How to design a game where players don't seek to min-max

[Janx]

Promotes may not be the right word. "Enables," would probably be better.

With classes, you can assign powers, abilities and such so that a character *must* be rounded. You can make sure a fighter, on top of fighting abilities, has some social and knowledge skills as well, for example.

Classless systems, by and large, do not do that. I guess one could design a classless system that does enforce rounding in its own way, but that is not the norm of design today. Classless systems emphasize player freedom of design choice - and that includes freedom to specialize.

I think this is related to my point, which i guess didn't have traction.

In 3e, you get X skill points. You can spend them anywhere, but you are basically going to go max-ranks on every skill you can, rather than spread the load. Which in turn causes you to narrowly select the skills you think will be useful most of the time, along the adage of "it's OK if I don't have social skills, I can light it on fire"

I propose that a design might be interesting to give skill points by category. You get 5 points in Combat, Social, Knowledge and Trade respectively.

Which means the PC will have a social skill of some kind. And a Knowledge skill.

Though I think the min/max problem would still exist that a player would rather maximize one skill in a given category, than spread out the points across many skills because that diversity will be a bunch of skills the PC is still too low in to be useful. Better to excel in something, and use that whenever you can or to barter with for an NPC with the skill you lack.

So PC would maximize their "Intimidate" and use that contantly, rather than daintily attempt a Diplomacy with 1 point, knowing they'll fail that, and every other social skill they put 1 point in.

I wonder if the design flaw is in thinking that people suck at almost everything except what they specialized in.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Another "generic fantasy" RPG I like, HARP Fantasy, has diminishing return on investments. Sure, your skills start out giving you +5 per rank until rank 10, which you could easily reach by level 3, then +2 per rank until rank 20, and each rank adding only +1 from rank 21 on. From what I've seen on the ICE forums, this either discourages maxing out, or encourages multiclassing. There is advantage to putting ranks into spells after you're paying 2:1, but only for the scaling options, or overcoming your armor's casting penalty.

World Tree, and anthropomorphic animals "furries" fantasy RPG has diminishing return on investment happen immediately. Each skill rank costs one more point than the current rank. In play this matters little, but it is important in character creation when raising a skill from zero to 10 ranks costs you 55 XP total. Additionally, its advantage system comes with trade offs, sure you can be great at being a warrior, while not getting much Advantage XP from other things.

 

[System Ufera]

It seems that my goal with this thread still isn't all that clear. The thing is, my game is rather different than other games in terms of how valuable any given stat is to any given character, which I've tried explaining. Unlike with games such as DnD, where an optimized character would only focus on one or two things (and do so because they only really benefit from one or two things), my game will involve meaningful benefits for most characters from many different investments.

Take the warrior. I've already mentioned how the warrior would benefit from a decent Resolve (he/she won't be scared easily). But Resolve, as an attribute, isn't even tertiary for a warrior. Warriors would pay attention to Strength first; depending on the weapon type, they would then pay attention to either Agility or Constitution as a secondary; then what they didn't choose as a secondary would likely tie with Instinct (helps w/ reactions and battlefield awareness) for tertiary. Attributes such as Resolve and Willpower (the difference is that Resolve is more defensive, whereas Willpower is more forceful and adrenaline-based), despite not being among the top 3 tiers of importance, would still give important (and even needed) benefits to a warrior, those being Morale and Hero Points, respectively. The three remaining attributes, those being Charisma, Knowledge, and Wisdom, can still be useful for certain types of warriors, such as generals, warriors who study their enemies for weaknesses and/or movement patterns, etc. Heck, there's already an edge that expands a weapon's crit range, which requires a small investment in Wisdom.

One of the problems here is that I'm not sure, in terms of game design or otherwise, how to reinforce this idea for the players. As a result, the players who are currently testing my game are hitting the point of diminishing returns for the stuff they're good at (for example, life or death is binary, and so dealing more damage to an already dead enemy won't help), and I'm afraid that they'll get into a TPK situation when I get around to designing encounters with enemies that can cause status effects (such as those based on fear).

 

[Morrus]

It seems that my goal with this thread still isn't all that clear. The thing is, my game is rather different than other games in terms of how valuable any given stat is to any given character, which I've tried explaining. Unlike with games such as DnD, where an optimized character would only focus on one or two things (and do so because they only really benefit from one or two things), my game will involve meaningful benefits for most characters from many different investments.

Take the warrior. I've already mentioned how the warrior would benefit from a decent Resolve (he/she won't be scared easily). But Resolve, as an attribute, isn't even tertiary for a warrior. Warriors would pay attention to Strength first; depending on the weapon type, they would then pay attention to either Agility or Constitution as a secondary; then what they didn't choose as a secondary would likely tie with Instinct (helps w/ reactions and battlefield awareness) for tertiary. Attributes such as Resolve and Willpower (the difference is that Resolve is more defensive, whereas Willpower is more forceful and adrenaline-based), despite not being among the top 3 tiers of importance, would still give important (and even needed) benefits to a warrior, those being Morale and Hero Points, respectively. The three remaining attributes, those being Charisma, Knowledge, and Wisdom, can still be useful for certain types of warriors, such as generals, warriors who study their enemies for weaknesses and/or movement patterns, etc. Heck, there's already an edge that expands a weapon's crit range, which requires a small investment in Wisdom.

One of the problems here is that I'm not sure, in terms of game design or otherwise, how to reinforce this idea for the players. As a result, the players who are currently testing my game are hitting the point of diminishing returns for the stuff they're good at (for example, life or death is binary, and so dealing more damage to an already dead enemy won't help), and I'm afraid that they'll get into a TPK situation when I get around to designing encounters with enemies that can cause status effects (such as those based on fear).

It just kinda sounds like your game needs a certain level of mechanical expertise, and your players just aren't very good at the game (yet); and that lack of expertise in your game is manifesting itself as poorly designed characters. That's an ironic term, of course, because your players think they've optimized their characters, but they haven't - in your game a optimal character has a broader range of strengths.

Maybe it just needs them to play it more until they become good at it and realise that a more effective build isn't the obvious one.

 

[Umbran]

I propose that a design might be interesting to give skill points by category. You get 5 points in Combat, Social, Knowledge and Trade respectively.

This basic idea was used in White Wolf games back in 1991 - They did allow a character to have a primary, secondary, and tertiary area, with more points in the priimary, and fewer in each of the other areas.

Though I think the min/max problem would still exist that a player would rather maximize one skill in a given category, than spread out the points across many skills because that diversity will be a bunch of skills the PC is still too low in to be useful.

....

I wonder if the design flaw is in thinking that people suck at almost everything except what they specialized in.

People thinking something isn't a design flaw. It is a either a perception flaw that people think it, or it is a design flaw that the skill actually isn't useful at lower ranks.

 

[Darth Quiris]

Well... it's nearly impossible to truly get rid of the possibility of min/maxing in any game system because it's simply the nature of us as people and gamers to want to make characters that are really good at something, and if a game allows us to manipulate it in some way than a lot of players will take advantage of that within the game's mechanisms and succeed no matter what you try to do.

This is not any particular game's fault. It's a player thing in combination of the social dynamic and social contract implied through the group coming together to play a game that everybody wants to play while agreeing to play the game that was talked about.

Another facet not considered at all is the fact that different players get their fun in rpgs in different ways. There are 8 Kinds of Fun that all of us get from our games, and while all of us get fun in the 8 ways, the order and preferences in which we find our fun is always different.

Because we are all different, it's virtually impossible to design a traditional game system that deals with all 8 kinds of fun and there's no way to truly get rid of min/maxing.

The games that have come the closest, though, are these games and these are the ones you should look at as inspiration (and this is of course not a finite list... just the ones I can think of atm):

Apocalypse World (and any *World Engine game) - Monsterhearts, Dungeon World, Monster of the Week, etc.
Smallville, Marvel Heroic, Firefly and really any Cortex Plus game.
Burning Wheel
Fate Core and Atomic Robo
DramaSystem by Pelgrane (who did 13th Age)
Mutant City Blues, Nights Black Agents and any Gumshoe game
Numenera and Cypher System
FFG Star Wars: Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion/Force & Destiny

Now all of these can be manipulated to an extent, all of them do have built in game balances that do prevent real min/maxing that can happen in a lot of other games. The only ones that are class like games are the *World Engine games, Numenera and the FFG Star Wars games, and in these games the 'classes' are loose and customizable yet they are really focused and limited in their overall power potential equally among all of them so no one 'class' outshines any other. They also don't have exactly traditional game mechanisms in them.

Apocalypse World has a 2d6+modifier roll that is then checked on a spectrum of possible results that result in a wide variety of possible outcomes. Numenera allows the players to choose to spend their own utility to make some results easier to determine while using a simple d20 roll to determine success. Both of these are also player roll only games and the GM never does any dice rolling. Star Wars uses customized dice and a unique dice pool system that allows for a wide variety of results in a single roll that focuses not on combat but the narrative exploration of every scene and provides players a wide scope of interpretation.

The thing with all these games is that they are all virtually simple. Easy dice rolls, easy to use and play and lots of simple choices to make. The more mechanisms and options you put into a game, the more the players will have to focus and optimize to make a character that can work. It's ironic really.

And in the case of Cortex Plus, these games are impossible to break and you can't min/max in them. You can try, but they are designed very well. Just check out Firefly and see that even Jayne is a well rounded character.

edit: I forgot a game you should check out. Tenra Bansho Zero is a rpg that was originally a Japanese rpg that got a really awesome English translation that has a really solid dice pool system that uses character ideas similar to Fate Aspects and the game is really amazing. How I described it here as far as it's system goes does not do it justice. It's truly an amazing game and as far as games with dice pools this is probably the best dice pool game ever designed.

 

[Darth Quiris]

I wish I could see this system you are working on. It'd really help in giving you more advice on how to approach it for the goals you want.

Understand that min/maxing isn't really a problem in and of itself and in my own perspective on gaming it's not something that truly exists but it's the perception of the people at the table as a whole that lends a certain focus to players who prefer to optimize the game's systems and focus their characters to be the best they can be in a specific area. All this is a factor of the fluid nature of how different people find their fun in these games in their own way.

In the end, design the game system you want to design for the reasons you personally want to design it and enjoy the game that evolves from your own creative mind.

 

[System Ufera]

I wish I could see this system you are working on. It'd really help in giving you more advice on how to approach it for the goals you want.

Um... Well, the thing is, the core system itself is mostly unwritten in any official format. I admit, I should have written down the system's core mechanics itself a long time ago, but I haven't. It's mostly in my head, and for the most part I've been teaching my players through example, showing them how things work as the situations arise. Ah... perhaps that is one of the sources of this problem, as I've seen it? Anyway... here's a basic idea of how my system works:

The system itself relies on what I call a "modified percentile roll" for determining success. That is, it has all the defining elements of a percentile roll system: for any given task, you have a number (called your character's "Talent" in my game) derived from your character's stats, and in order to succeed on that task, you must roll below that number on a set of percentile dice. The "modified" aspect of this system comes in two parts. First, there's the already-stated fact that the Talent is derived from not one but two attributes, or an attribute and a skill. Second, there's the introduction of a "Difficulty," a number derived from difficult circumstances and/or any opposition to your success, which you must also roll above.

Assuming a success, the degree of success is then determined by exactly what is being done, or what is being used to do it. Most damaging abilities have a Damage Die assigned to them; this is usually dependent on either the weapon used (for attacks), or the damage die of the ability itself (i.e., which spell is used, or something like that). Any ability with a damage die is going to calculate its damage according to the following formula, called a Damage Function:

[ ( 1/2 x the Primary Statistic Modifier ) x ( Die Size ) ] + [ (Secondary Statistic Modifier) + (Additional bonuses) ]

For example, say you're attacking with a longsword, which is a large blade. The Primary Statistic Modifier for Large Blades is Strength, the Secondary Statistic Modifier for Large Blades is Agility, and the die size for a Longsword is 1d6. Assuming your character has a Strength of 30 and an Agility of 25, and assuming that there are no additional bonuses, this means that on a hit, you would deal 3d6 +5 Damage.

Other abilities may have a much simpler static die to determine success. This includes things such as Knockback, which, by default, on success, allows you to push a target 1d3 squares away from your character. Still other tasks don't measure the degree of success by how well you do, but by how long it takes you to do it, and sometimes how many resources you use to do it. This includes things such as making items, which would require multiple successes of various types to create the finished product.

 

[Derren]

Players will always min-max, no matter what you do.

You can only try to make it a suboptimal choice by making the game as varied as possible instead of a primarily combat game which seems what you are designing now or by minimizing the direct influence players have during character creation like with career based character creation seen in Traveller.

 

[Foxwarrior]

I'm afraid that they'll get into a TPK situation when I get around to designing encounters with enemies that can cause status effects (such as those based on fear).

I think this might be a large part of your problem here. You say that it's important to have a decent Resolve, but you haven't yet put them in situations where it would have mattered? I too would not invest many character building resources into defenses against things that haven't occurred when I could be putting my resources into things I can actively choose to use.