Do more choices make us happier (in gaming)?

[I'm A Banana]

Overall, there has been a tendency to increase the number of available choices across all decision points as time has gone by. The first trick is to figure out which choices add to overall player happiness and which do not. The second is to hit on how many options continue to be a value add, and at which point there are too many options. The third is to figure out how to make money once you've hit that limit and adding more classes, races, feats, powers, etc is just decreasing overall player enjoyment.

IMXP: Archetype, Archetype, Archetype.

I don't care about playing a shardmind seeker or a dragonborn warlord.

I do care about playing a Knight in Shining Armor, a Badass Normal, an Archmage, or a Trickster. Amongst other things.

D&D relies on our abilities to realize the archetypes we want to pretend to be, and to inspire us to have new ones.

Maybe someday being a shardmind seeker will be totally awesome, something like what making a githzerai monk is today. Or, heck, a fighter. Fighters are basically D&D manufactured archetypes.

Choice only matters in as much as we get to choose our archetype. Once we have that, choice is largely superfluous. Once I pick to become a nature hero, the rules should basically just support that choice in various ways, and get the heck out of my way.

Choice also matters in play, but that's sort of a different kind of choice than what characters we want to play as.

Of course, what archetypes we might want to play are pretty subjective (not everyone wants to be in a Magitek world, but probably some folks do), so the game sort of has this quixotic need to support everything it can possibly support, bringing everyone together under one roof as much as possible. This makes it important for D&D to support the guy who wants to play a child charmed by pixies alongside the girl who wants to play someone out of a hyper-violent '80's comic.

I'm not even sure most of the designers of the game have ever been aware what a huge extent of the game "playing different archetypes" is, but it's probably a lingering reaction from the oversimplification of 2e's "everyone who swings a weapon around is a fighter" style.

 

[Longtooth Studios]

IMXP: Archetype, Archetype, Archetype.

I don't care about playing a shardmind seeker or a dragonborn warlord.

I do care about playing a Knight in Shining Armor, a Badass Normal, an Archmage, or a Trickster. Amongst other things.

D&D relies on our abilities to realize the archetypes we want to pretend to be, and to inspire us to have new ones.

Maybe someday being a shardmind seeker will be totally awesome, something like what making a githzerai monk is today. Or, heck, a fighter. Fighters are basically D&D manufactured archetypes.

Choice only matters in as much as we get to choose our archetype. Once we have that, choice is largely superfluous. Once I pick to become a nature hero, the rules should basically just support that choice in various ways, and get the heck out of my way.

Choice also matters in play, but that's sort of a different kind of choice than what characters we want to play as.

Of course, what archetypes we might want to play are pretty subjective (not everyone wants to be in a Magitek world, but probably some folks do), so the game sort of has this quixotic need to support everything it can possibly support, bringing everyone together under one roof as much as possible. This makes it important for D&D to support the guy who wants to play a child charmed by pixies alongside the girl who wants to play someone out of a hyper-violent '80's comic.

I'm not even sure most of the designers of the game have ever been aware what a huge extent of the game "playing different archetypes" is, but it's probably a lingering reaction from the oversimplification of 2e's "everyone who swings a weapon around is a fighter" style.

As with most forms of art, gaming become richer when we start thinking in terms of layers.

I agree that designing begins at the core, and that most of my greatest character started with an archetype. However, for me, that alone is not enough.

One of the things I get from gaming is the ability to be expressive.
This doesn't mean that I need an unlimited number of options, just the freedom to mix them as I like. Most colors come from mixing three basic colors, so it doesn't have to be complicated to be rich.

 

[BenBrown]

Another reason more choices may lead to dissatisfaction. The "Not as good as Bob" effect. Bob is that guy in your group who can make systems sit up and sing. Maybe he's a frequent poster on charop boards, or maybe he doesn't bother looking at them because that stuff is immediately apparent to him. At any rate, he can effortlessly make characters that are much more effective than yours in whatever field you might choose--and he doesn't make them boring either.

No matter what choice I make, I'm never going to make a character that does what I want as well as Bob can. I suppose I could turn character creation over to him, but where's the fun in that?

In reality the one guy in my groups who did this (for D&D 3.5, Champions, and a couple of others) is a terrific guy and a good enough role-player that we tend not to mind that his characters are more powerful than everyone else's, but there's still this sense, adding to the dissatisfaction, that my character will never be as effective as his.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Another reason more choices may lead to dissatisfaction. The "Not as good as Bob" effect. Bob is that guy in your group who can make systems sit up and sing. Maybe he's a frequent poster on charop boards, or maybe he doesn't bother looking at them because that stuff is immediately apparent to him. At any rate, he can effortlessly make characters that are much more effective than yours in whatever field you might choose--and he doesn't make them boring either.

No matter what choice I make, I'm never going to make a character that does what I want as well as Bob can. I suppose I could turn character creation over to him, but where's the fun in that?

In reality the one guy in my groups who did this (for D&D 3.5, Champions, and a couple of others) is a terrific guy and a good enough role-player that we tend not to mind that his characters are more powerful than everyone else's, but there's still this sense, adding to the dissatisfaction, that my character will never be as effective as his.

I am the Bob of our group. And at some levels I hate it. Seeing how to do things is fun. But someone having picked the wrong options and left themselves get weak is ... annoying. I'm never sure whether to try and help or not. (I certainly don't want to overshadow everyone, but would far far rather level everyone up than myself down). One reason I like 4e is that good (if not the best) choices are normally obvious.

 

[amerigoV]

Players, especially on webboards, whine if there are choices ("there is no direction to this campaign, too many books to look through to make a character") or if there are not choices ("railroad! All PCs are the same! Why can't I play a LG 1/2 Dragon Orc Barbarian Reaver Studmaster!?!?! I could in system x!!!").

Back in my 1e days, BBoards (when the nerdnet was not cool), everybody whined that you could not build the PC you want. If you looked at characters from books (say Drizzt), they had to "break" the system to make the character stat block.

Then comes the glory of 3.x. A building block system that you can make just about anything you want if you have enough books. Towards the end of 3.5 starting into 4e, I swear I would see posts on all this gamist/simulist/cubist crap that "I miss the old days - you were forced to make your PCs unique with personality. Now PCs are just a pile of numbers without personality."

So, some players will whine no matter what. Some players will not care and will play whatever. For me, I find Savage Worlds has the right balance of fiddly bits/choices vs. simplicity. Others find that system too "simplisitic". Some people cannot handle how often you mess with the fiddly bits ("I have to pick an advance every 2-3 sessions! I cannot hand it!"). Everyones mileage will vary on what level and types of choice they want.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Well that's because their are a continuum of tastes. Some people just want to jump in and play. Some people want to make sure everything they can think of they need is on their sheet. Some people don't like to think too much. Some people think a lot.

The difficulty is too many insist on playing the same game designed for only one range of tastes.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Look up secondary reinforcement. Culture has nothing to do with it.

I know conditioning. I've taught behavior. You're being obtusely reductionist.

Culture has a LOT to do with it, especially in these sort of complex, social examples. Even were I to reduce it to something as schematic, unhelpful, and unrelated to real world behavior as reward schedules, your social context determines how people reward you for your choices.

Take a choice with long term social impacts like marriage, or a choice with short term impacts like what color you wear when you leave the house. Can you honestly tell me that the surrounding culture doesn't restructure the reward schedule in a fairly drastic way?

Choice also matters in play, but that's sort of a different kind of choice than what characters we want to play as.

Indeed. But this really only bears on choices that have a long term impact. Choices during play can, of course, have such impact, but campaign to campaign and table to table, the nature of them is going to vary a lot... except for character creation. That's one that everyone can get their head around and cite examples.

 

[delericho]

Too few choices generally means that someone just can't get the option they want, and perhaps can't even get close. Too many choices means that players (especially inexperienced players) can become paralysed with indecision.

Providing a huge set of choices for experienced players but a limited set for newbies feels like it should work, but just doesn't - the new players feel they are somehow missing out, even though the huge list would destroy the game for them.

Finally, providing choices where some are 'good' and some are 'poor', and the distinction is very subtle but quite important is also a bad idea: some players will end up with ineffective characters relative to everyone else, and won't understand why. They'll thus enjoy the game less than they should (and less than everyone else), and walk away. "System Mastery" is a bad thing.

What is needed is a relatively small but diverse set of meaningful options, all of which represent 'good' choices.

 

[Stormrazor2000]

What I haven't seen mentioned is the effect of subject matter knowledge or sophistication on the outcomes for many verses few choices. It seems to me there would be a correlation there.

As a non-gaming example. I know a lot about computers and love to build them. So when I shop for computers I want to see lots of options. Because I am a SME (Subject Matter Expert) I can quickly draw up a list of pros and cons in my head and thus can digest large amount of choices. In the end I can make my choice and feel good about that choice over the long term.

Now if I was to pick a new recliner. I know nothing about furniture much less recliners. So I would be paralyzed if I was given all kinds of choices as I would have to do all sorts of painstaking research which I would likely not do. Or I would just give up and turn the decision over to my wife who is the SME on it. Oh who am I kidding, my wife would have already chosen by then.

I think the same can be applied to choices in RPGs. When introducing a new player to D&D I don't give them a bunch of books and let them loose. I have 2-3 pre-gens to choose from or in some cases I just hand them a character.

Veteran players become SMEs and want more choice. They know what they want and they can quickly draw up that list of pro/con in their heads.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I was thinking along these lines when I counted up how many choices you make during character creation in OD&D and 4E. Check the comments for some critiques of the methodology, but it might bring some quantitative data to the conversation.