round-by-round, also has a little bit of the new mixed in with the old, but I suspect this was fortuitous rather than deliberate - an attempt at a simulationist mechanic also produced a mechanic that is reasonably compelling for the more modern-oriented player.)

Or consider the difference between those who prefer M:TG, and those who prefer traditional wargames. Players of the former are hardly being pandered to as ego gamers, given that every game has at most one winner. But it's obviously a very different gameplay experience from a traditional wargame. I would expect a game like 4e to be more fun for the typical M:TG player than for the typical traditional wargamer.

What a pen and paper RPG does offer that neither Donkey Kong nor M:TG does is an opportunity not only to engage the mechanics, but by doing so to shape a dramatic, compelling, shared imaginary world or storyline. And modern RPGs, with their changed approaches to participation etc, reinforce this distinguishing feature rather than reducing it.

And if the above sounds like its influenced by reading Robin Laws game texts and Ron Edwards essays, well that's because it is!

 

[innerdude]

Briefly, I think that concrete examples would really, really help here. I tried to provide one, by way of comparing it with Morrus's recent thread re: conditions and players' participation. Because that's not what you're talking about, could you please be more specific as to examples of this trend in game design?

-O

Well, I think there's a definite correlation between the perceived needs of new GMs and game design.

It seems to me that perhaps one of the reasons D&D has narrowed its general play style focus is because WotC recognized the "GM problem" already discussed--without a GM, there's no game. One of the ways to create a larger supply of GMs (and thus have those same GMs hook their friends into the game) is to create a rules system that removes much of the "stress" of being a GM. What are the two biggest stressors of being a GM? Adjudicating for players (who may not always agree with rulings) and preparing adventures. And I think we can all agree that 4th Edition, regardless of its merits or failings, was certainly forward-thinking in that regard.

More than any other previous edition, 4th Ed. seems to have a subtle, but clear message to players that says "Hey, you can DM this too. It's not that hard, really, and it's actually a lot of fun!" Because powers and classes are so balanced, and because the game focuses on team-based encounter design, at a fundamental level, 4th Edition is doing its darndest to get out of the way of a fledgling DM's biggest potential weaknesses--creating cohesive narrative and balancing encounters.

Another way to do this is to help new GMs not feel like they are failing by not coming up with their own "ZOMG Uber-Epic Plot." The encounter and skill challenge structures create their own internal consistency that can give a fledgling DM the confidence to say, "You know what, I don't necessarily know how the BBEG is making things happen, but by golly I've got 5 easy-to-prepare encounters ready, and I can tie things in as I go."

Now, another question that goes along with this though is, does team-based, encounter-driven design create more natural "positive reinforcement" points for an ego-driven gamer than another type of system? I don't know the answer for that.

 

[jmucchiello]

Lifestyle gamer:

Any individual who meets ALL of the following criteria:

• has been playing roleplaying games for more than three years;
• is no longer a fulltime student attending high school or university/college for an undergraduate degree;
• plays RPGs at least once a month; and,
• spends more than $100 a year on RPG games and accessories

I'm lapsed!! Why didn't someone tell me I was lapsed?!

I haven't spent $100 on RPGs in the last 5 years in total. (And that includes buying the 4e core books.)

If all you had to do was "train DMs" it would be easy. But that's not what you have to do. You also have to steer people together and enable them to meet up not only with a DM - but with an entire group of people. That's not easy to accomplish. In fact, it's quite damned hard to do, even with the Internet. And even when they meet up - they have to "click" together as at least "gaming friends", and preferably out of game friends too. That's not an easy thing to accomplish.

This is not really true. Once you possess a GM he will bring in players for you. Most people come into RPGs through existing social relationships with existing players and GMs. It is rare for someone to discover RPGs in a vacuum and flounder at finding a GM.

 

[Starfox]

While I like the topic, I find this line of thought misguided:

Once again, on your turn, rolling one dice and failing a saving throw and on your turn rolling one dice failing in an attack are the exact same level of interaction with the game and the rules.

There is a huge difference here, in that making an attack involves making a decision - to attack, who to attack, using what attack, and to not run away. Rolling a single dice on your turn involves no decisions. It is just a mechanic timer over which you have no effect whatsoever, and can easily be delegated to a computer. In fact, I find my players prefer non-interactive unconsciousness - this is where you go make a new pot of tea and let some of the tension out you your system. Making rolls each turn does not make a situation involving as long as this roll does not involve any choices, any tactics.

I know the thread passed over this topic and there were some answers along this line, but I still want to stress that participation is about choices - not merely die rolls. And that is a big issue with mechanics like (the original 4E) skill challenge rules - once you've identified the skill to use, there is no further need of choices, there is only mechanics in the form of dice rolling. This is the point where my players lose interest. Keeping their interest trough a 18-roll skill challenge (complexity 5) is just not possible once they analyze the situation.

 

[S'mon]

Success in a game of skill *is* an accomplishment - maybe a trivial accomplishment, but real, not illusory. Winning a game of chess is an accomplishment. Winning a game of Warhammer Battles is an accomplishment. Succeeding in a D&D session through player skill is an accomplishment.

"Illusion of accomplishment" might be an appropriate term for:

1. Success in games of pure chance, like Snakes & Ladders. We may feel we accomplished something when really it was just the luck of the dice.

2. Success that is pre-mandated, where the 'game' is set up so players can't really lose. This may be relevant to RPGs, which often stack the deck by default heavily in favour of the players. Computer games which allow saves & respawns could fall into this category, but arguably grinding through the levels to ultimate victory is a sort of accomplishment, even though real failure is only possible if the player gets bored and gives up.