The Min-Max Problem: Solved

[Lanefan]

Celebrim, if your definition of failure is to fail the overall task, not just to have some setbacks along the road, then it is very different from mine. As a storytelling GM, overall success is assumed - the only failure I as a GM push for are temporary setbacks/quirks. For example, death happens only at the player's option in my games.

There's micro-failure e.g. you blow your open-locks roll and the door stays locked, and macro-failure e.g. you set out to rescue the kidnapped princess but instead manage to kill her by mistake.

I have no problem with either type of failure. Stuff happens.

Some, like you, don't like macro-failure; and I can see where that's coming from if you're looking to tell a continuous story and the players are cool with it.

Some, however, can't even handle micro-failure; which is why we're seeing things like fail-forward (which in agreement with [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] I see as a faulty term) creep into the lexicon. 'Nuff said.

Succeed/fail: rules that set up a dichotomy of A) get what you want or B) suffer pain or boredom. As in, "welp, I failed my Caster Level check, so my level 13 Invert Monster spell just did jack and squat to my opponent. And I'm not allowed to do anything else besides talk until my next turn." Or "I just failed my Detect Traps check on Lanefan's lawn, and now I have to take 18d6 damage. Why didn't I spend more time min/maxing?"

These are both examples of what I'm calling micro-fail. A macro-fail would be if the failure to find my lawn trap resulted in a full-on TPK, leading to mission failure.

I still think you're being a bit harsh on the "suffer boredom" side, in that you're assuming the only thing that interests a player is what her own PC does and-or whether it succeeds. In theory a player doesn't "switch off" when it's not her turn; and though in practice far too many in fact do just this that's on those players to fix, not the game designers.

Min/max: creating a character that is embarrassingly unbalanced (to anyone but the character's player). This is not synonymous with optimizing.

Now here I disagree; as I tend to use the terms the other way around. Min-maxing is simple stuff like putting your best stat in strength when rolling up a fighter. Optimizing I see as the extreme and highly objectionable sort of activity that gets people thrown out of respectable clubs.

"Less focus on natural language and more focus on math" kept min-maxing down in 4e. It sounds like the designers had to implement rule-based leashes to what, make characters more balanced?

Given that a main focus - maybe even the main focus - of 4e design was character balance, this should come as no great surprise.

Lan-"18d6 - hell, no problem - that's an average of 63 points o' damage; a mere wake-up call for a 100 h.p. tank like you"-efan

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim, if your definition of failure is to fail the overall task, not just to have some setbacks along the road, then it is very different from mine.

I don't know any definition of failure that means success with setbacks. Further, a setback is by definition of a very temporary nature. The term implies that it was overcome. There is a big difference between a project failing and a project having set backs. There is a big difference between your company failing and your company having setbacks. Your definition of failure is to remove failure from the realm of possibility.

Which, you even admit:

As a storytelling GM, overall success is assumed...

the only failure I as a GM push for are temporary setbacks/quirks.

So your definition of failure is indistinguishable from success.

Otherwise, I agree that Mouse Guard seems to fail at some of the objectives it sets itself.

Where they failures or just setbacks?

But honestly I am not that interested, I played the game once.

Sounds like failure to me.

 

[Celebrim]

Here's what I meant in the OP, in case we're derailing a bit:

Succeed/fail: rules that set up a dichotomy of A) get what you want or B) suffer pain or boredom.

False definition. False dichotomy.

As in, "welp, I failed my Caster Level check, so my level 13 Invert Monster spell just did jack and squat to my opponent.

I am just not going to go there.

Min/max: creating a character that is embarrassingly unbalanced (to anyone but the character's player). This is not synonymous with optimizing.

Isn't it? Some people think it is. Some people would suggest that making the focus of chargen being good at something, rather than being a character which is realistic to setting, or being a character that produces an interesting story, would be min/maxing.

I don't think quibbling over that is important, but I do want to point out you are now seriously splitting hairs.

Without justifying my opinion, I think the only thing that is really wrong with what you are calling Min/Maxing is that it is often indicative of some sort of socially dysfunctional gaming, either in that the player does not want to be challenged and becomes frustrated if they are, or that the player wants to be the center of attention all the time, and otherwise dominate both play and the direction of play. In essence, many min-maxers want to play a game where the referee exists only to validate their awesomeness, and the other players exist only to witness it.

I think there is an interesting intersection between the goals of 'story based referees' where success is assured and the goals of 'min/maxers', and I further notice that many of those games presume a small party of just 1-3 players. Anyway, that's a tangent and a don't want to get too much into badwrongfun territory criticizing Forge and Indy gamers for some of the very things that annoy me about them. It's enough to say that I don't always think that the aesthetics of play of those games are what the players or designers of the games believe that they are.

What if I was diametrically wrong, and more succeed/fail can be a cure for min/maxing?

What are you trying to cure? Because there is only one thing that you really need to cure, and that's whether everyone in the group is having fun. So the question becomes, why is the behavior of the Min/Maxer causing people at the table to not have fun? The cure then suggests itself. I will however suggest that one very important cure to the problem is when designing a system of play, more sure it rigorously enforces Celebrim's First Law of RPGs: "Thou shalt not be good at everything." If it doesn't, then you'll have to come up with some sort of social contract that implements the First Law.

 

[Celebrim]

Some, however, can't even handle micro-failure; which is why we're seeing things like fail-forward (which in agreement with [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] I see as a faulty term) creep into the lexicon. 'Nuff said.

I am beginning to think inventing language is as bad of an idea as using a metaphor to explain yourself. One of the many problems with inventing a term as short hand for some larger and often complex idea is that when people who haven't read the original essay begin using the term, they come up with their own definition for it as is suggested by your term and then beginning using the term to mean that instead. The result is often more confusion rather than less confusion. Another problem is that often the term you come up with clouds the issue simply because it is badly named leading to all sorts of back-flips and twists to get around what the words suggest as opposed to what they were intended to label. I could here insert a lot of hot button examples from popular culture, but I think we are going to have enough heat as it is with 'Fail-Foward'.

'Fail-Forward' was an idea that was originally addressing plot railroads, and in particular gates in the railroads where the plot passed through a very narrow aperture and some sort of success was required to get through the gate and no provision existed for what to do should a string of bad rolls lead to failure at that gate. In other words, the problem here we are trying to solve is: "On failure, the story is over."

The original essayist was basically asserting, quite correctly, that having a story have the possibility of stopping at some anti-climatic point just because the party missed one clue, or failed one open locks check, or couldn't solve the riddle might work OK for some sort of competitive one shot, but wasn't really how you should design a long running campaign.

There are a ton of ways you can address this problem at a design level or at a procedures of play level or at a mechanical level. People have wrote essays about the "Three clue rule", and we could maybe have something like a "Three door rule.", where you designed problems where if one plan of attack failed, there was always at least one other way to go forward. Where I think the whole otherwise fine idea derailed is with one-true-wayism, where systems not only called out the problem to the perspective GM, but told them that there was one way to approach the problem and that in particular this game was so superior to all those Old Has Been Games that didn't approach the problem this way. Mechanics that tried to mechanically enforce that way as if GMs couldn't be trusted to run a good game unless the rules forced them to only added to the problem.

Add to that the problem that some players have taken the idea and run with it as a validation for a game where no real problems can occur as if the best way to have fun was always to receive immediate instant gratification.

Hmmm... does that sound like something that intersects the goals of a typical Min/Max player?

A macro-fail would be if the failure to find my lawn trap resulted in a full-on TPK, leading to mission failure.

That's not a desirable ending to a game, but preventing that result mechanically may cause more harm than good. A better approach might be to suggest to GMs not to place a trap that might lead to a campaign ending TPK in a non-climatic scene of a story. But beyond that, I don't even consider 'Trap goes off, everyone dies' really the problem Fail-Forward was trying to solve. Better examples in my opinion are, "NPC dies, so story dies too.", or "Can't open this door, no story for you.", or "Nothing happens until the party finds the clue in the false bottom of the jewelry case in the writing desk of the boudoir.", or even "If the party goes left rather than right, they find nothing interesting."

Rather than what has become known as "Fail Forward", I prefer to solve the same problem with "Story in All Directions". You can still fail your way out of success, but unless you actively try to avoid story, you'll find it.

 

[Starfox]

Sounds like failure to me.

Seems this matter is vastly more important to you than than to me.

 

[Lanefan]

I am beginning to think inventing language is as bad of an idea as using a metaphor to explain yourself. One of the many problems with inventing a term as short hand for some larger and often complex idea is that when people who haven't read the original essay begin using the term, they come up with their own definition for it as is suggested by your term and then beginning using the term to mean that instead. The result is often more confusion rather than less confusion. Another problem is that often the term you come up with clouds the issue simply because it is badly named leading to all sorts of back-flips and twists to get around what the words suggest as opposed to what they were intended to label. I could here insert a lot of hot button examples from popular culture, but I think we are going to have enough heat as it is with 'Fail-Foward'.

'Fail-Forward' was an idea that was originally addressing plot railroads, and in particular gates in the railroads where the plot passed through a very narrow aperture and some sort of success was required to get through the gate and no provision existed for what to do should a string of bad rolls lead to failure at that gate. In other words, the problem here we are trying to solve is: "On failure, the story is over."

In a campaign setting with any depth whatsoever you'll never hit "On failure, the story [i.e. campaign] is over" as there's always going to be another story out there somewhere.

"On failure, the mission is over" or "On failure, the adventure is over" is seen by some as a problem, but usually not by me. I look at it more as if they fail, they fail; and depending on the overarching situation that failure may or may not have any long-reaching consequences.

Example: if their mission is to loot the tomb of Happuset because of the mighty treasures they've heard are in there and they flat out fail to get in to said tomb, then they can't get in and the tomb remains undisturbed. End of adventure, no lasting consequences, party finds something else to do.

The original essayist was basically asserting, quite correctly, that having a story have the possibility of stopping at some anti-climatic point just because the party missed one clue, or failed one open locks check, or couldn't solve the riddle might work OK for some sort of competitive one shot, but wasn't really how you should design a long running campaign.

Which is odd, given that a long-running campaign would in theory provide more alternatives for other adventures and missions.

Where a choke point can become a serious headache is if you're trying to run a hard-wired adventure path from start to end with no side treks, and that's on the AP author to provide options.

There are a ton of ways you can address this problem at a design level or at a procedures of play level or at a mechanical level. People have wrote essays about the "Three clue rule", and we could maybe have something like a "Three door rule.", where you designed problems where if one plan of attack failed, there was always at least one other way to go forward. Where I think the whole otherwise fine idea derailed is with one-true-wayism, where systems not only called out the problem to the perspective GM, but told them that there was one way to approach the problem and that in particular this game was so superior to all those Old Has Been Games that didn't approach the problem this way. Mechanics that tried to mechanically enforce that way as if GMs couldn't be trusted to run a good game unless the rules forced them to only added to the problem.

This is all gettable-aroundable.

Add to that the problem that some players have taken the idea and run with it as a validation for a game where no real problems can occur as if the best way to have fun was always to receive immediate instant gratification.

But this is the crux of the problem, right here: player entitlement. And it's not quite as gettable-aroundable as mechanical issues are, at least not without some arguments and head-butting and occasional use of the DM smackdown hammer.

Hmmm... does that sound like something that intersects the goals of a typical Min/Max player?

Not necessarily. Optimizing is one thing, always expecting to immediately get what you want is another; and while the twain sometimes meet they're not hard-wired together by any means.

Put another way: I've known I-want-it-now players who whine about every failure but who couldn't optimize their way out of a shoe, and I've known hard-core optimizers who are perfectly willing to accept failure as a part of the game even after trying to minimize the odds of such happening.

That's not a desirable ending to a game, but preventing that result mechanically may cause more harm than good. A better approach might be to suggest to GMs not to place a trap that might lead to a campaign ending TPK in a non-climatic scene of a story.

True, though sometimes the most innocent of traps or the seemingly simplest of combats can lead to a TPK if things really go wrong.

But beyond that, I don't even consider 'Trap goes off, everyone dies' really the problem Fail-Forward was trying to solve. Better examples in my opinion are, "NPC dies, so story dies too.", or "Can't open this door, no story for you.", or "Nothing happens until the party finds the clue in the false bottom of the jewelry case in the writing desk of the boudoir.", or even "If the party goes left rather than right, they find nothing interesting."

The first three of these might mean some short-term frustrations for both the PCs in the fiction and the players at the table, but eventually they'll realize they're hooped for this adventure and might as well try something else.

The fourth one - if they go left rather than right they find nothing interesting - is kinda hogwash, as in theory they're eventually going to explore both ways, aren't they?

Rather than what has become known as "Fail Forward", I prefer to solve the same problem with "Story in All Directions". You can still fail your way out of success, but unless you actively try to avoid story, you'll find it.

Same here, with the caveat that you sometimes need to at least go through the motions of looking for story before you'll find any. If you all meet in a tavern and decide you're just going to sit there until an adventure comes to you, all that's probably going to happen is you'll drink until you run out of beer money.

Lanefan

 

[KenNYC]

The best safeguard against min maxing is a DM who will not let himself be pushed around. Two weeks ago I was DMing and the party was in a forest and they were clearly not alone. The Paladin discovered the crude implication of footprints (squashed grass in a roughly one foot shape) and decided he wanted to know if he could see if it was human, dwarf, orcs or something else, and did he see if there were multiple people walking.

"are you a Ranger who spent years tracking?"

"No"

"Then how would you know these things?"

End of tracking attempt, no die roll needed, no check, no nothing. It made no sense so I was not going to let him apply all his min maxed plusses nonsense to a die roll.


The Warlock tried to tell me he was an expert lock picker. I don't care how he configured his sheet, I asked him what in his warlock training would possibly lead to expert lockpicking skills. There was no answer because there is no answer. Throw those plusses in the garbage and start thinking of an in narrative answer to your problem. That solved all min maxing problems at the table and the players then went on to enjoy a session with almost no dice rolling but heavy on narrative.

 

[Starfox]

This now seems to be a discussion of the merits of sandbox versus storytelling, more than a discussion of min-maxing. This is a general observation and not a comment on KenNYC that I quote below.

"are you a Ranger who spent years tracking?"

"No"

"Then how would you know these things?"

When playing in a game like 5E that essentially lacks skills, this might be a legitimate approach. But if playing something like 3E, 3.5, or PF1, where players have skill ranks/points that they have to prioritize, its not. If the paladin has skills ranks in tracking, then tracking is obviously a part of his background somehow.

Actually, it is EXACTLY this problem that PF2 seeks to correct with its levels of expertise, even if what I've seen of it from the playtest so far is not impressive. Take Survival as an example. Ayone can use Survival to sense direction or survive in the wild, but you have to be trained in order to conceal tracks or track. These are actual examples from the playtest book.

What the paladin player was trying in your example is to go Old School, narrating his actions without reference to a skill system at all. In this tradition the player supplies the skills, not the character, especially outside of combat. This is a legitimate way to play the game, even if I agree with you here KenNYC; I don't use this playstyle at my table either. But it can be hard to draw the line; when does player ingenuity apply, and when does the character's skills, background, and experience apply. Each table has its own playstyle.

 

[Celebrim]

"On failure, the mission is over" or "On failure, the adventure is over" is seen by some as a problem, but usually not by me. I look at it more as if they fail, they fail; and depending on the overarching situation that failure may or may not have any long-reaching consequences.

The issue is that the sort of people that were worried about this had a very narrow definition of story. To them 'story' was something character driven, personal, and compulsory in the sense that failing the story had some dramatic consequence. In that sense, there was only one story, the one that we were telling. You mention adventure paths, but it isn't just published adventure paths that are going to have this structure. It's everyone that imagines and prepares for the game in the same way, either because the AP is trying to achieve the same thing that they want to achieve or because the AP has served as the only model of play that they've encountered and they are just replicating the procedures of play that they know. Many a novice GM has run their own game with narrower choke points than you find in an adventure path.

Put another way: I've known I-want-it-now players who whine about every failure but who couldn't optimize their way out of a shoe, and I've known hard-core optimizers who are perfectly willing to accept failure as a part of the game even after trying to minimize the odds of such happening.

Personality. Personal skill. You haven't actually overturned the idea that they share a similar or identical aesthetic of play. All you've really said, and I agree mind you, is that if optimizing doesn't actually lead to social dysfunction of some sort, then it's not a problem. I've said before that as a GM I prefer to have at least one powergamer in the party, because a powergamer can assist the other players in their goals if he does it right by ensuring party continuity and that the story goes on. Not dying and being able to overcome obstacles is something that Thespian in the party usually wants to do as well, if not necessarily for identical reasons. Which is not to say that the Thespian necessarily lacks system mastery, but if you're a real Thespian you'd rather run a character that is less than optimized if you think that it fits the character and background you've imagined.

The fourth one - if they go left rather than right they find nothing interesting - is kinda hogwash, as in theory they're eventually going to explore both ways, aren't they?

Sometime search Enworld for "Rowboat World" for a discussion of what I'm thinking of.

Same here, with the caveat that you sometimes need to at least go through the motions of looking for story before you'll find any. If you all meet in a tavern and decide you're just going to sit there until an adventure comes to you, all that's probably going to happen is you'll drink until you run out of beer money.

That's pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. At one time I naïvely thought that personality of the PC wasn't really something a DM ought to have any say over and I freely let players introduce pretty much any character that they wanted to play. What changed my mind was a group that introduced PCs with primary motivations of safety and misanthropy who just wanted to hide and be left alone. That might be a valid character, but it doesn't make for a functional player character in a social game.

 

[GMMichael]

False definition. False dichotomy.

As the OP, I believe I get to set the assumptions for the thread. Thus, true definition. Also, if I may pick on D&D just a little:

If the total equals or exceeds the target number, the ability check, attack roll, or saving throw is a success. Otherwise, it’s a failure. The DM is usually the one who determines target numbers and tells players whether their ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws succeed or fail.

. . .If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success—the creature overcomes the challenge
at hand. Otherwise, it’s a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the
objective or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the DM.

. . .Sometimes one character’s or monster’s efforts are directly opposed to another’s. This can occur when both
of them are trying to do the same thing and only one can succeed, such as attempting to snatch up a magic ring that has fallen on the floor.

It might look like a false dichotomy, but the epitome of role-playing games still supports it. And yes, I'm reading "combined with a setback" as quickly thrown in to appease indie players who are considering a game of D&D.

Without justifying my opinion, I think the only thing that is really wrong with what you are calling Min/Maxing is that it is often indicative of some sort of socially dysfunctional gaming, either in that the player does not want to be challenged and becomes frustrated if they are, or that the player wants to be the center of attention all the time, and otherwise dominate both play and the direction of play. In essence, many min-maxers want to play a game where the referee exists only to validate their awesomeness, and the other players exist only to witness it.

Unfortunate, isn't it?

What are you trying to cure? Because there is only one thing that you really need to cure, and that's whether everyone in the group is having fun. So the question becomes, why is the behavior of the Min/Maxer causing people at the table to not have fun? The cure then suggests itself. I will however suggest that one very important cure to the problem is when designing a system of play, make sure it rigorously enforces Celebrim's First Law of RPGs: "Thou shalt not be good at everything." If it doesn't, then you'll have to come up with some sort of social contract that implements the First Law.

Good question. Min-maxers are the bane of n00b GMs, who spend hours setting up a respectable trap/encounter/monster, and watch a min-maxer dispatch it within two die rolls. So there, the GM isn't having fun.

They can also ruin the fun for other players: if a PC sees a chance to do something cool and the min-maxer walks up to it and destroys it (the challenge, not the embodiment of it), then the rest of the party will quickly learn that they can just write off having any fun involving the min-maxer's chosen specialty.

I don't see how Celebrim's First Law applies to min-maxers. Care to explain?

The Warlock tried to tell me he was an expert lock picker. I don't care how he configured his sheet, I asked him what in his warlock training would possibly lead to expert lockpicking skills. There was no answer because there is no answer. Throw those plusses in the garbage and start thinking of an in narrative answer to your problem. That solved all min maxing problems at the table and the players then went on to enjoy a session with almost no dice rolling but heavy on narrative.

Ouch! I agree, "I roll to solve it" shouldn't be the only answer, but I'd sure like what's on my sheet to count for something. (And yes, I keep plenty of qualitative information on my sheet.)