Consequence and Reward in RPGs

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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

 

[pemerton]

IIRC, he talks about hitting name level in about a year of play.

The nearest I could find was this, on pp 58, 112:

If your players wish to spend most of their time visiting other planes (and this could come to pass after a year or more of play) then you will be hard pressed unless you rely upon other game systems to fill the gaps. . . .

While it might seem highly unlikely to those who have not been involved in fantasy adventure gaming for an extended period of time, after the flush of excitement wears off - perhaps a few months or a year, depending on the intensity of play - some participants will become bored and move to other gaming forms, returning to your campaign only occasionally. Shortly thereafter even your most dedicated players will ococcasionally find that dungeon levels and wilderness castles grow stale, regardless of subtle differences and unusual challenges. It is possible, however, for you to devise a campaign which will have a very minimal amount of participant attrition and enthusiast ennui, and it is not particularly difficult to do so.​

(The latter passage then leads into a discussion of Boot Hill and Gamma World as D&D variants - ie the "other systems" referred to in the earlier passage.)

To me, spending most of their time visiting other planes implies name level or pretty close thereto. He certainly doesn't seem to be envisaging the same characters being played in a continuous campaign for years on end!

 

[AriochQ]

My first thought after reading this post was "Get off my lawn you pesky kids!"

But seriously...I have been playing since 1978 and the current version of D&D is much more forgiving. As already discussed, zero HP death and 'save or die' spells have gone away. I don't necessarily view this as a bad thing. IMHO, they were poor game design. Let's look at the 'save or die' mechanic. When combined with the 'auto fail on a 1', it means that you have a 5% chance of dying any time you roll. Anyone who played to higher levels 1st or 2nd ed. will remember that 'save or die' effects became increasingly common. Basically, you were going to roll a '1' (5% chance each time you roll) and die at some point. Is that a good mechanic? I would say no.

On the other hand, I agree that the pendulum has veered too far toward 'no risk'. This is especially apparent in Adventurer's League play. Outside AL, individual DM's can tailor their own games to the lethality they desire, so I don't see it as a issue of concern.

In short, the OP is probably right regarding lethality/challenge but I don't think it is ever appropriate to tell anyone they are playing D&D wrong.

 

[Over the Hill Gamer]

...I have been playing since 1978 and the current version of D&D is much more forgiving. As already discussed, zero HP death and 'save or die' spells have gone away. I don't necessarily view this as a bad thing. IMHO, they were poor game design. Let's look at the 'save or die' mechanic. When combined with the 'auto fail on a 1', it means that you have a 5% chance of dying any time you roll. Anyone who played to higher levels 1st or 2nd ed. will remember that 'save or die' effects became increasingly common. Basically, you were going to roll a '1' (5% chance each time you roll) and die at some point. Is that a good mechanic? I would say no.

On the other hand, I agree that the pendulum has veered too far toward 'no risk'. This is especially apparent in Adventurer's League play. Outside AL, individual DM's can tailor their own games to the lethality they desire, so I don't see it as a issue of concern.

In short, the OP is probably right regarding lethality/challenge but I don't think it is ever appropriate to tell anyone they are playing D&D wrong.

Let's not forget that 1e also required a resurrection survival roll, based on constitution, that offered a pretty good chance of dying permanently even as you were being brought back from the dead. I recall losing several characters to such a die roll.

 

[AriochQ]

Let's not forget that 1e also required a resurrection survival roll, based on constitution, that offered a pretty good chance of dying permanently even as you were being brought back from the dead. I recall losing several characters to such a die roll.

I could live without that, but I did sort of like the level loss upon death that some groups used. Given the slow rate of leveling in 1e, it made a death (even with a successful resurrection) very painful and thus more meaningful.

 

[Lanefan]

The nearest I could find was this, on pp 58, 112:

If your players wish to spend most of their time visiting other planes (and this could come to pass after a year or more of play) then you will be hard pressed unless you rely upon other game systems to fill the gaps. . . .

While it might seem highly unlikely to those who have not been involved in fantasy adventure gaming for an extended period of time, after the flush of excitement wears off - perhaps a few months or a year, depending on the intensity of play - some participants will become bored and move to other gaming forms, returning to your campaign only occasionally. Shortly thereafter even your most dedicated players will ococcasionally find that dungeon levels and wilderness castles grow stale, regardless of subtle differences and unusual challenges. It is possible, however, for you to devise a campaign which will have a very minimal amount of participant attrition and enthusiast ennui, and it is not particularly difficult to do so.​

(The latter passage then leads into a discussion of Boot Hill and Gamma World as D&D variants - ie the "other systems" referred to in the earlier passage.)

I've always taken those few pages to be little more than an advertisement for TSR's other game systems at the time, and thus largely ignored them. Looked at more closely, the whole section seems to be about keeping players interested if the base campaign is losing them; be it by jumping to a different system, interjecting some offbeat adventuring (he mentions his Alice in Wonderland levels in Castle Greyhawk as an example), visiting other planes, etc.

And - and this is very relevant to the discussion we've been having elsewhere - on p. 112 under "The Ongoing Campaign" the second paragraph is all about having an ongoing backstory as a means of maintaining player interest and giving the PCs a greater purpose in the game world.

To me, spending most of their time visiting other planes implies name level or pretty close thereto. He certainly doesn't seem to be envisaging the same characters being played in a continuous campaign for years on end!

While he may not have envisioned that when he wrote the DMG, it's exactly what ended up happening in a great many instances. I think that's in part due to the tone taken in the introduction to the PH, which a) seems to point much more strongly to longer ongoing (and interweaving) campaigns and parties, and b) would have been read by many more people, at least to begin with.

As for the "visiting other planes" bit, I'm starting to wonder if that's based more on his experiences DMing his own game...which from what I can tell mostly took place in one great big dungeon: Castle Greyhawk. If he or his players wanted something different, pretty much the only option was to jump to another plane to find it.

You are using the wrong levels: as per DMG p 86, "The level of the aspiring character should be computed at current (not to be gained) level." Hence [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s figure of 15,000 is correct, assuming a "roleplay" factor of 1: 1+2+3+4 = 10, x 1500 = 15,000 gp.

Huh. I never noticed that. Apologies to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] .

Lan-"probably a good thing I never used the RAW to set my games' training costs; I'd have been doing it wrong for 30+ years"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Let's not forget that 1e also required a resurrection survival roll, based on constitution, that offered a pretty good chance of dying permanently even as you were being brought back from the dead. I recall losing several characters to such a die roll.

IME a failed resurrection roll can in fact open up some adventuring opportunities, in part because on a failed roll the casting Cleric often gets a vague notion as to what caused the failure (or can cast Commune and ask).

In two cases (each in a different campaign, and about 18 years apart) I've seen characters decide, after a PC failed a raise because some deity said 'no', to take it on themselves to adventure their way into the land of the dead (without dying!), find the soul of their dearly departed, and then attempt to either buy/bribe it out or get it out by force/stealth.

They're one-for-two. The force/stealth group did manage to get their target soul out - just - while the buy/bribe group ended up losing a contest of champions that had their souls vs. their target's soul as the stakes.

Lan-"it's not the gettin' there that's the problem - it's the gettin' back"-efan

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Let's not forget that 1e also required a resurrection survival roll, based on constitution, that offered a pretty good chance of dying permanently even as you were being brought back from the dead. I recall losing several characters to such a die roll.

My favorite random death roll was for the haste spell, which let you make twice as many attacks in a round at the cost of magically aging a year (where any sort of magical aging triggers a system shock roll). It's certainly one way of balancing a spell.

 

[Libramarian]

You're speaking my language @lewpuls! I largely share your preferences and hope you keep writing articles here.

It's interesting that old editions of D&D literally called XP an award while newer editions call it a reward.

However I think D&D evolved in this direction not so much to appeal to a broader pool of players, but DMs. Most new DMs do not have the restraint and conscientiousness needed to run Gamist D&D. They gravitate to a storytelling style where they script everything of consequence in advance, and therefore find the greater predictability of modern D&D play a boon.

E.g. the reduced risk of PC death is often advocated in terms of reducing player discouragement but I think more important is the fact that newb DMs don't deal well with random PC deaths or extemporaneous resurrection quests interrupting their plot.

The players are there for hardcore gamist play. I recently picked up Battlefield 1 and was shocked to see how unforgiving it is for a modern AAA videogame to new players. I must have died 30 or 40 times before getting my first kill. The Dark Souls games of course are also huge sellers while being notoriously frustrating to play.

IIRC in the run-up to 5e Mearls/Crawford mentioned that most DMs don't read the DMG so their options for DM training are limited. At one point they said they wanted to make instructional videos. Seems like they expect streamed games to provide that instead but the problem with that is scripted, participatory D&D (with attractive, charismatic players) will win the battle for views every time over procedurally hygienic, gamist D&D.

 

[Libramarian]

this whole post reads like an old person

And that, as far as I'm concerned, tends to make this sound like he's just an old geezer

*facepalm* Oh boy, it's one of those articles by some older person...I can grab any person over 50 off the street and hear this same complaint

I hope I'm not the only one discomfited by this ageism. It's not right to dismiss someone's opinion just because they're old or sounds like they're old.

 

[Hussar]

I hope I'm not the only one discomfited by this ageism. It's not right to dismiss someone's opinion just because they're old or sounds like they're old.

No, but it is right to dismiss someone's opinion when it carries no weight, isn't supported by the actual facts, and has been repeated ad nauseam over the past thirty years.

Sorry, but, none of the things in 5e are new. Again, we had Dragonlance back in 1984. My James Bond 007 game is dated 1983 (which included ALL SORTS of rules for keeping the PC's alive). My Star Frontiers game was published in 1982 and, complete with the three Volturnus modules, ran a pretty sweet story based campaign. On and on and on.

Could you play RPG's the way you are talking about? Sure, of course. No one is denying that. What's being denied is that somehow this was the only way RPG's were ever played and it is this big change in gaming that we have now. It's nostalgia glasses of the worst kind.