The pleasure in RPGs - alternatives to overcoming challenges

[pemerton]

From the "Adverarial GMing" thread:

If the PCs are expected win then winning loses any real meaning. For the PCs to be able to win than there must be a significant possibility of them losing.

<snip>

On that note, I try to make sure that my players bask in their successes and that they truly see the positive results when they succeed (especially for dramatic successes), this makes it that much more tangible/real and worthwile when the players fail and see the results of that as well.

This is another example of what I mean by presupposing that the point of the game is for the players to confront challenges, using their PCs as the vehicles for doing so.

 

[Raven Crowking]

presupposing

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Because someone expresses an opinion you might personally disagree with, it does not follow that said opinion is a presupposition, as opposed to a result gleaned from reason and/or experience.

Your continued use of this is demeaning to those you apply it to, and tends to weaken the force of your statements. This is especially true when you sample an IF/THEN statement, as you did above, which by the nature of the statement itself does not presuppose the IF to be true.



RC

 

[Nagol]

I'm not sure what you have in mind here. If a bear is a level X elite in combat, and if taming the bear is a level X complexity 2 skill challenge, then the XP award is the same across combat and non-combat approaches, and the pacing of the encounter is likely to be comparable whichever approach the players choose to have their PCs pursue. I don't think that this negates player decisions in character design, but maybe this isn't the sort of thing you had in mind.

It comes back to absent the characters and the other potential solutions to a challenge, how easy should activity X be? Should taming a bear be level X complexity 2 challenge or was it made so so as to be about the same difficulty as combat? Imagine for a moment that the bear has 20 copies made and each one is approached by a adventuring group of a different level from 1-20. In your universe, at what level does the adventuring group have a good chance of success? At what level does the adventuring group effectively auto-succeed? I understand that in the method of play preferred by you, the answers are "all of them" and "none of them" because the encounters are designed specifically to interact with the party as it currently is. But, I don't work that way. Bears will be tameable in about the same range, a few a bit tougher, a few a bit easier based upon the expressed world.

Whereas I don't think 4e (as written, including its encounter design system and XP and treasure rules) really suits challenge play - there is no obvious reward for the players, for example, in overcoming the challenges their PCs face(because, by the rules, treasure parcels accrue with XP and XP accrue, roughly, by real time played). LostSoul, in his 4e hack, is running a challenge game, but he has had to make quite a few changes to the system to support this.

4e isn't one of the editions I reach for.

 

[pemerton]

RC, I'm not meaning presupposing as a criticism. I'm meaning it in the sense in which "Get in the car so we can head off" presupposes that we have a car. Presuppositinos, in this sense, are very frequently the result of reason or experience.

So presupposition isn't a flaw. But it is a feature of some statements.

Also, I'm not disagreeing with anyone. Just interested in exploring alternative approaches to (what seems to me to be) the D&D mainstream.

And if offence has been caused, I apologise.

At present I have to run, but will elaborate later.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Pemerton, thanks for that reply.

A presupposition in the sense you are describing is not part of the statement being made, but a predicate indicated by the statement being made. In both cases you cite, the supposed presupposition is part of the statement.

"I have a car that we can take" does not presuppose the car, although it may presuppose sufficient gas. Likewise, while any conclusion may rely upon presuppositions (and I would argue that all conclusions do), the conclusions themselves are not presuppositions.

This is especially important in any discussion that centers around the premise that presuppositions may be invalid, as you indicate this discussion is in your first post.

Certainly, though, any statement predicated by an IF/THEN statement is agreed to be not necessarily universal aforehand, by the mere existence of the IF/THEN qualifier.


RC

 

[Balesir]

I certainly get the feel that, on ENworld, this is the widely-accepted default approach to RPGing. Discussions, for example, about scaling challenges, or adversarial GMing, or what counts as a meaningful choice as opposed to a railroad, tend to assume that this is how the game is being played.

I think that a conflation of challenge-based and simulationist is the usual assumption, but that goes rather wider than ENworld, in my estimation.

What I am calling "values" play is, in Forge terms, narrativism. In D&D 4e, as I play it, the narrativist agenda is supported by exploration of character and situation, with the setting as a backdrop providing (to borrow a phrase from Mercurius) "vibe and atmosphere".

While I can see a methodology that could be used to play it this way, I don't think I would describe 4E as really "supporting" Nar play because it has no mechanisms for the non-DM players to directly coordinate or design so as to address premise/theme. The drive to challenge-based caused by xp/level is likely to be less troublesome than with exploration-based play, though, and a DM-led theme selection (by trial and error, or through discussion, if the group is savvy/mature enough) could work, I can see that.

I think the other main way the 4e could be played is as high concept (genre) simulation - but because (as has been frequently observed) 4e's mechanics don't always bring the fiction into the foreground if the GM and players aren't active in doing so, in my view playing 4e as an exploration game runs the risk of degenerating into "mere dice rolling".

Not only that, but if you keep the 'xp for killing stuff' mechanism then challenge-based will forever creep in as players are driven by the desire for more toys and goodies.

For the reasons I already stated I don't think that 4e, as written, lends itself especially well to challenge play (not that it couldn't be tweaked, of course, as LostSoul has done).

I don't agree - I thin all the elements for a good challenge-based game are there, with a couple of fairly small issues.

Remember that gambling is a form of "step on up". The challenge does not have to be one of skill alone, or even at all. And the challenge is an invitation, not a demand; if the players have no choice about stepping up to the challenge then I think you may be heading into some form of narrativist or theme-based territory (how long before the players react to the outrage being perpetrated - and how will they respond?).

The main issue with 4E then is the explicit framing of the challenge. A single encounter is usually a pretty minor challenge - a win is expected. But that fits, because the players should be the ones deciding just "how far to step" in the "step on up" - they choose the 'danger level' through how much they take on between extended rests in almost a similar way to 1E's choosing what level of the dungeon to go down to. What is missing are more rewards for racking up that danger level instead of resorting to the "five minute workday". Individual games can do this through the scenario context - forcing the pace a bit by having prisoners to rescue, etc. - but how to do this is not well expounded in or supported by the printed material. I am probably lucky in that I have players who will push through anyway, mainly because it's more fun that way!

 

[Beginning of the End]

But what if the players aren't seeking victories. Aren't looking for solutions. And don't want to be cautious?

Okay... What would that game look like?

Whether we're talking game, world, or story, having goals and needing to overcome challenges in order to achieve those goals seem fairly fundamental to any sort of meaningful activity. So once you've take goals and challenges off the table, what exactly are the players doing?

 

[Quickleaf]

Okay... What would that game look like?

Whether we're talking game, world, or story, having goals and needing to overcome challenges in order to achieve those goals seem fairly fundamental to any sort of meaningful activity. So once you've take goals and challenges off the table, what exactly are the players doing?

In the last game I played in me and another player used to riff off each other - she played an absent-minded mischevious changeling chaos sorcerer and I played a smarmy accented wild elf ranger. We had some pretty funny exchanges about elven sterotypes, her over-talkativeness, instigating trouble... It certainly enlivened the game but I don't think instigating and inter-party RP without some kind of quest could keep my attention in the long run.

 

[pemerton]

I think that a conflation of challenge-based and simulationist is the usual assumption, but that goes rather wider than ENworld, in my estimation.

Interesting observation.

While I can see a methodology that could be used to play it this way, I don't think I would describe 4E as really "supporting" Nar play because it has no mechanisms for the non-DM players to directly coordinate or design so as to address premise/theme.

I think the sort of narrativism you get with 4e is fairly vanilla (but not as vanilla as narrativist Rolemaster, I can tell you!). The non-GM players mostly make their input at the character build stage (and the flexible retraining is part of this). Of any edition of D&D, 4e has the highest number of player-accessible game elements that, simply through being built into a PC, bring thematic content with them (Eladrin and the Feywild, Warlock pacts, Tiefling heritage, a lot of the PPs/EDs, etc).

One way I look at 4e is that it's a little like HeroWars/Quest except, instead of leaving it to the players to think up and build relationships into their PCs, WotC have decided to make money by selling a lot of discrete little "relationship components" to their market.

I think 4e can be played ignoring all this - or putting the GM in charge of deciding what it all means - but I think that would be (i) to ignore the tenor of the advice about the world in the PHB and DMG, and (ii) to run the risk of making it a degenerate high-concept dice rolling exercise.

Not only that, but if you keep the 'xp for killing stuff' mechanism then challenge-based will forever creep in as players are driven by the desire for more toys and goodies.

Another interesting observation.

I don't agree - I thin all the elements for a good challenge-based game are there, with a couple of fairly small issues.

Remember that gambling is a form of "step on up". The challenge does not have to be one of skill alone, or even at all. And the challenge is an invitation, not a demand; if the players have no choice about stepping up to the challenge then I think you may be heading into some form of narrativist or theme-based territory (how long before the players react to the outrage being perpetrated - and how will they respond?).

The main issue with 4E then is the explicit framing of the challenge. A single encounter is usually a pretty minor challenge - a win is expected. But that fits, because the players should be the ones deciding just "how far to step" in the "step on up" - they choose the 'danger level' through how much they take on between extended rests in almost a similar way to 1E's choosing what level of the dungeon to go down to. What is missing are more rewards for racking up that danger level instead of resorting to the "five minute workday". Individual games can do this through the scenario context - forcing the pace a bit by having prisoners to rescue, etc. - but how to do this is not well expounded in or supported by the printed material. I am probably lucky in that I have players who will push through anyway, mainly because it's more fun that way!

Good stuff.

With challenge/"step on up" in 4e, I see some other issues - like the way combat is designed to make the players work for their win, but to come close to guaranteeing that win in a wide range of cases, and the change in Essentials to award XP even for failed skill challenges. Also treasure parcels, which tend to mean that treasure isn't a real reward. Do you agree that there are issues here, or am I misperceiving the situation?

 

[pemerton]

Okay... What would that game look like?

HeroWars/Quest, maybe.

Whether we're talking game, world, or story, having goals and needing to overcome challenges in order to achieve those goals seem fairly fundamental to any sort of meaningful activity. So once you've take goals and challenges off the table, what exactly are the players doing?

The question isn't whether there are goals or challenges that the PCs face. The question is whether the main purpose of play is for the player to use their PCs as vehicles to overcome challenges. Or, rather, is the engaging of ingame challenges via the PCs the means to some other end at the table. Such as making an aesthetic or other thematic/evaluative point.