Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)

[Hussar]

".. for you." Right?

"For me" the value added is scores of time over the negatives. (year after year after year)

But, how does that work?

If the results are unpredictable, and the number of dramatic results are equal to non-dramatic results, then it should split half and half right? If there are more non-dramatic results, and again, we're using an unpredictable model, then the majority of results should be non-dramatic.

If you are consistently beating the odds, then it's no longer combat as war. It can't be since the law of averages would have to rule, particularly year after year after year.

And this is where the elitism that Tony V talks about comes in. People want to believe that their game is "combat as war" because 1. that sounds way cooler, and 2. combat as sport is more heavily aligned with certain editions and play styles that cannot possibly have anything in common with how the poster plays.

The problem is, if your game is truly combat as war, but the players win the vast majority of the time, then it's not combat as war. It can't be. If the group is succeeding in combat after combat, year after year, then you are playing combat as sport. There isn't any other explanation.

 

[Savage Wombat]

But, how does that work?

If the results are unpredictable, and the number of dramatic results are equal to non-dramatic results, then it should split half and half right? If there are more non-dramatic results, and again, we're using an unpredictable model, then the majority of results should be non-dramatic.

If you are consistently beating the odds, then it's no longer combat as war. It can't be since the law of averages would have to rule, particularly year after year after year.

And this is where the elitism that Tony V talks about comes in. People want to believe that their game is "combat as war" because 1. that sounds way cooler, and 2. combat as sport is more heavily aligned with certain editions and play styles that cannot possibly have anything in common with how the poster plays.

The problem is, if your game is truly combat as war, but the players win the vast majority of the time, then it's not combat as war. It can't be. If the group is succeeding in combat after combat, year after year, then you are playing combat as sport. There isn't any other explanation.

1. I think several people on this board are looking for conflict where none was intended. The CaW/CaS divide was a difference of playstyle - and while the original writer seemed to prefer one, he didn't claim superiority. Just that different rules serve the different styles.

2. If the players keep winning in an ostensible CaW game, it doesn't mean that it's not really CaW. It means that the DM is either not as good at it as the players, or not trying hard enough to win. That does not change the nature of the playstyle difference.

3. If you don't like the CaW/CaS concept, fine. Don't use it, and you're even free to say you dislike it when it comes up. But please don't try to define the concepts with your negative spin for people who are asking about it. It's as bad as, say, a FARK politics thread.

 

[pemerton]

If you have a truly hard game, then there has to be a significant chance of failure. Combat or non-combat, it doesn't matter.

<snip>

If it's possible to change the odds such that the party constantly (or nearly constantly) succeeds, then it's not really that hard. It might be a challenge to find how to change the odds, but, the fact that the odds can be changed belies the difficulty.

Here are some phrases which, for message board purposes, can be treated as synonymous: "is hard"; "is a challenge"; "is difficult".

Relying on that synonymy, I now restate the quote:

If you have a truly hard game, then there has to be a significant chance of failure. If it's possible to change the ods, then it's not really that hard. It might be hard to find how to change the odds, but the fact that the odds can be changed belies the hardness.​

I hope that this restatement reveals what has gone wrong: if it is hard to change the odds, then in fact the game was hard, even if the upshot is that the odds were changed and hence the final, modified, risk of failure was low.
[MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] gave work examples; I can give some too. When I have to get something written by a deadline, I rarely fail - writing to a deadline is part of my job. But that doesn't mean it can't be hard - it's just that I put in the effort, an am quite good at it. You might retort, "OK, then, it's not hard for you" - but now we're just playing with ambiguities in the meaning of "hard. Eg it's not hard in the sense that I'm likely to fail, but it certainly is hard in the sense that I might be exhausted by the end of it.

If lethality can be mitigated by the players of the game to the point where it becomes extremely rare, then the game is not terribly lethal in the first place.

In a D&D game, I'd pretty much say that this is illusionism. If every problem has a solution, so long as I spend enough time on it, then there is no real challenge.

I think this is obviously untrue. I mean, every sudoku or crossword has a solution, but that doesn't mean that no puzzle of that sort is ever a real challenge. It's a long time since I took a maths or logic exam, but every question on those exams had a solution too, a solution that I was in principle capable of identifying and applying. It doesn't mean that none of them was hard.

Or to give a real-world example: the threat to mercant shipping of submarine warfare was able to be mitigated via the convoy system, plus other innovations in naval practices and technology. That doesn't mean that the threat posed by submarines was an illusion!

If I had to dig a grave in the hot sun it would be hard but I'm certain of success. Now that is a physical challenge I realize but there are mental challenges that are similar.

In my games failure to play well results in death. Over the years, my players have learned to play well.

<snip>

In my games, characters die on occasion but not frequently. I attribute that more to my players skill than to the easiness of my game.

I think we all have to agree that combat tactics are combat tactics and good ways to move through a dungeon could be established. It gets challenging when the unexpected happens and you have to think on your feet. The whole point is that hard does not equate to death. Hard is not 3 in 10 chance of death instead of 1 in 10 chance of death.

<snip>

A game where you entered a room and rolled a die ten and on a 2 or better you clear the room is no easier than a game where you have to get a 5 or better. Perhaps it's harder to not die but it's not hard as in requiring skill. That is the kind of hard I'm talking about. Not improbability of success.

This makes sense to me.

Emerikol's players mitigate the lethality of his campaign through constant interventions, but that doesn't remove the danger itself. Mitigating that danger is in fact the very game itself.

<snip>

Now, mitigating the difficulty of Emerikol's game may rely on DM-negotiation and/or in-game actions that follow conventions particular to his table, but I submit that's somewhat orthogonal to the issue of difficulty.

So does this.

I submit that difficulty is orthogonal to the concept of the two outlined styles of play. Difficulty isn't the issue. The issue is sandbox vs linear.

Pulsiver's point has nothing to do with difficulty at all. It's about sandbox vs linear.

I don't quite see it that way. "Linear vs open world" is actually mentioned as a separate way to look at design. He refers to "wish fulfillment" as "having an experience". The experience doesn't have to be linear, it merely has to be foregrounded to a greater degree than choices.

As I posted a way upthread, I agree that it's not about difficulty. Nor is it about linear/sandbox. It's about "choice" vs "experience". In RPGing, the examplar of "wish fulfillent" is not really what Emerikol pulled out in the OP. It's first person immersive RPing. I think of CoC as the poster-child for this, but I think a lot of the more "avant garde" 2nd ed stuff (Ravenloft, Planescape) was intended to be played this way too.

What I'm getting at is that the difference between these two types of games is not really about the associated fiction of the game moves. That's a red herring I think. It's about how transparent the consequences are for the decisions players make.

<snip>

A game with less predictable consequences tends to snowball into dramatic showdowns, like scoring chances in soccer, showdowns in poker, or save-or-dies in D&D. Some people really like this, and some people deride this as 20 minutes of fun in 4 hours, which I can understand.

<snip>

In CaS game you can play in more of a Wish Fulfillment mindset because you're not risking as much at each decision. You can take plays off to goof around, as it were. In a CaW there's a lot more pressure to be in win-at-all-costs mode all the time, because you don't want to be the person who drops the ball when it turns out that that decision was actually extremely important.

I like your analysis. I don't know that I agree with the connection to WF, though - goofing off isn't necessarily about "having an experience". I think it can often be about "authorship", about achieving some communicative effect in the real world. (Eg making a point about your PC, or about someone else's, or making a point about what is at stake.)

 

[Bluenose]

2. If the players keep winning in an ostensible CaW game, it doesn't mean that it's not really CaW. It means that the DM is either not as good at it as the players, or not trying hard enough to win. That does not change the nature of the playstyle difference.

If the GM is trying hard enough to win, then they'll win. Period. Unless people are going to argue that the GM can cheat and Rule 0 shouldn't count when you don't want it to, then they can always throw more enemies in, add waves of reinforcements, that didn't exist before the players planning. Since they don't I think it becomes pretty obvious that in the CaW playstyle the GM generally has to play a different way and can't use all their resources against the players.

 

[Iosue]

And this is where the elitism that Tony V talks about comes in. People want to believe that their game is "combat as war" because 1. that sounds way cooler, and 2. combat as sport is more heavily aligned with certain editions and play styles that cannot possibly have anything in common with how the poster plays.

The problem is, if your game is truly combat as war, but the players win the vast majority of the time, then it's not combat as war. It can't be. If the group is succeeding in combat after combat, year after year, then you are playing combat as sport. There isn't any other explanation.

Look, here's the primary difference between Combat as War vs Combat as Sport, at least as Daztur suggested (I make no claim about how edition warriors may have abused it). Do you find lots of short, one-sided curbstomp battles appealing? If so, you like Combat as War. Do you find a succession of one-sided curbstomp battles boring, and prefer battles with a little more granularity, a little give and take? If so, you like Combat as Sport. I mean, it's right there in the post that linked to earlier in the thread. There's nothing there about combat as war being a statistically accurate representation of battles in war. It all comes down to do you want your combat to be like the fencing matching Princess Bride, or like Indy shooting the swordsman in Raiders?

Here are some phrases which, for message board purposes, can be treated as synonymous: "is hard"; "is a challenge"; "is difficult".

Relying on that synonymy, I now restate the quote:

If you have a truly hard game, then there has to be a significant chance of failure. If it's possible to change the odds, then it's not really that hard. It might be hard to find how to change the odds, but the fact that the odds can be changed belies the hardness.
​

I hope that this restatement reveals what has gone wrong: if it is hard to change the odds, then in fact the game was hard, even if the upshot is that the odds were changed and hence the final, modified, risk of failure was low.

@Emerikol gave work examples; I can give some too. When I have to get something written by a deadline, I rarely fail - writing to a deadline is part of my job. But that doesn't mean it can't be hard - it's just that I put in the effort, an am quite good at it. You might retort, "OK, then, it's not hard for you" - but now we're just playing with ambiguities in the meaning of "hard. Eg it's not hard in the sense that I'm likely to fail, but it certainly is hard in the sense that I might be exhausted by the end of it.

I agree with much of this. I think the common mistake is to equate difficulty with chance of character death. Death is just another journey, one we all mus-- no, wait, that's Gandalf. Death is just one of many failure states. The stakes don't have to be about life or death. They could be about quest goals, story goals, or personal character goals. Once looked in this way, I think a lot of the differences fall away. In a B/X game, for example, the goals of my game may be "stay alive and find the riches." While the goals in pemerton's game might be, "Avenge my father, and reclaim my homeland," in addition to other character goals. Our games may look very different, but as DM's are jobs are highly similar: we put obstacles in the way of the character's goals. Failure outcomes may be diverse -- death or failure to get loot in my campaign; letting the enemy get away, or having to run and live to fight another day in pemerton's. But the players will constantly work to prevent those failure states, so out and out failure is likely to be rare.

As I posted a way upthread, I agree that it's not about difficulty. Nor is it about linear/sandbox. It's about "choice" vs "experience". In RPGing, the examplar of "wish fulfillent" is not really what Emerikol pulled out in the OP. It's first person immersive RPing. I think of CoC as the poster-child for this, but I think a lot of the more "avant garde" 2nd ed stuff (Ravenloft, Planescape) was intended to be played this way too.

I'd say just "immersive" rather than limiting it to "first person". The experience can come vicariously. A player playing his paladin may constantly say, "My character says this," or "My paladin does that," but if he thrills at his paladin's successes and feels disappointment in his failures, the player is having an experience. This is contrast to, say, M:tG, where if a player loses they don't generally say, "Noooo! My planeswalker was vanquished!"

It cannot be stressed enough that Pulsipher, as near as I can tell, did not intend for RPGs to fall into either side of the dichotomy, but rather to be a bridge between them. A particular game or a particular table may lean one way or the other, but even so there is no RPG that doesn't provide both interesting choices and wish fulfillment/an experience. In essence, that was the innovation of RPGs -- to combine the interesting choices of a wargame with the wish fulfillment of being a character in a fictional world. So with RPGs the question is never "Is our game about interesting choices or wish fulfillment?" The questions are "What interesting choices does our game offer, and what kind of wish fulfillment do we want to experience?"

 

[pemerton]

I'd say just "immersive" rather than limiting it to "first person". The experience can come vicariously. A player playing his paladin may constantly say, "My character says this," or "My paladin does that," but if he thrills at his paladin's successes and feels disappointment in his failures, the player is having an experience.

Sure. By "first person immersion" I wasn't meaning to preclude 3rd person action declaration, but rather to capture the character identification that is (as you say) central to RPGs in a way it's not to (say) M:tG.

It cannot be stressed enough that Pulsipher, as near as I can tell, did not intend for RPGs to fall into either side of the dichotomy, but rather to be a bridge between them. A particular game or a particular table may lean one way or the other, but even so there is no RPG that doesn't provide both interesting choices and wish fulfillment/an experience. In essence, that was the innovation of RPGs -- to combine the interesting choices of a wargame with the wish fulfillment of being a character in a fictional world.

I think this point is very similar to Ron Edwards' point that all RPGs involve exploration of a shared imaginary space. But different tables are interested in, and different systems offer varying support for, various ways of approaching and/or building on that exploration.

I think some approaches to RPGing come very close to eschewing choices on the player side, other perhaps than certain choices about characterisation. I think these come closest to the WF side of the dichotomy.

Paizo has built an entire business around selling wish fulfilment (by this definition) modules to gamers. An adventure path is exactly the same as something like Mass Effect - linear with a cool storyline.

I certainly think there is something to this. It seems to me that APs must at least put some outer limits on player choices (eg in the typical AP the basic opposition and BBEG is pre-determined, as are many of the key situations that the campaign will involve). In that sense what is on offer is primarily an experience, I think.

 

[pemerton]

This is contrast to, say, M:tG, where if a player loses they don't generally say, "Noooo! My planeswalker was vanquished!"

But henceforth they should!

 

[BryonD]

But, how does that work?

We have long ago established that I lack the eloquence to turn this light bulb on for you.

A very important part ties into awareness of what is and is not random and uncontrollable. Finding ways to mitigate risks, manage circumstances, etc. If you are looking at the elements in a vacuum you don't see the possibilities correctly.

But the real point remains, you are declaring because your games have worked one way that everyone else must experience the same thing. When a vast number of people have a good experience that you claim can't happen, perhaps you can find more fun can let go of your presumptions.

 

[Sadras]

"For me" the value added is scores of time over the negatives. (year after year after year)

Just to clarify are you speaking of PC/Party failures or Dramatic Showdowns that never materialise?

 

[BryonD]

Just to clarify are you speaking of PC/Party failures or Dramatic Showdowns that never materialise?

I'm talking about PC/Party failures that were very fun to all involved because of the way they played out.
I'm talking about Dramatic Showdowns where the party realized they had made a mistake and now had to figure their way out of it.
I'm talking about PC/Party successes because they managed to stack the odds in their favor.
I'm talking about PC/Party successes when they got insanely lucky and it was awesome.
I'm talking about PC/Party success that came after PC/Party failures and the sense of revenge was awesome.


You didn't say much, so I can't take much context. But you seem to be back to implying the inevitability of circumstances based on looking at mechanics in a vacuum. I not only reject that presumption but I'm saying that my decades on gaming experience disprove the null hypothesis claiming my game can't happen. That isn't to say that other peoples' game with negative results don't happen. But I'm not going to get hung up on worrying about if someone else has a game that is defined by failures and dramatic events that did not materialize.