Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[Doug McCrae]

So, its quite possible to percieve a need for high level spells even if you don't anticipate them seeing much use by PC's.

Good point.

If you look at EGG's theories of play as a whole, I think what EGG was railing against wasn't so much 'high level play' as it was his perception that too many DM's were discouraging what EGG considered 'skillful play' by making attaining high level too easy. The real heart of his complaint is I think that 'high level play' makes it easy to overcome all challenges with 'character skill' rather than the 'player skill' he thinks that the game should encourage.

I think he has two separate objections to MH:

1) The PCs go beyond the scope of the game as written too quickly. Monsters in the book aren't a challenge, the listed magic items are worthless as the PCs already have better. The game group gets bored of D&D after a short time, six months or so, maybe less. The same group could've got a much longer period of play out of the same product if advancement had been kept much slower.

2) Players under a MH GM are undeserving of their PC's power. The idea seems to be that having a high level character should mean something, it should be a respected badge of honor. Having a 10th level cleric, say, should indicate the same (high) level of player skill across different game groups. PC power should match player skill.

I don't think, otoh, that Gary has any problem with challenges that are overcome thru character power alone. D&D is full of those.


Quotes in support of the above:

1e DMG page 92

Thoughtless placement of powerful magic items has been the
ruination of many a campaign. Not only does this cheapen what should be
rare and precious, it gives player characters undeserved advancement and
empowers them to become virtual rulers of all they survey.

...

many campaigns are little more than a joke, something that better DMs
jape at and ridicule - rightly so on the surface - because of the foolishness
of player characters with astronomically high levels of experience
and no real playing skill. These god-like characters boast and strut about
with retinues of ultra-powerful servants and scores of mighty magic items,
artifacts, relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out
with tinsel and ornaments. Not only are such "Monty Haul" games a crashing
bore for most participants, they are a headache for their DMs as well,
for the rules of the game do not provide anything for such play - no
reasonable opponents, no rewards, nothing! The creative DM can, of
course, develop a game which extrapolates from the original to allow such
play, but this is a monumental task to accomplish with even passable
results, and those attempts I have seen have been uniformly dismal.

Strategic Review Vol 2 Issue 2

It is often a temptation to the referee to turn his dungeons into a veritable gift shoppe of magical goodies, ripe for plucking by his players. Similarly, by a bit of fudging, outdoor expeditions become trips to the welfare department for heaps of loot. Monsters exist for the slaying of the adventurers — whether of the sort who “guard” treasure, or of the wandering variety. Experience points are heaped upon the undeserving heads of players, levels accumulate like dead leaves in autumn, and if players with standings in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s of levels do not become bored, they typically become filled with an entirely false sense of accomplishment, they are puffed up with hubris. As they have not really earned their standings, and their actual ability has no reflection on their campaign level, they are easily deflated (killed) in a game which demands competence in proportionate measure to players’ levels.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think, otoh, that Gary has any problem with challenges that are overcome thru character power alone. D&D is full of those.

I don't think we are really disagreeing here. I think we might be quibbling over the best way to say something, but other than that, your quotes are exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I wrote my post.

I don't think I have to claim that Gary has a problem with some challenges being overcome thru character power alone. He only objects to when character skill rather than player skill overcomes all challenges.

I think however that its clear from what you quote and what you write that Gygax thinks character level is a reward for player skill rather than a substitute for it, and that the two should go together. This is what I was trying to say. Advancement in character skill, under the Gygax model, should not occur unless player skill has increased accordingly and further advancement would require yet more increases in player skill.

Or, to put it another way, Gygax has an expectation that failure is part of the fun of the game and argues (persuasively AFAIC) that without it rewards have a diminishing margin of return. And here you get to the intersection of what I'm talking about with what Gygax was fighting against back in the day. What it comes down to is that while I agree failure sucks, then only thing that is worse than the singificant possibility of failure is the impossibility of significant failure. As much as regular doses of failure irritate the ego gamer short term and to a lesser extent (the extent that every gamer is to some degree achievement oriented) every gamer, they are necessary to the overall fun of the game in the long run.

 

[Nifft]

Advancement in character skill, under the Gygax model, should not occur unless player skill has increased accordingly and further advancement would require yet more increases in player skill.

I could buy that.

Or, to put it another way, Gygax has an expectation that failure is part of the fun of the game and argues (persuasively AFAIC) that without it rewards have a diminishing margin of return. And here you get to the intersection of what I'm talking about with what Gygax was fighting against back in the day. What it comes down to is that while I agree failure sucks, then only thing that is worse than the singificant possibility of failure is the impossibility of significant failure. As much as regular doses of failure irritate the ego gamer short term and to a lesser extent (the extent that every gamer is to some degree achievement oriented) every gamer, they are necessary to the overall fun of the game in the long run.

Sure, just like frustrating foes must be actually frustrating in order to generate such immense satisfaction at their messy deaths.

Cheers, -- N

 

[jmucchiello]

What it comes down to is that while I agree failure sucks, then only thing that is worse than the singificant possibility of failure is the impossibility of significant failure. As much as regular doses of failure irritate the ego gamer short term and to a lesser extent (the extent that every gamer is to some degree achievement oriented) every gamer, they are necessary to the overall fun of the game in the long run.

This is the other place! Ahh, one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes sums this up nicely. But the summary leaves out the part just before the "reveal" where Valentine tries to setup up a robbery where failure is an option but Pip implies there won't be failure unless it is specifically part of the plan.

 

[pemerton]

I haven't really even discussed what I think the rewards from playing a PnP RPG should be directly. I've hitherto mostly confined myself to discussing what they shouldn't be. If you believe that there are other sorts of rewards available in gaming, then we are not likely to be in as much disagreement as you seem to think.

That would be good.

I got the impression from your initial post, and some of the back-and-forth on the first few pages, that you thought some modern RPGs (including 4e) were designed to provide a certain sort of reward that you called "the illusion of accomplishment" - ie, the PC killing lots of things and successfully overcoming obstacles, from which the player draws vicarious pleasure - at an ever-increasing rate of turnover.

I think that the design of 4e and similar games is intended to do something else, namely, (i) to provide social rewards of the sort awesomeapocalypse suggested upthread (and in this respect it's not that different from earlier RPGs) and (ii) to cater to players who prefer to engage the mechanics of the game as the method of achieving those social rewards. So I don't see the same element of ego-gratification that you suggested in your initial post.

I'd be interested in your responses, especially to awesomeapocalyps.

 

[Saeviomagy]

There are times when I feel I'm failing to communicate my ideas well, and that's the reason people aren't understanding me. But after a certain point, especially when I have people who understand (but may or may not fully agree), it becomes clear that explaining myself yet again is pointless.

The thing is, I DO understand, and even agree with your point, but the fact that you keep using this particular example makes me think that I'm actually misunderstanding you, because it doesn't jibe with the rest of what you're saying.

And yes, I have had rounds where I've felt impotent because I've missed: and despite them being by far the minority I'd like to see less of them. The way to do that, however, isn't to increase success chance, it's to increase the options available. The situation basically only occurs when you're in a slugfest on boring terrain with a single foe who has single-target effects that, for some reason or another, you have no means of avoiding. In any other situation you have non-trivial decisions to make (in the current incarnation of the game). In previous editions, sure, there was very little choice for a non-caster as soon as they were faced with a single foe. Even then, the most engaging fights had something else to them.

 

[pemerton]

Or, to put it another way, Gygax has an expectation that failure is part of the fun of the game and argues (persuasively AFAIC) that without it rewards have a diminishing margin of return.

This may be true for some ways of playing the game. I'll try to explain why I doubt that it is true for all ways of playing the game.

What it comes down to is that while I agree failure sucks, then only thing that is worse than the singificant possibility of failure is the impossibility of significant failure.

It depends on (i) what we mean by failure, and (ii) what the goals of play are.

Suppose that our goal in play is to have the PCs be participants in a fantasy adventure story which (i) is thematically compelling (a metagame goal) and (ii) changes the ingame world in a signficant way (an ingame goal). The possibility that we will fail at these two goals doesn't increase the fun of achieving them. It just gets in the way. If the mechanics make such failure a real possibility, we need to change games (eg to HeroQuest, The Dying Earth, Burning Wheel, or some similar modern game). The sort of mechanics that get in the way of the goal, and which are (by the standards of this goal) therefore candidates just to be bad mechanics, are "miss-a-turn" mechanics. Because they stop the players, at least temporarily, from driving the game in the desired direction.

On the other hand, it is quite consistent with success at our two goals to be guaranteed that there be a possibility of the PCs failing in their ingame endeavours - after all, it may be this very failure that brings about results (i) and (ii). So mechanics that result in the PCs failing are fine, provided that they still allow the players to drive the game forward by engaging those mechanics. (HeroQuest and Burning Wheel are both full of advice to GMs about how to run a game that will work this way. DMG2 tries the same for 4e, but doesn't do as good a job of it, in my opinion.)

The sort of approach to play that I'm describing is therefore quite different from Gygaxian play, because it contemplates the possibilit of a strong divide between player success/failure and PC success/failure. But I don't think it is especially about ego-gaming.

EDIT: A comparison. When I used to play armies or cops and robbers at primary school, there was always a chance that a teacher would come into the playground and confiscate our toy guns. This chance of failure did not enhance the fun - it was just a pointless obstacle that got in the way. (Note that things would be different if the aim of the game was to play in spite of the teachers' prohibiting the game - but I never played this "deliberate disobedience" variation.)

 

[pemerton]

I have had rounds where I've felt impotent because I've missed: and despite them being by far the minority I'd like to see less of them. The way to do that, however, isn't to increase success chance, it's to increase the options available.

As best I can tell, this is exactly what I mean by engaging the mechanics of the game. For a certain type of player and playstyle, it's fun to do even as part of playing out your PC's failure. This isn't about ego, as far as I can tell. It's about a certain view of what it means to play a game.

 

[jmucchiello]

This may be true for some ways of playing the game. I'll try to explain why I doubt that it is true for all ways of playing the game.

Isn't this an unnecessary diversion? The OP's thesis has nothing to do with "all" or even most styles of play. In fact, it only has to do with exactly one specific style of play: Fast, frequent ego-reward. At no time is this style of play deemed better or worse than any other style of play. All other styles of play have nothing to do with this conversation except where they belong to the set of all styles of play possibly being marginalized by the style being put forward as becoming dominant.

 

[pemerton]

Jmucchiello, I don't think it's a diversion at all. The OP's thesis is that games are being designed to cater to the ego-gaming style. I'm pointing out that there is a different, non-ego-gaming style to which they cater, and furthermore it's a style found in games like HeroQuest (which I've never heard accused of being an ego-gaming RPG) which are obvious and acknowledged influences on the design of 4e.

It's possible, I guess, that the 4e designers have seen a hitherto unnoticed possibility of turning indie design into ego-gratifiying design. But I think it's just as likely that designers who have come out of the indie scene, like Mearls and Laws, have applied what they've learned about game design in that domain to the design of a more mainstream game like D&D 4e.