The pleasure in RPGs - alternatives to overcoming challenges

[Balesir]

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?

I think what you may be missing is that although, naturally, the players have goals, and the characters have goals, these goals are not neccessarily the same. In what we are calling "challenge based play" the goal of the players is to take on and beat challenges through the agency of their characters. The characters may or moy not have some other goal that means that they must overcome these challenges. But it is also possible for the characters to have in-game goals that are completely unconnected with the goals that the players have in doing the activity of roleplaying. The players might wish to imagine experiencing a world, a character or a situation that is alien to them, for example. Or they might wish to explore a question like "can murder ever be justified" without the trauma of actually murdering somebody or the misfortune of meeting someone so vile that their murder might actually be justified. Just because challenges and objectives are a natural part of existence does not mean that in-game challenges and objectives are neccessarily the main focus of desire when people decide to do some roleplaying.

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?

Awarding xp for failed skill challenges is something I am coming to agree with, in fact, although it goes alongside including consequences for both successes and failures during the challenge. As an example, a challenge I ran last weekend involved an encounter with each failure, set such that the encounter xp value upon complete failure was equal to the xp value of the skill challenge. The encounters gave no xp - but the challenge as a whole gave xp whether succeeded or failed at.

Treasure, in the regular sense, I see as part of character "advancement". In other words, they are just another aspect of xps. Many players see xps/levels as the "reward" for beating encounters - and to an extent it's fun to see/treat them that way. But really it would be a failure of the whole enterprise if play at lower levels was not fun, too. There is a sense, I think, in which xps/levels are an aspect of the "stepping up"/challenge in themselves. OK, you were able to competently manage a character with that power and number of schticks - now try with even more capability and stuff to cope with! The tendency of some to use their (highest level) character's level in bragging contests speaks to this element, too.

To an extent, all of the aims of play are something of a case of smoke and mirrors. We should never completely forget that these characters and worlds of which we speak actually exist only in our imaginations. The desires, feelings, capabilities and achievements of our characters are as ephemeral as the world in which they live, and the only real benefit to be gained from the activity of roleplaying is the "fun" we find in the contests, world building and storytelling we do while pursuing it. For various arbitrary values of "fun".

 

[LostSoul]

Okay... What would that game look like?

 

[pemerton]

There is a sense, I think, in which xps/levels are an aspect of the "stepping up"/challenge in themselves. OK, you were able to competently manage a character with that power and number of schticks - now try with even more capability and stuff to cope with!

That's a good point. (And the rest of your post was interesting too!)

 

[Pbartender]

Um.....No it does not.

Raven Crowking's post is in response to a problem described in another post (players spending an unlimited time searching areas), and points out that (rather than being a presupposition), resource management is an important means of preventing that problem from occurring.

Research management isn't the only way to do it. However, if you remove the resource management from D&D without putting something else in its place, you shouldn't be surprised if problems begin to show up that were kept under control by resource management in earlier editions.

IOW, that resource management is important isn't a presupposition; it is a conclusion.

EDIT: In at least one game, an alternate solution is having the treasure follow the PCs around until they finally notice it. Other solutions include not making treasure important, having PCs automatically find whatever is possible to find (Take 20, I choose you!), and handwaving the effects of searching (such as through patronage schemes, or having the treasure appear off-screen as it were, etc.).

It seems to me that part of this specific problem (and several other problems as well), is the common misconception that everything, even the smallest action, must be challenging in some way.

A great many DMs have gotten into the habit of making players roll checks for just about everything (a little hyperbolic, a know, but bear with me). Why not just cut to the chase, and let them succeed at the things they should be able to succeed at?

Somewhere in the room, there is a clue to who the murderer is. It is a critical clue, without which they cannot solve the mystery. They've made sure they are alone and no one is coming. So, why make them take Perception checks ad nauseum until they finally succeed and find it? So long as they say, "We're searching the room for any clues to the murderer," why not just let them find it and describe where and how and what they find... Then they can can to the fun part, which is trying to figure out how that clue fits into the puzzle and see where it leads next.

Skip the boring, gratuitous dice-rolling part. Move on to the interesting stuff.

 

[Barastrondo]

I've had plenty of sessions where players spend a lot of time not overcoming challenges, or to be truly technical, overcoming very mild or self-imposed challenges -- a character working up the nerve to express how he feels to another character, or wheedling the bartender into spreading some gossip that is more entertaining than useful, or just getting into a colorful argument with a crotchety old man for the sake of having fun and entertaining the fellow players.

I'm sure that to some players this would be utterly meaningless. It puts no tallies in the "win" column, or in the "loss" column; in fact, these are the places where players are most likely to make a poor choice in full knowledge that it's a poor choice, because it would be in-character and because it would be entertaining. But to us, this kind of interaction is highly meaningful, usually because it's born entirely from the group's minds and not at all from the pen of a designer we've never met. And the results are so hilarious because the stakes are so low, as it were.

Apart from the "it's meaningful because it's personal" side of things, I also find that these parts are notable because they're valuable pacing; a game that is a series of climaxes with no gentle slopes or time in valleys is very draining. It's good to have intellectual challenges, but it's also good to slip into comfortable old-shoes roleplaying and enjoy a bit of a seventh-inning stretch.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It seems to me that part of this specific problem (and several other problems as well), is the common misconception that everything, even the smallest action, must be challenging in some way.

It might be, but in my case, the interest is about decision points and campaign management. Do we keep searching in case there is hidden gold, or should we move on lest a patrol find us? Because, IME, it is all too often not about "Can we find the hidden clue?" but rather "Can we strip this place down to the bare stone?"

(This last was the specific context of the post pemerton was quoting.)

IMHO, the solution to "a critical clue, without which they cannot solve the mystery" is not to rely upon a critical clue, without which the mystery cannot be solved. That said, I've often said that you should never set up a situation where the PCs can fail, unless you are willing to live with the consequences of that failure.


RC

 

[Umbran]

A great many DMs have gotten into the habit of making players roll checks for just about everything (a little hyperbolic, a know, but bear with me). Why not just cut to the chase, and let them succeed at the things they should be able to succeed at?

If I might add - another part of the problem is the perception that many DM's have gotten into <insert bad habit here>, and this must be stopped!

 

[Mort]

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.

That said, the PCs winning should usually be the more likely scenario and when it is not ( for ex. there's a no-win scenario on the table) the DM should make sure that losing is somehow fun/rewarding for the players (if not their characters).

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.

Quoting someone completely out of context is a bit disingenuous, don't you think?

In the thread I was responding to:

Of course the adventurers want to win.

The question is, should they be expected to win? Is winning a precondition of enjoying the game?

I was merely pointing out that for there to be a win condition, losing must be on the table.

Does that mean everything in the game must be a challenge to overcome,or that there must be a win condition? No it doesn't, especially if the players often have fun just interacting with the world and each other.

BUT if you're going to have a challenge for the players (and challenge by no means equals combat, a challenge is merely an obstacle to be overcome) I do maintain the challenge should often be meaningful - otherwise it's not a challenge.

 

[Pbartender]

If I might add - another part of the problem is the perception that many DM's have gotten into <insert bad habit here>, and this must be stopped!

Consider me properly chastised for generalizing my personal experience with many DMs (including myself).

However...

While I do hold the perception that many DMs have gotten into a particular habit, I never asserted that it was a bad habit or that it must be stopped... If it's not a problem, then it's not a problem.

Except in regards to the fact that both Raven Crowking and I have both encountered similar situations with players searching rooms incessantly to find the least scrap of anything that might be valuable, and we both considered a problem. And also that in my instance (and in the instances of many of my friends and acquaintances who DM) changing that habit largely fixed the problem.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Except in regards to the fact that both Raven Crowking and I have both encountered similar situations with players searching rooms incessantly to find the least scrap of anything that might be valuable, and we both considered a problem. And also that in my instance (and in the instances of many of my friends and acquaintances who DM) changing that habit largely fixed the problem.

I consider it a potential problem, but it is not a problem that I have. If you go back to the thread that spawned the quote that pemerton used, you will see that the context is "IF you do this THEN you will not have that problem".

My "IF you do this" isn't the only way to solve that problem, but it is an effective way.


RC