Making Things Different

[BrokeAndDrive]

I know, I know, I'm touting these things AGAIN; feel free to skip if this bugs you

High-level gaming... well, you could always talk to the master Upper_Krust on that. I refuse to play D&D without his Immortal's Handbook rules!

 

[KidSnide]

I've agreed with Mouseferatu's general point. By late paragon / early epic level, PCs should be able to call upon armies or perform rituals well outside the normal range of D&D dungeoneering. It's not that I don't think dungeons (or the esoteric extra-planar dungeon-replacements) should figure in epic level play. It's just that should be just one aspect of the PCs adventures.

Do do this right, D&D probably needs some sort of non-adventuring resource & ability system that phases in at high heroic / low paragon to give PCs village/kingdom/planet effecting abilities. GMs decide how much they want to use this system (including, potentially - not at all) depending on the campaign. The point of this system is that domain rulership mechanics (including mass combat leadership) is a different "silo" than adventuring powers. In a campaign with dungeon crawling and kingdom running, the players shouldn't have to decide between being an effective fighter and an effective general.

What does that system contain? Well, presumably politics, kingdom economics, kingdom-level ritual magic and some sort of mass combat. And, when I say "kingdom" - there's no reason you couldn't start with a village (or a ship, or a merchant company) at an appropriate heroic tier.

-KS

 

[howandwhy99]

In terms of magic, think old school. Wish, Meteor Swarm, Time Stop, Prismatic Sphere, Dominate Monster, Summon Monster IX, Gate.

Many of these higher level spells were nerfed in d20. They are far more useful on the grand strategy scale. Meteor Swarm called a multitude of meteors to fall from the sky onto the area selected. Time stop worked for 1d4+1 10 minute turns for outdoor mass combat time scale. Summon Monster XI called truly horrific and awesome outer planar creatures, Prismatic Sphere was a near impenetrable prison or protection.

High level can be a blast, but it doesn't need to mean supers skirmish-level tactical play.

 

[pemerton]

I want my RPG experience to be at the single participant level.

Agreed.

Sure, and others want the option of expanding their RPG experience to include directing mass battles, or governing a country, or leading an organization and using its resources to achieve certain goals.

D&D already does personal combats quite well. This thread is an attempt to look at ways to incorproate these other aspects into D&D.

There are games that manage to incorporate aspects of this into the single participant level - through reputations, followers and similar attributes that can be used by the player to resolve challenges that their PC confronts, or to augment the PC's own skills and abilities.

I'm not sure that any RPG can do justice to anything beyond personal combat. Once you get to the scale of a mass battle, anything beyond a PC or major NPC is going to be reduced to a collection of stats little different from a unit in a wargame.

In 4e the most natural way to approach these larger-scale things would be using a skill challenge, which (in the absence of formal reputation or follower mechanics in 4e) would have to take into account the social and political circumstances of the PCs. DMG2 has some suggestions along these lines.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm guessing that, like me, most people arguing for big-scale stuff in D&D would not find a Skill Challenge to be satisfying. At least not for military engagements.

 

[FireLance]

I get that, but my instinct is that to run those mass battles and other big scale scenarios, what is really needed is a completely new game. (Modeled on the underlying RPG, of course.)

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. You say new game, I say new rules, but I think it all boils down to pretty much the same thing.

There are games that manage to incorporate aspects of this into the single participant level - through reputations, followers and similar attributes that can be used by the player to resolve challenges that their PC confronts, or to augment the PC's own skills and abilities.

So, what games are these and how do they do it? Tell me more!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. You say new game, I say new rules, but I think it all boils down to pretty much the same thing.

Its possible, but my guess is that linking it too closely to the underlying RPG- such as by including it as merely a subset of the RPG's rules- you're going to introduce problems of scaling, player expectations, and possibly even terminology issues.

To return to the Star Trek example, imagine the difficulty of playing a ship vs ship or fleet vs fleet scenario when your PC is equivalent to Kirk or Picard. Will your SvS rules include options for Kirk, Spock, Sulu and McCoy board an enemy ship, or will you just have rules for Elite Boarding Parties?

Would Whorf give you a +3 bonus in a Fleet action? +1? And what about all of his personal special abilities? What do they matter at that scale?

 

[pemerton]

I'm guessing that, like me, most people arguing for big-scale stuff in D&D would not find a Skill Challenge to be satisfying. At least not for military engagements.

Maybe not. What do you think of this? It's an example of a skill challenge used to run a siege. The DMG2 has an example of a skill challenge used for diplomatic negotiations.

This sort of stuff presumably wouldn't satisfy those who like the wargamey or Diplomacy aspect of high-level AD&D and Moldvay/Cook play. But more of this sort of stuff, better developed and with better rules for incorporating the effects of powers or the resolution of individual nested combats or sub-challenges, could certainly achieve some of what Mouseferatu was looking for in his blog post - giving play a different feel at higher levels. Without needing to change the mechanical subsystems or single-PC focus.

 

[pemerton]

So, what games are these and how do they do it? Tell me more!

Well, I'm thinking mostly of HeroWars/Quest and Burning Wheel. If you know these games already, then skip to the last paragraph to see why I think the sorts of techniques they use might help deal with the "making things different" issue!

A PC for HeroWars/Quest is, in mechanical terms, a list of free-form descriptors with numerical ratings. The basic resolution system uses opposed rolls to determine success levels for winner and loser. Relationships, followers, reputations and so on are just more attributes that can be used to resolve contests. To give an example: The goal, in play, is to learn who the head of the evil cult is. My PC is the leader of the beggars in the city and wants to send them out to gather rumours. Mechanically, this could be resolved as a contest between my PC's Beggar Guildmaster attribute and the cultist's Manipulates From The Sidelines attribute.

Two mechanical complexities have further implications. First, attributes can be used to augment other attributes that are then used to actually resolve the contest (a bit like secondary skill checks in a skill challenge). So in a fight to defend my barony against invaders, I could use my Born To Rule This Land attribute as an augment for my Tactical Leader or Cuts Down Orcs Like Chaff attribute. Even equipment in HeroQuest is an attribute - so my ruler can have the Impregnable Castle attribute, and use that to resist the orc horde's Cut A Bloody Swathe Across The Land attribute. Second, there are also pretty well-developed community rules that allow players to draw upon their PC's communities to get additional augments, at the risk of depleting the resources and loyalties of those communities.

Naturally enough, playing out these sorts of contests is going to be fairly abstract in parts. When I use my Beggar Guildmaster attribute, I'm going to talk in general terms about what I'm doing to bring it into play - it's a key part of HeroWars/Quest that the GM and the player each explain what is happening in the gameworld as part of the process of mechanically framing the contest (again, a bit like a skill challenge) - but we're not going to resolve every little aspect of every single beggar's adventures as they collect rumours and learn the truth about the cult. This is a cost of keeping it a single-PC focused RPG - once you have detailed resolution for this sort of thing, or for the invasion of a barony, as far as I can see you're playing a wargame or something similar.

Burning Wheel's mechanics are less generic and suitable for abstraction than HeroWars/Quest, but there are rules for Circles (= contacts) and Reputations/Affiliations (various sorts of augments to Circles) that can then be used as attributes to resolve contests - mostly social/political contests - in the same way that skills can be used.

If your game unfolds in such a way that low-level PCs mostly have skills and attributes that are about what they, individually, can do, but then gradually evolves over time so that more and more of the PCs' attributes are the sorts of relationship/follower/reputation abilities that I've been talking about, then the nature of play would change fairly dramatically - instead of the PCs guarding caravans and fighting orcs as mercenaries, they would be planning and leading caravans and commanding the guards that fight off the orcs - even though the mechanical systems in play had not changed, and the game retained a focus on individual PC personalities.

 

[KidSnide]

Maybe not. What do you think of this? It's an example of a skill challenge used to run a siege. The DMG2 has an example of a skill challenge used for diplomatic negotiations.

This sort of stuff presumably wouldn't satisfy those who like the wargamey or Diplomacy aspect of high-level AD&D and Moldvay/Cook play. But more of this sort of stuff, better developed and with better rules for incorporating the effects of powers or the resolution of individual nested combats or sub-challenges, could certainly achieve some of what Mouseferatu was looking for in his blog post - giving play a different feel at higher levels. Without needing to change the mechanical subsystems or single-PC focus.

A satisfying mass combat system doesn't necessarily have to involve moving a lot of figures around on the board. In fact, if it takes a lot of time to move those figures and they are just producing a foregone conclusion, it is very easy for a great mass of minis to negatively impact the game.

What a satisfyign mass combat system (or kingdom economics simulator, or diplomatic system) needs is the ability for the players running the commanding PCs to make meaningful decisions about how to run the battle or kingdom. That doesn't require controlling every troop, but a major battle should have opportunities for the general to make informed non-obvious decisions about when and where to attack (and maybe with which troops).

Presumably, a good major battle will also have opportunities for the other PCs to cast appropriate war rituals and add bonuses by leading particular troops in their missions. A good mass combat system would also allow situations in which the PCs can personally descend into the melee to run some encounters with the regular combat system. (If you're fighting a big battle and the PCs never actually role to hit, you're missing something big...)

This is analogous to a good economic or political system. There would be interesting decisions (which towns to build up, which allies to cultivate) that should affect the outcome. But there would also be opportunities to adventure -- I point to the Kingmaker series as the best recent example of that sort of thing. Companion D&D, Birthright and others have had similar goals.

Where a skill challenge mechanic can break down is where the decisions made by the PCs are based entirely on what skills to use and not which command decisions are most appropriate given the situation. As a general, I want to decide whether we use the archers to attack over the river or have the infantry ford it to storm the enemy banks. I don't want the critical decision to be whether I try to remember a historical strategem or perceive the enemy's next attack. This is, of course, a common problem with skill challenges -- but that's why (as written) they are better suited as a default one-off mechanic than as a way of solving recurring types of scenarios.

-KS