Soviet Reversal or how the reward should be different from the challenge

[loverdrive]

I'm mostly busy making vidyagames, as you might see on my Itch, so I don't really have much time to do any TTRPG-related work and/or thinking, but here's some:

While working on my game, I recently had an epiphany: reward for beating a challenge should never boost your ability to beat similar challenges. It should've been completely obvious, but this thought never crossed my mind.

If you beat a tough boss and get a cool new shiny sword that deals over9000 damage, the question is, what's the point? You've already proven that you know how to read animations, dodge, parry, manage your stamina and whatnot. You evidently don't need any help at combat, because if you did, you wouldn't be able to defeat this boss anyway. Instead, the sick loot drop should include Brazilian double jump boots, while cool shiny sword should be hidden behind tough platforming, so the reward A) is meaningful, B) pushes you towards developing a new skill and experiencing something new: you sucked at platforming before, that's why you mostly avoided it, but with these new double jump boots, how can you pass on an opportunity to test them out?

Reward for beating a challenge should never boost your ability to beat similar challenges. It should've been completely obvious, but this thought never crossed my mind.

It should've been obvious, but it made me wonder why so many RPGs do the exact opposite. Cutter gets better at violence by doing violence, so they'll do violence, and in the next session we will see how they do violence, but with 3 dots in Skirmish instead of 2! I'm waiting with bated breath! Just can't contain my excitement!

Combined with niche protection, this quickly leads to ossification. Cutter beats people into a bloody pulp, Slide smooth-talks people into submission, Whisper does magic mumbo-jumbo. Day in, day out, the same ####ing thing. And I love Blades. It's one of my favorite games. Replace Cutter with Fighter or Gunlugger; replace Slide with Bard or Skinner; replace Whisper with Wizard or Brainer. Nothing of matter will change.

So here's my Soviet Reversal: the only way to improve at something should be doing something else to incentivize wandering outside of the prison of your character's specialization.

 

[Tutara]

But what if I like my role? I agree that providing greater breadth of ability rather than just ‘here’s a bigger number’ is a good shout, but making me do something I hate (platform jumping, for example) to get something I want (a nifty new sword) isn’t necessarily going to broaden my horizons- it’s just going to remind me I hate doing that thing.

 

[Yora]

What's the Soviet part in this?

Something about resources being reallocated to underperforming factories, incentivizing factories to underperform?

 

[Yora]

This is something I like about percentile skill based systems. (Or d20 systems that work the same in 5% steps like Dragonbane.)
The chance to improve a skill is the reverse of the chance to succeed at the skill.

In Dragonbane, any time you use any skill, there is a 10% chance to mark the skill for advancement (when you roll a 1 or a 20). At the end of the adventure, you roll all the marked skills, and if you fail the roll the skill rank goes up by one. You also get free marks to assign to any skill that didn't get marked during the adventure as rewards. If you use these marks on skills that are very low, they most likely improve. If you use them on your highest skills, they most likely get wasted.

Nice system that incentivizes using skills that are low, and using your advancement marks to improve your weaknesses rather than your strengths.

 

[Staffan]

What's the Soviet part in this?

Something about resources being reallocated to underperforming factories, incentivizing factories to underperform?

"Soviet reversal" or more commonly "Russian reversal" is the term for a type of joke popularized by Ukrainian comedian Yakov Smirnoff, constrasting life in the west and east. Things like "Here in the West, you watch TV, but in Soviet Russia TV watches you."

 

[clearstream]

I'm mostly busy making vidyagames, as you might see on my Itch, so I don't really have much time to do any TTRPG-related work and/or thinking, but here's some:

While working on my game, I recently had an epiphany: reward for beating a challenge should never boost your ability to beat similar challenges. It should've been completely obvious, but this thought never crossed my mind.

If you beat a tough boss and get a cool new shiny sword that deals over9000 damage, the question is, what's the point? You've already proven that you know how to read animations, dodge, parry, manage your stamina and whatnot. You evidently don't need any help at combat, because if you did, you wouldn't be able to defeat this boss anyway. Instead, the sick loot drop should include Brazilian double jump boots, while cool shiny sword should be hidden behind tough platforming, so the reward A) is meaningful, B) pushes you towards developing a new skill and experiencing something new: you sucked at platforming before, that's why you mostly avoided it, but with these new double jump boots, how can you pass on an opportunity to test them out?

Reward for beating a challenge should never boost your ability to beat similar challenges. It should've been completely obvious, but this thought never crossed my mind.

It should've been obvious, but it made me wonder why so many RPGs do the exact opposite. Cutter gets better at violence by doing violence, so they'll do violence, and in the next session we will see how they do violence, but with 3 dots in Skirmish instead of 2! I'm waiting with bated breath! Just can't contain my excitement!

Combined with niche protection, this quickly leads to ossification. Cutter beats people into a bloody pulp, Slide smooth-talks people into submission, Whisper does magic mumbo-jumbo. Day in, day out, the same ####ing thing. And I love Blades. It's one of my favorite games. Replace Cutter with Fighter or Gunlugger; replace Slide with Bard or Skinner; replace Whisper with Wizard or Brainer. Nothing of matter will change.

So here's my Soviet Reversal: the only way to improve at something should be doing something else to incentivize wandering outside of the prison of your character's specialization.

Others such as @Tutara have made the reasonable point that through opting into and overcoming a jumping challenge I have (potentially) shown my interest in jumping. Therefore give me improved jumping so I can take on bigger and more complex jumping challenges. That conceded, something observed when we work out what players like and give them more of it is that it can result in monotony which is as you say, imprisoning. I think it also makes less than ideal use of the game's design-space (assuming the game to contain some non-jumping mechanics, obviously not a given.)

A good reward strategy for player-who-loves jumping is not all-jumping, it is mostly-jumping-sometimes-other. An always-other reward strategy risks frustrating some players. Still, I'm sympathetic to mixing it up. How does this then dovetail with your - I want to repeat the same challenge over and over theory?

 

[clearstream]

deleted, accidentally strayed into non-RPG-related conversation

 

[billd91]

But what if I like my role? I agree that providing greater breadth of ability rather than just ‘here’s a bigger number’ is a good shout, but making me do something I hate (platform jumping, for example) to get something I want (a nifty new sword) isn’t necessarily going to broaden my horizons- it’s just going to remind me I hate doing that thing.

I suppose it depends on the design of the situation. If this were a computer game, for example, that had equal portions platforming and combat and you had the ability to pursue each chapter's challenges in your preferred order but needed to complete both, loverdrive's idea would work. You beat the one challenge to make the other easier, probably because it fits your skills/preference better, then you're on to the next chapter. Beating the one challenge helps you complete the chapter by making the other challenge easier.

For a multiplayer co-operative RPG, it's not that clear. And you're right, if being the big hitter is your jam and other players are tackling the other aspects of the game, being better at being the big hitter is exactly what you want.

 

[payn]

I'm mostly busy making vidyagames, as you might see on my Itch, so I don't really have much time to do any TTRPG-related work and/or thinking, but here's some:

While working on my game, I recently had an epiphany: reward for beating a challenge should never boost your ability to beat similar challenges. It should've been completely obvious, but this thought never crossed my mind.

If you beat a tough boss and get a cool new shiny sword that deals over9000 damage, the question is, what's the point? You've already proven that you know how to read animations, dodge, parry, manage your stamina and whatnot. You evidently don't need any help at combat, because if you did, you wouldn't be able to defeat this boss anyway. Instead, the sick loot drop should include Brazilian double jump boots, while cool shiny sword should be hidden behind tough platforming, so the reward A) is meaningful, B) pushes you towards developing a new skill and experiencing something new: you sucked at platforming before, that's why you mostly avoided it, but with these new double jump boots, how can you pass on an opportunity to test them out?

Reward for beating a challenge should never boost your ability to beat similar challenges. It should've been completely obvious, but this thought never crossed my mind.

It should've been obvious, but it made me wonder why so many RPGs do the exact opposite. Cutter gets better at violence by doing violence, so they'll do violence, and in the next session we will see how they do violence, but with 3 dots in Skirmish instead of 2! I'm waiting with bated breath! Just can't contain my excitement!

Combined with niche protection, this quickly leads to ossification. Cutter beats people into a bloody pulp, Slide smooth-talks people into submission, Whisper does magic mumbo-jumbo. Day in, day out, the same ####ing thing. And I love Blades. It's one of my favorite games. Replace Cutter with Fighter or Gunlugger; replace Slide with Bard or Skinner; replace Whisper with Wizard or Brainer. Nothing of matter will change.

So here's my Soviet Reversal: the only way to improve at something should be doing something else to incentivize wandering outside of the prison of your character's specialization.

I've had many discussions here with folks about incentive and advancement. There are a number of folks that dont just like, but demand, rewards for doing what the game expects them to do. For example, "why would my character ever pick locks if they didnt get XP and get better at it?" For some folks this is just the way RPGs work.

Personally, I prefer to just ditch the lure altogether. Im not going to give you a better sword for killing to find better jumping boots etc... I have been leaning more into meta plot and long term goal pursuit. I do this by running adventure paths and detailed sandboxes like Pirates of Drinax for Traveller. I use or create detailed players guides so the themes are apparent to the players. Pursuit of cracking cases, solving mysteries, exposing conspiracies and making major change in the setting is the reward for playing. It does take a proactive type player who doesnt need obvious XP reward systems or repetitive game play loops to work. Though there isnt anything wrong with traditional reward systems either, it really comes down to preference.

 

[Yora]

Mechanical incentives are a super useful tool to support players approaching the events in the game from the perspective of the genre that the campaign targets.

A good combination of game system and campaign setting is one in which the things that make mechanical sense for the players are also genre appropriate for the characters. If the mechanics of the game system are nudging you on to do obviously risky and reckless things that are in line with the genre of the campaign, players are much more happy and eager to do these things than if the mechanics will make the same behaviors costly for the players.