Let's Talk About Character Resources To Power Abilities

[Staffan]

A game that wanted to make these separate pillars equal might need to figure out how to merge these two buckets together. The trick, however, is making consequences and victories in one affect or influence the other. It can be difficult not to silo these systems into their own mini-games, or switch play modes going from one to the other. They don't need to be identical, but they should feel similar to each other, and maybe allow a smoother overlap.

Exalted 3e tried something like this. Not necessarily the interplay between combat and not-combat, but trying to make them have equal weight. In previous editions, a very disproportionate amount of Charms (magic-powered special abilities) were focused around combat – I'd estimate something like half or more (but I'm not gonna count), in a game where 5 out of 25 skills are direct combat skills (Melee, Martial Arts, Thrown, Archery, Dodge). So in order to balance things out, they wanted to make more Charms for other skills – but the problem was that these skills didn't have the mechanical hooks to support them. In combat, you can do charms that improve your accuracy, your damage, or let you make more attacks, or let you defend better, or let you counterattack, or attack at a longer range, or make your thrown weapons return, or a number of other different things, and these would often come in different power levels (attack two opponents -> attack all opponents or attack one opponent twice).

But something like Crafting? There were like ten charms for that, some about just getting better at crafting, others about crafting faster, or using up less resources. But since 2e crafting didn't have much mechanical support, 2e crafting charms didn't have much to work with. So the solution of course was to provide more rules for crafting, which would then give Charms more scaffolding with which to interact. And then repeat that process across all other 19 non-combat skills, and you get an unwieldy mess.

 

[WhammeWhamme]

Personally, I like having in-game resources: HERO's End, spell points, L5R's rings.

Not everyone does. I've noticed more people dislike the ones that look the most like maths, e.g. HERO's End. (That it constantly goes up and down is just more maths and makes it even less popular.)

Whereas simpler systems, e.g. L5R's rings, aren't an issue for most folks. Tracking the charges doesn't even need maths, coloured tokens would do the job. That they're also narratively cool helps too.

Another thing that occurs to me is that every magic system (that I know of) uses some sort of resource tracking, be it power points or spell slots. This means that anyone who wants to play a spell caster has to be happy with resource tracking.

This specific post made me think of magic systems that, well, didn't use resource tracking.

One is my vague memories of the... Dragon Warriors? Mystic?

Basically: You cast a spell. Then you roll to see if you're mystically exhausted. Stronger spells make the roll less likely to succeed.

It's balanced alongside a more traditional spell-point-y spellcaster with basically the note that "on average, these will cast the same number of spells before becoming exhausted".


The other was Blood Sword (gamebook), where I think spellcasting for the... Enchanter? mostly had a cost in rounds.
That is to say, you would
1) Spend your turn to prepare a spell.
2) Spend your turn to try to cast a spell. Random chance of success. If fail, proceed to 3
3) Try again, with a +1 for each failure.
4) Spell cast! Has effect, un-prepares itself.

You could pre-prepare spells, but prepared spells penalized the roll to make the spell happen.
(The non-combat spells were just auto-cast and just Did The Thing)

In a sense these both involve management of a resource - the Mystic is gambling their potentially-last spell every time, the Enchanter is managing time - but there's no number to keep track of.


I feel like there must be newer examples, but I don't know 'em.

 

[Milieu]

I believe that the resource-management game can pall and become UnFun much more rapidly than most GMs and even players realize, and besides, it's Cool to be able to splurge and go wild with abundant resources. (At least for some people; others howl that doing so is "BadWrong Decadant MunchkinFun!" especially when they are not the ones doing it.)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but aren't you kind of doing the thing you're criticizing? You say that a style you don't like becomes UnFun with a capital U and a capital F, even if the people who play that way don't realize it. And then imply that all the people who don't think your style is Cool are the type who complain that other people are having fun wrong. (I realize you don't quite state that, but the structure of the sentence implies those are the two primary groups, or else why mention them? If the BadWrongFunners aren't the main category of people who disagree with you, you could more neutrally say "others seem to enjoy the constraints of resource management" or just end the sentence after "some people".)

it's Cool to be able to splurge and go wild with abundant resources

If it's Cool for you, then I'm not here to tell you you're having fun wrong, but we would probably both have more fun playing in separate games that match our respective styles. For me, it's only Cool to splurge because you can't do it all the time.

If a system has some sort of powered-by-resources limitation, I have an incentive to find ways to make it freely usable, instead, by depowering it or having it take more time to deploy.

Time is also a kind of resource! Maybe we can find a compromise after all.

 

[Bill Zebub]

That's fairly common advice, but I wouldn't pass that off as a solution to anything. It's compensation for a game that doesn't provide what is needed because they couldn't figure out how to make the necessary rules and mechanics to make their system work. You're either improvising or doing the work for them, which is Basic GM 101.

I was speaking generally about RPGs, not a specific game.

And...I'm curious why you think it's "compensation" for a poorly designed game. It's the way I want to play RPGs. I read "necessary rules and mechanics" and what I envision is pushing buttons on a character sheet, e.g.: "I use Find Traps and roll a 15" "You find a pit trap." "I use Disarm Traps and roll an 8." "You trigger the trap and take 1d6 damage."

That can't (I hope) be what you're talking about, so could you expand on what you think a good approach or design looks like?

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Exalted 3e tried something like this. <snip>

I know nothing about Exalted, so thank you for sharing and explaining all that! Based on your description, it sounds like a familiar pattern of trying to make non-combat as interesting and engaging as combat in that system. But from their perspective, "interesting" and "engaging" means more options, more customization, and more bloat. To be fair, that is how a lot of us look at these systems because we rarely see any different ideas in many of the games we play. Cheers!

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I was speaking generally about RPGs, not a specific game.

Likewise.

And...I'm curious why you think it's "compensation" for a poorly designed game. It's the way I want to play RPGs. I read "necessary rules and mechanics" and what I envision is pushing buttons on a character sheet, e.g.: "I use Find Traps and roll a 15" "You find a pit trap." "I use Disarm Traps and roll an 8." "You trigger the trap and take 1d6 damage."

That can't (I hope) be what you're talking about, so could you expand on what you think a good approach or design?

Sure! First, I don't disagree with that approach. I think it is how it should be handled, regardless if the game has rules and mechanics to support you doing it. But I do feel that a lot of systems fall short in this area, leaving it to the GMs to compensate for what I feel is missing.

What happens when the GM has to adjudicate something that one of the players feel is unfair or punitive? If it's ts not in the rules or the guidelines, then the GM may need to stop everything to justify their decision because the system doesn't back them up. That is essentially the game offloading more work and responsibility onto the group that could be mitigated with better design or structure.

As far as what I think is a good design or approach is, I don't know yet because I haven't seen it, but it's not what you envision (pushing buttons?). That's just rubbish. None of us want that.

But I have been working on some ideas of my own, and the best solutions I could come up with required building a system from the ground up. That's all I'm going to say about that. I can't really explain the parts without explaining how the whole thing works, and I don't want to expose that can of worms here.

What I can say is that I have been thinking a lot about system designs and approaches that, frankly, have gone unchallenged for so long. We've grown accustomed to accepting standards and expectations established decades ago are still the primary model used by everyone else. And it is really hard to iamagine anything outside of these norms because we rarely ever see it. Even if we do, many people are not interested in new or different, especially if it requires work or effort or getting out of their comfort. That's not directed at anyone, just generally speaking.

I could try to explain the relevant parts of what I figured out for myself, but they work because I created a system around it. I honestly don't know how (or if) those ideas would work in existing systems built around different approaches. But that is kinda why I am here discussing the topic: to see if it is even possible to find better solutions for existing systems, or if systems just need to change their approach.

Apologies for just rambling and not providing any real answers. I'm just processing with a lot of dancing thoughts. So let me ask you this: aside from adding consequences for a failed check, is there anything else you do to make skill checks more interesting for your players? Any ideas you borrow from other systems, or invent your own? Do you feel anything is missing or would be better if included to keep every player engaged and invested regardless who is rolling the dice?

 

[Bill Zebub]

What happens when the GM has to adjudicate something that one of the players feel is unfair or punitive?

I believe that is 100.0% of the time a problem with the people.