D&D 5E L&L D&D Next Goals, Part Two

[Sunseeker]

It may be that out long experience with RPGs has affected our perspective some. In the one hour game, a fight exists to determine if you survive exploring the room. It's like the purpose of a fight in Munchkin or a Chance Card in Monopoly. The fight itself is a mechanic for determining success or failure within an adventure as much as an attack roll determines success or failure within a fight.

As time has gone by, the fight has become a more complex mini-game within the larger game that is D&D. It would be as if, in Monopoly, buying a property became a complex minigame. Part of me thinks that could be fun, but that doesn't mean all Monopoly games need to play that way.

No matter which way you cut it, regardless of edition, it's not quite that simple. At it's base, we still have two rolls, attack, and damage. Now, we could certainly make either one or both of those static, but I suspect that flies against the whole "we like to roll dice" philosophy. In my gaming experience though, dice rolling has little to do with time spent in battle. It can, but I've played games with 10 times the number of dice a 20th-level 3.x Wizard throws out that go much faster than any edition of D&D. Simple doesn't always necessitate "fast", complex doesn't always mean "slow". "Fast" doesn't always mean "fun". It can, when done properly, but in my experience RNG alone is not "fun".

You seem to have made a giant leap here equating fast combat with pointless and easy combat, based on absolutely nothing that I can see. As DEFCON1 and Kamikaze Midget said, the importance of the fight, the purpose of the fight, the value of the fight...that's all in the DM's arena.

Unless...are you thinking in game time? A fast combat is over in four rounds, and a slow combat in twenty rounds? Because I'm looking at it "table time", in which a fast combat is ten minutes, and a slow combat is three hours. Both can be the same number of rounds in the game, but the table time is dramatically different.

My point was only that we shouldn't let the quality of a fight be determined by a pre-determined by a certain amount of rounds or minutes. A fight should take as long as a fight takes. If it doesn't come off as an enjoyable fight, that's something the whole group needs to think about.

The post I originally quoted broke a session down into specific increments and then attached certain aspects of play to certain allotments of time and that doesn't feel like the right way to go about things.

Depends on the group, but...

It could be just fun to beat a few kobold skulls.

Those kobolds might be more set dressing -- the "real gameplay" lies elsewhere.

The PC's get to show off their powers and abilties.

They could be a small part of the massive kobold tribe and the party is fighting a war of attrition against them, being the terror that haunts their dreams and the bogeymen who momma kobolds tell their hatchlings will come and take them in the night.

Etc.

Not that it's a good idea for all combats to be like that, but they have their purpose.

Sure, but do those really qualify as "fights"? I mean I had a 7th level party tracking down some demon worshippers, who had enslaved kobolds to mine this corrupted crystal produced by the imprisoned "body" of their demon god. THe party of course had to go through the mines, but even a dozen kobolds were of little challenge to them, and I didn't want to have them fight powered up kobolds, so I just said "you encounter kobolds, they try to attack you, what do you do?" "we kill them mercilessly", "okay" I said, "they die like the horribly squishy little things they are."

It was almost more of a skill challenge than a combat. We didn't roll initiative, we didn't roll attacks or damage, we just did it because there was no point in having actual combat for the situation.

Fight length does not determine this.

If you design for quick fights and allow for longer fights, you'll capture a more casual crowd while being able to satisfy the more refined tastes of the hardcore later.

By most standards, I'm fairly hardcore when it comes to gaming, but by others, I'm pretty casual. So when we talk about capturing the "casual" market or appealing to the "hardcore" players, it always makes me wonder who exactly we're talking about. It covers a pretty wide range of people and includes a lot of different variables and I don't think the amount of time one sets aside for gaming alone determines how "hardcore" or "casual" you are.

If you design for longer fights and allow for quicker fights, you're only going to capture the hardcore, because the casual are going to walk away before they're going to tinker with the system.

Good fights and meaningful fights can be quick, so by default, they should be. You can always turn up the dial if that seems weak sauce for your particular play-style.

I'm not suggesting we aim for either really. I'm suggesting we aim for quality, for appropriate challenge. I'm saying we shouldn't design with an estimated time spent on the fight in mind. Some groups will go slower than others, some will go faster, in the same fight with the same characters. There's a lot of variability here that no amount of rules can deal with. Some actions will take longer to resolve than others, so we shouldn't start saying: "Well, a kobold should take 2 rounds to kill, but a squad of kobolds will take 5 rounds, but then if we include difficult terrain it might take 7, or if the party is all wizards it will take 2 rounds, of if it's all fighters it'll take 10 minutes". Those aren't qualities we need to design around because they're far too diverse and outside the control of the game to be something it can reasonably address.


Look, here's the heart of it: All monsters, and by extension all fights should be based around how much of a challenge you want them to be for players. The time it takes for players to deal with that challenge will vary significantly from group to group, and there's really nothing to be done about it, it's the nature of the beast. But if we design each monster with the idea of being a fair challenge at the right level and then allow DM's to design their encounters based around how difficult they want that specific encounter to be, we'll be able to produce easy, moderate, difficult and epic fights with a singular, unified math.

If we attempt to design monsters and encounters with them based on an abstract measurement of time based on an average group experience of select testers, we're going to get monsters and encounters that do not hold to those measurements at all because of the high level of play variability experienced at the table.

In short: let the game deal with the math. If the math if sound, anything is possible. Let tables deal with the time, because that's something the DM can manage on the spot and make appropriate to the expectations of their group.

Designing monsters for simplicity or complexity are entirely different issues. If you want to aim for simplicity first to capture casuals, sure that's great, but simplicity doesn't imply speed, so leave time out of the equation, the number of possible variables associated with time spent in a fight are simply too many to be an issue the game can reasonably address through it's math and framework. Time is a table issue. Simplicity and complexity are math issues the game can handle.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The whole thing with different complexities of Basic, Standard and Advanced, is much like comparing different types of mobile phones out there. The proposed Basic rules are just like Feature Phones or even more basic mobile phones, it doesn't do much other than make phone calls and text because that's really all a mobile phone really needs to do, with the comparison that Basic rules=Feature Phone is the idea why the Basic rules aren't appealing to me.

Standard and Advanced rules on the other hand are a lot like Smartphones, Standard rules being more of a mid-range Smartphone and Advanced rules being some sort of Super Phone. The reasons I'd certainly prefer Standard and Advanced over Basic is for the exact reasons I'd prefer a Smartphone over a Feature Phone.

 

[pemerton]

A fight should take as long as a fight takes. If it doesn't come off as an enjoyable fight, that's something the whole group needs to think about.

<snip>

I had a 7th level party tracking down some demon worshippers, who had enslaved kobolds to mine this corrupted crystal produced by the imprisoned "body" of their demon god. THe party of course had to go through the mines, but even a dozen kobolds were of little challenge to them, and I didn't want to have them fight powered up kobolds, so I just said "you encounter kobolds, they try to attack you, what do you do?" "we kill them mercilessly", "okay" I said, "they die like the horribly squishy little things they are."

It was almost more of a skill challenge than a combat.

<snip>

we shouldn't design with an estimated time spent on the fight in mind. Some groups will go slower than others, some will go faster, in the same fight with the same characters. There's a lot of variability here that no amount of rules can deal with.

<snip>

All monsters, and by extension all fights should be based around how much of a challenge you want them to be for players. The time it takes for players to deal with that challenge will vary significantly from group to group, and there's really nothing to be done about it, it's the nature of the beast.

<snip>

the number of possible variables associated with time spent in a fight are simply too many to be an issue the game can reasonably address through it's math and framework. Time is a table issue.

What RPGs do you have in mind (other than D&D, obviously)?
[MENTION=94389]jrowland[/MENTION] mentioned "zooming" in and out upthread. Here is how HeroQuest revised handles that:

(1) Combat can be resolved by a single opposed check of appropriate abilities: the degree of success determines who suffers what sorts of consequences.

(2) Combat can be resolved by an extended contest: each round an opposed check is made between combatants, and whoever wins earns a number of points reflecting their degree of success, and when the required number of points has been accrued the comat is over, and consequences for victor and loser are determined by reference to the number of points each had accrued.​

Extended contests obviously take longer to resolve, being a series of opposed checks, but the payoff is more colour, more detail, and the capability for choices made in each round to shape the fiction for the next round, so that the context for the next opposed check changes. (Not unlike a 4e skill challenge.)

HeroQuest revised gives the GM the job of deciding which resolution method to use, based on pacing considerations.

Burning Wheel handles "zooming" like this:

(1) Melee combat can be resolved via BW's generic skill check mechanics: the player declares "My guy draws his rapier and runs the NPC through", the GM assigns a difficulty, the player makes a skill check, and if it succeeds then the player's PC has indeed run the NPC through with his rapier.

(2) Melee combat can be resolved using the "Bloody Versus" mechanic: each player gets a pool of dice, based on combat skill plus modifiers, and allocates some of the pool to attack, and some to defence. Each pool is rolled, and attack successes over defence successes go to wounds. So the possible outcomes are both hurt, one hurt or neither hurt (and the game has guidelines for interpreting these various outcomes, and moving on from them in the game). (NB. It's called "Bloody Versus" because it involves opposed - or "versus" - checks, and the outcome is generally bloody.)

(3) Melee combat can be resolved using the "Fight!" mechanic: actions are scripted in conditions of mutual ignorance on a second-by-second basis, and then declared and resolved via the appropriate checks. There are intricate rules for jockeying for position, getting in close with your knife or holding them off with your polearm, blocking blows with shields and absorbing them with armour, etc.​

When using Fight!, both the resolution and the outcome will have a lot more colour and detail than either of the other two methods. You have multiple rounds each involving comparisons of declared actions and resolution of them (via opposed checks, unopposed checks or whatever else is appropriate given what the combatants declare). And Bloody Versus is clearly going to take longer than a simple check, because pools have to be split and two opposed checks resolved, plus outcomes of those checks compared to wounds charts. Whereas resolving combat via a simple check is no different from rolling a skill check in 3E or 4e.

Burning Wheel gives the group as a whole the job of deciding which method to use for resolving any given combat. The GM might suggest one approach, but a player is entitled to call for another approach, and in particular to call for Fight! if s/he thinks the stakes are important enough to be worth spending time on.

The thing about both these systems is that they separate "zoom detail" from difficulty of challenge. You can do mopping up the kobolds as a single check or two if you want to - but if they're the kobolds who destroyed your village, you can play out your defeat of them in detail using Fight! even if it's pretty much guaranteed to go your way.

And conversely if the PCs are surrounded by 10 efreets that they can't beat, they can fight until unconsciousness using Bloody Versus resolution if that's what the group wants, the real focus of the action being not on the unwinnable fight, but rather what the efreets want once they've beaten the party into submission.

4e doesn't really have options like this - if you make the fight quick by making all the enemies minions, you also make it a pushover for the PCs.

I would like D&Dnext to be more flexible. Maybe the grid vs "theatre of the mind" approach that jrowland mentioned is one way to come at this. As I said upthread, I'm not realy sure.

 

[pemerton]

a fight can be a penalty for failure at the "adventuring" game. The goal of treasure-seeking adventurers is to get as much treasure as possible without getting killed. Or, alternatively, the goal of objective-seeking adventurers is to accomplish their "mission" (given by an NPC or self-directed) without getting killed. In either example, getting into an unnecessary fight works against the PCs. This kind of "penalty fight" is perfectly reasonable design, but it's not spending game time moving the PCs forward and so it should go pretty fast.

<snip>

In more recent editions, we've gotten closer to the idea that getting into fights is the objective. That can be fun too -- there's nothing wrong with adventurers who have the goal of trimming the local monster population. In that kind of game, the fights are the fun, so you want to have sufficiently detailed-and-interesting fights to keep the game exciting.

Part of the issue here is that even if the PCs don't want to get into fights, the players might. If resolving fights is a mechanically satisfying and exciting part of the game, whereas resolving exploration or treasure seeking is more tedious, then the players have an incentive to trigger fights regardless of the ostensible goals of their PCs.

Hence, in my view, the desirability of exciting and engaging mechanics to support all three pillars.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

Well, looking over what Mike wrote, I have just reengaged my Interest Drive. I wasn't getting any feeling of a "base game" from the current playtests...but this little L&L update was a breath of fresh air.

What I'd like to see done with the 'Basic' style of 5e is, in place of skill dice or modifiers, a character would either have or not have a skill. If they have it, they get "Advantage" when using it. Without the skill, no Advantage or no possibility of even trying (depending on skill use/situation). If someone wanted to use more advanced skills, they could, and nothing would change. Set DC-bases would work for all. With regards to giving Fighters bonus dice to STR checks, just do the same; Fighters get Advantage using STR stuff, Wizards get Advantage using INT stuff, etc. No modifiers, no muss, no fuss. As more granularity is needed for a particular group, expand into "skill dice".

Anyway, my end result: Positive.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[I'm A Banana]

Sure, but do those really qualify as "fights"?

I think you're seeing something similar to what pemerton is referring to as "zooming." If you're shooting for an hour-long session, fights need to be simple and can easily be abstract. They are showing you the simplest way to resolve combat.

I think it's not really meant to appease everyone's sense of what a fight should be, but I believe it is meant to not chase off people who want to keep it simple.

So when we talk about capturing the "casual" market or appealing to the "hardcore" players, it always makes me wonder who exactly we're talking about.

It's a fair point. I think the idea would be to go for as "casual" as the game can, on all metrics. If the basic game is "hardcore" in any way, it will turn off people who are "casual" in that way. So if the game is all-round casual, without complexity built in as a requirement at any point, it becomes the most accessible.

I'm suggesting we aim for quality, for appropriate challenge.

What's appropriate for one table isn't going to be universal, so the game needs to be able to flex on that metric. What makes a fight quality at one table makes it horrible at another, so the game needs to flex on that metric, too.

I'm saying we shouldn't design with an estimated time spent on the fight in mind.

I think that rather we should design with the estimated time spent as one factor among many, so that people can telescope in or out.

Then, we should present the shortest possibility as the basic possibility, so that we don't put in an artificial barrier to entry.

 

[Iosue]

I'm going to pull the actual quote by Mearls here.

Quick to play, with complete adventures playable in an hour. A group should be able to complete a simple dungeon with five or six rooms in that time span. Obviously, you can build bigger dungeons for longer sessions, but it's important to reduce complexity and therefore reduce the minimum time needed to play an adventure. A quick start time and fast play are key to recruiting new D&D fans and making the game accessible for people with ever busier, hectic lives.

He's not saying the game will be designed around 1 hour games. He's not saying fights have to be done in 10 minutes or less. He's just saying the game has to be playable in an hour. His "One-Hour D&D Game" L&L talks about this in more detail.

Some relevant parts:

Replaying the 1981 Basic Set recently has been eye opening. Even including the rules I've added to the game, character creation took somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. In about 45 minutes of play, we created an entire party of adventurers (dwarf fighter, human magic-user, halfling thief), kicked off an adventure with the characters just outside of a ruined keep, and explored six different rooms in a small dungeon. That exploration included two battles with goblins and hobgoblins. We played at a fairly relaxed pace. There was plenty of roleplaying between the characters and frequent questions on the rules as the players navigated both basic D&D and my house rules.

So what exactly should happen in an hour? One of the first proof of concept adventures I ran captures what I'm aiming at. In this adventure, the characters bought a treasure map from a halfling, traveled through a forest to the purported location of an orc lord's tomb, dodged a few traps in the tomb and solved a puzzle needed to gain access to the inner sanctum, battled skeletons that ambushed them, and then defeated the vengeful spirit of the orc lord and the animated statues that guarded his tomb. With the orc lord laid to his final rest, the characters claimed his magical axe and a small cache of gems.

The DM needs rules that can allow for adventures with as many fights as needed, from a single big brawl to a number of shorter fights. I'd like to see an adventure design system that gives me a suggested total XP value for monsters and traps to use so that I can push the characters to the limit of their abilities. I can then spend that XP for one battle, lots of little battles, or just sprinkle monsters in an environment as I choose.

So it's very simple. It's not a matter of being designed so that all fights are 10 minutes. It's about a group only having one hour to play, so they say, "Okay, we're going to do this little mini-adventure that'll fit in that time." Maybe it'll only have a couple of fights, like Mearls' examples. Maybe it'll have one big fight that takes most of the hour. Maybe it'll be Fantasy SWAT, with a squad of PC's clearing six monster filled rooms in record time. Whatever kind of one-hour game that group wants to play.

And for that casual gamer family deciding how to spend that time between the end of dinner and the kids' bedtime, and making a choice between D&D and a boardgame, it'll probably easy for them to have a five, six room dungeoncrawl, with two fights, one trap, and some NPC interaction. Just like Jeff Carlsen so astutely put it, combat in such a scenario won't be a primary deliverer of fun, but just another part of the whole game.

 

[Nellisir]

By most standards, I'm fairly hardcore when it comes to gaming, but by others, I'm pretty casual. So when we talk about capturing the "casual" market or appealing to the "hardcore" players, it always makes me wonder who exactly we're talking about. It covers a pretty wide range of people and includes a lot of different variables and I don't think the amount of time one sets aside for gaming alone determines how "hardcore" or "casual" you are.

Well, I'd like a game I could bring out at Board Game Night, which is usually about 3 hours, and has 2-3 games. So 1-2 hours is my definition of casual. The people who are really interested can then be brought into a "regular" campaign.

 

[KidSnide]

a fight can be a penalty for failure at the "adventuring" game. The goal of treasure-seeking adventurers is to get as much treasure as possible without getting killed. Or, alternatively, the goal of objective-seeking adventurers is to accomplish their "mission" (given by an NPC or self-directed) without getting killed. In either example, getting into an unnecessary fight works against the PCs. This kind of "penalty fight" is perfectly reasonable design, but it's not spending game time moving the PCs forward and so it should go pretty fast.

<snip>

In more recent editions, we've gotten closer to the idea that getting into fights is the objective. That can be fun too -- there's nothing wrong with adventurers who have the goal of trimming the local monster population. In that kind of game, the fights are the fun, so you want to have sufficiently detailed-and-interesting fights to keep the game exciting.

Part of the issue here is that even if the PCs don't want to get into fights, the players might. If resolving fights is a mechanically satisfying and exciting part of the game, whereas resolving exploration or treasure seeking is more tedious, then the players have an incentive to trigger fights regardless of the ostensible goals of their PCs.

Hence, in my view, the desirability of exciting and engaging mechanics to support all three pillars.

Sorry if I was unclear, my post was about players as much as it is about characters. If you are trying to run a game where the objective of the players is to gather treasure or accomplish their mission, then getting into unnecessary fights is a failure. It drains resources and poses a danger to life or to success. This is a useful role in the game, but it's not fun if this kind of fight drags on for a long time.

Thus, it's important for the game to support this kind of quick fight. In this style of D&D, it's relevant to the game, but it's not the point of the game.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with playing the game for the fights, whether or not it's the character's goal. And, obviously, the game also has to support fun, engaging and interesting combats that go on for longer than five minutes. Almost any type of game will want an important fight some of the time. I was just trying to show how some games have fights that are a relevant and important part of the game, but shouldn't take all that much time.

-KS

 

[pemerton]

I was just trying to show how some games have fights that are a relevant and important part of the game, but shouldn't take all that much time.

Ah - yep, that makes sense.