Tension, Threats And Progression In RPGs

Back when Dungeons & Dragons was new, the designers and most of the players were wargamers. Typical adventures involved threats to the player character's lives and possessions - their money and magic items. As the hobby has grown, more of the participants are not wargamers, and many campaigns must find other ways to create tension, or abandon tension entirely in favor of linear stories or other means. People refuse to have their painstakingly-crafted characters killed.

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". . . a good campaign must have an element of danger and real risk or else it is meaningless - death walks at the shoulder of all adventurers, and that is the true appeal of the game." Gary Gygax

Add to this players who have learned from video games that games never really threaten you – in video games there is always the save game or the respawn, and if your avatar is killed you just come back to life and go pick up your stuff and continue on as though it never happened. These players may not like a game in which their virtual lives can truly be threatened. Unsurprisingly, there's a large segment of video gamers who blame the game if the player fails.

The question arose recently on a LinkedIn group of what GM's can do to create tension other than threaten the physical well-being of characters.

Threatening not only the possessions of characters but also their status or well-being in their community may work. While this may be more acceptable to some than having their avatars' lives threatened, it still runs into the very strong loss aversion that is common in the 21^st century. (Loss aversion: people's strong tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains.)

The difference might be that if (say) there's a status track that reflects how much the community trusts the player character, even if the status goes down it's easy to see how it can go back up. It's more generic than, say, destroying the player's favorite magic wand - that wand is never going to come back. The game/campaign also must make whatever statuses are being tracked just as important as magic items and money.

But this still involves the threat that something will be taken away from a player's character, and therefore from the player.

The key to the popularity of Eurostyle tabletop games is that players are on a clear progression from less to more - as contrasted with games where players progress from more to less (as in Chess and all its variants, Checkers - and a great many wargames). Players never lose anything, never have anything destroyed or stolen, hence loss aversion is not involved.

The contrast can become not who keeps or does not keep something, but who progresses faster and who slower, even as everyone is assured of progression. This is the way computer RPGs work, again because your character cannot fail in their tasks, and even death rarely slows them down.

RPGs already have progression in the increasing capability of the character, whether that comes from leveling up, or more skills and feats, or more magic items and money, or something else such as prestige and ownership of land. But the early RPGs all threatened loss of something. How do we structure an RPG, or for that matter any adventure, so that players' loss aversion is not activated?

I don't have a lot of ideas here because, to me, games should always involve some sort of conflict (I strongly dislike Eurogames, which are usually parallel competition puzzles, not games). Conflict implies the possibility of loss. Without the possibility of loss or failure, what tension can you put into a game?

There's a spectrum of what most of us call "games" from a game as a tense challenge at one extreme to a game as an "experience," often a story, at the other extreme. Traditionally, stories required tension, required conflict as a major element, but nowadays stories without that tension have become more popular (also think of "walking simulator" video "games"). Thanks to the visual element that has become more and more important as time passes, video games are better able to provide an experience, although tabletop video games can come close when players have sufficient imagination. (Imagination is a disappearing commodity, but that's a topic for another time.)

I have always been content with threatening what the players possess, whether that's the physical well-being of their characters or their possessions (especially magic items and money). But I came to RPGs from wargaming, just as Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson did.

Perhaps readers can suggest how to structure RPGs without loss aversion, yet without turning the "game" into a story told by the GM that the players merely follow.

​contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

The main source of tension in the game I GM is what can loosely be called "story losses": if this thing you are trying to do doesn't work, then this other thing that you don't want to occur, will occur.

I totally agree. "Story losses" really captures the general idea. When we watch a movie we ordinarily expect that the heroes will triumph in the end, the question is how. RPGs let us feel the tension as we're going along and participate in the story. The tension is primarily from heightening drama. In this sense things like "I want signature aspects of my character protected" makes way more sense when an RPG is thought of as a story, not as a game. In a Eurogame there's usually no direct "versus" aspect of the game, but that doesn't mean there's no loss. The loss is there in the form of opportunity cost. There have always been other games without a versus: The venerable Clue is a good example. The players can't affect each other directly at all, but only one gets to solve the crime.

I'm not sure that the term "loss aversion" as used by behavioral economics is really being understood in the original post, although I do think loss aversion does play a role in an RPG (e.g., how much people dislike XP losses compared to foregone opportunities). Loss aversion refers to the fact that people tend to be inconsistent in their preferences for losses depending on framing. I have no problem with the author coining a new term but I think calling on a term to mean something else vague just sheds confusion.

In this sense RPGs as many people play them are more like an interactive, collaborative performance like jazz or dance than they are like sport. In a jazz combo (I've played in them) different players have roles: The drummer and bassist interact a certain way and usually play throughout the piece, the horn players tend to take turns more, etc. The general goal of a combo of equals (as opposed to a leader with a few sidemen) is that no one player should consistently outshine the others. Each gets their chance in the spotlight to play a solo and to sound good. The combo interacts to create a sum greater than the parts, which sets up the ability for each player to shine. Often there isn't even an audience for jazz playing if you're talking about a studio jam. The audience is really the players themselves. A "versus" player is usually someone you don't want around.

 

[Koloth]

Maybe the groups I played with were the outliers but early D&D character creation was often as simple as generate 6 numbers using method outlined by the DM, pick a race, class, buy basic armor and such, and a pregenerated Adventurers Pack that had all of the basic gear and start playing.

Now most DM's want some kind of back story, you have feats, skills, traits, advantages, disadvantages on top of stats, class/profession, and race. After all of that you have a bit more attachment to the character.

Plus old style D&D frequently threatened permanent loss of equipment(rust monsters, jellies, oozes, etc), permanent level drains from many types of undead, and a Permanency spell cost a point of Constitution.

Newer games usually have easy ways to recover lost stats, levels and equipment.

I have often felt that the 'Adventure Path' format removes a lot of risk of failure from the game as the path assumes the PCs will succeed. Plus encounters are often softer compared to older games.

 

[MarkB]

I have often felt that the 'Adventure Path' format removes a lot of risk of failure from the game as the path assumes the PCs will succeed. Plus encounters are often softer compared to older games.

Depends on the path. I still remember my players' PCs being absolutely ripped apart by both Red Hand of Doom and Savage Tide when I ran them with the encounters as written. So many new characters.

 

[GMMichael]

Plus old style D&D frequently threatened permanent loss of equipment(rust monsters, jellies, oozes, etc), permanent level drains from many types of undead, and a Permanency spell cost a point of Constitution.

Ah, the good old days.

I'm with Jay - there are different meanings of "loss aversion" at play here. That being said, if your GM is a wargamer in sheep's clothing, you'd best not spend a lot of time on your backstory. If your GM in an entitled millenial, your character can safely invest time in its own Facebook and Instagram accounts.

To be fair, I'd probably prefer the millenial GM's story better: risk of death is fun, but shouldn't be the name of the game.

 

[pemerton]

I totally agree. "Story losses" really captures the general idea.

I think that to really look at this one has to look at goals. What is a player (or more specifically their character's) goals. In early D&D it seems the goal was "Survive and amass more money and magic items". So at that point, taking any of those creates loss. Take the superhero genre - those have very different goals, in general terms things like "Protect the city" or "save the people from the madman". With such goals then the tension is created by threatening those goals.

In classic D&D, with its goal of amassing treasure and gaining items, doing those things directly improves the player's position. Magic items give you new resources as a player (eg spells to use) or buff existing aspects of your position (eg bonus to hit). Gold lets you buy new equipment which directly improves your position in the game. (Much like "points" used to build an army in a wargame.)

Earning gold also indirectly improves your position, by yielding XP which let you gain levels.

I think one thing that motivates ideas like those in the OP is this: it's not obvious how "story losses" (or story wins) directly or indirectly affect the player's position. (It's clear that they affect the character's position - eg in the superhero example, all the NPCs now think the character is a villain.) And if those losses actually don't affect the player's position - eg the GM will manipulate other aspects of the fiction (whether overtly or behind-the-scenes) to make sure everything turns out OK - then it's not entirely clear how the player is actually playing a game.

So while I don't really agree with the OP, I think it touches on a point that is fairly fundamental to the design and play of RPGs.

 

[Hussar]

I think that to really look at this one has to look at goals. What is a player (or more specifically their character's) goals. In early D&D it seems the goal was "Survive and amass more money and magic items". So at that point, taking any of those creates loss. Take the superhero genre - those have very different goals, in general terms things like "Protect the city" or "save the people from the madman". With such goals then the tension is created by threatening those goals. Making it very difficult for the heroes to save the city would create the same kind of tension.

This is a really excellent point. Someone mentioned Savage Tides AP and it has an excellent scenario - defend Farshore. You amass victory points by doing certain tasks - finding and making allies, building defenses, doing this or that all within a specific time limit - that determine the end result of the scenario. You could plausibly do lots of killing and still wind up with a fairly Pyrrhic victory if you weren't careful.

So, yes, it's entirely possible for the PC's to be constantly "winning" and still lose.

In classic D&D, with its goal of amassing treasure and gaining items, doing those things directly improves the player's position. Magic items give you new resources as a player (eg spells to use) or buff existing aspects of your position (eg bonus to hit). Gold lets you buy new equipment which directly improves your position in the game. (Much like "points" used to build an army in a wargame.)

Earning gold also indirectly improves your position, by yielding XP which let you gain levels.

I think one thing that motivates ideas like those in the OP is this: it's not obvious how "story losses" (or story wins) directly or indirectly affect the player's position. (It's clear that they affect the character's position - eg in the superhero example, all the NPCs now think the character is a villain.) And if those losses actually don't affect the player's position - eg the GM will manipulate other aspects of the fiction (whether overtly or behind-the-scenes) to make sure everything turns out OK - then it's not entirely clear how the player is actually playing a game.

So while I don't really agree with the OP, I think it touches on a point that is fairly fundamental to the design and play of RPGs.

The problem with this model is that it's ultimately futile. It's a treadmill of kills stuff, take its loot so you can kill bigger stuff and take its loot, round and round. It's a very solid model, to be fair. Tons and tons of games are built on this. But, it does get rather stale after a while. There's a reason we don't see a lot of games following this model anymore. For one, computer games will give you a pretty good experience for this without all the hassle of trying to play a F2F RPG.

And, really, this model, while you still see it from time to time, doesn't really appeal to gamers, apparently, who want a bit more depth to their play than just murderhoboes killing and looting.

While I'm pretty unabashedly gamist in my approach to RPG's, even I'll balk at the idea that we should go back to the idea that the primary win/loss conditions in an RPG should be loot or death. And, really, as soon as you move away from D&D, this gets even more apparent. What's the point of death or kill and loot in my GURPS Mars game based on Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy where the point of the game is to establish a Mars base?

Or, even going back to the good old days, take Star Frontiers. You are Star Law Rangers. Your gear is assigned to you by Star Law. You are, essentialy, Old West sheriffs. If something takes away your laser gun, you just go requisition another laser gun. You aren't really supposed to be putting criminals in the ground (although that does happen a lot). You are supposed to bring them in for justice.

My problem with this article is it seems to presume that RPG=D&D. Sorry, that ship has sailed a LONG time ago. How does Kill and Loot even remotely relate to my Dread game? Or Blades in the Dark?

 

[5ekyu]

I fall into the camp with several others. Story loss stakes come easy for players who get into the character, the world, the NPCs and where the stories and challenges are about more than survival and loot.



Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[Hussar]

I fall into the camp with several others. Story loss stakes come easy for players who get into the character, the world, the NPCs and where the stories and challenges are about more than survival and loot.



Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

I wonder if this isn't the heart of the issue. It's pretty easy to play an RPG as just a tactical exercise wargame where you have your party, you have your objective, and off you go. A lot of early play D&D was this sort of thing. Moldvay Basic, for example, pretty much defines this as how the game is supposed to be played. You have dungeon where the adventure is, you have a town where you go back, resupply and then head back to the adventure.

But, really, haven't we moved a fair ways beyond this? Many campaigns no longer even have a "dungeon" as in some site away from civilization, where you are expected to repeatedly foray into and adventure. Now, play typically starts and maybe even focuses in civilization, where the interaction of the characters with whatever concepts that DM is laying out along with (hopefully) ideas that the players themselves are pushing, makes the campaign.

My players, right now, are pushing to start a thieves guild in the city they have been in the most often. Now, I've kinda screwed the pooch on this, because I didn't actually follow up on what they were pushing for, but, if I was a better DM, the campaign would have spend the next several sessions with them dealing with stuff in the city instead of the quest I had prepped. I'm discovering that I'm really not a very good sandbox DM when the sandbox is too big. Lessons learned for next time.

But, right there, there's a win/loss condition that the players have set for themselves. Do they create this thieves guild and how successful are they at it? The tension is all right there in the basic concept. Put up achievable goals, play through and see what happens. What I think I need to do is come up with a series of scenarios with victory conditions for each scenario, where doing one thing closes off other options, and at the end, that's how successful they are.

However, at no point in what I have in mind is death or loss of equipment really an issue. Granted, if they die, that's a definite loss, but, still, that's not really what that scenario is about.

Hrm... ideas are starting to percolate....

 

[pemerton]

The problem with this model is that it's ultimately futile. It's a treadmill of kills stuff, take its loot so you can kill bigger stuff and take its loot, round and round. It's a very solid model, to be fair. Tons and tons of games are built on this. But, it does get rather stale after a while. There's a reason we don't see a lot of games following this model anymore. For one, computer games will give you a pretty good experience for this without all the hassle of trying to play a F2F RPG.

<snip>

While I'm pretty unabashedly gamist in my approach to RPG's, even I'll balk at the idea that we should go back to the idea that the primary win/loss conditions in an RPG should be loot or death. And, really, as soon as you move away from D&D, this gets even more apparent. What's the point of death or kill and loot in my GURPS Mars game based on Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy where the point of the game is to establish a Mars base?

<snip>

My problem with this article is it seems to presume that RPG=D&D. Sorry, that ship has sailed a LONG time ago. How does Kill and Loot even remotely relate to my Dread game? Or Blades in the Dark?

I agree that there a really stark limits on the classic D&D model, and that it doesn't easily generalise beyond D&D. (Or even to much of D&D post-1980.)

I'm not sure that classic game is entirely replacable by a computer, though - when it comes to engaging with the fiction, a GM is still better able (I think) to adjudicate unexpected moves (like "creative spellcasting") than a computer is. So for those who enjoy classic D&D, face-to-face RPGing has something distinctive to offer.

But for those who want something else - which I'm pretty confident is a majority of contemporary RPGers - what exactly does that look like?

It's pretty easy to play an RPG as just a tactical exercise wargame where you have your party, you have your objective, and off you go. A lot of early play D&D was this sort of thing. Moldvay Basic, for example, pretty much defines this as how the game is supposed to be played. You have dungeon where the adventure is, you have a town where you go back, resupply and then head back to the adventure.

But, really, haven't we moved a fair ways beyond this? Many campaigns no longer even have a "dungeon" as in some site away from civilization, where you are expected to repeatedly foray into and adventure. Now, play typically starts and maybe even focuses in civilization, where the interaction of the characters with whatever concepts that DM is laying out along with (hopefully) ideas that the players themselves are pushing, makes the campaign.

My players, right now, are pushing to start a thieves guild in the city they have been in the most often. Now, I've kinda screwed the pooch on this, because I didn't actually follow up on what they were pushing for, but, if I was a better DM, the campaign would have spend the next several sessions with them dealing with stuff in the city instead of the quest I had prepped.

<snip>

right there, there's a win/loss condition that the players have set for themselves. Do they create this thieves guild and how successful are they at it? The tension is all right there in the basic concept. Put up achievable goals, play through and see what happens. What I think I need to do is come up with a series of scenarios with victory conditions for each scenario, where doing one thing closes off other options, and at the end, that's how successful they are.

Someone mentioned Savage Tides AP and it has an excellent scenario - defend Farshore. You amass victory points by doing certain tasks - finding and making allies, building defenses, doing this or that all within a specific time limit - that determine the end result of the scenario. You could plausibly do lots of killing and still wind up with a fairly Pyrrhic victory if you weren't careful.

So, yes, it's entirely possible for the PC's to be constantly "winning" and still lose.

If we replace the goal of the classic D&D model, which is engage fiction to (i) survive and (ii) find treasure so as to earn XP, with an alternative goal of engage fiction to [do X] to earn VP, then what else has to change? First and foremost, the players need ways to do X.

Most of the debates around railroading, player-driven vs GM-driven games, etc, can be seen through the prism of issues like Who decides what X is? How do the players learn what X is? How do the PCs (and thereby the players) get the resources necessary to do X? Who judges whether the players have succeeded in doing X? If the answers are, the GM decides, the players learn by trying stuff and seeing what happens as the GM narrates outcomes, it's in the gift of the GM and the GM judges, perhaps using some skill checks and free RP as a guide, then we get the makings of the classic railroad. Thus a lot of indie-type RPG design can be seen as reacting against one or more of those answers.

(And if the answer to How do the PCs get the necessary resources is "Kill all these orcs to get the McGuffin", then we've basically got the fighting of the classic game without the degree of player strategy and skill. It's a tactical skirmish game with a veneer of story laid over the top.)

I think the OP is motivated, in part, by a feeling that there's no answer to these questions about doing X which are consistent with RPGs remaining a game. I think that feeling is wrong; but if all I knew of post-classic D&D was the Dragonlance modules, that my opinion might be different!

 

[GMMichael]

Most of the debates around railroading, player-driven vs GM-driven games, etc, can be seen through the prism of issues like Who decides what X is? How do the players learn what X is? How do the PCs (and thereby the players) get the resources necessary to do X? Who judges whether the players have succeeded in doing X? If the answers are, the GM decides, the players learn by trying stuff and seeing what happens as the GM narrates outcomes, it's in the gift of the GM and the GM judges, perhaps using some skill checks and free RP as a guide, then we get the makings of the classic railroad. Thus a lot of indie-type RPG design can be seen as reacting against one or more of those answers.

The Eurostyle answer to these questions, or more accurately, French-Filmmaker answers:

Who decides what X is? Everyone involved.

How do the PCs get the resources to do X? The only resources needed are equal to two bistro bills and four packs of cigarettes. So, not an issue.

Who judges whether the players have succeeded? Success is not required - only change.

And X, by the way, pretty much involves a slight change in your daily routine, someone's hurt feelings, several sexual rendezvous, and more cigarettes. But at least it's not a classic railroad.