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]

Also [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], double post => double XP. A strategy for level gain!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I agree that there is a power there, but also a weakness WRT telling a story. Often, making a good/interesting story involves loss on the part of the protagonist. Most traditional rpgs have no mechanism rewarding a player for a substantive loss by their character. Reward mechanisms, like XP/leveling, are based solely on "winning" whatever goals the character has, and apply to the character and player as well. Contrast this with Fiasco, in which you the player can "win" by having your character suffer the most during the course of the game. (Although if you do win in this fashion, your character walks away winning as well.) This puts a player's immediate interests at odds with the character's immediate interests in a way that allows for plotlines that D&D would have great difficulty creating.

That's why it's hard to categorize something like D&D or GURPS as the same type of game as FATE or Fiasco. From a role-playing perspective, the story is just how you refer to the events that happen as a result of your role-playing. When you're playing a traditional RPG, you're not trying to tell a story; you just worry about playing your character, and whatever happens is what happens. If it's not dramatically satisfying - if it wouldn't make a good/interesting story for someone else to read about - then that's not terribly important.

 

[aramis erak]

Now brace yourself: CR worked for me, too!
I suppose, everyone who disagrees with you regarding CR is on your ignore list

CR worked reasonably well for me in 3.0 through about level 8...

The CR system in 5E worked well right up to level 10.

 

[Ratskinner]

That's why it's hard to categorize something like D&D or GURPS as the same type of game as FATE or Fiasco. From a role-playing perspective, the story is just how you refer to the events that happen as a result of your role-playing. When you're playing a traditional RPG, you're not trying to tell a story; you just worry about playing your character, and whatever happens is what happens. If it's not dramatically satisfying - if it wouldn't make a good/interesting story for someone else to read about - then that's not terribly important.

I tend to agree about there being a distinct difference, but I do make finer distinctions. For example, I don't categorize Fate and Fiasco together, because Fate still has mechanics that define a character distinctly from a story, and most players still affect the world most directly through the actions of a single character. I tend to think of Role-Playing games in terms of "Generations", WRT Story Games:

1st Gen: Games that do not acknowledge narrative causality/story concerns mechanically. Most mechanics are concrete (have direct representation in the fiction), those that are not tend to be abstract for the purpose of simplifying a complex system that would be difficult or tedious to calculate at table. Examples: Old-School D&D, GURPS, most Gumshoe games, tons of games from the 80's and 90's, Fudge straddled the line between 1st and 2nd gen, depending on how groups used Fudge Points (IME).

2nd Gen: Games that have some mechanical recognition of story or narrative concerns, but still maintain a traditional "core" of resolution mechanics that are the "bread and butter" of the system. The most moderate versions of these represent 1st gen games with some kind of story motivator bolted-on (some kind of action, hero, or plot points or perhaps some kind of XP system for roleplaying a weakness). The more extreme sorta blend into third generation games, dropping almost all detail from what are otherwise concrete mechanics and relying more heavily on narrative justification and impetus. Examples: 4e (moderate), 5e (barely),
any version or derivative of D&D with various add-ons like the Sweet 20 Experience System, Burning Wheel (slightly less moderate), Fate & MHRP (more extreme), Some Apocalypse Engine games (Dungeon World, Apocalypse World itself arguably).

3rd Gen: Games that tend to work without directly mechanically representing the fictional "physics" or "reality" and mechanically focus almost entirely on some level of narrative causality. There are many obscure examples from the Forge that verge on Story Games. Examples: Some Apocalypse Engine games (Uncharted Worlds, Worlds in Peril, Fellowship), Fiasco, Capes (obscure and possibly a Story game), Archipelago.

Story Games: Mechanics are almost entirely abstract from the fiction, AND(!) players are not attached to a particular character for their action within the fiction space. Examples: Once Upon a Time, Universalis (an early shot, but doesn't have mechanical closure for plot threads), Baron Munchausen(? -haven't actually played it), some improv and wiki games.

First gen games tend to provoke a lot of fudging and/or rail-roading by GMs who really want to be running a second or third gen game. Second or third gen games tend to drive some hardcore folks nuts because they often feel at a loss to deal with mechanics that aren't actually "in" the fiction, or don't want to be authoring events from outside their character's actions. Many second gen games and even some third gen games aren't really good at "closing" plotlines, even if the mechanics reflect and awareness of them. You can see this with some weird corner-case mechanics (luck, some magic, hit-on-a-miss, come and get it) that do or don't drive folks nuts.

Anyway, that's my current $.02 on the subject.

 

[Ratskinner]

[MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], there's a lot in your post, this is just picking up on the bits where I thought I had something to contribute.

I do tend to ramble.

My fantasy Cortex/MHRP isn't comedic, but it's is more light-hearted than typical D&D. I think in part because the system encourages the player to take the situation and run with it - there is no sober planning or worrying about consequences.

I find it rather liberating in this respect!

I've come to appreciate that kind of speed in a game as well. People worry about how long it takes to resolve things...but I see my group spending far more time planning things that they really shouldn't have time to do. (Although the difference between Real Life and having a GM tell you stuff must be allowed for.)

Interesting point.

Because I've never done much system=story RPGing (even as simple a one as classic alignment) in a way that lets the player blame the author, I feel that I haven't seen a lot of what you describe. My players have tended to have to take responsibility for their PCs. But I'm aware that the phenomenon exists.

Its weird to me how the same "alignment argument" which actually just boil down to "are racist ideas real in this fictional world" are still happening. My group just had one a year or two ago...with players who have been playing for decades, no less. IMO, it sorta shows up the fundamental problem with idea of absolute/objective morality.

Vincent Baker wrote about this a while ago, contrasting IIEE with teeth with IIEE that relies upon the participants to do the work of linking resolution to fiction (he contrasted his designs of DitV with In a Wicked Age).

Oddly enough, I think that 4e skill challenges have more "teeth" (in Baker's sense) than BW Duel of Wits, which can become just a dice game if the players don't inject their fiction into it. (Whereas a move in a skill challenge can't be adjudicated, at least if the canonical procedure is followed, until located in the fiction.)

Of course, classic D&D combat can suffer from this problem badly: dice are rolled, hits taken, but who knows what is going on in the fiction! - it's all just numbers.

Yup. HP ::shakes fist:: Make it an accounting game. Trying to play TotM doesn't really help any, IME. I'd like to see a system (for story-first gaming) where players look at a fight and decide what resources to devote, the GM puts some kind of risk or challenge dice into play...roll accordingly, and the mechanics kick out "things that happened" during the fight (or phase of the fight). Make it swift and move along. Maybe you could even do something like the end of Fiasco where you narrate what the die represents as you dispose of it.

I feel that the issue of surprise can be divorced from the issue of teeth for IIEE - but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to articulate it clearly. It's more a gut feel, based on play experiences with 4e skills and BW.

But - as per my earlier post - it shifts a big load onto the GM to be able to narrate consequences. The system won't, in itself, carry that load, though it can help (I'm thinking of the DW list of "GM moves", and a less canonical equivalent in the BW Adventure Burner advising the GM about options for narrating failure).

I think so.

Imagine a monster defined by something like tags in DW, instead of a tag like messy we have a list of "bad stuff" that the system kicks out on a trigger. The GM would only be "on the spot" for all that when homebrewing something new.

Harder, perhaps for social situations

 

[pemerton]

Imagine a monster defined by something like tags in DW, instead of a tag like messy we have a list of "bad stuff" that the system kicks out on a trigger. The GM would only be "on the spot" for all that when homebrewing something new.

Harder, perhaps for social situations

I remember a thread on [the Forge? RPG.net?] where someone was complaining about this for BW Duel of Wits - that the rules talk about the need for a compromise but don't "kick out" the actual content of the compromise.

Also, in your "generations" of games, how does something like T&T's very abstract melee mechanics fit in?

 

[Ratskinner]

I remember a thread on [the Forge? RPG.net?] where someone was complaining about this for BW Duel of Wits - that the rules talk about the need for a compromise but don't "kick out" the actual content of the compromise.

Also, in your "generations" of games, how does something like T&T's very abstract melee mechanics fit in?

I'm not familiar enough with T&T to know.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm not familiar enough with T&T to know.

T&T Combat in nutshell:
Everyone is presumed to hit. Go straight on to rolling damage.
Total all the damages on each side;
Find the difference in side totals
Lower total divides the difference amongst themselves evenly; fractions are divvied out as whole points one apiece until gone.
Subtract armor from damage assigned to you.
Reduce current Con by that amount.
Repeat.

resolution is at the engagement level, and is side total vs side total. So rather abstract.

 

[Ratskinner]

T&T Combat in nutshell:
Everyone is presumed to hit. Go straight on to rolling damage.
Total all the damages on each side;
Find the difference in side totals
Lower total divides the difference amongst themselves evenly; fractions are divvied out as whole points one apiece until gone.
Subtract armor from damage assigned to you.
Reduce current Con by that amount.
Repeat.

resolution is at the engagement level, and is side total vs side total. So rather abstract.

From that description, it depends on the sources of the damage dice, the rest sounds like a rather abstract 1st Gen game. If the mechanics all directly represent or reflect physical traits, abilities, or actions in the fiction, then its 1st gen. If dice are sourced from abstract things like motivations, or some kind of hero points, then it probably leans into 2nd Gen.

 

[aramis erak]

From that description, it depends on the sources of the damage dice, the rest sounds like a rather abstract 1st Gen game. If the mechanics all directly represent or reflect physical traits, abilities, or actions in the fiction, then its 1st gen. If dice are sourced from abstract things like motivations, or some kind of hero points, then it probably leans into 2nd Gen.

It's not all physical. Dice by weapon, adds by +1 per point over 12, –1 per point under 9, for each of Strength, Dexterity, and Luck.

If it's not "1st gen", your categorization is totally F*f, as its 1975 publication date and post-GenCon 1974 writing date put it as one of the first 5 RPGs in print.