Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Dedicated Mechanics
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8844115" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I am a big fan of plug-in subsystems to handle specific minigames - such as a heist, a chase, building an organization, running a business, conducting a mass battle, crafting an object, etc. etc. etc. - that might come up in play. In fact, I've written before that I consider the presence of numerous minigames within the game to simulate all the different features of the imagined reality to be the defining trait of an RPG. Certainly, that and not role-play is actually the defining trait of cRPGs like Skyrim or Witcher III or even something like Ultima IV. Modern RPGs try to make the switching between minigames feel more seamless, but it's still there. </p><p></p><p>Modern tabletop RPG design has IMO become fixated on "elegance", which the designer usually defines as a single master mechanic which is intended by them to handle every situation that comes up. But since the real things being modeled or simulated are often very different, abstracting them all to the same system invariably leads to problems when you try to adapt the one master mechanic to minigames the author poorly considered or didn't think of as important.</p><p></p><p>Some good examples are skill mechanics which in modern games often are the sole mechanic of the game, and if not are at least a single mechanic governing all the skills used in the game whether social, mental or physical. The truth is, this usually leads to absurdities that come into play whenever you start trying to reify the mechanics to concrete in game situations. A single game mechanic typically means all skill checks are pass/fail when some skills are better modeled as quantitative results, and a single game mechanic means that the standard deviation on expected success is governed not by the thing being modeled but by the arbitrary range allowed by your fortune mechanic. </p><p></p><p>Since the most easily reified skills are physical ones since they relate to things that can be quantified, this is most easily demonstrated by how a uniform skill mechanic handles breaks when dealing with physical skills like lifting things or jumping. What you end up with is minor absurdities where the weaker character regularly can move loads the stronger character can't because the range of the fortune is larger than the range of modifiers to the check and the mechanic is trying to model a simple pass/fail question like, "Can X be moved?". Or for example, you end up with a jump mechanic were the same jumper randomly jumps between 5 feet and 25 feet just because how far you are jump is tied to the range of the fortune mechanic. </p><p></p><p>Another common example is that even a very good turn-based combat system that simulates tactical squad-based combat well enough to suspend disbelief, often utterly falls down when simulating a chase scene where everyone is moving at once. Suddenly it becomes important that the system allows one side or character to make all of their move at once while the other side is suspended in time unable to react. A game that simulates fencing might not and probably does not simulate a game of tag or a game of football very well. It turns out that you need minigames with different assumptions for that. </p><p></p><p>One common problem that arises is that designers historically rather than abandoning the notion of a single master game with mechanics that cover all situations, try to make that game granular enough to solve the problem. For example, the problem of a game that doesn't handle both fencing and tag well can be solved by reducing the time scale way down to "impulses" or "segments" of a turn where each party can only engage in small fractional movement. In other words, trying to more realistically modelling everything in "real time" rather than "turn based" (a real time video game is just a game with very short turns and no pauses between them). But of course, the problem with this in a tabletop game is that eventually reifying your mechanics to make them more realistic makes them unwieldy and slows down play. </p><p></p><p>But contrast, multiple minigames with different simplifying assumptions - a game of fencing can model position and a chase can model relative distance for example, or maybe fencing models characters taking all of their actions together for simplicity, whereas tag models the same thing in phases where in each phase there is simultaneous action of potential types with movement being one phase of the turn.</p><p></p><p>Personally I would rather a game have a large number of provided minigame solutions than be elegant and one of the frustrations I have with most modern game systems is that they get so focused on the one thing that they do that they don't actually provide a solution for players with actual agency interacting with the fiction in a legitimate way but not in the way the game expects, effectively moving off the mechanical map into a white space that is not described.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8844115, member: 4937"] I am a big fan of plug-in subsystems to handle specific minigames - such as a heist, a chase, building an organization, running a business, conducting a mass battle, crafting an object, etc. etc. etc. - that might come up in play. In fact, I've written before that I consider the presence of numerous minigames within the game to simulate all the different features of the imagined reality to be the defining trait of an RPG. Certainly, that and not role-play is actually the defining trait of cRPGs like Skyrim or Witcher III or even something like Ultima IV. Modern RPGs try to make the switching between minigames feel more seamless, but it's still there. Modern tabletop RPG design has IMO become fixated on "elegance", which the designer usually defines as a single master mechanic which is intended by them to handle every situation that comes up. But since the real things being modeled or simulated are often very different, abstracting them all to the same system invariably leads to problems when you try to adapt the one master mechanic to minigames the author poorly considered or didn't think of as important. Some good examples are skill mechanics which in modern games often are the sole mechanic of the game, and if not are at least a single mechanic governing all the skills used in the game whether social, mental or physical. The truth is, this usually leads to absurdities that come into play whenever you start trying to reify the mechanics to concrete in game situations. A single game mechanic typically means all skill checks are pass/fail when some skills are better modeled as quantitative results, and a single game mechanic means that the standard deviation on expected success is governed not by the thing being modeled but by the arbitrary range allowed by your fortune mechanic. Since the most easily reified skills are physical ones since they relate to things that can be quantified, this is most easily demonstrated by how a uniform skill mechanic handles breaks when dealing with physical skills like lifting things or jumping. What you end up with is minor absurdities where the weaker character regularly can move loads the stronger character can't because the range of the fortune is larger than the range of modifiers to the check and the mechanic is trying to model a simple pass/fail question like, "Can X be moved?". Or for example, you end up with a jump mechanic were the same jumper randomly jumps between 5 feet and 25 feet just because how far you are jump is tied to the range of the fortune mechanic. Another common example is that even a very good turn-based combat system that simulates tactical squad-based combat well enough to suspend disbelief, often utterly falls down when simulating a chase scene where everyone is moving at once. Suddenly it becomes important that the system allows one side or character to make all of their move at once while the other side is suspended in time unable to react. A game that simulates fencing might not and probably does not simulate a game of tag or a game of football very well. It turns out that you need minigames with different assumptions for that. One common problem that arises is that designers historically rather than abandoning the notion of a single master game with mechanics that cover all situations, try to make that game granular enough to solve the problem. For example, the problem of a game that doesn't handle both fencing and tag well can be solved by reducing the time scale way down to "impulses" or "segments" of a turn where each party can only engage in small fractional movement. In other words, trying to more realistically modelling everything in "real time" rather than "turn based" (a real time video game is just a game with very short turns and no pauses between them). But of course, the problem with this in a tabletop game is that eventually reifying your mechanics to make them more realistic makes them unwieldy and slows down play. But contrast, multiple minigames with different simplifying assumptions - a game of fencing can model position and a chase can model relative distance for example, or maybe fencing models characters taking all of their actions together for simplicity, whereas tag models the same thing in phases where in each phase there is simultaneous action of potential types with movement being one phase of the turn. Personally I would rather a game have a large number of provided minigame solutions than be elegant and one of the frustrations I have with most modern game systems is that they get so focused on the one thing that they do that they don't actually provide a solution for players with actual agency interacting with the fiction in a legitimate way but not in the way the game expects, effectively moving off the mechanical map into a white space that is not described. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Dedicated Mechanics
Top