Do more choices make us happier (in gaming)?

[blargney the second]

I've been thinking about the subject of choices in RPGs since we hit level 12 on Tuesday. The decisions I've had to make at this level are definitely harder than at any previous level.

Part of is that there are far more options available now than there were earlier in 4e's life. But it's also that I'm high enough level that I've already had time to take the no-brainer, top-tier feats for my concept. Now I've got to start picking from the second-tier choices, and ideally pick the ones that work best with what I already have.

The interesting thing is that I don't have buyer's remorse for anything that I can retrain out. I feel those pangs most keenly with the only thing that I can't ever reallocate: ability distribution.

Ah well... I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time! I can't really ask for more than that.
-blarg

 

[Greg K]

I want


1. the choice to play the following without multiclassing:

Nature Bard: Some that can use music to inspire/charm people, but wields druid magic
Priestly Bard: a divine casting bard who can bless, excorcise, heal, and turn undead while using music to inspire/charm people
Roguish Bard: A trickster bard- someone with the bards lore and musical charming, but very stealthy and sneaky
Warrior Bard: A non spellcasting bard- someone with lots of lore, perform and c
Wizardly Bard

Nature Monk: a nature spellcaster that uses martial arts and wears no armor

Priestly Monk: a divine spellcaster that uses martial arts and wears no armor

Shamanistic Monk: a non armor wearing martial artist that deals w/spirits- especially ancestral spirits.

Psionic monk:

any of the concepts found among the kits in the 2e Complete Class Handbooks.


2. I want the rules to allow clerics that are not trained to wear armor without having to ignore class features and whose spells/ abiities are based soley on the spheres/domains/whatever of their deity.


3. I want the ability to decide my character's fighting style and not be blocked because either the designers didn't create powers for it or thought the style or weapon itself should be limited to a particular class.

 

[Umbran]

The data about other choices in life suggests that this is not the case. Getting what you want is fine in the moment, but in the long run is not ideal.

I'm going to guess that this is too simply stated to be accurate.

If my player comes to me and says, "I want to play a fighter who can do some cool stuff with a longsword," I don't expect either of us will find it short of the ideal for me to give it to him or her.

If my player comes to me and says, "I want exactly these stat numbers, exactly this class and race and spells and feats, put together from these specific 7 different source books three of which you don't even own...." then we are more likely going to run into problems.

Which is to say - getting what you want may or may not be a problem, depending on what it is you want.

More importantly - I'd hazard that it is entirely possible that the major issue there isn't getting what you want. The issue is not understanding what will actually make you happy.

There's an age-old stereotype of the guy in mid-life crisis: he gets it in his head that something is missing from his life, and getting that something will fix everything. That thing may be a sports car, a basement full of power tools, or a mistress 20 years his junior. Whatever it is, ultimately, getting that thing doesn't actually make him happy, because lack of that thing isn't what made him unhappy in the first place.

Now, by and large gamers aren't in the midst of mid-life crises, but the example is still demonstrative - getting exactly what you want is of no use whatsoever if what you want isn't actually the thing that will make you happy.

 

[Votan]

To put it bluntly, anyone subscribing to the above perspective might do well to try a far less free, privileged life for a while, and see how those fragile theories regarding the 'burden of options' (or what have you) hold up.

There can be circumstances where less freedom is good. Think about the rules of the road (ideas like stoping at lights and signs). Sure, there are cases where the need to stop at the stop sign is limiting and annoying and honestly there would be no disadvantage to running it.

But it is much more pleasant to drive with some rules of the road than none. These rules limit but, if well implemented, make driving conditions better (overall -- not necessarily for any one driver). They are also calibrated for an average driver and not for one of extremely high skill.

I see a reasonable set of character limitations to be in the same genre. It's not that nobody could play a very odd character effectively, but that the rules are in place to make the game world more enjoyable on average (and I include the DM and other players in that metric).

 

[Barastrondo]

It's an interesting question, made all the more interesting depending on how many layers of choices there are. For instance, if your group only plays one game system or genre -- "only D&D and fantasy games in its vein," for instance -- then there's more pressure for that system or genre to be able to provide everything you want to do within it. On the other hand, if a group skips around and plays a wide variety of systems and genres, then I think it'd be easier to find greater acceptance of limited palette games.

There's a peculiar gulf between the needs of players who enjoy your game among others and the needs of players who enjoy your game exclusively. And even within those groups needs vary, of course; some people may never need more than the first few archetypes they attached to, and others may require the flexibility to try things they haven't seen in ten years of play.

Personally, I don't think that any one gamer's quality of life is improved by options they're not going to use; a die-hard GURPS-only gamer receives no benefit from a new Pathfinder release. But the main utility from those lots-of-choices options, be it a choice among games and a choice among options within a game, is that you stand a chance of triggering someone's enthusiasm. And that's the real fuel the hobby runs on: enough enthusiasm to want to run a game for your friends.

 

[Betote]

In order to apply this idea to RPGs, we have to think about what's a choice. For example, Risus has no list of skills, Savage Worlds has a short list of broad skills and GURPS has a giganormous list of very specific skills. Which one of them gives us more possible choices?

The same happens with in-game options. For example, one could argue that OD&D offers its players more choices in combat than D&D4e, because the latter gives a set of combat actions/powers specific for each character, whereas in OD&D you simply tell your GM what you want to do and he decides what happens. We could argue that page 42 sets the rules for that, but the point is that many people feel restricted by this. So, by increasing the number of explicit options, we have reduced the range of perceived choice for players, who feel compelled to choose from their set list of combat powers (even if, in theory, there's nothing you could do in OD&D that you couldn't in D&D4).

 

[KidSnide]

Personally, I don't think that any one gamer's quality of life is improved by options they're not going to use; a die-hard GURPS-only gamer receives no benefit from a new Pathfinder release. But the main utility from those lots-of-choices options, be it a choice among games and a choice among options within a game, is that you stand a chance of triggering someone's enthusiasm.

Well, I think it stands to reason that choices only help if they are choices might plausibly be chosen. Certainly, I enjoy a variety of things to eat at lunch, but a cafeteria is not improved by the addition of rat pie, rat pudding, rat sorbet or a ratty strawberry tart.

But the broader point is that choice itself doesn't improve fun, it's meaningful choice that improves fun. What constitutes "meaningful" will differ by player and by group, of course. However, for most players, (1) a meaningful choice is at a level of detail that the player cares about and (2) the player has enough information to make a reasonably well informed decision.

If tactical combat isn't interesting to a player, having 10 different combat powers to choose from isn't going to improve the game. Even if the player cares about the outcome of the battle, each position, strike and reposte might be below the player's level of interest. Similarly, giving me three different adventures to choose from doesn't interest me since, IME, all I care about is going on the most fun adventure and there's not usually a good way to communicate that.

The same thing applies at character generation. Players want to have enough choice and variety to create a character to the level of detail they care about, but don't want to be bothered making dozens of decisions that are "meaningless" to that particular player.

-KS

 

[Janx]

Canis's topic raises a bunch of points.

First off, in any study, the results are a generalization and there are going to be exceptions to the rule. Thus, there is no point to get one's panties in a was if you know of an exception.

Humans, I think, are wired to like having choices. Just like having anything else, if having zero is bad, 1 is better, and so on, a human will generally assume that more is better until it reaches some obvious limit of usefulness. Thus, a zillion dollars is pretty useful. A zillion girlfriends is not so much, when one considers all the presents one must buy. The difference, a zillion dollars can solve its own problems. A zilliona girlfriends introduces new problems, let alone containment. A zillion choices, seems good, because like a zillion dollars, it doesn't have to take up space or time (at least not appearing that way).

Incidentally, the paralasys referred to is often called "analysis paralasys", and happens when one gets stuck in the deciding phase, and can't make a decision, so one analyzes over and over again, looking for, and finding a new angle or metric.

As individuals, having some choices is good. How many is debatable. For any one topic, there is likely a threshold of actual usefulness. Particularly in variant choices. Having a choice between living or dying is good. Having a choice between living in one of 6 colors, versus a color wheel of selection, not so useful, whether that wheel is broken up into 100 or 100,000 choices.

To the people MANUFACTURING choices, there is value in this human conditioning. It's pretty easy to off variations off a base product. Once you invented the hamburger, your product looks so much more versatile when you can have it with mayo, mustard, ketchup, cheese, pickles, onions, lettuce, tomato, in any combination of those. And a raise goes to the guy who comes up with more sauces and cheeses to choose from.

The same thing goes with paint. Once you figure out how to make a liquid that can be brushed over a wall and let to dry, and it seals it and gives it a uniform appearance, adding coloring to that is a no-brainer. Then being able to have more colors satisfies that human desire to have "just the thing".

How does this fit with D&D? Adding morre feats, more spells, more monsters, more classes has been how D&D has been able to sell more than just the PH, DMG and MM for over 30 years. Otherwise, it could be done with a skills-based system, and a dynamic spell buildiing system. 1 rule book. Done.

Thus, for people selling stuff, Choices are a very useful marketing tool.

In 4e, how many different ways are there to make a "warrior". Oodles with all the feats and stuff. In 1e, the was the Fighter, Paladin and Ranger. if you picked a Fighter, you could play him as a ranged guy, sword and board, fencer, etc. 1 choice had lots of versatility.

Furthermore, if you wanted a warrior type, you pretty much got it when you made a Fighter, instead of a Wizard, Thief or Priest. In 4e, you've got so many choices that you still may not have picked "just the right thing" to get what you envisioned.

I'm not for cutting down all choices. I suspect though, a ruleset could be made, to limit the choices to "meaningful ones" for character creation. And to remove or balance the sub-optimal choices where you'd never pick Feat X because it was a waste, and thus a non-choice.

 

[Janx]

kidsnide touched on choices that are sub-optimal, which eliminate them from the "actual choice decision tree".

When I was buying a house, I was given the following advice:

"Only keep a list of the top 3 houses you are interested in. As you look at subsequent houses, consider the house in comparison to your top 3, and it should replace one of those, or be forgotten."


When you're house hunting, you will be looking at a lot of houses, over the course of many evenings and weekends. It is impossible to remember them all, let alone consider them all against each other.

Instead, by following this method, you are only ever really considering 4 houses (your current top 3, and the new one). When you are ready to decide to make an offer, you've only got 3 choices to pick from. 3 choices that you've already ruled from 20-100 other candidates which are now non-choices.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I want


1. the choice to play the following...<snip many cool options>

Sounds like you want to play a fantasy campaign using a system like M&M/W&W or HERO, simulating D&D type builds.