More DMing analysis from Lewis Pulsipher

[Tony Vargas]

Add to these requirements the demands for player agency, "balance" and fairness required for Story Now! and Gamist play and I think a "broad church" RPG, while not necessarily impossible to attain, will be a tough nut to crack. So far, I don't see 5E getting particularly near it.

One thing that makes me wonder about the style debates is how things as basic to accommodating as many different points of view as 'balance' or 'fairness' get segregated to specific styles. 'Balance' isn't a style, it's a way to let various styles interact in the same game without wrecking it - balance is not one of the conflicting goals that must reach a compromise, balance /is/ the compromise. Fairness is even more basic: if you don't think the game should even be fair, why should you expect anyone to be fair to you, or your 'style?' What basis do you even have for bringing a group together.

 

[Savage Wombat]

One thing that makes me wonder about the style debates is how things as basic to accommodating as many different points of view as 'balance' or 'fairness' get segregated to specific styles. 'Balance' isn't a style, it's a way to let various styles interact in the same game without wrecking it - balance is not one of the conflicting goals that must reach a compromise, balance /is/ the compromise. Fairness is even more basic: if you don't think the game should even be fair, why should you expect anyone to be fair to you, or your 'style?' What basis do you even have for bringing a group together.

I would think in this case, "balance" refers to the "all options roughly equal" style of character/monster building necessary to grade challenges, which is important for Gamist play. Balance between, say, combat and exploration is a different issue.

 

[Emerikol]

That is, of course, if you are (a) particularly learned in a field, (b) of a particular mental/emotional bent, and (c) looking for the kind of simulation of process which underwrites your own mental processing.

Another possibility is that we imagine more detail than the rules provide. As long as the rule doesn't hinder what we are imagining it works out. As DM I often narrate the outcome of the die rolls in all sorts of flavorful ways. It is probably one of the reasons people dislike martial healing and rapid hit point recovery. It stifles their narrative.

I agree some people fit into the categories you defined. How many I don't know. When it comes to movies, I've experienced exactly what you say. As an IT professional, I have a hard time enjoying movies with quick and easy hacking of every system coming and going.

Personally I'm not looking for a wounds module. I like the abstraction of hit points. That makes the game heroic but I can keep the narrative where I want it without that much trouble. Maybe it's my experience.

 

[Emerikol]

One thing that makes me wonder about the style debates is how things as basic to accommodating as many different points of view as 'balance' or 'fairness' get segregated to specific styles. 'Balance' isn't a style, it's a way to let various styles interact in the same game without wrecking it - balance is not one of the conflicting goals that must reach a compromise, balance /is/ the compromise. Fairness is even more basic: if you don't think the game should even be fair, why should you expect anyone to be fair to you, or your 'style?' What basis do you even have for bringing a group together.

Several answers. Balance is not the only good and perfect balance at the edges as defined by some on these boards is hostile to other priorities.

Those of us wanting the rich heritage of D&D magic and also the simple fighter keep hitting the buzz saw from these people. Our choices are either practically supernatural fighters or totally dumbed down watery magic or some combination. I really don't have a balance issue with any edition of D&D. I've had great fun with each edition save one. That one was devoted specifically to the ideals of the people I'm talking about.

When they savage 5e because of balance when I believe the game has already compromised tremendously to make them happy I see no happy ending where I am enjoying the same game they do.

 

[Starfox]

To block peasant railguns, or bag-of-rats, or other stuff like that in d20 requires GM fiat - which is to say, the game engine must be messed with. No self-respecting RM or C&C player would put up with it!

Somewhat on a tangent, I am with Gödel here - I do not believe it is possible to construct a game systems such that it can resolve all situations that the system creates. GM fiat is not a despicable option - it is a necessity. Only the simplest, most high-level simulations can even approach the ideal you are looking for (ie wargames).

 

[pemerton]

'Balance' isn't a style, it's a way to let various styles interact in the same game without wrecking it - balance is not one of the conflicting goals that must reach a compromise, balance /is/ the compromise.

I would think in this case, "balance" refers to the "all options roughly equal" style of character/monster building necessary to grade challenges, which is important for Gamist play. Balance between, say, combat and exploration is a different issue.

Just for interest, here is some discussion from Ron Edwards on balance:

"Balance" is one of those words which is applied to a wide variety of activities or practices that may be independent or even contradictory. . . . The word is thrown about like a shuttlecock with little reference to any definition at all. That's the current state of the art. So I'm taking time-out . . . to go on a full GNS balance rant, because the assumption that Gamist play is uniquely or definitively concerned with "balance" is very, very mistaken.

Overall
1.Compare "balance" with the notion of parity, or equality of performance or resources. If a game includes enforced parity, is it is balanced? Is it that simple? And if not, then what?
2.Bear in mind that Fairness and Parity are not synonymous. One or the other might be the real priority regardless of which word is being used. Also, "Fair" generally means, "What I want."
3.Are we discussing the totality of a character (Effectiveness, Resource, Metagame), or are we discussing Effectiveness only, or Effectiveness + Resource only?
4.Are we discussing "screen time" for characters at all, which has nothing to do with their abilities/oomph?
5.Are we discussing anything to do at all with players, or rather, with the people at the table? Can we talk about balance in regard to attention, respect, and input among them? Does it have anything to do with Balance of Power, referring to how "the buck" (where it stops) is distributed among the members of the group?

They can't all be balance at once.

Within Gamist play
1.Parity of starting point, with free rein given to differing degrees of improvement after that. Basically, this means that "we all start equal" but after that, anything goes, and if A gets better than B, then that's fine.
2.The relative Effectiveness of different categories of strategy: magic vs. physical combat, for instance, or pumping more investment into quickness rather than endurance. In this sense, "balance" means that any strategy is at least potentially effective, and "unbalanced" means numerically broken.
3.Related to #2, a team that is not equipped for the expected range of potential dangers is sometimes called unbalanced.
4.In direct contrast to #1, "balance" can also mean that everyone is subject to the same vagaries of fate (Fortune). That is, play is "balanced" if everyone has a chance to save against the Killer Death Trap. Or it's balanced because we all rolled 3d6 for Strength, regardless of what everyone individually ended up with. (Tunnels & Trolls is all about this kind of play.)
5.The resistance of a game to deliberate Breaking.

Within Simulationist play
I am forced to speak historically here, in reference to existing and widespread Simulationist approaches, not to any potential or theoretical ones. So think of Call of Cthulhu, GURPS, and Rolemaster as you read the next part.

1.One fascinating way that the term is applied is to the Currency-based relationship among the components of a character: Effectiveness, Resource, Metagame. That's right - we're not talking about balance among characters at all, but rather balance within the interacting components of a single character. I realize that this sounds weird. Check back in the Sim essay to see how important these within-character interactions can be in this mode of play.
2.And, completely differently, "balance" is often invoked as an anti-Gamist play defense, specifically in terms of not permitting characters to change very much relative to one another, as all of them improve. This is, I think, the origin of "everyone gets a couple EPs at the end of each session" approach, as opposed to "everyone gets different EPs on the basis of individual performance."
3.Rules-enforcement in terms of Effectiveness, which is why GURPS has point-total limits per setting. Note that heavy layering renders this very vulnerable to Gamist Drift.

Within Narrativist play
This gets a little tricky because I can't think of a single coherent Narrativist game text in which balance as a term is invoked as a design or play feature, nor any particular instance of play I've been involved in which brought the issue up. But I'm pretty sure that it's a protagonism issue.

1."Balance" might be relevant as a measure of character screen time, or perhaps weight of screen time rather than absolute length. This is not solely the effectiveness-issue which confuses everyone. Comics fans will recognize that Hawkeye is just as significant as Thor, as a member of the Avengers, or even more so. In game terms, this is a Character Components issue: Hawkeye would have a high Metagame component whereas Thor would have a higher Effectiveness component.
2.Balance of Power is relevant to all forms of play, but it strikes me as especially testy in this mode.

That's the end of my balance rant, but I beg and plead of anyone who reads this essay: I would very much like never to hear again that (1) Gamist play must be uniquely obsessed with balance, or (2) if play is concerned with any form of balance, it must be Gamist. These are unsupportable habits of thought that pervade our hobby and represent very poor understanding of the issues involved.​

Lewis Pulsipher also has coments on balance, from a companion article to the one quoted in the OP. I don't have it ready-to-hand, so I'll summarise: he notes that MUs are the most powerful and versatile PCs at mid and high levels, and suggests that GMs will have to be careful to avoid having the players of MUs dominate play.

This could be seen as an instance of Edwards' Gamist 2 (effectiveness of different strategies), and at the extreme 5 (breaking), Simulationist 3 (character effectiveness that extends beyond the notional level-appropriate limits) and Narrativist 1 (players of wizards get disproportionate screen time). Obviously some players (including, perhaps, Gygax) think that the power trajectory for MUs is an instance of balance in the sense of Gamist 2, but with a longer real-world conception of the unit of play over which effectiveness of strategies must be balanced: fighters are more viable at the start but have a power cap; MUs are vulnerable at start but lack the same cap. (This obviously won't work if players are allowed to start characters above 1st or 2nd level.)

4e, with its martial encounter and daily powers, can be seen as a version of Edwards' Thor vs Hawkeye point: fighters get meta-resources to balance the raw effectiveness of mages. But obviously this is controversial. One balance-style criticism I have seen is a version of Edwards' Simulationist 1 - namely, that it's unfair that fighter players get all this "meta" as part of their build when mage players don't.

Which I think is consistent with the point that not all these forms of balance can be achieved simultaneously.

 

[pemerton]

GM fiat is not a despicable option - it is a necessity.

Being rid of it is an aspiration for purist-for-system sim play, at least as I have engaged in and encountered such play. Edwards' comments on that - "the system is not to be messed with" - resonates for me.

The aspiration may not be realisable in practice, but I think there are significant differences in where the bumps appear in the rug. For instance, in 3E or 4e-style turn-based combat with small parties and movement speeds that are somewhat slow relative to real-world human capabilities, you won't get peasant railguns emerging. But the fact that the system can't, even in principle, be extrapolated to larger groups of characters without introducing such problems is (from the purist-for-system point of view) a flaw, because it is a marker of causation being violated.

It is hard to exaggerate the number of hours and amount of intellectual effort that I, as a RM GM, put into trying to construct an initiative system and action economy that would allows for initiative (ie reflexes) to matter - and hence have an action declaration and initiative phase - but would also permit continuous action without peasant-railgun-type problems. And there were still problems: probably once every half-dozen sessions it would turn out that the way in which the end of the round fell made a difference to someone's action resolution for a reason that made no ingame sense (mostly because their movement would bring them within reach of an enemy before the end of the round, and hence they couldn't redeclare their parry, but if the enemy were 5' or 10' away then they would be outside reach and hence have a chance to redeclare parry at the beginning of the round before the last distance would be closed and the attack from the enemy come in).

These problems were grudgingly tolerated but were clearly experienced by all the game participants as just that - problems.

One way to try and solve this problem is by making "rounds" so short that all the events can be seen as happening literally simultaneously. I understand that GURPs has 1 second rounds. In HARP the rounds are 2 seconds. In Burning Wheel they are "1 heartbeat" ie around about a second or so. This solution has other issues though, which can be seen in HARP: archery, with requirements to spend time nocking, drawing, etc, becomes a less interesting option in play (because a lot of your actions don't actually involve attack rolls), and there is at least the risk (depending on how the maths of attacks and defence work out) that it is less powerful too.

BW uses a different time-frame for archery duels and firefights (flexible rounds of 20 seconds to 1 minute), and suggests that when a melee and a firefight are happening simultaneously that you resolve the rounds on a 1:1 basis, handwaving the differences in elapsed time. This is a fine gameplay solution, but reintroduces all the "violation of causation" issues once again.

(The above also constitutes more evidence/explanation for why Edwards' discussions around combat resolution and initiative, and the problems they cause for sim play, resonate so strongly with me!)

 

[Starfox]

Example: In swordfighting combat, the ability to pull off a move will likely be dictated by a host of details concerning relative physical positioning. Where are your opponent's feet relative to yours? Where are his or her arms? How is your balance and that of your opponent apportioned between left and right feet? If the blades are in a bind (touching), exactly how much pressure is there between them and in which direction? Guy Windsor has on his "Swordschool" site some (long) seminar videos that go into just this latter point; he goes so far as to suggest that medieval masters (Fiore dei Liberi specifically) distinguished between "Largo" and "Stretto" moves that could be (wisely) attempted only depending precisely upon the exact degree of force exerted in a bind. In short, the possible moves available to a swordsman will depend at least as much upon her opponent's actions as upon her own.

I didn't have time to comment on this when I first read it.

I feel this is a problem with games like 3E that tries to generalize maneuvers. Once you know how to trip, you can always trip-there is no need to wait for an opening, and the opponent has no way to look out for and guard against your recurring trip. Which can quickly get boring and repetitive. I'm going to list some possible ways to combat this situation:

Feng Shui had a "boring and repetitive" rule. If the GM judges and action repetitive, he can assign an arbitrary penalty. Feng Shui is supposed to be cinematic; your move was not cinematic enough and got cut. I'd append that the player should be given the option to try something else instead with his action, but that's me. This rules is simple and works in any game but not with any group.

4E tried to combat this with dailies and encounter powers; you can trip, but enemies will only fall for this once per fight. I could bye this explanation, but many (including most of my players) could not - it lacks verisimilitude.

There was a little-known combat card game called Highlander. A card game can solve this in that you have a random hand of possible maneuvers. If you read these as openings in your opponent's defenses, it is a solution to the problem. You can only trip when you have a trip card in your hand. (Highlander did not have a trip IIR, but you get the drift).

Fighting Fantasy was a book dueling game - each combatant was represented by a book with a position/stance on each page and a maneuver card with color-coded maneuvers. It was like advanced rock-paper-scissors. Certain positions were restricted; "Do only green or yellow next turn". Certain of these restrictions made you vulnerable to certain attacks - like trip. You could try to set the opponent up this way. Also, if one player consistently did trip attacks, the other would get wise to the tactic and use moves that were not vulnerable to trips. While interesting, this example is way too complex for rpgs in which you fight a lot, especially open melee (as opposed to duels).

 

[Starfox]

Being rid of it is an aspiration for purist-for-system sim play, at least as I have engaged in and encountered such play.

[...]

It is hard to exaggerate the number of hours and amount of intellectual effort that I, as a RM GM, put into trying to construct an initiative system and action economy that would allows for initiative (ie reflexes) to matter - and hence have an action declaration and initiative phase - but would also permit continuous action without peasant-railgun-type problems.

I fully respect your efforts in this direction, and I've had the same problems myself.

I fear that trying to rule away such problems is a method with sharply diminishing returns for reasons that have to do with Gödel's Theorem. At some point, an open-ended system WILL break down. The question is only when, and how much cumbersomeness of rules you accept in trying to remove it from the rules.

A simulation is always made to be accurate under certain parameters, a certain level of detail. It is much like trying to map our global Earth on a flat piece of paper - you can either preserve angles, or you can preserve scale, but you cannot preserve both. This is not a problem as long as the map covers only a small area, but as you widen the map the errors accumulate. With a projection which preserves angles, you can make white cut-outs on a world map to make the area depiction more realistic. This makes the map harder to read, and reduces the scale distortion problem, but does not eliminate it.

 

[pemerton]

4E tried to combat this with dailies and encounter powers; you can trip, but enemies will only fall for this once per fight. I could bye this explanation, but many (including most of my players) could not - it lacks verisimilitude.

There was a little-known combat card game called Highlander. A card game can solve this in that you have a random hand of possible maneuvers. If you read these as openings in your opponent's defenses, it is a solution to the problem.

13th Age uses random allocation rather than player choice. (But not cards: odd or even attack roll, sometimes with minimum rolls required as well.)

Is the verisimilitude problem for 4e one of outcome - it's unverisimilitudinous that an opponent can be tripped only a limited number of times per fight (not technically true, but putting p 42 to one side for the sake of discussion)? Or one of process - it's unverisimilitudinous that my decision, as a player, determines whether or not my opponent has left an opening?