D&D 5E Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[pemerton]

a party of level eight characters can fight a bunch of level one or two characters, or even ogres, and it's just as narratively dramatic as if they'd fought a bunch of "level eight" NPCs that mysteriously had lower stats to guarantee that they would be weaker than the level eight PCs.

I mean, how is it any more dramatic for those soon-to-be-defeated enemies to have an 8 written next to their level, rather than a 3?

The numbers written in the "level" box don't matter, of course. What matters is the actual experience of play, and hence (from the design point of view) the mechanics that engender that experience.

Using 4e combat as an example: a typical level-N monster or NPC has more hp than a typical PC of the same level, and does more damage per hit than a typical PC of that level would with at-will attacks. However, players playing have the benefit of "deeper" resources than the GM does when playing NPCs and monsters: their rationed abilities (dailies, encounter powers, action points) are better; they have a "unconscious rather than dead at 0 hp" buffer; and they have access to healing surges which, once unlocked, enable them to regain lost hp more effectively than NPCs and monsters can.

This is how 4e implements the "contrivances" of dramatic fiction: lucky strikes that just eke out victory, and turn-of-the-tide comebacks when the protagonists seemed to be on the ropes.

Simply using lower-level PCs in place of on-level monsters won't produce the same dynamic: it will make headaches for the GM (who has to run a large number of more complex characters) while removing the asymmetry between the GM-side and the player-side that produces the contrivances.

The approach you describe would work fine in an attrition-based resolution system, but a system of that sort is probably already forfeiting dramatic resolution for some other goal.

A non-4e example that illustrates the same idea of asymmetry is Marvel Heroic RP: the "currency" that passes between GM and players is plot points, but (crudely put) for the GM a plot point is worth only a bonus d6, whereas for the players a plot point can easily be worth a bonus d8 or more. Thus the PCs and not the villains, overall, get the lucky breaks. (A difference between MHRP and 4e is that a MHRP character sheet can be run as either a PC or an NPC, because the asymmetry is located in the non-PC-specific plot point/doom pool rules. Whereas in 4e a lot of it is embedded into a particular characters power load-out and hit point and healing surge totals. In this respect 4e carries on the D&D tradition of being fiddlier than your average RPG.)

Gamism as an agenda is more directly opposed to narrativism.

The two agendas' goals ---

"Here's a challenge, let's step on up and win!" (Gamism)

"Here's an interesting moral, ethical, or psychological dilemma, let's play out the consequences of that premise!" (Narrativism)

--- will ultimately have to implement highly divergent mechanical underpinnings.

Is there much evidence for this? Tunnels & Trolls and the classic TSR Marvel Super Heroes RPG are both examples cited by Ron Edwards of systems that can be played either in Gamist or Narrativist fashion. I think 4e is another example - it lends itself pretty well to a light narrativism, but also to a light gamism. And Champions is a game which, while perhaps simulationist in its surface sensibilities, is able to be drifted in both gamist (point-buy min-max!) and narrativist directions.

Your own paraphrases show why this is so - the same techniques that are used to set up an arena of challenge to be resolved by the players in a show of luck and skill (gamism) can be used to set up a moment of dramatic conflict to be resolved by the players in a display of what they care about emotionally in the game (narrativism). In both cases a clear difference from simulationist play is that the arena/moment is set up. Simulationist play tends to incline towards naturalistic emergence of ingame situations. Sim play won't give you Helm's Deep as Tolkien wrote it, but it won't give you White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors either. For some examples of D&D modules that I think could lend themselves to narrativism as much as gamism, I would mention the D series and Night's Dark Terror.

No character is safe in these books. The author is quite good, in fact, at presenting a character as a likeable protagonist for a book or two and then killing it off or having some other awful thing(s) happen to it.

Not knowing the books I can't comment on your exchange with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] about this, but if a character survives as a protagonist for "a book or two" then I think that is highly comparable to a D&D PC, and not an instance of killing off characters willy-nilly. I don't know how many of these books there are, but most characters in most fiction don't exist for more than "a book or two".

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Simply using lower-level PCs in place of on-level monsters won't produce the same dynamic: it will make headaches for the GM (who has to run a large number of more complex characters) while removing the asymmetry between the GM-side and the player-side that produces the contrivances.

That's a completely different argument, though; before, you were saying that it was lame to fight weak monsters, and now you're saying that it's more work for the GM to run PC-complexity enemies.

The old argument is weak, since there's no way to have the party fight equally-powerful enemies on a routine basis and still have them win every time. We both know this.

The new argument is stronger, but it still relies on the premise that PCs are inherently more complex than NPCs, which need not be the case. There's no reason for a PC to be inherently complex, and that was actually one of the early design goals for Next - that there should always be a "simple" option.

And with that headache removed, we get to my original point - I absolutely do not want the PCs to win because of contrivances. I want such contrivances to be as far-removed from the system as possible. If the players win, then it must be entirely on their own merit, rather than due to inherent system bias.

 

[pemerton]

That's a completely different argument, though; before, you were saying that it was lame to fight weak monsters, and now you're saying that it's more work for the GM to run PC-complexity enemies.

I was addressing your particular mechanical solution.

But I can reiterate the "lame to fight weak monsters point" too, if that will help: in a simulationist system, there is typically some sort of correlation between mechanical stats (be that AC and hp, points spent in building, whatever the relevant measure in the system at hand) and ingame puissance. In these sorts of games, being a 1d4 hp kobold or giant rat means something - it means that you're weak within the fiction.

Likewise, typically, for levels on characters. So the 5th level PCs constantly fighting 2nd level enemies means that the PCs are constantly beating up on their inferiors - those levels correspond to an ingame state of affairs too. (It would be like Superman spending his time beating up on some of The Flash's less impressive enemies, like Heat Wave and The Top.)

4e - again, just to pick one salient example - decouples stats and ingame status in certain ways. For instance, a monster can have 1 hp for action resolution purposes yet be, within the fiction, a fearsome monster (eg a 17th level Frost Giant minion). 4e also uses swarm mechanics to model large numbers of smaller and/or lesser foes, which helps make fights between the PCs and small armies mechanically satisfying to resolve, playing more like a typical D&D combat and less like a book-keeping wargame.

there's no way to have the party fight equally-powerful enemies on a routine basis and still have them win every time. We both know this.

The new argument is stronger, but it still relies on the premise that PCs are inherently more complex than NPCs, which need not be the case.

It need not be. There can be other ways of establishing asymmetries. I mentioned one in my earlier post - the asymmetric "currency" of plot points in MHRP. In Burning Wheel, to give another example, players are expected to have access to more "fate points" than the GM, and hence to have an advantage over typical NPCs and monsters. As I said, 4e is somewhat distinctive in building the asymmetry into the basic elements of PC building.

I absolutely do not want the PCs to win because of contrivances. I want such contrivances to be as far-removed from the system as possible. If the players win, then it must be entirely on their own merit, rather than due to inherent system bias.

Until you tell me more about how encounters are being framed, I don't really know what the meaning of "merit" and "system bias" are here. For instance, if you as a GM only send 2nd level NPCs against your 4th level PCs (so as not to overload the odds of TPK) then how is that not a "system bias", just manifesting itself not in the character build mechanics (as in 4e) or the resolution mechanics (as in BW or MHRP) but in the encounter building system?

I'm also not really sure what you mean by "contrivance". For instance, I suggested upthread that readily available Raise Dead is a pretty obvious contrivance intended to facilitate a fairly common style of D&D play. Bags of Holding are contrivances too, at least in a system in which XP gained is proportionate to pounds of gold carried out of the dungeon! (In my 4e game, by contrast, the only PC to have an X of holding is the fighter, who needs a Handy Haversack to store one of the two-handed weapons that he switches between while wielding the other one. I don't see that as a contrivance in the same way.)

 

[Balesir]

I want such contrivances to be as far-removed from the system as possible. If the players win, then it must be entirely on their own merit, rather than due to inherent system bias.

OK, but my experience is that leads to one of two requirements, in D&D. Either (a) the opposition to the PCs has to be extraordinarily deficient in "merit", or (b) the PCs die a lot, simply due to the expression of the law of large numbers.

What is actually required for a "PCs win only on merit against challenging foes" system is that the most common form(s) of conflict should not end with one side dying. I have never found that D&D - because of it's stated objective of being a game about "adventurers" - handles situations with an abundance of such conflicts well.

"Action Adventure" movies are well known for having contrived scripts and exceptionally fragile "mooks" for just this same reason. Our conception of "adventurers" as people who cheerfully face deadly challenges on an everyday basis, while a fun conceit for entertainment purposes, actually flies in the face of reality on several levels. If we want a harsh light of "reality" in terms of equality of opposition and likelihood of death, we have to pick other genres of video entertainment, such as soap operas, social dramas or investigative stories. The same is true of RPGs.

On the "Game of Thrones" question, the RPG system best suited to that sort of play seems to me to be Universalis. With no GM and characters built, controlled and killed off at requirement by the players (using game currency), I think a GoT-style story could work well with Universalis.

And, for what [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is apparently looking for, HârnMaster would work well. There is a reason that the published Hârn adventures tend heavily toward the detective mystery, social "situation" and "day in the life" type topics. Fighting in HM tends to be very deadly, so it tends to happen as the climax of a tense resolution, rather than as a commonplace, in scenarios for the system that work. This isn't due to contrivance - it's just that characters tend to be "out of it" for a while after combat happens, which means that fighting generally happens "at the end" - whether that "end" is a climax or an anticlimax...

 

[Balesir]

I guess you could do that, if you really wanted to. I had just never seen it quite so enforced​ as it was in 4E. In earlier editions, you could go either way.

I see it "enforced" in just about every action-adventure film that I watch, so I guess the idea of it being a requisite for a system that, for us, has always been a framework for action-adventure play just seems completely natural.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But I can reiterate the "lame to fight weak monsters point" too, if that will help: in a simulationist system, there is typically some sort of correlation between mechanical stats (be that AC and hp, points spent in building, whatever the relevant measure in the system at hand) and ingame puissance. In these sorts of games, being a 1d4 hp kobold or giant rat means something - it means that you're weak within the fiction.

Right. That's what I like. The mechanics of the game are supposed to (relatively) accurately model what the thing actually is within the world. Kobolds and rats are generally weaker than orcs and wolves.

Superman is kind of a ridiculous example, but I would rather have Spider-Man spending most of his time fighting random goons and low-level crime bosses with only an occasional super-villain, than have every fight be against something supposedly as amazing as he is. If you constantly defeat super-villains, then it only serves to establish that you were more powerful than previously believed - or at least that the villains are less powerful. You can't consistently win against even odds. (Insert the coin-flipping scene.)

4e - again, just to pick one salient example - decouples stats and ingame status in certain ways. For instance, a monster can have 1 hp for action resolution purposes yet be, within the fiction, a fearsome monster (eg a 17th level Frost Giant minion).

Which is probably the single most anti-sim thing in the entire game. The mechanics for the creature do not represent its actual abilities, but rather, its place within the plot. That is what I would refer to as "narrative bias" - the game mechanics have an agenda, to promote the desired outcome of the heroes easily defeating the creature, rather than sitting by and observing what the outcome would be.

I don't even know that it's possible to create an objective frost giant within 4E, because it's only even supposed to exist​ relative to its place in the story.

It need not be. There can be other ways of establishing asymmetries. I mentioned one in my earlier post - the asymmetric "currency" of plot points in MHRP. In Burning Wheel, to give another example, players are expected to have access to more "fate points" than the GM, and hence to have an advantage over typical NPCs and monsters. As I said, 4e is somewhat distinctive in building the asymmetry into the basic elements of PC building.

Unfortunately, as a meta-game mechanic, I can't even begin to address the concept of any sort of plot points. Since they don't represent anything which actually exists within the game world, they already have no place within a sim game. Is it somehow "less sim" for plot points to operate unequally between sides? Is it wetter underwater, if you're there when it rains?

Until you tell me more about how encounters are being framed, I don't really know what the meaning of "merit" and "system bias" are here. For instance, if you as a GM only send 2nd level NPCs against your 4th level PCs (so as not to overload the odds of TPK) then how is that not a "system bias", just manifesting itself not in the character build mechanics (as in 4e) or the resolution mechanics (as in BW or MHRP) but in the encounter building system?

Merit, in this case, would be an objective measure of abilities. This is the reality of what you are within the game world. Based on their merits, an orc could probably beat a kobold in a fight. A wolf is stronger and faster than a rat, while the rat may be more agile.

The actual merits of Spider-Man include his superior strength, speed, intelligence, creativity, etc. If he wins against Thanos, then it's probably based on some unlikely contrivance of the plot rather than because he really deserved to win.

System bias is when the game tries to play sides, and stops being objective. If you (as the GM) place a diamond in the treasure hoard specifically because one of the PCs died, and everyone knows that you can use this to cast Raise Dead, then that's you trying to promote an outcome. The objective alternative is that the diamond is either there, or is not there, based on other factors involving the monster and past activity within the region (which can usually be simplified down to a percentile roll, rather than explicitly modeled).

If you have something like encounter guidelines, which exist to make sure that the number and type of monsters encountered is roughly within the capabilities of the adventuring party, then that is definitely system bias - you're trying to promote the desired outcome of the party winning, rather than objectively representing the world as it actually is.

Of note, AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines, but rather just told you how many of a creature you were likely to find at once, given various circumstances. From that point, it was up to the PCs to not get themselves in over their heads.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

OK, but my experience is that leads to one of two requirements, in D&D. Either (a) the opposition to the PCs has to be extraordinarily deficient in "merit", or (b) the PCs die a lot, simply due to the expression of the law of large numbers.

Is it somehow less dramatic for the PCs to defeat a swarm of trolls when they're level 14, rather than when they're level 7? Because trolls are objectively pretty scary - they can rip most people in half, with ease - so I wouldn't consider it "beneath" a high-level adventurer to save a town from them. In fact, if they can do it without breaking a sweat, then that just shows how awesome they are.

Seriously, try it some time. Throw in a bunch of level 1 and 2 mooks in your next big boss fight, and watch the PCs feel awesome as they rip through them like they weren't even there. And really, they should be there, if your boss is worried that some adventurers are coming after her.

 

[pemerton]

If we want a harsh light of "reality" in terms of equality of opposition and likelihood of death, we have to pick other genres of video entertainment, such as soap operas, social dramas or investigative stories.

Even then you'll still need contrivances, I think, to get dramatically satisfying play. The PCs get dragged into inordinately many Byazantine plots, inherit more than the usual fair share of haunted houses from mysterious uncles, seem to know (or at least be in a position to get to know) all the interesting people, etc.

The mechanics of the game are supposed to (relatively) accurately model what the thing actually is within the world. Kobolds and rats are generally weaker than orcs and wolves.

<snip>

Merit, in this case, would be an objective measure of abilities. This is the reality of what you are within the game world. Based on their merits, an orc could probably beat a kobold in a fight. A wolf is stronger and faster than a rat, while the rat may be more agile.

I'm having trouble following this.

If the PCs typically win, because they rarely meet NPCs or monsters as "objectively" tough as them, how is this less contrived than a 4e frost giant minion? You've just shifted the location of the contrivance, from character build rules to encounter design rules.

(And that's not even addressing the issue of dramatic pacing - I have never found classic D&D attrition-style combat satisfying. For me, a major technical achievement of 4e is showing how you can keep hit point loss at the core of combat resolution while creating dramatically satisfying play.)

System bias is when the game tries to play sides, and stops being objective.

<snip>

If you have something like encounter guidelines, which exist to make sure that the number and type of monsters encountered is roughly within the capabilities of the adventuring party, then that is definitely system bias - you're trying to promote the desired outcome of the party winning, rather than objectively representing the world as it actually is.

OK, so you seem to agree with me. Now if what a group wants out of play is anything like an action adventure experience, you are going to need such guidelines, aren't you? Otherwise you'll get a classic D&D PC-mortuary experience instead, I think.

AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines

AD&D had one of the biggest contrivances of all - the dungeon, layered in a "choose your own level of challenge" smorgasbord. But it did assume that the players, not the GM's, would be deciding how difficult encounters were and hence how much risk there was. But AD&D, at least as presented by Gygax, wasn't at all about achieving a dramatically pleasing play experience. Tomb of Horrors, for instance, can be an intricate intellectual experience, but the only emotion likely to be experienced is frustration. (Of non-RPG activities, the one it has the closest resemblance to that I can think of is a crossword.)

If you (as the GM) place a diamond in the treasure hoard specifically because one of the PCs died, and everyone knows that you can use this to cast Raise Dead, then that's you trying to promote an outcome. The objective alternative is that the diamond is either there, or is not there, based on other factors involving the monster and past activity within the region (which can usually be simplified down to a percentile roll, rather than explicitly modeled).

Who writes the tables, though? Have a look at the volumes of loot generated by the classic D&D treasure tables and tell me how they're not contrived!

And you haven't addressed the Raise Dead point. This is an obvious contrivance, which is not made less so by locating it within an imagined gameworld in which mid-to-high level clerics routinely have this capability.

If you constantly defeat super-villains, then it only serves to establish that you were more powerful than previously believed - or at least that the villains are less powerful. You can't consistently win against even odds.

And yet Conan does. And so do the protagonists in LotR. That is the whole point of literary or dramatic contrivances.

I would rather have Spider-Man spending most of his time fighting random goons and low-level crime bosses

But in my Spider Man collection, at least, he mostly spends his time fighting super-villains, with the "random goon" episodes being essentially down-time, where the real focus is on character development/backstory progression.

Some of this may also depend on how frequently a group plays sessions. My group plays every 2 to 3 weeks for around 4 hours per session. I have no real interest in spending that time dealing with random goons. If we were going to a movie instead, we would expect it to provide real drama. An RPGing session should have something at least comparable to offer, in my view.

 

[pemerton]

Is it somehow less dramatic for the PCs to defeat a swarm of trolls when they're level 14, rather than when they're level 7? Because trolls are objectively pretty scary - they can rip most people in half, with ease - so I wouldn't consider it "beneath" a high-level adventurer to save a town from them. In fact, if they can do it without breaking a sweat, then that just shows how awesome they are.

The issue for me is about the play. Will this be exciting to resolve, or just an exercise in dice rolling?

I once read a good review of the G-series - this was 15 years ago online, so it's probably not around anymore! - which advised participants to limber up in preparation to avoid spraining that dice-rolling wrist. There is a lot of truth to this, in my view.

The actual resolution of a situation should involve surprise, highs and low, reversals of fortune, and all the other elements that make things exciting and dramatically engaging. This is a complex mix between fictional stakes (above a certain level, giant rats really just won't cut it) and mechanical system (no matter what the fiction involves, book-keeping-style resolution can get boring after a while; and so can rocket-tag style play, which admittedly I know better from RM rather than 3E/PF).

Simulationist encounter and world building, for me, tends to be a bit of a let down when it comes to fictional stakes. And simulationinst action resolution (and knock-on effects of that on PC build) can tend to be a let down on the mechanical side.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Second, D&D as a storytelling venture removes cooperation and competition for collaboration. The players on the proverbial basketball court are there to collectively perform a narrative for the surrounding audience. Anything that inhibits what makes good narratives is contradictory to the game. Instead every one of the rules exists to promote players to create a fiction of their own desire to be "included" with the fictions of others. The basketball players look at each other and ask "What would be the coolest thing to do next?" And the game rules support an entertainment the Harlem Globetrotters might epitomize.

Game play is a fundamentally different act than storytelling. Knowing what the players around the table of D&D want is going to be difficult for a activity that is attempting to be at least both at the same time if not more.

This really is not true, howandwhy, and seems very ignorant of well, collaborative storytelling. Storytelling can very easy be collaborative, and competition between players is not a major element of D&D. There is absolutely nothing that puts "a good game" and "a good story" in absolute opposition. There are conflicting elements, but there's a lot of stuff that lines up, too, and it's just dead, plain, wrong to assert that storytelling conflicts with collaboration.

Personally, I would suggest that 5E needs to hew closer to game than simulation, simply because complex dice-driven games are terrible at simulation, and attempts to make them better merely make them more and more complex. All you're really doing when you make a very complex simulationist RPG in 2014 is saying "Look, I made a TT game that does what a computer game/sim could do about a hundred times as well and a thousand times as fast!".

You want enough simulationism that it doesn't seem blatantly gamist, that it doesn't actively pull the average player out of the world to think about the metagame aspects, but it should be simplistic, straightforward stuff, and if there is a conflict between simulation and game-fun, the latter should typically win out.