The importance of non combat rules in a RPG.

[ExploderWizard]

The central concept of InSpectres is that the GM doesn't decide *anything* ahead of time. He doesn't know what the NPC knows either. If the player were to lose the roll, then the GM would get to narrate the scene, and could say what he wants or have some other event entirely happen. This applies to events in the game too - if they are investigating spooky lights in a house, a player who makes his roll could decide that the house is haunted by an angry spirit, or someone has been doing satanic rituals, or that Old Man Corruthers is doing it with smoke and mirrors.

I'll admit that its a pretty out there game, but one of the design goals was to have a game that could be ran with no prep at all. And its a comedy game so if things don't make sense that's kind of OK. The setting is sort of Ghostbusters on Reality TV.

OK got it. This sounds like a really fun time for a group that loves freeform/improv stuff. I might have to give it a look.

 

[Garmorn]

Ok, now that my thinking pattern is out of its 30 year rut of what a RPG is, what is the actual spectrum?

Rough guess is Tatical games that are about individual characters to complete impro rules.

 

[maddman75]

OK got it. This sounds like a really fun time for a group that loves freeform/improv stuff. I might have to give it a look.

Definitely. It also has a confessional mechanic, where one character can talk about what's going on with the other PCs, and even refer to future events. So if someone says 'It was pretty scary in that house, but things REALLY got crazy after Joe went off by himself and opened the closet'. If Joe goes along with it, he gets bonuses to his actions.

There's also a balance where the PCs are trying to make enough money to keep the business going. If you make things too easy on yourself you don't get paid!

Ok, now that my thinking pattern is out of its 30 year rut of what a RPG is, what is the actual spectrum?

Rough guess is Tatical games that are about individual characters to complete impro rules.

IMO, the key bit is that game events are imagined in a fictional narrative, and there's some judge outside the rulebook, usually a GM but it could also be group consensus, whoever wins a roll, etc.

 

[Chrono22]

I've considered using game cards as a way of unobtrusively guiding the narrative- where a pc or npc reveals cards over the course of the conflict to his benefit or loss- is there any system that does this already?
Since combat mechanics use props to good effect (minis), I figure a role playing prop could also work.

 

[Primal]

All so very, very on point. I was trying to put together a system with unified mechanics for all conflict resolution. I was also trying to have relatively robust combat rules. By extension, I needed to have robust non-combat rules.

That opens a MASSIVE can of worms. If everything uses the same mechanics and level of detail, there's a lot to include. Social interaction, of course, but beyond that - investigation, stealth operations/infiltration, puzzles/riddles, trap handling, survival, travel, crafting, etc. Sure, some of those can be rolled up into higher groupings to shorten the list a bit, but then look at the nuances of just one category.

Social interaction - haggling with a merchant, convincing a king to go to war, tricking guards into granting passage, seduction, interrogation, telling a rousing tale to garner favor/respect, bragging contests, insult contests, etc. Let's up the ante and talk about the really complex - person A is trying to convince a king to go to war against kingdom X, person B is worried about convincing the king to hire his smiths to make arms and armor, person C is trying to convince a king to go to war against kingdom X and Y, person D thinks peace is the best option but is in the same adventuring party as A, B, and C so he's trying to subtly sabotage their efforts, person E is the NPC vizier of the king who wants the king to go to war but hates the adventuring party so she wants to finagle the king disliking the party's suggestions but following hers, person F is the queen and she secretly lusts after person C and wants to make sure the outcome sets up a good scenario for her to pursue her desires. And so on.

By no means am I suggesting it's impossible, but it's a heck of a lot of work to bring detail to all aspects of a game. And as Stalker0 said, I worry how detailed social interaction rules would impact, say, my complex example above.

Hmmm... that is only true if you strive for a detailed, "simulationist" set of mechanics. There are a lot of games that succeed in balanced combat and social mechanics without an extensive list of modifiers or "needless" complexity (for example, 'The Shadow of Yesterday' or 'The Dying Earth RPG' Garthanos mentioned).

 

[Primal]

On that note - what indie systems have the best conflict resolution systems, particularly for social and investigative challenges? I'd like to do some research

Well, in that regard I personally prefer (to mention the ones that instantly popped into my mind) 'Dogs in the Vineyard', 'Polaris', 'The Shadow of Yesterday' and 'Dust Devils'.

I already mentioned 'Polaris' on the previous page of this thread, but I just can't praise its innovative and revolutionary mechanics enough. The game does not have a referee or GM -- rather, the player sitting opposite of you is your "opponent" (Mistake), and his/her job is to make your protagonist's life as hard as possible (and you will act as his/her Mistake). The whole conflict system works on a set of ritual phrases (e.g. "And this is how it happened" or "You ask far too much"), some of them only triggered via Aspects (abilities, items, relationships, etc.) and some of them more powerful than others. You only roll if the negotiation comes to a deadlock, but then the protagonist is usually at a serious disadvantage (often something like 15-30% chance to succeed). Whatever happens, the story advances, and although this is a game of high fantasy, a heroic end is a rare exception (most often you become corrupted by Mistake, i.e. demons, or the world ends). A truly brilliant system that produces heart-breakingly beatiful stories with the right kind of players.

'Dogs in the Vineyard' is a heavily thematic "Mormon Western" in which the PCs act as the God's judge, jury and executioners as they root out corruption among the Faithful. The conflict system utilizes a dice pool, but the catch is in the fact that the more violence you're willing to use, the more dice you'll get into your pool. This game digs deep into moral values, practically asking: "How much harm are you prepared to do for the greater good?". For example, are you willing to draw out your gun at the blind village elder (and pull the trigger), if that is the quickest and most efficient way to put end to the demonic influences rampant in the village? Or are you prepared to beat up (and possibly execute) half the village? Another catch is that you cannot perfectly control what happens in the story once the bullets start flying -- you only know that very likely the consequences will be severe. And everyone will acquire new traits from conflicts, so even if you "win" a gunfight, you might become haunted or traumatized by your actions. Emotionally and thematically a very powerful system.

'Dust Devils' is one of the oldest indie games, another Western, but not about trigger-happy protagonists riding into sunset at the end. Rather, this game was heavily influenced by movies such as 'Unforgiven', and all protagonists are plagued by personal Devils that are related to their pasts. For example, if your protagonist is a hopeless drunk who accidentally shot his son in a fit of rage, those events will come up often during play. All conflicts, regardless of their nature, are resolved with poker hands, and the winner gets the "bragging rights" (right to narrate the events). Naturally, if you give in your Devil, you get hefty bonuses (e.g. your drunkard takes hefty swigs of Whiskey before a gunfight). In the final scene the protagonists either give in to the Devil for good or try to find some kind of peace and absolvement before the "curtain call" (for example, the drunkard might smash his last bottle and walk into his end to save a young boy from killers).

'The Shadow of Yesterday' is a fine example of a high-fantasy system that perfectly models the conventions of the genre without any need of complexity. At its heart the system is a simplified variant of 'Fudge', but it also adds something of its own to the mix. Thís game works around 'Keys' which could be said to represent your character's traits, perks, alignment and demeanor. If your character has, for example, the keys of 'Coward' and 'Prone of Despair' (I pulled those out of my head), you might get much more experience from an encounter with monsters by trembling in fear under a bush as they walk by and throwing a fit of crying and wailing after they've gone past, than from slaying them. Also, most conflicts are resolved by a single roll, unless the player wants to resolve in round-by-round in an extended conflict. At the end, most characters Ascend to divinity and that is when the player gets to describe their final scene.

There are a lot of other systems ('Grey Ranks', for example), but I think these four serve as good examples of thematic systems that are model their respective genres wonderfully and yet use simple conflict resolution to create powerful drama.

 

[keterys]

Thank you very much - very detailed responses

 

[TheNovaLord]

Duty and Honour has a sleek and simple card system for its mechanic

ominihderon games

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

In any game? In some games. If there was a NASCAR or Formula 1 RPG I'm sure it would have pretty detailed driving rules. The games that have a large section on combat typically rely on tactical combat as the crux of the game 'experience'.



Can you justify why combat is the only activity in an RPG that requires more rules than anything else to draw out the drama of the situation at the table past more than a minute or a single yes/no dice roll? Why can't a race be just as dramatic an edge-of-your-seat, or more so, then combat?

I think it's pretty simple: combat is one of the most complex activities that people can do and it involves everything that people make or use from rocks and sticks to science fiction ray guns and space fighters. Everything in the environment is potentially a weapon, cover, a strength, or a vulnerability.

On the other hand, a foot race is pretty simple. There is some strategy and some psychology, but mostly, it comes down to "run as fast as you can for as long as you can or need to." That's it. If you're faster, you will probably win. If the other guy is faster, he will probably win. If you aren't faster now, you get faster by training in advance of the race. And that's it. It is interesting to the participants because it pushes them to explore their limits and reveals the results of training and genetics. It is interesting to spectators because they see the exhibition of excellence and because they get to see who is actually faster. But none of those are especially complex or strategic. There is a reason why EA does not release "Fastest Man Alive 2010: 100 yard dash and the marathon." It just wouldn't be interesting.

Now, there are games for other kinds of sports. Auto-racing games have a long history, possibly because the sport is too expensive and dangerous for most people to actually participate in directly and because a lot of the technical requirements for victory are external to the participants. (The same driver can get into a faster car). But in those auto-racing games, the interesting part is not the strategic elements or other decisions. Instead, it is the skills involved in executing those maneuvers.

If you want to find sports that have enough complexity and strategic depth to justify a system that approaches the complexity of RPG combat systems and that can build excitement in a turn based or non-realtime format, you need to look at team sports--soccer, football, basketball, etc. You will find that these sports actually do spawn real games that hold the interest of their players no just with the dexterity and skill required to attain victory but also in the strategic elements of the game. In fact, there have been versions of these games that are successful despite completely discarding the physical, real-time skill elements. Fantasy football and soccer club manager games would be examples of these. While they attempt to model a far more restricted struggle than RPG combats typically attempt to model, their rules for modeling it often approach RPG combat systems in complexity.

So that's why RPGs usually hang more on combat than footraces and have detailed systems for resolving combat: combat is able to support that level of detail and interest in an interesting and exciting manner even when abstracted in turn-based rulesets.

"But you could do that with team sports!" you might object. Sure you could. But combat integrates much more naturally into stories than (even) team sports competitions do. Even if you were playing Friday Night Lights d20, odds are good that most of the time the football game would be a sidenote that was not directly integrated into the real story. If the home team wins the game, it won't resolve the budding love triangle between the quarterback, the cheerleader and the debate club president. If the home team loses the big game, it won't answer the question of who murdered the teacher last week. The football game has little to do with either. On the other hand, combat integrates into those scenarios easily and naturally. If the debate club president turns out to be a vampire cultist (obviously we're now playing Buffy or some similar game) then the quarterback's epic duel with him on top of the bell tower can resolve that love triangle. The cheerleader will see both men for what they are and even if they are both alive at the end, she will choose one or the other or demonstrate herself unworthy of either's attentions. Likewise, you can conclude the story of the murdered teacher with a dramatic shootout with the obsessive psychotic murderer when he pulls a gun rather than submits quietly.

 

[Woas]

I would say astrophysics and space flight are more complex that bopping one another with sticks.


So you are saying to me that in a game where if I was to play a NASCAR legend, driving at the most famous race of the season... hours and hours of driving, pit stops, crashes, laps..., that to resolve if I win or lose should only be based on a single/simple dice check and should never be given the time, energy or investment in any means for a more drawn out resolution system because it is arbitrarily 'not as complex' as physical combat?

I think it's pretty simple: combat is one of the most complex activities that people can do and it involves everything that people make or use from rocks and sticks to science fiction ray guns and space fighters. Everything in the environment is potentially a weapon, cover, a strength, or a vulnerability.