Consequence and Reward in RPGs


I like to compare trends in the game industry as a whole with individual segments, such as RPGs. Often what’s happening “out there” will turn up in the individual segments, if it hasn’t already.



The most striking trends in hobby games is the movement from games of consequence to games of reward. Players in hobby games in the past have been expected to earn what they received, but more and more in hobby games we’re seeing games that reward players for participation. This is a general trend in our society, where schoolkids expect rewards for participation rather than for achieving excellence, and in fact excellence is sometimes not allowed!

Reward-based games have always been with us via party games, and to a lesser extent family games. Virtually no one cares who wins a party game, and all of these games tend to be very simple and fully accessible to non-gamers. Mass-market games are much more reward-based then consequence-based. Hobby gamers might call them “not serious”.

A reward-based game is more like a playground than an organized competition, and the opposition in reward-based games tends to be weak/inconsequential/nonexistent.

Home video “save games” have always tended to make video games a “you can’t lose” proposition. We’re moving beyond that.

With free-to-play video games dominating the mobile market and a strong influence in other markets, designers reward players so that they’ll play the game long enough to decide to spend money in it. We see players who blame the game if they fail, who expect to be led around by the hand, even in games that people purchase.

Tabletop RPGs generally involve an unspoken pact between the players and the GM, so that the players can have fun and not have to worry too much about losing. But the game tends to be more enjoyable when there’s a possibility of failure - the triumphs are sweeter. The co-creator of D&D (Gary Gygax) put it this way in one of his last publications (Hall of Many Panes) "...a good campaign must have an element of danger and real risk or else it is meaningless - death walks at the shoulder of all adventurers, and that is the true appeal of the game."

Classic games involve conflict. Many so-called games nowadays do not involve conflict, and there are role-playing "games" that are storytelling exercises without much opposition.

Reflections of this trend in RPGs often involve abundant healing and ways to save characters from death, such as the ridiculous Revivify spell, usable by a mere fifth level cleric in D&D Fifth Edition, that brings back the dead on the field of battle.

35 years ago, a young player GMed his first game for our shared-characters campaign. He really wanted to ensure the players had a good time - so he gave out lots of magic items. We wanted players to earn what they received, so myself and the other lead GM waved our hands after the adventure and most of those items disappeared.

I’m a senior citizen, in my roots a wargamer, and I prefer games of consequence. But that's not where the world is headed.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher
 

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Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
In many of the classic modules, once you dug in a bit it would clarify the level suggestions along the lines of, say, "this adventure is intended for 4th to 7th level characters with a total of roughly 25-30 levels preferably including at least one Cleric" - or something like that.

Even then, the level suggestions are merely a guideline - sometimes more accurate than others. :)

Lan-"and keep in mind that CR, also, is just a guideline"-efan

Yeah. 1e and 2e were much looser with the guidelines, though. I found them to be much more flexible than 3e. I had to force flexibility into 3e when I ran it.
 

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Hussar

Legend
I have to see what kind of character sheets you have been using over the years. Sure a few saves changed here and there but nothing making sense? Hmm.

Your character has a 16 strength and is using a two handed weapon. You are a 2e player sitting at a 3e table with only 2e knowledge.

What is your hit and damage bonus?

You are a 2e player and your fighter meets an ogre. You charge in since a 2e fighter would obliterate the ogre. Much to you surprise, not only does the ogre shrug off your damage but he kills your pc in a single round despite you having 16 hp.

You sit at the 3e table. You have about ten encounters and ding a level. It took you maybe six hours of play.

On and on and on.
 

Shasarak

Banned
Banned
Your character has a 16 strength and is using a two handed weapon. You are a 2e player sitting at a 3e table with only 2e knowledge.

What is your hit and damage bonus?

Attack and damage are written on your character sheet.

You are a 2e player and your fighter meets an ogre. You charge in since a 2e fighter would obliterate the ogre. Much to you surprise, not only does the ogre shrug off your damage but he kills your pc in a single round despite you having 16 hp.

Does not sound like a 2e player to run in against an unknown enemy like that especially if you only have 16 hp.

But what was the problem with the character sheet in this example?

You sit at the 3e table. You have about ten encounters and ding a level. It took you maybe six hours of play.

On and on and on.

Again does not really sound like a problem with the character sheet to me.

But how about sitting at a 2e table where you, through a convoluted and intricate plan, manage to lure a Dragon out of its lair to attack a nearby town (on a lake) leaving you with all of its treasure and ding a level taking you maybe six hours of play?
 

Hussar

Legend
Attack and damage are written on your character sheet.



Does not sound like a 2e player to run in against an unknown enemy like that especially if you only have 16 hp.

But what was the problem with the character sheet in this example?



Again does not really sound like a problem with the character sheet to me.

But how about sitting at a 2e table where you, through a convoluted and intricate plan, manage to lure a Dragon out of its lair to attack a nearby town (on a lake) leaving you with all of its treasure and ding a level taking you maybe six hours of play?

Sorry, wrong game. 2e, no XP for gold. And the xp for that dragon won't ding you a level. Nice try though.

As far as the hit and damage bonus being written on your sheet - again, it doesn't MEAN anything to you. You have an AC of 16 (wait, what?) and the bad guy has an AC of 20 (again, wait, what?). Your 16 strength gains you a +3 to hit (wait, what kind of munchkin game is this?) while you have a +4 to damage for some reason.

Oh, and you now have these skill things - no explanation for them or how many you got, or what the numbers actually mean. And, hey, you have Power Attack - what's that? What's your Base Attack Bonus? Oh, and you can no longer be a fighter/thief at 1st level. That doesn't exist as a thing anymore. But, good news, you are no longer limited in levels in any class...

People have internalized the changes between editions to the point where they don't see the changes anymore. They forget just how huge the change in 3e really was. It completely rewrote the game from the ground up. Virtually nothing in 2e actually exists in 3e. Classes, mechanics, everything was changed.

Well, how can you completely rewrite a game and then say that nothing changed?
 

Shasarak

Banned
Banned
Sorry, wrong game. 2e, no XP for gold. And the xp for that dragon won't ding you a level. Nice try though.

No XP for gold? You can play that way, I guess.

As far as the hit and damage bonus being written on your sheet - again, it doesn't MEAN anything to you. You have an AC of 16 (wait, what?) and the bad guy has an AC of 20 (again, wait, what?). Your 16 strength gains you a +3 to hit (wait, what kind of munchkin game is this?) while you have a +4 to damage for some reason.

What kind of story game were you playing where a +3 to hit is considered a munchkin game? Oh, I forgot, no XP for Gold so you just talked to everything. Sure why not.

Oh, and you now have these skill things - no explanation for them or how many you got, or what the numbers actually mean. And, hey, you have Power Attack - what's that? What's your Base Attack Bonus? Oh, and you can no longer be a fighter/thief at 1st level. That doesn't exist as a thing anymore. But, good news, you are no longer limited in levels in any class...

So what are these Skill things that look just like Proficiencies? What is this AC supposed to be? What is this Fireball spell supposed to do? Wow this is so confusing for me even though it says that children 11 and up can understand.

People have internalized the changes between editions to the point where they don't see the changes anymore. They forget just how huge the change in 3e really was. It completely rewrote the game from the ground up. Virtually nothing in 2e actually exists in 3e. Classes, mechanics, everything was changed.

Well, how can you completely rewrite a game and then say that nothing changed?

That is just marketing talk. If you believe the marketing talk then of course it is not going to make sense.
 

Hussar

Legend
No XP for gold? You can play that way, I guess.

Well, considering that's how 2e is played, I'd say that I certainly can play that way. 1e had XP for gold, meaning that level advancement in 1e was pretty fast. 2e slowed advancement WAY down.

What kind of story game were you playing where a +3 to hit is considered a munchkin game? Oh, I forgot, no XP for Gold so you just talked to everything. Sure why not.

In 2e, a 16 Str gained you a +1 to damage and that's it. Now, I've got a +3 to hit and +4 to damage for exactly the same score.

So what are these Skill things that look just like Proficiencies? What is this AC supposed to be? What is this Fireball spell supposed to do? Wow this is so confusing for me even though it says that children 11 and up can understand.

Skills work very, very differently than Proficiencies (which were an optional rule in 2e). Firstly, all those thief abilities that 2e had squared off for thieves, are now available to everyone. Secondly, there was no DC calculation in 2e. Your chance of success was purely based on your stat. Having a +6 Concentration skill is meaningless in 2e. +6 to what?

Look, I'm not saying that no one can learn. Obviously the learning curve isn't all that steep. Fair enough. But, pretending that 3e is completely unchanged from 2e is ignoring an awful lot of the game. 3e rewrote virtually every aspect of the game. Monsters are completely different between editions. Spells work completely differently. The initiative system is completely different. The skill system was new. Feats were unheard of. Every class got reworked. Game balance got reworked.

These really are different games.

That is just marketing talk. If you believe the marketing talk then of course it is not going to make sense.

Yeah, I guess all those Dragonsfoot folks and OSR folks are just completely out to lunch and have no idea what they're talking about.
 

Shasarak

Banned
Banned
Well, considering that's how 2e is played, I'd say that I certainly can play that way. 1e had XP for gold, meaning that level advancement in 1e was pretty fast. 2e slowed advancement WAY down.

You are right that not everyone used every rule when playing 2e. One of the more common ones was not using level limits and I am sure there are plenty of other examples.

In 2e, a 16 Str gained you a +1 to damage and that's it. Now, I've got a +3 to hit and +4 to damage for exactly the same score.

You are correct and 3e also opened up bonuses for high Con to everyone not just Fighters as well. But again all of that is written on the Character Sheet so you do not have to remember what your bonus is for having a 16 Str.

Skills work very, very differently than Proficiencies (which were an optional rule in 2e). Firstly, all those thief abilities that 2e had squared off for thieves, are now available to everyone. Secondly, there was no DC calculation in 2e. Your chance of success was purely based on your stat. Having a +6 Concentration skill is meaningless in 2e. +6 to what?

+6 to Concentration is +6 to your Concentration roll the same way that +3 to Riding, Land based was +3 to your Riding, Land based roll. And as for opening up thief abilities, well are we really expected to believe that only Thieves have a chance to climb something? What to try and move silently? Well you are not a Thief so tough luck? o_O

I have seen some people saying that before Thieves were introduced as a class that everyone could try and climb and sneak so maybe in this case 3e was just changing back to the original way that it used to be.

Look, I'm not saying that no one can learn. Obviously the learning curve isn't all that steep. Fair enough. But, pretending that 3e is completely unchanged from 2e is ignoring an awful lot of the game. 3e rewrote virtually every aspect of the game. Monsters are completely different between editions. Spells work completely differently. The initiative system is completely different. The skill system was new. Feats were unheard of. Every class got reworked. Game balance got reworked.

These really are different games.

I am not saying that they are not different games. Obviously it is not like changing from 3e to 3.5 or 4e to Essentials. I am just saying that the changes to the character sheets were nowhere as drastic as you claim. AC is still Armour Class just going up instead of down. Attack bonus is still doing the same thing as THAC0 just going up instead of down. Longswords are still doing 1d8 damage + Str and Fireballs are still Fireballing.

Yeah, I guess all those Dragonsfoot folks and OSR folks are just completely out to lunch and have no idea what they're talking about.

I dont really know any Dragonsfoot folks to be able to comment.
 

Libramarian

Adventurer
My thoughts on this probably suffer from too much spectating at a distance, but I'll share them anyway - it's a messageboard, right!

I think that there are two salient differences between contemporary AP play and the "classic" style.

(1) The idea of "story" plays a much bigger role now than it once did, which creates pressure towards completion (and hence designing for being able to be completed), which puts pressure on the system - both mechanics and GMing techniques - to reduce lethality vs PCs.

One manifestation of this I remember discussing with @S'mon a while ago (and in my memory he agreed with me, but maybe my memory has some bias in it!), is when the tactical challenge becomes something like a suduko - "Given that this is beatable by a standard party, and we're a standard party, what's our optimal resource deployment configuration to beat it" - which I think is pretty different from what Luke Crane describes.

Milestone levelling would be another. Yet another is building in failsafes for clues and other info to make sure the "plot" doesn't become derailed. Some of this will take the form of "success at a cost" (if you need the GM to feed you the clue, you suffer for it or get some weaker version of it), but personally I find "success at a cost" as an alternative to failure (whether classic "blank wall" failure or indie "failing forward") to be a rather insipid device.

(2) The actual process of play, I think, involve less exploration and less exploitation of fictional positioning. So the idea of making one's own luck has less purchase. (Passive perception scores would be just one marker of this, and by no means the most significant.)


As I said, these are an outsiders' views, so maybe wrong in part or in whole. But that's how it looks to me.
I remember that thread. It's this one right? Quite an interesting discussion there; I recommend a perusal to anyone still following this thread. I basically agree with your analysis of the differences between APing and the classic style of play but I don't think I'm as concerned as you are about whether gamist APing sacrifices what is distinctive about RPGing. I would give a different answer as to why the classic style is superior as a means for pursuing the gamist creative agenda ( I quite like my post here).

I advocate a return to the classic style because I think most D&D groups are basically gamist and they would enjoy it more than the AP style (the other dominant style; Pemertonian scene-framing in my estimation is extremely niche). I think the bottleneck in uptake is not modern gamers' love of prepackaged story and dice-based exploration (I'm tending recently to think these are smokescreens by the relative minority of modern gamers who want the gamist experience but refuse to Step On Up to get it). It's just a lack of support from the game in terms of the tools and techniques needed to run it. Many modern DMs are not even aware of the concept of random encounters, much less why it's important for the DM to recuse themselves from the responsibility of putting encounters together on the fly.

We need to go back to the dungeon and expand slowly and carefully from there (so I say :p)

The second was to make me think of all the "silly" D&D monsters - not just the plain silly ones like mimics and ear seekers, but the meta-silly ones like pseudo-undead and gas spores. This sort of set up is just primed for the GM to play those sorts of expectation-thwarting tricks, and yet if they're taken very far at all they disrupt the conventions on which their place as tricks rather than outright abuses depends. The traps which trigger when the square 10' in front is pressed are analogous. Is classic D&D inherently liable to (which is not at all to say "desined to") a spiral into meta-driven instability?

It's an interesting question. I don't much like those expectation-thwarting monsters. I would say yes to very conservative, hidebound classic D&D, but no to OSR D&D. One of the most exciting things about the OSR is the enthusiasm for making up new monsters, spells, magic items, and settings -- more generally the belief that logical analysis of the game will not only allow one to run it better and have more fun with it, but to expand the game while preserving the appeal without resorting to self-referential tricks.

And, now, we get to the heart of things. The dismissive condescension towards other play styles. Nice. Reducing randomness means that you just "act" like you've earned it? Snort. I'll tell that to every Chess champion I meet. The funny thing is, the gamist in me LOATHES random chance. How is that a test of your skill when random chance sends all your skill wahoonie shaped? Sorry, but, for me, in a truly gamist game, it's a test of my SKILL, not a test of my dice fapping skills.

I haven't played much chess but I know that getting very good at it requires a ton of brute memorization of opening sequences. Kind of like making a 3e or 4e character offline. I don't find that very compelling but I guess to some degree its a matter of taste.

This stuck in my head a bit and I thought I'd pull this out for a bit of extra examination.

How is this not pure gamism? You are making decisions base on what will give you greater chances of success. It has nothing to do with the story of the game nor does it try to simulate anything. It's a purely gamist decision. Now, you might not like it since it makes the game "easier" than you feel is necessary. Fair enough. But, it's no different than someone watching Texas Hold'em tournaments to learn better ways of playing. Or reading strategy guides to make them a better poker player.

Are you saying that someone who takes the time out of the game to learn how to be a "better player" (in the sense of increasing their odds of success) is somehow an inferior player? That they aren't "playing right"? That the only real way of being a better player is making all the mistakes yourself? I'd argue that while there's nothing wrong with "learning from your mistakes", learning from other people's mistakes is also perfectly valid from a gamist perspective.

To me whether an exchange of play is gamist doesn't depend simply on the intentions of the participants but on whether it pursues the gamist creative agenda: the players putting their ideas on the line for judgement in front of an audience, risking at least a small amount of recognition or esteem. Grabbing a build someone else made doesn't involve sufficient personal risk.

This focus on the social dynamic at the table rather than the player's intention allows me to say for example, that I also consider it good play to be fairly sanguine in the face of a random death.
 


Lanefan

Victoria Rules
No XP for gold? You can play that way, I guess.
1e had xp for gp. 2e took it out. Many 1e groups took it out as well.

That said, it's possible you're both right when comparing 2e to 3e, as 2e evolved quite a bit during its run and by the end - with all the options and so forth - kinda wasn't as far from 3e as you might think.

Someone looking at a character sheet from 1991-era 2e would find it quite different than from 1998-era splat-soaked 2e; that same 1998-era sheet wouldn't be all that far adrift from a 2000-era 3e sheet as other than being different organized and named much of the same info would be there. Sort of.

Lanefan
 

Hussar

Legend
Totally is possible to run AD&D btb.

Thank you for that. I needed the laugh. If that's your combat system in a flowchart (actually, EIGHT flowcharts) form I'm fairly confident in saying that the vast majority of people playing AD&D didn't follow the rules. :D But, I gotta admit, that's a pretty darn comprehensive set of charts there. I think the author might do Powerpoint slides for the Pentagon.
 

prosfilaes

Adventurer
I advocate a return to the classic style because I think most D&D groups are basically gamist and they would enjoy it more than the AP style (the other dominant style; Pemertonian scene-framing in my estimation is extremely niche). I think the bottleneck in uptake is not modern gamers' love of prepackaged story and dice-based exploration (I'm tending recently to think these are smokescreens by the relative minority of modern gamers who want the gamist experience but refuse to Step On Up to get it). It's just a lack of support from the game in terms of the tools and techniques needed to run it. Many modern DMs are not even aware of the concept of random encounters, much less why it's important for the DM to recuse themselves from the responsibility of putting encounters together on the fly.

"I think most D&D groups would enjoy playing the way I play more than the way the market has gone" is somehow not persuasive. In my experience, there are a lot of players who played 1E who now play Pathfinder; I know of one group that has existed for 25 years, with some members having started ten years before that, that plays Pathfinder. Also in my experience, the responses of players to character deaths has not encouraged me to run my game in a way that increases the number of PC fatalities.

Hard numbers, especially about what people "would enjoy playing" are going to be very hard to come up with. I'm satisfied that those that want Labyrinth Lords and OSRIC and friends can get them, and those of us who want Pathfinder or 5E can get them, with pemerton being the one stuck with the bag of an OOP game. (Sorry.) Perhaps some of us wouldn't be running or playing the games we are in an optimal world; there's a long list of games I'd rather be running than Pathfinder I'm running. But TORG or InSpectres or Farflung are less similar, not more similar to your playing style. If I really want to do a dungeon crawl, I've got Gloomhaven coming.

As for random encounters... I'l l let the Order of the Stick (Vaarsuvius) speak for me: "Each party has one (and only one) encounter because random encounters are tedious, and a waste of everyone's valuable time. So no matter how long the journey, you only have one random encounter before everyone gets bored and moves on to the main plot."
 


2e did not actually take it out but you guys had me wondering for a second there!
They made it optional, where I suppose it was probably assumed in earlier editions. They also had the individual class awards, where it xp-for-gp was on the Thief chart, and if you combined the two then Thieves earned 2xp per gp.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
They made it optional, where I suppose it was probably assumed in earlier editions.
It was baked in to 1e, to the point where each magic item on the list had two values: a gp value and an xp value. That said, I've never yet encountered a group - even back in the day - that used xp for gp.

Not sure about 0e or B/X. I never realized xp for gp was even optional in 2e.

Lan-"if gp got me xp as well I'd be even greedier than I am now, if such a thing is possible"-efan
 

Jacob Marley

First Post
It was baked in to 1e, to the point where each magic item on the list had two values: a gp value and an xp value. That said, I've never yet encountered a group - even back in the day - that used xp for gp.

My group used XP for GP. Of course, we were also inspired to play D&D by stories of Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers, and buccaneers and buried gold (Thanks Lego Castle and Pirates sets!) more so than monster slaying. XP for GP felt natural to those types of stories.
 

Shasarak

Banned
Banned
It was baked in to 1e, to the point where each magic item on the list had two values: a gp value and an xp value. That said, I've never yet encountered a group - even back in the day - that used xp for gp.

It was not until 3e that I encountered a group who did not use xp for gp but that just meant that I got the xp for defeating them rather then for their stuff.
 

pemerton

Legend
I remember that thread.
Thanks for the links - I just re-read bits of it.

I advocate a return to the classic style because I think most D&D groups are basically gamist and they would enjoy it more than the AP style (the other dominant style; Pemertonian scene-framing in my estimation is extremely niche). I think the bottleneck in uptake is not modern gamers' love of prepackaged story and dice-based exploration (I'm tending recently to think these are smokescreens by the relative minority of modern gamers who want the gamist experience but refuse to Step On Up to get it). It's just a lack of support from the game in terms of the tools and techniques needed to run it.
Interesting conjecture, including the "smokescreen" part of it. I'm surprised you've only got one response!

I think you're right about interest in my preferred approach being modest, though I'm always a bit puzzled by that because a lot of RPGers claim to really be into "story", and I think it's the most reliable way of generating "story" without railroading.

pemerton being the one stuck with the bag of an OOP game. (Sorry.)
Don't worry about me - if I want to keep runing 4e, I've got plenty of material plus the ability to make more of my own if necessary!

In print/out-of-print is not a very signficant consideration in my RPGing.
 

Hussar

Legend
Heh, I'm in the same boat as [MENTION=89537]Jacob Marley[/MENTION] - we used xp for gold all the way through 1e, but, I never met a group that did so in 2e. The baseline rules were no xp for gold. To be honest, I didn't even realize it was an option in 2e. Buried somewhere in the DMG I assume?

I do remember classes had individual xp bonuses and that rogues who stole gold could earn xp that way, but, AFAIK, that was it.
 

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