How to design a game where players don't seek to min-max

[System Ufera]

This.

I'm sorry but this is sounding like a horribly mismanaged mess. If you ain't got it written down, how can a player read it and learn the rules? How can anybody get the entire picture of how it all works and see if it makes sense or is balanced? How can anybody be sure we're actually playing by the rules, and not CalvinBall?

An RPG is generally a large mass of rules. Larger than can be stored in one persons memory, let alone easily shared with others in entirety. While I can imagine playtesting a component without writing it down, in general, you should be writing first, then playtesting what is written. ISO9000 applies to a lot of things (write down what you're going to do, then do it like you wrote it down).

I'm not going to seek to make excuses; I know that this is an important aspect of playtesting, and I admit that I'm in the wrong for not doing this. The problem is, I have a hard time articulating myself, and every time I try to write down the core rules in any official way, I either end up misrepresenting the rules or rambling on in a fashion similar to a caricature of John Kerry. I suppose I could try doing the latter for the core rules at the moment, and try to fix it later; still, it's going to take a long while, and in the meantime, I'll have less time to produce the content that my players are requesting for the campaign. It'll have to be done, though.

 

[Umbran]

The problem is, I have a hard time articulating myself, and every time I try to write down the core rules in any official way, I either end up misrepresenting the rules or rambling on in a fashion similar to a caricature of John Kerry.

Something that might help here: Rules (and technical information, in general) are often well suited to being presented in outline form. Don't worry about "articulating" in full prose. Don't worry about sentence structure, just get the technical information down in bulleted list form, and you may have what your players need.

 

[Janx]

Something that might help here: Rules (and technical information, in general) are often well suited to being presented in outline form. Don't worry about "articulating" in full prose. Don't worry about sentence structure, just get the technical information down in bulleted list form, and you may have what your players need.

I agree. starting in outline and bullet form is just fine.

 

[Manbearcat]

Sorry to be almost a week later in getting back to these.

But, beware the law of unintended consequences. If you aren't encouraging min/max behavior, you may be encouraging (or discouraging) some other behavior.

For sure. I think anyone interested in designing a game should have this question among the top two or three on their list of to-dos. If you create a game system without deep consideration for precisely what sort of behavior you want to encourage from your players, and thus what sort of action declarations are likely to come up in play, its likely that some tension between play agenda and the actual outcomes that spin out of play procedures will arise. Some folks call that a feature. I'll call it a bug. Muddled genre and disunity twixt the players' expectations and what the system actually produces are never a good thing imo.

Or, in some cases... do away with most of the advancement! FATE based games, for example, don't usually do a lot of "advancement", per se. The game focuses on character change over time rather than character advancement. The usual character change in stats is swapping skills (trade the positions of a Rank 2 and a Rank 3 skill, for example) rather than outright raising skills up.

Certainly one way to do it and the FATE model delivers on its promise well.

These ideas here for how to handle xp is why I really love the Apocalypse World Engine games and the Cortex Plus games because how they handle the XP part of character advancement is pretty different than more traditional games. Smallville especially changes this up because the only way to 'advance' is to challenge yourself and cause your character Stress while also having another PC present at the end of an episode/session to help boost your character up so your character's progress is about perceivering through adversity and the challenges you struggle with.

Agreed. Those are the systems I had in mind (and Dogs in the Vineyard).

Though I already posted one other way to do this, hold on a second....

There is a large degree to which the progress/advancement issue is not relevant to the discussion. Why? Because player generally don't want their PCs to die!

If you have the potential for violent conflict, the player's going to consider that in their strategy. The more potential conflict, the more important survival in them will be. Thus - the more fighting you have, the more the players will want to min/max for survival. The long-term reward system is secondary, because a dead character can't generally reap the long term rewards anyway.

Well, its certainly relevant, its just not the only target that you have to pin down and hit the bullseye on. The other targets mentioned in this thread are all very relevant as well. And certainly your statement above, of which I've advocated the same plenty a time before, is another aspect of the mix. If you make your game about brutal survival and every campaign loss is utterly punitive to your ability to play the game at all, then don't be surprised when players spend all their resources to hedge against campaign losses!

One quick example of handling the issue of campaign losses (which has been mentioned in the thread) is how my 4e games are organized:

1) While my combats are quite difficult (n + 2 or more for standard, budget-wise), perhaps only 1/3 of the total conflicts in my game happen to be combat. Since 2/3 of my conflicts are noncombat, my players make deep investments in a thematic suite of noncombat abilities such that campaign wins are much more likely in noncombat conflict resolution.

2) Beyond campaign losses, my noncombat conflicts charge PCs Healing Surges for micro-losses and everyone for macro-losses (sometimes 2 surges). If its a "perilous journey" or "oregon trail attrition" or "find the temple of templedom in the swamp of swampty-do (love that place by the way...especially this time of year)", and the PCs suffer a campaign loss, then the PCs will have to repeat the conflict. That can create a pretty severe spiral, especially coupled with the denial of Extended Rests.

3) 2 feeds back onto 1.

4) From a narrative perspective, noncombat campaign losses suck.

Ok, I'm off to see The Hobbit with my nephew (and am preparing for disappointment as the journey to Lonely Mountain and Smaug has always been the meat of the story for me)!

 

[Koloth]

My suggestion is don't do it via game design. Why? Real life encourages Min-Max to a large degree. Most people don't go to a University to get a Doctorate in General Studies. They instead get a degree in Organic Chemistry or Electrical Engineering. This doesn't mean they have no other skills. They likely have some ability to write, transport themselves from place to place, cook, etc. They may even have a couple of skill points in playing RPGs. And if they are on an ROTC plan, they may have a couple of skill points in shooting RPGs.

Encourage players to generalize somewhat via in game challenges. If the primary in game objective of adventures 1-4 is to kill orcs, you will likely wind up with a bunch of characters optimized to kill orcs, no matter how hard the game system discourages it.

If instead, adventure 1 is kill orcs, adventure 2 is steal something from the evil(or good, depending) wizard's council, adventure 3 is a diplomatic mission to a land where they abhor edged weapons and adventure 4 is to round up a large herd of horta, you will most likely have a rather diverse skill set in the characters when adventure 5 shows up.

 

[TreChriron]

What other game systems are you familiar with?

I ask because there are several hundreds of games out there. Several of them have "mechanisms" for supporting play styles that appeal to various people's tastes. They range from the traditional ultra-detailed to the "new school" "narrative" simplistic. Some ditch stats or attributes to focus on Skills, while others just use a profession as a skill. Some deal in abstract "actions" so the focus is on the narrative vs. the system-bits. Engineer's study design patterns and other Engineer's design. Scholar's study a multitude of other's works before crafting their own theories. You need to become a student of game design!

Check out The GumShoe System or Cortex Plus (Hacker's Guide) or Fate or Amber Diceless. Get a feel for mechanics outside the "main stream" (ala D&D).

Reading your posts thus far, I get the impression you have a limited exposure to the myriad games available. What you have described has been done before and more importantly the results of player's min-maxing systems has been in this hobby for decades (from the beginning...). Some games are harder to min-max because they literally take the focus off of "increasing numbers increase capability" and instead place that focus on "screen time" or "niche protection" (or both).

A quick idea. You want "emotional" and "mental" traits to be important? Make all your talents require 3 pertinent traits, with a minimum of one of the mental/emotional traits you find important. Or limit the talents score by a calculation using these important traits. Say no combat skill can exceed 5 x your resolve (if you don't have the will to cut people down, you hesitate or balk...). You can find skill caps and limits in systems like BRP/Legend/RuneQuest or GURPS.

Another quick idea: give a bonus on various talents based on these mental/emotional scores. Those with a high resolve, or courage, or empathy get a bonus on related tasks.

You have two options when it comes to player choices and behavior. The carrot or the stick. You can encourage play with rewards and bonuses, or discourage choices with restrictions and penalties. Some games use both methods in one degree or another. If having well rounded characters is important to you, and you want the players to come up with them, you will need to devise a way to either inspire or discourage them from that behavior.

 

[Jhaelen]

Make all your talents require 3 pertinent traits, with a minimum of one of the mental/emotional traits you find important.

Agreed. That's actually the approach taken by The Dark Eye (Das Schwarze Auge). It also features rapidly diminishing returns when increasing traits. You can still be fairly successful if you're min-maxing in DSA, but it requires a large party and a GM willing to adapt challenges to cater to the party's strengths.

In systems that put a focus on telling a story rather than overcoming challenges, min-maxing, while still possible, isn't required, encouraged, or even beneficial.

 

[Boris2112]

My only suggestion is that you have the player flush out their characters some before they roll dice. That is to say, what is the characters drive, class, simple background. In the game I run when characters are being made the players have already decided what they are going to make for a character. And then they roll the dice. I must admit that the players in my group are all in the experience level of around 20 years of gaming different games and are more focused on making a good character than on the stats. But this is the system that works for us. We just fit the framework around the character instead of the character around the framework. Another thing you can do maybe now that I think of it. Let the players after they have rolled the dice, pull points from their top rolls to place on their low rolls (1 or 2 at most) this could help to meet class stat requirements. Also make them pay in game for those low stats. Whatever stat they have neglected make them use.

 

[System Ufera]

Sorry for not getting back to this thread in a while; my response notification emails stopped coming, and I just happened to notice that I have replies.

My suggestion is don't do it via game design[...]

If the primary in game objective of adventures 1-4 is to kill orcs, you will likely wind up with a bunch of characters optimized to kill orcs, no matter how hard the game system discourages it.

If instead, adventure 1 is kill orcs, adventure 2 is steal something from the evil(or good, depending) wizard's council, adventure 3 is a diplomatic mission to a land where they abhor edged weapons and adventure 4 is to round up a large herd of horta, you will most likely have a rather diverse skill set in the characters when adventure 5 shows up.

While I certainly think that doing this would be helpful, I'm not quite sure how I could ensure this once I start selling my game on the market. Ultimately, the course an adventure takes is determined by the GM and players who are playing it; sure, I could design a few pre-made adventures to set an example, but that's about it.

What other game systems are you familiar with?

I'm mostly familiar with DnD 3.5 and 4e, with some experience in Pathfinder, Warhammer 40k roleplaying games, and World of Darkness. I also have many rulebooks for GURPS, though I only played one campaign of that, and it was a version which was both "lite" and outdated (even the books I have are newer than the ruleset of the campaign I played).

Though I loathe to play World of Darkness (I only played it because I had no other games going on at the time), I admit it's given me some ideas which I'm using, such as the mechanic by which your chance of success with any given action is determined by adding together two stats which do not directly influence each other.

My only suggestion is that you have the player flush out their characters some before they roll dice. That is to say, what is the characters drive, class, simple background. In the game I run when characters are being made the players have already decided what they are going to make for a character. And then they roll the dice. I must admit that the players in my group are all in the experience level of around 20 years of gaming different games and are more focused on making a good character than on the stats.

Yeah... some of my players haven't been alive for 20 years, let alone having that much gaming experience. Also, since my game is new, and as such they don't have any prior experience with it, many of the characters they play are characters which I make for them, based on what they describe to me for what they want to play.

Also make them pay in game for those low stats. Whatever stat they have neglected make them use.

I'm actually starting to do this (remember the whole resolve thing I mentioned earlier), though I think it's sinking in for my players more because I'm giving them more info about what the stats do. Still, I'm having trouble with making a system with which to create a set of challenges (designing monsters, skill challenges, etc) which is both balanced against the PCs' ability and diverse in the type of challenges faced. Though I have tried many times to create such a system, most of the times I try fail to get beyond the "drawing board" or "brainstorming mechanics" stages, and so I end up making up challenges as the game goes along. I know, I shouldn't do that, but I can't think of anything better to do.