Raven Crowking
First Post
When I play a game, I play it not only to “have fun”, but also to be challenged. This is true whether the game is a sport, a board game like Monopoly or Chess, a video game, or a role-playing game. If the game is not challenging, it isn’t worthwhile.
Of course, one might easily say that “being challenging” is then a component of “being fun” – and that person would be right. My objection to the statement “The purpose of games is to be fun” isn’t that it is incorrect per se, but that it is inadequate. Ultimately, unless “being fun” is somehow described in more concrete terms, the statement has no meaning. Worse, because of the implication that the game must be fun at all times to all participants, or else fail to live up to its purpose, valuable parts of the game experience may be lost.
For example, I don’t particularly enjoy striking out in baseball. Nor is it particularly fun to lose one’s queen in chess. However, the possibility of both are an important overall part of the satisfaction of both games. Hitting the ball is only meaningful within the context of not hitting the ball. Moving the queen is only meaningful within the context of the game, where doing so has both potential benefits and dangers.
Likewise, within the context of a role-playing game, the satisfaction of interacting with a coherent world is a large part of the reason that I play. Should the GM be running a world that doesn’t seem coherent – one that scales with my character, or one where the poison jumps from the wine to the fish based on which one my character tastes (either to protect my character or to punish him) – a great deal of the satisfaction of the game is lost. If it seems as though the world exists primarily for the game, as opposed to existing for the satisfaction of the GM in creating a coherent world, the word suffers, and the game suffers with it.
The same is true for games where I am expected to follow a pre-determined plot. While interacting with the fictional constructs of the fictional world can be fun (and is more fun the more thought the GM puts into the creation and motivation of those constructs), having limited improv abilities within the GM’s prewritten play is decidedly unsatisfying. To me, at least.
This is not to say that the GM need always be nothing more than an impartial referee. The GM creates and populates the world, and so long as the internal coherence of the world is given primacy, the GM may set up plots, hooks, and adventure sites to his heart’s content. Even within the most sandboxy of sandbox campaigns, the GM may create scripted encounters* that, when engaged by the PCs, allow the GM to set up scenes from his imagination – so long as he doesn’t also imagine that they will play through or end completely by the script.
I find that treasure parcels are “unfun” because they damage the coherence of the setting. The idea that, should the party miss some treasure in Encounter A, it will teleport to Encounters B, C, and D until they find it, is particularly “unfun”. To those who say, “But what does it matter if the players don’t know?” I respond “(1) The GM knows, and (2) unless that GM’s players are a lot less canny than mine, either they know already, or they will know soon.”
I find fudging die rolls “unfun” for the same reasons. It has always intrigued me that some GMs believe that fudging is OK when the GM does it, but not when the players do. It is somewhat telling that, in the 1e DMG, Gary Gygax also said that fudging the results of a die roll was OK under certain circumstances. I, for one, have never seen a case where fudging a die roll – by GM or player – did not ultimately work to the detriment of the game and the satisfaction of the participants thereof.
I believe it telling that those who claim to the contrary do not do their fudging in the open. If they believe that knowledge of fudging harms the game, do they really believe that the other people at the table don’t eventually catch on?
2nd Edition had the first official “Don’t let the PCs die; fudge!” advice, and following it led directly to a game of “Lets see how much plot protection we have!” In this game, players have their characters do increasingly foolish things, to determine just when the GM will stop fudging and will let the consequences of their actions actually take place. In those games of WotC that I witnessed where fudging occurred, the same game has sooner or later been played by those at the table. IMHO and IME, players want their choices to have meaning, and naturally want to know just how much protection from their choices is happening, almost as soon as they discover fudging is occurring at all.
It is my opinion that, in order to have a really great game, you must also have to include the possibility of real defeat. This is not only in terms of PC victory or defeat, but in all aspects of the game.
For example, the GM can only craft really great encounters if he has the ability to experiment with encounter design, and any experimentation means that some encounters will fall flat. The longer it takes to run an encounter, the more time during a game session that encounter will consume. The greater percentage of a game session an encounter consumes, the more important that it be at least adequate. Therefore, so long as encounters in a game move relatively slowly, the GM is under pressure to avoid experimentation and stick with the tried and true. This results in a series of adequate, but not stellar, encounters in most games, for fear that a lousy encounter will ruin the whole session.
A faster-paced game has more encounters per session, and therefore any given poorly-designed encounter has less “weight”, and the GM is given more leeway to experiment.
One might say that a stellar encounter in a faster paced game is given less “weight”, too. I grant that this is true, but argue better to have a few stellar encounters with less “weight” than no stellar encounters at all.
Fudging becomes a tool in WotC-D&D simply because any attempt at a stellar encounter in those systems balances on too fine an edge. This is, IMHO, primarily an artifact of the combat engine. IMHO, this makes the game both tedious and meaningless, which is the antithesis of “fun”. There are several good suggestions for speeding up the combat engine in various EN World threads, both for 3e and 4e. In the case of each game, though, speeding combat only solves half the problem. IMHO, 3e enables player choice at the cost of encounter design efficiency, whereas 4e enables encounter design efficiency at the cost of player choice. There has to be a happy middle between those two extremes (5e? C&C? RCFG?). It seems to me that Pathfinder is following the course of 3e. I suspect that 5e, when it comes, will be a better game than 3e or 4e, WotC having learned from the problems and benefits of those games.
Of course, everyone is different (to varying degrees), and YMMV on the above. These are just some thoughts I’ve been having about game design, based on various EN World threads in which I am participating.
Best of all possible gaming!
RC
* Using the terms set up on another thread for Scripted and Unscripted Encounters.
Of course, one might easily say that “being challenging” is then a component of “being fun” – and that person would be right. My objection to the statement “The purpose of games is to be fun” isn’t that it is incorrect per se, but that it is inadequate. Ultimately, unless “being fun” is somehow described in more concrete terms, the statement has no meaning. Worse, because of the implication that the game must be fun at all times to all participants, or else fail to live up to its purpose, valuable parts of the game experience may be lost.
For example, I don’t particularly enjoy striking out in baseball. Nor is it particularly fun to lose one’s queen in chess. However, the possibility of both are an important overall part of the satisfaction of both games. Hitting the ball is only meaningful within the context of not hitting the ball. Moving the queen is only meaningful within the context of the game, where doing so has both potential benefits and dangers.
Likewise, within the context of a role-playing game, the satisfaction of interacting with a coherent world is a large part of the reason that I play. Should the GM be running a world that doesn’t seem coherent – one that scales with my character, or one where the poison jumps from the wine to the fish based on which one my character tastes (either to protect my character or to punish him) – a great deal of the satisfaction of the game is lost. If it seems as though the world exists primarily for the game, as opposed to existing for the satisfaction of the GM in creating a coherent world, the word suffers, and the game suffers with it.
The same is true for games where I am expected to follow a pre-determined plot. While interacting with the fictional constructs of the fictional world can be fun (and is more fun the more thought the GM puts into the creation and motivation of those constructs), having limited improv abilities within the GM’s prewritten play is decidedly unsatisfying. To me, at least.
This is not to say that the GM need always be nothing more than an impartial referee. The GM creates and populates the world, and so long as the internal coherence of the world is given primacy, the GM may set up plots, hooks, and adventure sites to his heart’s content. Even within the most sandboxy of sandbox campaigns, the GM may create scripted encounters* that, when engaged by the PCs, allow the GM to set up scenes from his imagination – so long as he doesn’t also imagine that they will play through or end completely by the script.
I find that treasure parcels are “unfun” because they damage the coherence of the setting. The idea that, should the party miss some treasure in Encounter A, it will teleport to Encounters B, C, and D until they find it, is particularly “unfun”. To those who say, “But what does it matter if the players don’t know?” I respond “(1) The GM knows, and (2) unless that GM’s players are a lot less canny than mine, either they know already, or they will know soon.”
I find fudging die rolls “unfun” for the same reasons. It has always intrigued me that some GMs believe that fudging is OK when the GM does it, but not when the players do. It is somewhat telling that, in the 1e DMG, Gary Gygax also said that fudging the results of a die roll was OK under certain circumstances. I, for one, have never seen a case where fudging a die roll – by GM or player – did not ultimately work to the detriment of the game and the satisfaction of the participants thereof.
I believe it telling that those who claim to the contrary do not do their fudging in the open. If they believe that knowledge of fudging harms the game, do they really believe that the other people at the table don’t eventually catch on?
2nd Edition had the first official “Don’t let the PCs die; fudge!” advice, and following it led directly to a game of “Lets see how much plot protection we have!” In this game, players have their characters do increasingly foolish things, to determine just when the GM will stop fudging and will let the consequences of their actions actually take place. In those games of WotC that I witnessed where fudging occurred, the same game has sooner or later been played by those at the table. IMHO and IME, players want their choices to have meaning, and naturally want to know just how much protection from their choices is happening, almost as soon as they discover fudging is occurring at all.
It is my opinion that, in order to have a really great game, you must also have to include the possibility of real defeat. This is not only in terms of PC victory or defeat, but in all aspects of the game.
For example, the GM can only craft really great encounters if he has the ability to experiment with encounter design, and any experimentation means that some encounters will fall flat. The longer it takes to run an encounter, the more time during a game session that encounter will consume. The greater percentage of a game session an encounter consumes, the more important that it be at least adequate. Therefore, so long as encounters in a game move relatively slowly, the GM is under pressure to avoid experimentation and stick with the tried and true. This results in a series of adequate, but not stellar, encounters in most games, for fear that a lousy encounter will ruin the whole session.
A faster-paced game has more encounters per session, and therefore any given poorly-designed encounter has less “weight”, and the GM is given more leeway to experiment.
One might say that a stellar encounter in a faster paced game is given less “weight”, too. I grant that this is true, but argue better to have a few stellar encounters with less “weight” than no stellar encounters at all.
Fudging becomes a tool in WotC-D&D simply because any attempt at a stellar encounter in those systems balances on too fine an edge. This is, IMHO, primarily an artifact of the combat engine. IMHO, this makes the game both tedious and meaningless, which is the antithesis of “fun”. There are several good suggestions for speeding up the combat engine in various EN World threads, both for 3e and 4e. In the case of each game, though, speeding combat only solves half the problem. IMHO, 3e enables player choice at the cost of encounter design efficiency, whereas 4e enables encounter design efficiency at the cost of player choice. There has to be a happy middle between those two extremes (5e? C&C? RCFG?). It seems to me that Pathfinder is following the course of 3e. I suspect that 5e, when it comes, will be a better game than 3e or 4e, WotC having learned from the problems and benefits of those games.
Of course, everyone is different (to varying degrees), and YMMV on the above. These are just some thoughts I’ve been having about game design, based on various EN World threads in which I am participating.
Best of all possible gaming!
RC
* Using the terms set up on another thread for Scripted and Unscripted Encounters.
