Have You Ever Considered...

[Drawmack]

As I see it there are three major issues with creating a "balanced" RPG. The problems draw nice paralells to computer science, heck they are both rules based systems, so I'll be drawing my analagies there.

1) It is impossible to come up with an all encompasing definition of balance that can be applied to everyones style of play. This is analogeous to a computer program that can determine what sort of animal you are thinking of from physical traits. Take dogs for example. Do all dogs have fur, tails, four legs, two eyes, two years, etc? If we cannot even comprehensively define the term balance we cannot even hope to apply it.

2) In order to sell a game to the largest number of possible people, we need to genericize the game as much as possible. If we define balance comprehensively, we pidgeon hole our game and limit our audience. For example the most balanced game I ever played was toon, anyone seen a new edition of this recently?

3) In order to truly balance the game you would have to test every possible combination of features, just like with software. DnD cannot be balanced for the same reason that MS will never release an OS that has no bugs from day 1, it is impossible to test all of the features. Take a first level rogue and attempt the following. Create one rogue with every possible stat in every possible location of every possible race. Okay so 10 years later when you're done with take, apply every possible combination of skill point selections to every one of these charaters. Are you getting the point yet? In the old days classes had set skills and abilities, and the system was more balanced. Players clammored for more options and the industry responded with more player options. However, balance was sacraficed for player option becuase it forced the system into an untestable state. The only way to even begin to approach balance in an RPG is to first limit your audience and secondly limit their options further limiting your audience. Wow, you think the industry is in danger now - how about if that happened?

 

[Hussar]

As has been mentioned already, while balance is difficult, if not impossible to achieve, it remains a very admirable goal.

When elements within an RPG are unbalanced, it causes far more problems. A recent thread talked about how earlier editions of D&D greatly rewarded cheating during chargen because of the way the stat bonuses were arranged. To the point where later chargen systems (original Unearthed Arcana, I'm looking at you) were pretty insane.

The two weapon fighting rules in 2e are another poster child for this. A longsword/shortsword armed fighter wasn't a little better than any other fighter out there, he was lightyears better. To the point where not taking that combination (or better yet - two longswords) was a deliberate choice to handicap your character.

One could argue that the power attack feat is another example. It makes two handed weapon fighting just too good. Sword and board is arguably very substandard choice and two weapon fighting get's fobbed off to rangers and rogues.

Any time unbalanced mechanics clearly favour a given choice, then it becomes intrusive to the point where you have only two choices - either take the better choice or deliberately handicap yourself.

While we will never have a perfectly balanced game, that's not the point. The point is that every element of the game should always been measured against other options so that no single option becomes a blindingly obvious choice. 3.x has managed this rather well IMO. None of the new classes coming out of WOTC has been heralded as being the biggest dogs on the block. If anything, most are criticized for being too weak. There's how many PrC's in print from WOTC? Which one is the most obvious choice for power?

That's what balance gives you. It allows you to green light options for the players while being fairly certain that you aren't going to wind up with something that's going to wreak havoc on your campaign.

 

[BobbyMac]

You want an unbounded world?


Ringworld

The Ringworld itself, an enormous single world discovered at the far reaches of Known Space, a ring around a sun at approximately the orbit of the Earth. It is 997,000 miles wide, about 125 Earth-diameters. The total inner surface of the ring is equal to that of 3 million Earths. The ring is spun at a speed to provide 1G of gravity on the innerside, while 20 giant shadow squares at about the orbit of Mercury occlude the Sun to provide night. It was constructed by the Pak Protectors, now mostly extinct, who had a common origin with humans. The Ringworld is home to some 30 trillion sentient inhabitants from up to 2000 hominid species. The world is described in a series of novels by Niven, Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers, and, after the game's publication, The Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children.

from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld


There is an RPG set in it by Chaosium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RingworldRPG#Setting


but hey ... d20 Ringworld anyone?

 

[Andor]

but hey ... d20 Ringworld anyone?

Yeah but then you get the d20 Book of Rithashara.

Besides, d20 doesn't do supertech that well. Nobody has the hitpoints to take a shot from a 'digging tool' for example. Could make a fun redo of some classic quests however. "Take this evil Mcguffin and chuck it into the heart of the Fist of God.

 

[Sejs]

Yeah but then you get the d20 Book of Rithashara.

Nah that's just one of the perks of having a really high diplomacy skill.

 

[thedungeondelver]

but hey ... d20 Ringworld anyone?

No...but I'll play RINGWORLD with the METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA rules!

 

[Stalker0]

So let me get this staight, 3 million earths worth of land, and ONLY 30 trillion people? These people need to get to work, their population density is crap

But this thread has taught me that many campaigns worlds are very very very small compared to real earth

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

MM,

In what way is, to pick an example that leaps to mind because I mentioned it in another thread, Wushu not 100% mechanically balanced? If you're not familiar with Wushu, here's a link to the (free, downloadable) rules.

Except for player skill (which along with random chance will always determine the winner when the field is truly mechanically balanced), what imbalance can theoretically exist in a 'by-the-book' game of Wushu? Alternately, is there any sense in which Wushu does not qualify as a true RPG by your definition?

Obviously, it's something of an oddball game, but it seems to fall squarely in the realm of "RPG" (right down to a fairly traditional object: kill things, and possibly take their stuff) and to be mechanically balanced, like chess or checkers.

 

[mythusmage]

(Nota Bene: Too much to reply to in this thread, so I'm restricting myself to a few representative ones. Do not assume that simply because I do not replyto your post I have not read it or given it de consideration. A. k.)

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.

Reguarding the square mile: Not even wrong. How interesting it is has nothing to do with it, it misses the point. As does another poster's solution to traversing that mile. It serves as a mental experiment to demonstrate how large a square mile is in comparison to an individual. Before the automobile, back when people had to walk to get anywhere, it was a rare city that got much larger than a square mile. Modern American cities are spread out because they can be spread out.

Going on to Delericho's point regarding situations; here we have a great divide. Delericho says a designer can ignore certain situations, focusing on those that can, in some fashion be balanced. Sorry my friend, the mere fact such encounters can occur unless the designer rigs things so they can't renders the design ipso facto unbalanced. A good RPG design takes into account uneven, unfair encounters and plans for them. When you've got elder red wyrms and first level commoners runing around in the same world, they're going to meet each other. That's what I'm getting to with the matter of scope.

The game of checkers can be balanced because the field of play is so extremely restricted. small territory, little variety in playing pieces and what they can do. The typical RPG world is orders of magnitude larger, and has a vastly greater selection of playing pieces with a vastly greater selection of what those pieces can do.

It's an example of Chaos Theory in action. That being; in any complex system you cannot predict the outcome of a series of events based upon initial conditions. Just not doable. The best you can do where RPGs are concerned is create a situation where there is a temporary balance. One that could, and likely will, become unbalanced once the situation changes. Balance overall simplf cannot be achieved in any real sense, without placing such unrealistic restrictions on what players can do that the RPG looses what makes it unique in the field of participatory entertainment.

More coming, but now I have other comments to reply to.

 

[mythusmage]

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.

Crime hurts people.