Some mechanisms (often ported from the old days) are putting the incentives in the wrong place - blog post discussion

[tetrasodium]

But my point is that whether it's a good benefit or a bad cost is purely your perspective. If you change your perspective it's all good benefit or it's all bad cost.

Changing 5es terrible encumbrance to give s bonus when below the mark instead of s penalty after crossing it would do nothing to change that because the root cause in why people ignore it is the terrible design.


You miss the point. What was important is that there were two steps that mattered in different ways. The first one was tracked until you passed it and for all but the weakest characters the second one didn't really come up until "yea I'm sure all this puts me over". People didn't really track the second because it was a gentleman's agreement that kicked in when the GM said "your carrying a lot of stuff if you take all that". The first one was tracked for your standard kitbecause you got the benefits of faster movement and iirc better skill checks with some skills as long as you kept within the budget you worked out long ago & just keep tweaking.

"But I want to cheat" is not a good justification for ignoring encumbrance. "It's terribly designed almost explicitly to encourage players to forget about tracking a value that will almost never matter and accomplishes almost nothing even if they cross the line" is a very different thing.

 

[Blue]

I see the thrust here, but it's misguided.

A default should be the baseline, never a modifier. The "oh, it's during the day, you get a bonus to sight based perception rolls" is straight out bad design.

It also misses the point on some things. Spell components are one of them, because they fundamentally miss why the spell is there. You "handwave" spell components just like you handwave weapons. As in, only if you are ignorant, but 99% of the time it's not going to slow down the game with additional modifiers. I'm not just comparing spell components to weapons gratuitously - they server the exact same purpose*. Allowing a caster to be disarmed. Without it, you can't capture them safely so you can only kill them. A DM who lets a gagged and tied up caster cast their full complement of spell is... well, likely one will make that mistake. But if a DM says they are ignoring spell components, tell them that you expect to be able to cast every spell naked, bound and gagged, have them tell you no, and then realize the DM isn't actually ignoring spell components but doesn't actually understand what their house rule means.

(* There's also expensive spell components, which the designers say is a throttle from having a spell cast all the time. Like if there was no penalty to dying, it's just another slot used.)

The concepts put forth aren't bad, but are lesser to other things (like default should be baseline) and understanding why a rule is in place.

 

[Clint_L]

In effect, the post is talking about the difference between positive and negative reinforcement, which is something we study a lot in education, for obvious reasons. Note that folks popularly confuse positive and negative with good and bad, but that's not really what those terms mean in a psychological sense. Positive reinforcement responds to a behaviour by adding something, while negative reinforcement subtracts.

So in some contexts, pain can be considered positive reinforcement, in that you are adding something, pain, to an undesirable action - the classic example is touching a hot stove. Thus, though folks commonly think that negative reinforcement is the same as punishment, it is not - punishment often relies on positive reinforcement.

According to most recent research, humans are generally more strongly motivated by negative reinforcement, using the term in the psychological sense. In other words, fear of losing something tends to be more motivating, in the sense of reinforcing a desired behaviour, than the desire for gaining something. So from a purely psychological perspective, the notion that players will be more likely to respond to positive than to negative reinforcement is incorrect.

As has been astutely pointed out, in the context of an RPG this starts to become a matter of perspective. Adding 10' of movement for being lightly encumbered but starting from 20' of movement is functionally the same as subtracting 10' of movement for being heavily encumbered but starting from 30' of movement. Psychological research suggests that the latter would be more motivating, so the current system of, say D&D, actually has it right.

But I think that only holds true if the DM is the one monitoring it, and if the rule is enforced consistently. Once the player is in charge of tracking the behaviour, the equation changes, because they are naturally going to be more attracted to enforcing rules that they perceive as beneficial, and ignoring or conveniently forgetting ones that they perceive as deleterious. So if you want the player in charge, I would only do it for rules that they can perceive as advantageous, whether framed in positive or negative terms.

 

[ichabod]

Changing 5es terrible encumbrance to give s bonus when below the mark instead of s penalty after crossing it would do nothing to change that because the root cause in why people ignore it is the terrible design.


You miss the point. What was important is that there were two steps that mattered in different ways. The first one was tracked until you passed it and for all but the weakest characters the second one didn't really come up until "yea I'm sure all this puts me over". People didn't really track the second because it was a gentleman's agreement that kicked in when the GM said "your carrying a lot of stuff if you take all that". The first one was tracked for your standard kitbecause you got the benefits of faster movement and iirc better skill checks with some skills as long as you kept within the budget you worked out long ago & just keep tweaking.

I don't understand what you are saying. How did they matter in different ways? I mean, you're not even tracking the second one. So one gives you a bonus and one you didn't track because it was GM fiat? How does relate to phrasing penalties as bonuses?

"But I want to cheat" is not a good justification for ignoring encumbrance. "It's terribly designed almost explicitly to encourage players to forget about tracking a value that will almost never matter and accomplishes almost nothing even if they cross the line" is a very different thing.

Again, I don't understand. You are again not tracking, but now it's horrible game design instead of mattering in a different way. And something does happen when you cross the line, so how does that accomplish nothing?

 

[John Dallman]

When it comes to D&D, I'm full aboard the post-Hickman train. The game's scope has increased significantly. No longer are the PCs simply expected to dungeon delve and survive to get loot and become more powerful. It's no longer simply a survival sim. Now, the PCs are exploring long lost places, uncovering vast conspiracies, and making their mark on the setting and its people.

All of those things were happening years before Hickman. The game didn't tell you could do those things, but that didn't slow people down much.

 

[payn]

All of those things were happening years before Hickman. The game didn't tell you could do those things, but that didn't slow people down much.

No, what the game told you was to avoid getting beaten by sticks if you didn’t engage the relentless skill play focus. Folks don’t want to focus on that play in D&D anymore thus jettison many of these tedious task mechanics.

 

[Yora]

It's not just carrots and sticks, but also chickens and eggs.

People no longer look for certain types of gameplay because the rules required for it to work are no longer supported by the game.

 

[payn]

It's not just carrots and sticks, but also chickens and eggs.

People no longer look for certain types of gameplay because the rules required for it to work are no longer supported by the game.

There is an entire market for that gameplay the OSR.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't understand what you are saying. How did they matter in different ways? I mean, you're not even tracking the second one. So one gives you a bonus and one you didn't track because it was GM fiat? How does relate to phrasing penalties as bonuses?

Again, I don't understand. You are again not tracking, but now it's horrible game design instead of mattering in a different way. And something does happen when you cross the line, so how does that accomplish nothing?

I explained it in post 18, you quoted it in post 19 but badly missed the point and didn't seem to grasp it. You might need to review the rules themselves in order to understand how they were different from the awful 5e carrying capacity rules

Carrying Capacity :: d20srd.org

 

[GMMichael]

A default should be the baseline, never a modifier. The "oh, it's during the day, you get a bonus to sight based perception rolls" is straight out bad design.

Funny, the movement of all racial modifiers to Bonus Only would also fall, then, under the category of "bad design."
(It's about time someone else noticed.)

It also misses the point on some things. Spell components are one of them, because they fundamentally miss why the spell is there. You "handwave" spell components just like you handwave weapons.

I believe it's the handwaiving GMs that are missing the point, not the OP. The OP recognizes that handwaiving (encumbrance, spell components) is happening, and seeks to remedy that. Unfortunately, it looks like a solution for game designers, not GMs.

Any other areas of your favorite games where the incentives are not in the right place?

The first thing that comes to mind from my favorite game is the active defense requirement. A PC can attempt to dodge an attack and negate all damage from that attack. But this costs an action - one that could be used as a counterattack to cause, effectively, simultaneous damage to the attacker. So by choosing to defend, you're also choosing to do less damage than your opponent is.

So where's the incentive to defend? It's in teamwork: if you're defending (and being attacked), your ally can be safely causing damage instead. It's in accessorizing: having a shield or applicable perk makes defending much more effective. It's in timing: having the initiative over your opponent allows your damage to happen first, so if you wait for it by defending, you could defeat an opponent who might have simultaneously defeated you with a counterattack by virtue of having that edge of initiative.

Would I like to flip the incentives of defense actions? Say, by making a defense a free action, thereby removing the costs of choosing to defend? Well, everything has consequences. In this case, I think combat would take longer since every attack must be compared to a defense, and players would lose the option of making tactical considerations (how important is it that I take no damage right now, and how do I want to handle it?).