Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance

[Bluenose]

There are a couple of ways you evade the point in saying this. I'm not familiar with all of those systems, but in general they depend on a social contract to assign value to weapons only if it is reasonable to agree that they are assets within the setting. Thus, if you were trying to run a non-comic game, but one with a certain seriousness, you'd not have a die or trait assigned to the possession of an object which lacked utility as a weapon and in general the story teller would rule by fiat that that trait generally didn't apply to declarations of intent to do damage. Certainly within those systems you could declare things like 'Beware my Rubber Chicken' gave some advantage in combat equivalent to "I love my trusty shotgun ole Bessy." but the point is in practice players know not to do that and game masters don't respect attempts to violate the setting guidelines. Thus, holding a bazooka in Cortex Plus might generate an extra asset die in a way that holding a rubber chicken would not, or having a sword might create some advantage in a fight that holding a limp wet noodle or a bundle of clover didn't.

However, in such systems you are highly reliant on the game masters to respect and interpret the mechanics in light of the setting supposedly being emulated as the rules themselves aren't actually doing the job of genera emulation.

Well, the only one of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s four suggested systems that I play a lot is Heroquest, and that is pretty specific about abilities, and defines what happens for ones where you're using a broad ability, a defined ability for it's intended purpose, or an ability that it's a stretch to explain how it interacts with the situation. Does that require that the GM and players accept and understand the constraints of the setting? Yes. I'd suggest that if you don't trust the "social contract" in that sort of game, then you can't really trust it to control the excesses possible for spell-casters in D&D and that has implications for the importance of balance too. Perhaps the biggest being not to play with <people of manner undesirable>.

 

[mouselim]

Pemerton, I agree and structure is merely there as either a guideline or to conform play into a certain manner. Yet, without these rules, consistency goes for a toss. I happen to play three of the four RPGs you mentioned above and the nature of these games (three of the four that I know) provides a different sort of structure. Another purist will have argued that they are essentially not required too. In Marvel RP, there's team, solo, buddy, weapon, etc stats. In Fate, there are skills scores, ladder results, etc.

 

[pemerton]

I mean that a PC differs from a character in a novel or movie by having a will independent from that of the story teller.

I don't see how. The story tellers in an RPG are the game participants, including the player of the PC. The PC has not will, indeed no existence, independent of those game participants.

There are a couple of ways you evade the point in saying this. I'm not familiar with all of those systems, but in general they depend on a social contract to assign value to weapons only if it is reasonable to agree that they are assets within the setting.

<snip>

Thus, holding a bazooka in Cortex Plus might generate an extra asset die in a way that holding a rubber chicken would not, or having a sword might create some advantage in a fight that holding a limp wet noodle or a bundle of clover didn't.

Not really. The games rely on framing action declarations, but so does D&D. Can I declare a Perception check when I'm blindfolded and have wax in my ears? Can I declare a sword swing against the orc on the other side of the room, without spending an action to move?

All action declarations depend on fictional positioning. (Incuding the action declaration required to generate an asset in Cortex Plus.)

you are requiring the GM to not only know the properties of bazookas, but for the players to foreknow how the DM will rule on those properties.

No. You just require the GM and players to have similar conceptions of what is genre-permitted, and to be able to reach mutual accommodation in the event that expectations diverge. That's really no different from playing Tomb of Horrors and having to decide whether a STR 10 wizard is strong enough to pound iron spikes into the side of a pit; or whether Transmute Rock to Mud cast on the roof of the cavern will defeat the orcs beneath that roof.

It's inherent in an RPG that fictional positioning will matter to resolution, and hence that consensus will have to be reached. Having a weapon list doesn't change that fact.

(It's also not a coincidence that, of the games I mentioned, MHRP, HeroQuest revised and Fate all have extensive discussions of how genre expectations feed into action resolution.)

 

[Hussar]

The bigger issue IMO, that gets lost in these discussions is no one really agrees what balance actually means. Does balance only mean that everything must be identical? In that case, how can one claim that Chess is balanced? After all, there are six different types of pieces, all with different rules. A pawn isn't balanced against a queen after all. Overall, sure, the game is balanced because both sides have the same resources. But, now we have to accept that balance really depends on where you are standing. At the individual unit level Chess is totally imbalanced. On the whole it is balanced.

For me, I always define balance thusly:

Balance in a role playing game means that no option is qualitatively always better than all other options.​

So, in a game like Ars Magica, while there is serious imbalance between the characters, that balance is maintained at a higher level since Troupe Play means that no one always gets to play the finger wiggler. Remove that balancing mechanic and Ars Magica has some serious issues. Would you want to play a long term Ars Magica game where you can only play a mook and never the wizard? Heck, would you always want to play the wizard? I sure wouldn't.

When you have imbalanced systems, roleplaying is hurt because the most logical choice is to always choose the better option. It doesn't make rational sense, really, to deliberately choose the weaker option. If a longsword is flat out better than a broadsword (because the weapon vs armor table, and the fact that the majority of magical swords will be longswords) the game really pushes players to choose longsword over broadsword. I know one of the biggest changes I saw in fighter types in 3e was a sudden spike in fighter types not using swords. In fact, I'd say that swords became something of a large minority of weapon choice. Lots and lots of axes, spear and pole arms suddenly got use at my table. After almost twenty years, I actually saw a fighter choose a halberd as his primary weapon. All because of game balance.

Balance matters. It always matters. Games without balance lead to cookie cutter characters because if you have an option that is clearly better than other options, why handicap yourself?

 

[prosfilaes]

Or to put a finer point on it, if in a system a tea cup does 1d12 damage - just like every other weapon - what story point is actually being made and reinforced by using a tea cup as a weapon? The whole point of the scene is that the audience knows from experience with the system (in this case something akin to 'the real world) that a tea cup is a substandard weapon. If the audience knows no weapon is substandard, the audience probably finds the thing even more ridiculous and pretentious than it is. At least in a system with a weapon table, which the real world definitively has with a degree of fine resolution far exceeding any game system, you'd have an excuse for, "All I have is a tea cup, so that's what I'm using." In a game without weapon tables, does the lack really make for better stories? A game without a weapon table makes a tea cup the equal of a bazooka - all the time and not just in those establishing scenes.

James Maliszewski discusses running OD&D (which apparently makes all weapons 1d6) with a couple different groups, one of which didn't like it at all and started writing rules to differentiate weapons, and the other loved it and one player ended up running around just throwing coins at enemies. It's always sort of enticed me, in the sense that I could play a club-bearing ogre or dagger-wielding halfling because those are the characters I want to play, without worrying about optimizing weapons.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

You know what matters less than balance in a roleplaying game? RPG design theory. Theory is a means to a practical end. It does not have meaning except in terms of its power to bring about a practical end my players and I enjoy. Calling D&D an RPG, or not, has *NO RELEVANCE* to that end. So stop worrying about it.

I have to disagree with this bit. RPG theory is just people's ideas about how to make RPGs more fun. If we don't think that's worthwhile, then what are we doing on these forums? And having common definitions of words is important. How else are we going to talk about things? It is silly to get bent out of shape about someone's theories though. The stuff Wick put up is obviously in development and should be taken as such. The blog looks like something that was posted so the author could use others' criticism to improve his own ideas.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

The bigger issue IMO, that gets lost in these discussions is no one really agrees what balance actually means. Does balance only mean that everything must be identical? In that case, how can one claim that Chess is balanced? After all, there are six different types of pieces, all with different rules. A pawn isn't balanced against a queen after all. Overall, sure, the game is balanced because both sides have the same resources. But, now we have to accept that balance really depends on where you are standing. At the individual unit level Chess is totally imbalanced. On the whole it is balanced.

For me, I always define balance thusly:

Balance in a role playing game means that no option is qualitatively always better than all other options.​

So, in a game like Ars Magica, while there is serious imbalance between the characters, that balance is maintained at a higher level since Troupe Play means that no one always gets to play the finger wiggler. Remove that balancing mechanic and Ars Magica has some serious issues. Would you want to play a long term Ars Magica game where you can only play a mook and never the wizard? Heck, would you always want to play the wizard? I sure wouldn't.

When you have imbalanced systems, roleplaying is hurt because the most logical choice is to always choose the better option. It doesn't make rational sense, really, to deliberately choose the weaker option. If a longsword is flat out better than a broadsword (because the weapon vs armor table, and the fact that the majority of magical swords will be longswords) the game really pushes players to choose longsword over broadsword. I know one of the biggest changes I saw in fighter types in 3e was a sudden spike in fighter types not using swords. In fact, I'd say that swords became something of a large minority of weapon choice. Lots and lots of axes, spear and pole arms suddenly got use at my table. After almost twenty years, I actually saw a fighter choose a halberd as his primary weapon. All because of game balance.

Balance matters. It always matters. Games without balance lead to cookie cutter characters because if you have an option that is clearly better than other options, why handicap yourself?

I totally agree that an RPG needs to offer interesting choices, but that isn't what WIck is talking about in his article. Here it is:

“Game balance” is important in board games. It means one player does not have an advantage over another.

He's using "game balance" in its most common meaning, giving player characters equal mechanical power in combat.

 

[Hussar]

I totally agree that an RPG needs to offer interesting choices, but that isn't what WIck is talking about in his article. Here it is:

He's using "game balance" in its most common meaning, giving player characters equal mechanical power in combat.

But, isn't that essentially what I'm saying? That no given option is better than any other option? Even sticking to the combat aspect, since that's where balance is most often seen, if we choose to completely ignore balance and claim that balance is completely not important, then we wind up with cookie cutter characters - everyone chooses the best option because that's the most rational decision to make.

In an unbalanced system, why would you choose an option you know is less effective? Or, rather, why would you consistently choose less effective options? It's not rational.

 

[Campbell]

I'm not a big fan of all this talk about what is and isn't a role playing game? Does it particularly matter if a game fits into a neat little box or not? I don't sit down to play a role playing game with my friends. I sit down to play Fiasco, Apocalypse World, Demon - The Descent, L5R, Marvel Heroic Roleplay, etc. The techniques and priorities used in design should differ based on what play experience the designer is after. I don't want games designed to some platonic ideal. I say design great games and worry about what to call them afterward. Actually that last step isn't even needed. Orthodoxy in game design does us a disservice.

I also disagree that spotlight balance should take precedence at all times. That wildly depends on the play experience a player is seeking. What I'm after when I sit down to play any game I'm looking to have the decisions I make during play have a significant impact on the flow of the game. Specifically in games where the fiction matters, I want to make decisions that are going to have a real and visceral effect on the fiction. You can give me all the attention in the world, but if my decisions don't matter I'm not having fun.

For me personally, the same thing generally applies to mechanical balance. It's not about power. I will choose meaningful choices over mechanical impact every time.

 

[Celebrim]

James Maliszewski discusses running OD&D (which apparently makes all weapons 1d6) with a couple different groups, one of which didn't like it at all and started writing rules to differentiate weapons, and the other loved it and one player ended up running around just throwing coins at enemies. It's always sort of enticed me, in the sense that I could play a club-bearing ogre or dagger-wielding halfling because those are the characters I want to play, without worrying about optimizing weapons.

I can totally sympathize with this sort of thing because really, so much of my tweaking and balancing often amounts to making it mechanically reasonable to be either that smash smash club wielding brute or else a psychotic 3' tall dagger wielding killer and you could save so much time by just offering no mechanical choices and making who you were entirely a matter of flavor.

But on the other hand, there are points where it breaks down - and that guy running around giggling insanely while throwing handfuls of change at his enemies is one example. In the right kind of story, that's ok, but do we really want a guy armed with a rubber chicken and tossing peonies at the monsters and is that story necessarily welcoming to the rest of the groups goals? On the other end, if we do take being the club wielding brute or the dagger wielding 30lbs of death concepts seriously, then we expect at some level that there is some differences in when we are most advantaged and useful. And at some level, taking care of all of that solely in the fiction with no mechanical back up just doesn't work.

The guy up there who said, "Make sure your system matches your setting, because in the long run your setting will match your system" (or something of the sort) gets it exactly right.

And that also explains why I think rules lite systems can make great short games, but rarely long campaigns.