Have You Ever Considered...

[mythusmage]

...How Large a World Is?

In this post Delrechio avers that it is possible to, in some manner, balance an RPG. D&D in particular, but his thinking can be applied to most any RPG on the market. It's fairly typical of the thinking, though better expressed than most. I disagree with his conclusion, and I'll start with a single square mile.

Have you ever thought of how large a single square mile is? Try this; layout a square one mile on the side. You then walk from the very northeast corner straight over to the very northwest corner. Then you take a step one foot south and do it again. Do you know how many miles you would walk if you did this? 5,280. If you made 20 miles a day it would take you 2,640 days to walk that square mile. Now take a world about Earth's size and with Earth's land to water ratio. That's about 100 million square miles. 2,640,000,000 days to walk that. Mountain ranges have risen and eroded away in less time.

Now add in inhabitants of different biological kingdoms and domains, plus scenary, phenomena, and unexpected events. That's the playing field for an RPG like D&D. It gets a lot worse when the game includes space travel. (Wandering around even a simple multiverse is really bad.)

Now consider a traditional game, checkers for example. Consider the playing field there. An eight by eight square grid, two sides with 16 pieces each. Rules are fairly simple and victory goes to the crafty and quick witted. Compare it to the Earth, and all one might find and interact with on the Earth. Checkers is a beautifully balanced came because it can be. It can be beautifully balanced because the field of play is so restricted. D&D doesn't have those restrictions. Indeed, without those artificial constraints placed upon her to foster balance, D&D would be a very different game indeed.

Next: Why balance is bad for an RPG.

 

[eyebeams]

Chess is not "balanced" after the fashion of an RPG because:

1) RPG balance is a subjective term with objective airs. Chess consists of entirely objective transactions.

2) Chess begins with a set opening position and resources. RPGs do not.

3) RPG balance attempts to blunt the ability of a clever player to exploit systemic advantages. Chess has no purpose other than to exploit systemic advantages.

This last point is probably controversial, because the big adjustment of 3e was that minmaxing was perfectly okay, and the system has bits that reward player skill. But the pro-minmaxing is really about demonstrating the robust nature of the system, and the latter aspect is, if you go by Monte Cook, the exception that proves the rule. Cook explains that there are a few such "easter eggs" in the system, but these are deviations from a general plan that keeps anyone from using sheer play skill to acquire an enduring strategic advantage. In chess, decisive strategic skills are the purpose of serious chess play.

The size of the world matters in that ultimately, a reward in a typical RPG is access to more variety within the game. Look at D&D. Gaining level doesn't really make your character tougher, since balanced CR encounters will maintain standard threats no matter his actual level. On the other hand, higher levels justify access to more of the world: cooler monsters, domains and magic items.

 

[delericho]

Ahah! Suddenly, I understand what it was you were getting at with regards to scope.

In that case, the answer is "no - it is not possible to balance an RPG across the spectrum of possible situations."

That said, one can argue that the vast majority of those possible situations are either irrelevant, improbable, or so similar to one another that the designer wouldn't need to consider them.

Returning to your "square mile" analogy - for the vast majority of the steps involved in traversing the mile, the scenario is exactly the same as the one before it, so nothing new is gained. Therefore, we can abstract these out of our considerations. In fact, therefore, only four steps are of relevance - the first step from east to west, the first step from west to east, and the first step south at each end of the square mile. Suddenly, we go from 2,640 days down to less than an hour, and all the 'interesting bits' of the walk have been done.

So, to RPG design...

I would argue that the designer can ignore a great many cases where the outcome is obvious. For example, it is irrelevant whether the 5th level Fighter is more or less powerful than the 5th level Wizard if they find themselves in combat with 20 Great Wyrm Red Dragons. Since both will die within the first round, who really cares?

Likewise, there's little point in dealing with the corner case where the Fighter and the Wizard, equipped only with a tea cup, and dressed in kilts and green hats must soothe the ruffled feathers of the Aaracockra warlord who took offense at their stand-up comedy routine. It's a (deliberately) absurd scenario, and therefore can be considered beyond the scope of the game.

And then, of course, there's no need to consider both the Fighter & Wizard vs. 2 Orcs and the Fighter & Wizard vs. 2 Hobgoblins scenarios - they're close enough to be considered the same 'step'.

By reducing the set of 'important' scenarios it might be possible to get to a position where balance is possible.

However, there also exists the need to balance the sets of available options against one another. No-one would argue that a lone Bard is as powerful in combat as a lone Fighter, just as no-one would argue that the Fighter could out-do, or even equal, the lone Bard (assuming a 'proper' implementation of the Cha stat and associated skills). But how do you judge the one against the other?

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that I (mostly) agree with you that balance is probably not something that can reasonably be achieved. And yet, I'm still not convinced that it should simply be discarded as a goal - if the designers don't put considerable effort into trying to make the game balanced, then we'll end up with a total mess, as opposed to the slightly ordered chaos we currently have. And, to be honest, I prefer slightly ordered chaos to simple unbounded chaos.

 

[Vanuslux]

Saying that since universal balance is impossible the concept of balance should be disregarded is like saying that since universal enforcement of law is unachievable we should abandon all laws.

 

[Nifft]

Excellent.

Codification -- or at least explanation and exploration -- of the process of balance can only be good for us DMs who value such a beast. Heck, we might even improve the process.

Thanks, -- N

 

[greywulf]

If I remember rightly, Jorune (of Skyrealms fame) was a Jupiter sized planet, meaning it had enough surface area to encompass the whole of Faerun, Aerth, pretty much every other published fantasy gameworld, and still leave plenty of breathing space for more.

I don't want my role-playing to be balanced in any way. I want heroes beating incalculable odds because That's What Heroes Do. In chess terms, it's getting checkmate with three pawns. I want the heroes to feel like they've achieved something special, not defeated some critters and only lost 25% of their resources. That's a cowardly way to play, in my mind.

I want the Fighter to face off against a horde of Gnolls, and make them not only back down but follow him into the Caves of Utter Terror, and survive.

I want a game like that.

And y'know what? That's what we do in my group, every single week.

Balance? Hah!

 

[Andor]

Of course part of the problem of balance is that there is vast disagreement over what balance is.

Some people think 'go all day' classes like the warlock or Bo9s classes are unbalanced. Others think spell point classes that can shoot their wad in 1 big combat are broken. Vancian classes are rarely accused of being unbalanced (barring meta-magic rods) but are also widely viewed as unsatisfactory.

Some people think role balanceing is fine, IE a fighter should shine is combat and suck in social situations, vice versa for a bard. Others don't like any player missing out during part of the game.

Versatility is usually 'balanced' by weakness (except for the druid), allowing the character to be equally feeble at everything.

So before anything can be balanced you first have to define balance.

And then you need to fight off the horde of people or disagree with you.

 

[shilsen]

I don't want my role-playing to be balanced in any way.

...

I want the Fighter to face off against a horde of Gnolls, and make them not only back down but follow him into the Caves of Utter Terror, and survive.

I want a game like that.

And y'know what? That's what we do in my group, every single week.

Balance? Hah!

A lot of people who want their role-playing to be balanced (myself included) do what you say your group is doing every week. In fact, what you're referring to has nothing to do with what I refer to as balance. When I speak of balance, I generally mean internal balance within the party. While they can't do it perfectly, I like mechanics that make it easier to let all the different character classes and types shine more or less equally.

And delericho - very nicely and neatly put. I'm in agreement with you 100%.

 

[Umbran]

That said, one can argue that the vast majority of those possible situations are either irrelevant, improbable, or so similar to one another that the designer wouldn't need to consider them.

Returning to your "square mile" analogy -

I rather have to agree with the spirit here - the problem with the square mile analogy is that most of the area is not interesting. If, for example, that square mile is all arctic ice, the only reason to walk around like that is to keep warm.

And, to be honest, there is no need to be so exhaustive in the search through the space. Unless one is an archaeologist or doing a detailed biological population study, stepping one foot and doing it all again is using an inordinately high resolution if the point is to find the problem bits. Brute force and ignorance are usually not the most efficient search methods.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that I (mostly) agree with you that balance is probably not something that can reasonably be achieved. And yet, I'm still not convinced that it should simply be discarded as a goal...

*nod*. There are a great many things in human experience that seem to be unachieveable, but really are attainable. And there are a great many things that are not achieveable, but for which the striving is still a valuable exercise. And, there are a great many things for which the absolute goal is unachieveable, but for which "close enough" is darned useful. If you never try, you'll miss out on all of these.

 

[greywulf]

...While they can't do it perfectly, I like mechanics that make it easier to let all the different character classes and types shine more or less equally.

I agree. Balance means a lot of things to different people. It means a lot of things in the rules too; I think it's a overused and abused term overall, personally.

When it comes to internal balance I agree with what you're saying, entirely. As a DM it's important I give each player roughly the same airtime in a game. I don't want the rogue getting bored during combat, or the druid to feel left out in an underground adventure, for example. The all need a time to shine.

A large part of the balance comes from just that - the DM running the game for the players. It's important to take into account their characters and their gaming preferences. Internal balance is very difficult to achieve just looking at the character sheets simply because the characters don't level up at the same time. If the Fighter (for example) gains a level first, then he's going to be at least one feat (and probably two) ahead of everyone else. That's a significant edge, in the short term. I don't agonise over the fact that the balance is broken; a bigger and better Fighter benefits the party as a whole, and they'll all reach the same level soon enough.

Even when the characters are at the same level, I'm not generally worried about internal balance either. If the Fighter is better in a combat situation than the rogue, so what? I provide enough traps and puzzles to keep the rogue happy too.

The one rider to that is that some classes outside the Core books are significantly more powerful than their peers. Thankfully, no player has asked to play one of them yet; when they do, I'll review and nerf them appropriately. I think you know the classes I mean