Game design: badwrongfun and D&D

[xechnao]

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5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted | Cracked.com

It basically exposes game addiction due to "Variable Ratio Rewards".

Here is what it made me think about D&D:

Old school D&D randomness is guilty.
New school D&D game mastery is guilty (3e mastery about character builds, 4e about how they work together on the board).
If guilt exists can it be avoided?

I am heading to the conclusion that it cant.

I guess, the only remedy to this lies on the nature of reward. Instead of focusing on rewards of known value (I consider random or variable ratio rewards to be of known value due to their identification as patterns even if said patterns are prone to change) better focus on rewards of unknown value, namely personally generated information. In practice, this means to develop a system that solely promotes and gives tools for story development and freedom of exploration that can be experienced by being open to different atmospheres.

So what do you think?

 

[Chrono22]

No! Silence! Never speak of this again. I thought of it first.

 

[FireLance]

Interesting. Coincidentally, I recently blogged about a tangentially related issue: [Videogamey!] I Hate Random Loot Drops

Specifically, I was complaining about random loot drops in console and PC games where racking up longer play hours does not benefit the publisher.

EDIT: But back on topic, I don't really see how it relates to table-top games, unless it's meant to be used as a primer for DMs who want their players hooked onto their campaigns.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I read that a couple days ago.

But I do not see how it is connected to RPGs.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think you missed one important part - how addiction is often about not doing something else. Addictive games are easy to set up and play and you can do them at any time. I can play an online flash game at work (well, i think I could, I haven't tried yet.), but I can't just sit down with my friends to play D&D.

 

[Celebrim]

I've largely become immune to Skinner based game design. I think it was Diablo that broke me of it, and that was actually one of the first games to heavily implement it.

I played each of the 3 characters in Diablo up until I beat the game at Hell difficulty. Now, that might make a little bit of sense, in that the game play changed slightly between the three iterations. Not alot, but maybe enough that you could justify it.

But then I kept playing. I'd seen and done all there was to do, but I was lever pushing to get that next randomly scheduled reward.

Then I was saved by a hacker. I found a trainer to download that hacked the save file, and this let you equip yourself with whatever you wanted. My eyes were opened. An RPG was only worth playing if it would still be worth playing if you could cheat by giving yourself whatever equipment you wanted. Not that you would cheat, but if you could cheat, the story and game play would still be interesting enough to justify your time even if you no longer cared about any of the treasures you found or even leveling up.

From that point on, I no longer pushed the lever to get the pellet.

Apparantly I'm not the only one to discover this. I was talking to someone recently that discovered this phenomena even earlier hacking the save files for things like Ultima and Bard's Tale. If the only reason you are playing is to level up, then its not really a good game.

I'd seen 1e played this way, but never really experienced it. I'd seen 1e played with nothing but essentially random encounters dropping random treasure and grinding through encounter after encounter. There is a send up to this style of play and the fact that some players even prefer it in KotDT (the story arc where they go on an unstructured big game hunting expedition and insist it was most fun ever).

And I actually had some of this problem with 3e as a player. It seemed like the game focused too much on leveling up and getting that next power. Trouble was, I often found myself not really able to fully use and explore my current power set before I was getting new tricks I could pull. I wanted to slow down and savor things and use my wits more and my new powers less. I'm inclined to think that the insistance on fast leveling, many levels, frequent rewards (new powers at every level), and 'adventure paths' where your whole career is fast tracked ahead of time verges on Skinner design.

However, I'm inclined to think that there is no serious risk of this in a PnP RPG because the GM gets bored with it before the players do.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

However, I'm inclined to think that there is no serious risk of this in a PnP RPG because the GM gets bored with it before the players do.

Well, at least the "problem" is that you still need a GM, and if the Skinner-Box doesn't work for him... The "trick" would be creating a similar reward scheme for the GM... Imagine you had a proscribed XP budget and you could only use certain monsters if the PCs are high enough in level. I think to some extent D&D could give you that experience already - "I really want to use this Beholder, but the PCs are only 5th level and wouldn't survive. That's boring, I have to wait until they are 15th level. But of course, if you really really want that Beholder, you can just start a new campaign at 15th level (or try to downgrade his abilities to match your 5th level PCs.)

Most Non-MMORPGs I like to play, by the way, succeed your personal test. Even if there was a cheat good in mass effect 2 that would make me advance to 20th level or some such, I might still want toplay it just to see the story. It even gives me an interest in having a second playthrough, since I want to try both Paragon and Renegade options.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, at least the "problem" is that you still need a GM, and if the Skinner-Box doesn't work for him... The "trick" would be creating a similar reward scheme for the GM...

I imagine that it would be much easier to design a game to be played without a GM (as we understand the term) than to make a Skinner-Box for the Skinner-Box builder. Such a game would inevitably be 'board gamey', but it could still be fun. I imagine that you could use decks of cards for monsters, treasures, hazards and even plot points, tile randomizers, and so forth to make essentially an infinite board game. The technology basically already exists, it's just never been packaged (to my knowledge).

Most Non-MMORPGs I like to play, by the way, succeed your personal test. Even if there was a cheat good in mass effect 2 that would make me advance to 20th level or some such, I might still want toplay it just to see the story. It even gives me an interest in having a second playthrough, since I want to try both Paragon and Renegade options.

Right. I haven't done alot of gaming lately, but I think I'm about to turn the corner on that as my life finally settles down a bit. The last cRPGs I really enjoyed were 'Planescape: Torment' and 'Exile III'. I'm hoping to play Mass Effect 1 & 2 pretty soon (need to get the machine to play it).

 

[Mallus]

Computer games distill the pure kill/loot/advance cycle down to its essence in a way that table-top games simply can't. Too much other stuff happens in the live game. So yeah, does not apply to D&D, or any other pen-and-paper RPG.

I mean, even if a DM deliberately constructed the campaign to emulate a Skinner Box, there's no guarantee the players would follow suit and merely chase rewards. RPG play is usually pretty unfocused, discursive, with players pursuing whatever amuses them at the moment, in character or out.

Which is to say so much of the enjoyment people get out of RPG's comes from unpredictable human interaction, which kinda dilutes, if not defeats their sometimes Skinner-like mechanisms.

Also, Cel makes a great point about CRPG's. I couldn't care less about 'loot drops' in Dragon Age (or Torment, or Mass Effect, or Knights of the Old Republic) but I'm dying to hear the next bon mot from my favorite NPCs, or to simply learn more about them, as if they were good fiction (which I suppose is exactly what they are).

 

[fuzzlewump]

Also, Cel makes a great point about CRPG's. I couldn't care less about 'loot drops' in Dragon Age (or Torment, or Mass Effect, or Knights of the Old Republic) but I'm dying to hear the next bon mot from my favorite NPCs, or to simply learn more about them, as if they were good fiction (which I suppose is exactly what they are).

Yes... they have you just where they want you. Pressing the lever and receiving a random reward of good fiction every now and then. Just as planned...