Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7327460" data-attributes="member: 20564">Some mechanical aspects of the game can be very short or quite involved.  By mechanical I mean actually interacting with the system, such as rolling in D&D, not the entire scene.This is a generic RPG question, more for thought about design then to talk  about any specific system.  It's possible to read this question as "what  should a DM do", but I'm not aiming there; I'm looking at "what should the  system offer".Let me give a few examples of mechanical time:1. Trying to convince the duchess about the threat to her duchy from her vassal may take 45 minutes by wall clock time, but only involve six skill checks, so it's got a very low mechanics time to real time ratio.2. With a combat in a D&D-like will often have a good amount of the time involved the mechanics - how far can you move, are you triggering attacks of opportunity, did you hit, did you save, applying conditions, removing hit points.  This could be a long scene by the clock, and one with a high mechanics to total time ratio.3. On the other hand, selling a load of art objects might also have a high mechanics to wall time ratio - but it's just one roll by a character to see how well they were at finding buyers and negotiating because the players may not find it interesting to spend wall time on it.So, I've been tossing around thoughts about designing around the idea of short vs. extended mechanical aspects (#3 vs. #2) based around ... well, that's where my question comes in.Originally I was thinking risk.  Working out an escalation level.The lowest level would be no rolls at all.  Normal characters buying mundane equipment they can afford.  Do it by the book.A minimal level would be minimal risk or reward - selling off goblin swords or other treasure that's not a big deal of wealth relative to the PCs (which could be 1000s of gold of gems at higher levels, as long as it's still "not a big deal"), getting into an arm wrestling/archery/whatever contest, high level characters vs. wolves.  This would be resolved by a single roll.Above that might be meaningful, and be a few rolls.  A bar brawl, finding a buyer for a magic item, convincing the captured guard to tell you layout of the hobgoblin encampment.  (Again, it's not based on "how hard" - the last might be quite difficult.)Above that would be dangerous/of large impact but not life threatening.  A fight where people can get really hurt, but will likely end in surrender/capture.  Convincing a sheriff you aren't bandits and he shouldn't jail you.  Robbing the tax men.  Disarming the blade trap on a chest.  Selling the artifact you found.Finally we get to lethal.  Talking the baron out of hanging you.  A fight to the death.  Disarming the poison gas room trap.(Actually, there could be another level where your life is unimportant compared to succeeding.  And such martyrs are born.)This looked good, except some of these I felt the *players* may want to spend more time on.  Having a bar brawl with a bunch of known NPCs in their home base town might be right up their alley, even if it's not a huge deal in the big picture, nor advance in the plot.The flip side is that I think many RPGs make everyone mechanically competent and interesting in combat because it will take a long time mechanically and they want to make sure everyone is entertained and has parts to play.  But if there's a system that focuses on interest instead, you don't need everyone to be good in combat /if/ the players aren't interested in that aspect.  An example of this might be a thieves guild campaign where the vast majority of combats are dealt with quickly with some more abstracted rolls, perhaps only from the few characters with combat focus (I'm thinking Elliot from Leverage) while everyone gets involved and spends time on other aspects of the heists.  Or most scenes are just a few rolls from the impacted characters (again, thinking Leverage).So, assuming that had different levels of mechanical resolution that could reflect non-system aspects (how well the player gave the speech, tactics during combat, that you knew the password even though the guard didn't recognize you, that you had scouted the area and planned a stealthy entrance), as a player and a DM would you prefer:More important/risky situations involve more system involvement.VS.More interesting to players involve more system involvement.The majority of cases importance and player interest those go hand-in-hand, so this is a question about the times they don't.EDIT:  (Also putting this in a comment so the previous readers see it.)Discussing with [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] made me realize I never said why this difference was so important.  When I originally was playing with this idea in design, I was picturing a mechanical risk/reward magnitude rating, which is at partially under player control in that the characters can often escalate or attempt to de-escalate.  So that the complexity given also put boundaries on the magnitude of the outcome (either way).  So a bar-brawl, archery contest, or selling low-worth (compared to you) items might be low magnitude - just a single or few rolls, but no big deal who wins - you got 20% more or less than expected, or you have bragging rights and a trophy.This also means that I can run "easy" combats quickly (mechanically) and not take up a lot of session time, without inflicting more risk on the characters by "stealing" an opportunity for them to play out every move.But if it should be interest based (which seems to be where more people are talking about, and in line with my own rethinking that spawned this thread), then I don't have that nice "this will be minor" through "this will be (socially/physically/etc.) lethal"It also allows games that each table can determine what's the points  they want to make the "everyone participates" - many editions of D&D  have that locked in as combat, any many other pillars have diminishing  returns for more characters able to do a task. You don't need five  trackers often.  But a game with a different focus could have combat  done by "the one character good at it" while everyone is good at other  facets and wants to be able to use the system to focus on it.</blockquote>

Verification