Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[Starfox]

Having some catching up to do on the tread; bear with me while I commoen on old posts.

I think that the design of 4e and similar games is intended to do something else, namely, [...] (ii) to cater to players who prefer to engage the mechanics of the game as the method of achieving those social rewards.

This is very true and IMO one of the flaws of the system, but if I were to reply to it properly it would take a whole new thread. Just as a very short illustration, there are two ways of writing out a skill challenge for an adventure in 4E. One says "Players describe their own stunts; these skills make sense...". The other says "Players can use Diplomacy or Bluff. This happens when a PC succeeds at Diplomacy... This happens with Bluff..." In the second version, the role of the player is reduced to selecting which skill to use - then the scenario takes over and tells him what his PC is actually doing - which to me is "prefer to engage the mechanics of the game as the method of achieving those social rewards", a bad thing.

 

[pemerton]

Starfox, I agree with you that method (i) of doing skill challenges is better than (ii) - I don't think WoTC has got either the mechanics or the presentation of skill challenges fully under control, especially when compared to the sorts of action resolution systems they are being inspired by (eg HeroQuest).

But even method (i) is still engaging the mechanics - having described your stunt, you have to roll for it in the fashion that the mechanics dictate. In this way 4e is more like Burning Wheel or HeroQuest and less like AD&D. And of course a good player will describe stunts keeping in mind how they will be mechanically resolved, and how this will fit with their PC's abilities.

I don't think it's a flaw, in the sense of an objective failing (whereas I think the poor presentation and development of skill challenges is a flaw, in that it is an objective failing in the rulebooks and modules). But I readily agree that it is not something that all players, especially those who prefer a traditional approach to fantasy RPGs (eg AD&D, RQ, hardcore RM) would enjoy.

But I don't see any reason for distinguishing these different preferences in playstyle in terms of "ego" vs "delayed gratificaiton" (which is highly suggestive of infantile vs mature). I've tended to use "traditional" and ""modern" - if that's objectionable (and no one who prefers traditional to modern has yet indicated that it is) I'm very happy to look for another way of capturing what I think everyone agrees is a pretty significant difference in game design and game play.

 

[pemerton]

Delayed gratification and "ego gamers"

I've never heard any admirer of good music tell me that, if I'm really going to enjoy (for example) Wagner and avoid being an immature ego-listener, then I have to dilute every hour of stirring Ring Cycle with three hours of tedious Abba.

Why would it be essential, then, in RPGing, to interrupt every hour of really engaging and inspiring play with periods of nothing happening, no dice being rolled, no story being progressed, etc?

Obviously, just as some like Abba better than Wagner, so some get more pleasure from some types of dice rolling, progressing the story etc, and others get pleasure from different approaches. For some, "miss a turn" mechanics aren't a problem because they, as a player, are still there watching, kibitzing, advising, playing an NPC etc. For others, they are a problem because their conception of play is none of these things, but rather affecting the gameworld via their PC via the game mechanics.

Different approaches to playing the game, sure. Different preferences in game design, undoubtedly. Different degrees of maturity, or ability to accept delayed gratification? I'm just not seeing it.

 

[The Shaman]

I've never heard any admirer of good music tell me that, if I'm really going to enjoy (for example) Wagner and avoid being an immature ego-listener, then I have to dilute every hour of stirring Ring Cycle with three hours of tedious Abba.

Well, that's certainly a new way of packaging the "one hour of fun in four hours of gaming" canard.

 

[Hussar]

Just a comment on the whole "WOTC D&D borrows from video games" thing.

There was a recent interview (and I've totally forgotten all the names involved - The Truth blog or something like that?) where the dev talked about how he had learned things from video games that can be applied to PnP games. One of the big ones was the idea of learning curve. Bear with me, because I do think this applies here.

As I understood things, the idea went like this. In any given genre of video games, you have several fundamental basic mechanics. If you are playing an FPS on a PC, then WASD controls your movement, the mouse controls your view, the numbers switch your weapons. This is true of pretty much every FPS for a PC. Once I've played any FPS on a PC, I can move over to another title and everything I learned from the first game ports over.

The same is true for almost every genre, whether cRPG, RTS, or whatever. So long as a game falls into a given genre, you are likely going to know how the controls work after the first game.

4e has embraced this approach. Once I learn how to use any character in the game, all other characters work EXACTLY the same way. No one has radically different "controls" that I need to learn (like the spell/non spell caster division in previous editions forex - and even then, once I learn to cast like a wizard, that's different from casting like a Psion).

Now, wheel this around to the idea of the ego-gamer. Not having a new learning curve for every class means that I can choose any class and generally use it to a similar level of proficiency. This in turn means that any class I play will reward my actions in roughly similar manner and rate. Everyone hits roughly the same amount for roughly the same amount of damage (to use a purely combat example).

So, no matter what I play, I'm getting rewarded roughly as often as any other class. This is a significant departure from earlier editions where I might have one spells per day and couldn't hit anything for any significant damage the rest of the time.

Now, to me, the debate isn't over the idea of whether or not rewarding everyone equally is a good idea, but rather, what's the benefit of rewarding everyone at the table differently? The fighter gets to do his thing for pretty much the entire campaign without too much in the way of sitting on his hands. The wizard waits half the campaign doing not a whole lot, and then really comes into his own the other half.

Does that mean that fighter players were ego-gamers in days of yore? And now we're rewarding everyone just like the fighter used to be?

I don't have an answer and I'm trying really, really hard to maintain impartiality here. Cos I don't have an answer. I'm just bringing up ideas.

 

[Bluenose]

Ok, sure. I thought I'd provided some evidence, but if you wanted more evidence of that there was such a trend, I can understand. I'm not sure the evidence will be forth coming, because as I said, I'd need to spend hours googling up examples, and then having done that, I'd have to deal with people providing counter-examples and then we'd end up in an unwinnable debate based on impressions of something that can't be directly measured. All that is however something I can understand as a reasonable objection or method of objection.

What I don't understand is people demanding I provide evidence of perfectly ordinary and generic RPG experiences. That's were I've been stuck most of the thread.

As for the more reasonable objections, I don't think that there is much contriversy that both 3e and 4e designers said that they were taking some inspiration from video games (or that were it wasn't said it could be noticed), and I don't think that there is much contriversy that PnP game designers have frequently wrote articles in which they implied that PnP games were in a compitition with video games or that video games had something to teach PnP designers (whether you agree with the claim or not). Likewise, I don't think there is much argument over the fact that increasingly video game design and PnP design is seen to overlap (by designers on both sides of the divide), and in fact, the only thing that might provoke argument in that claim is 'increasingly' because very clearly, video game design has been heavily influenced by and often outright attempts at emmulation of PnP games or at least some aspect thereof.

Less clearly, but I think obviously, as cRPGs mature, they've been back pollenating the PnP games that inspired them. I felt like there were obvious influences from Fallout (released 1997, the same year that WotC acquired TSR and started work on a new edition) in the rules of 3e D&D. For a simple example, feats every 3 levels paralleled Fallout's perks every 3 levels. I feel that trend has continued as 3e evolved and into 4e. I can't prove that at all, because there is no way to measure this. I could provide evidence, but I don't intend to because its more trouble than its worth.

Now, so far I've said nothing negative about the trend. I don't really have anything against cRPG design inspiring aspects of PnP design so far as it goes. Where I have problems is with attempting to get PnP's to capture the aspects of the play experience of cRPGs which are inherently superior to PnP's, and very high on that list would be the tight action/reward loops that cRPGs can provide. Game theories that are perfectly applicable applied to creating Mrs. Pac Man or even WoW and providing entertainment in that medium, do not necessarily apply in the PnP world. Therefore I cringe whenever I read some designer or blogger saying something like, "I was playing some video game and I noticed that I never had to wait for my reward, and I was always engaged, or how much it sucked to be stunned... and I was thinking how great it would be if I could apply this design lesson to the PnP world." I think I've provided at least some recent examples of design ideas being floated in those terms. I personally think that there is very little that can be directly ported between turn based designs and the real time designs that increasingly dominate cRPGs, and vica versa, and I think that in attempting to do so you decrease the competitiveness of the satisfaction PnP's provide with respect to that of cRPGs.

I would argue, quite strenuously, that what designers are talking about here is player involvement, unrelated to success or failure of their actions. As you identify, there are fundamental differences between the turn-based nature of a TRPG and the real-time nature of (most) cRPG systems. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that nearly all players prefer being involved in activity rather than present but with nothing to do. What I read into statements about learning from cRPGs with regard to effects like stun is not that designers wish to remove any risk of failure; rather, it’s that removing people from any form of decision-making/activity leads to frustration, and that if it’s done for too long this will tend to leave them frustrated with the game. It is, incidentally, something I do see having been partly implemented in 4th edition D&D, primarily but not solely the form of ‘interrupts’ of various sorts which allow people to act outside their own turns. I do not agree though that it in any reflects a dislike for failure as such. Both failure and success occur more frequently in a cRPG than they do at the tabletop, simply because the rate at which actions occur is faster. I have not seen any evidence that recent tRPG systems make failure less likely than old ones – though I think there’s some evidence that designers are starting to implement concepts of play where they wish people to remain involved in activity even when it’s not their ‘turn’. In my opinion, that’s actually a good thing.

 

[jmucchiello]

We could go with pavlovian gamer perhaps?

I have said many times in this thread that I have been the ego-gamer at times. Your reaction is why I think "ego" should be removed from the description. It has nothing to do with the conversation. You are just being insulting.

 

[jmucchiello]

It sure seems to me like it is very much meant to be a horror story that these "new to D&D" design goals will build/encourage these unthinking monster gamers.

I see nothing in that description that means the gamer is an unthinking brute. All I see is someone who wants gaming to be "lite". Nothing wrong with that play style.

The OP's horror story is that attempting to cater to this style is a dead end for PNP RPGs. CRPGs will always do it better. Celebrim is calling this a mistake not because he wants the style of play eradicated. Instead he calls it a mistake to not promote what PNP games do better than CRPGs. All of the diversions in this thread about psychology are missing the point.

Can't we go forward in this thread seeking to identify PNP's strengths and what can be done to strengthen them without impacting the twitch gamer's enjoyment as well?

 

[jmucchiello]

Different approaches to playing the game, sure. Different preferences in game design, undoubtedly. Different degrees of maturity, or ability to accept delayed gratification? I'm just not seeing it.

What does maturity have to do with this thread? No one said twitch gamers are immature. No one said twitch gamers can't accept delayed gratification. What was said was these gamers prefer frequent gratification. You're just not seeing it because it isn't there.

 

[Celebrim]

What does maturity have to do with this thread? No one said twitch gamers are immature. No one said twitch gamers can't accept delayed gratification..

In fact, I said the opposite. I've been pretty much implying the whole time that chasing after more and more immediate gratification is pointless, both because it has a diminishing margin of return and because even a gamer who is primarily a twitch gamer when he sits down in a PnP environment will accept delayed gratification if it comes along with the sort of ego fulfillment he's looking for. For example, I gave an example from a recent campaign event of how being stunned could led to greater ego fulfillment than would be possible in a system without detrimental statuses.

Much of my problem with complaining about negative statuses and missed attacks and failure in general is that it creates perceptions in the player base that trust is being violated when failure happens. This leaves the player feeling that he's been wronged when the system allows for failure, which in turn creates player expectations that interfere with the realization of long term enjoyment. Ultimately, I was hoping to brainstorm on the subject of how you create a meaningful illusion of accomplishment in an RPG without resorting to designs that ultimately looked like Toon genera emmulation.

And it has nothing to do with maturity, because I've also said there are immature 'story gamers' and also that every gamer is in part or in some situations an ego gamer. If you want to see a really serious ego gamer, play a game with a chess grand master or something similar. Does anyone think that I'm claiming that chess is twitchy or immature or that playing chess competitively (and well) is somehow to be derided? Yet I've no doubt in my mind that a chess grand master is going to naturally play an RPG 'to win', and I've little problem with that in and of itself. It certainly can be problimatic, but it doesn't have to be.