Darkvision Ruins Dungeon-Crawling

[Thomas Shey]

Sure.

All I meant was that arguing, "You wouldn't be able to notice that (insert thing) on the rocky floor by torchlight..." isn't very compelling from a game design perspective unless it factors into a set of interesting choices made by the players.

That assumes the game design perspective doesn't care about the thing behaving at all like we expect the thing (which has a direct real world equivalent) to behave. I'm not sold that sort of complete disconnect is what most people are going to expect from their game, any more than the opposite. If you want to go that route, you're better off acknowledging the limits of torchlight, and basing the quality off of darksight from that.

Basically, "we don't want to light use to be too bad so there's an ecological niche for the alternative" does not strike me as exactly good design either. And I'm not exactly a hardcore simulationist by any standards any more.

 

[James Gasik]

You know, there's a very simple answer to this if you need to obscure things from players with darkvision. I pointed this out to my Warlock player the other day.

They were approaching a dragon's lair in a swamp. "As you approach the mouth of the cave, the edges of which look half-melted, you see a heavy mist hangs in the air ahead of you."

"Uh...Devil's Sight?" He asked, nervously.

"Sorry, it's heavily obscured, but it's not darkness."

You can do the same thing with smoke, barriers, thick webbing, even hide or cloth sheets hung from the ceiling. Given that many enemies employ darkvision, they naturally will come up with ways to foil it's use.

 

[GMMichael]

For both pitched combat and overall strategic command, being able to see in conditions that others cannot is a force multiplier.

That's why night vision is/was a gamechanger in modern combat and things like thermal optics are valuable items.

Sure, but modern combatants aren't looking for secret passages, trying to haul treasure, or following magical motes.

They are watching for traps (mines) hopefully, and a torchbearer can do this too, but only the torchbearer chooses from the dilemma: do I follow the sparse lighting already in here, or bring my own light so I can see what's in the dark spaces?

 

[Bill Zebub]

That assumes the game design perspective doesn't care about the thing behaving at all like we expect the thing (which has a direct real world equivalent) to behave. I'm not sold that sort of complete disconnect is what most people are going to expect from their game, any more than the opposite. If you want to go that route, you're better off acknowledging the limits of torchlight, and basing the quality off of darksight from that.

Basically, "we don't want to light use to be too bad so there's an ecological niche for the alternative" does not strike me as exactly good design either. And I'm not exactly a hardcore simulationist by any standards any more.

This response totally perplexed me, until I realized two things are probably true:

• My comment about realism might have been misinterpreted as a defense of darkvision (which would be understandable in a thread about darkvision...)
• Which means your post about realism might have been to point out the inadequacies of torchlight in the context of comparing different modes of vision (again, totally fair given the context of the thread)

But, no, I wasn't thinking about torchlight in comparison to darkvision. I was simply going down an off-topic tangent about how I don't care about realism unless it contributes to interesting/fun decision making for the players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You know, there's a very simple answer to this if you need to obscure things from players with darkvision. I pointed this out to my Warlock player the other day.

They were approaching a dragon's lair in a swamp. "As you approach the mouth of the cave, the edges of which look half-melted, you see a heavy mist hangs in the air ahead of you."

"Uh...Devil's Sight?" He asked, nervously.

"Sorry, it's heavily obscured, but it's not darkness."

You can do the same thing with smoke, barriers, thick webbing, even hide or cloth sheets hung from the ceiling. Given that many enemies employ darkvision, they naturally will come up with ways to foil it's use.

Of course if you go down that road long enough, it leads to blindsight (though that may not deal with the sheets case).

 

[Thomas Shey]

This response totally perplexed me, until I realized two things are probably true:

• My comment about realism might have been misinterpreted as a defense of darkvision (which would be understandable in a thread about darkvision...)

No, it was about deciding to minimize the problems with torchlight and the like so it had enough advantage over darkvision for game reasons. My point was "You don't want to make torchlight different, because it'll probably stand out as being odd; you want to make darksight different because it doesn't have any real equivelent anyway". Doing it at the other end does not seem particularly defensible just for game reasons, and I'm generally a big believer in game reasons.

• Which means your post about realism might have been to point out the inadequacies of torchlight in the context of comparing different modes of vision (again, totally fair given the context of the thread)

But, no, I wasn't thinking about torchlight in comparison to darkvision. I was simply going down an off-topic tangent about how I don't care about realism unless it contributes to interesting/fun decision making for the players.

But see, to some extent I think it usually does, unless there's a genre or setting reason to change it. Essentially, when you have two moving parts, one of which has a real world parallel people are capable of potentially being familiar with, if you want them to relate in a particular way, fiddle with the other one first because its fictional anyway.

 

[Bill Zebub]

No, it was about deciding to minimize the problems with torchlight and the like so it had enough advantage over darkvision for game reasons. My point was "You don't want to make torchlight different, because it'll probably stand out as being odd; you want to make darksight different because it doesn't have any real equivelent anyway". Doing it at the other end does not seem particularly defensible just for game reasons, and I'm generally a big believer in game reasons.



But see, to some extent I think it usually does, unless there's a genre or setting reason to change it. Essentially, when you have two moving parts, one of which has a real world parallel people are capable of potentially being familiar with, if you want them to relate in a particular way, fiddle with the other one first because its fictional anyway.

Got it.

I’m in the camp of “no darkvision except for exceptional (mostly non-humanoid) monsters” so I don’t really worry about finding that balance point.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Got it.

I’m in the camp of “no darkvision except for exceptional (mostly non-humanoid) monsters” so I don’t really worry about finding that balance point.

That's fine, I was just noting your apparent position was not a given just because one's designing for game choices. Like I said, I'm pretty gamist, but that seemed a pretty backwards way to address the gamist desire at its core.

 

[Bill Zebub]

That's fine, I was just noting your apparent position was not a given just because one's designing for game choices. Like I said, I'm pretty gamist, but that seemed a pretty backwards way to address the gamist desire at its core.

Then I think we're both misunderstanding each other.

 

[Argyle King]

Sure, but modern combatants aren't looking for secret passages, trying to haul treasure, or following magical motes.

They are watching for traps (mines) hopefully, and a torchbearer can do this too, but only the torchbearer chooses from the dilemma: do I follow the sparse lighting already in here, or bring my own light so I can see what's in the dark spaces?

Secret passages are something for which modern combatants need to search. A loose board or an underground tunnel could lead to a weapons cache (which could be viewed as treasure).

Mines, anti-personel IEDs, fu-gas rigged to a kitchen timer, and other such things would be traps.

If it is possible to see those things without using light, that is an advantage.