The Game for Non-Gamers: (Forked from: Sexism in D&D)

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Considering mechanical approaches that still describe what is going on in the game narrative:
That shouldn't be that hard. It actually happens in combat a lot.
1) The combat grid. It tells us where everyone is. So if you want to beat someone with your pointy stick, you have to go over there.
2) Descriptors. If you cast a fireball, you deal fire damage. The descriptors imply what's going on.

I am not necessarily saying that you'll find 1:1 equivalents for each. But I think the "descriptor" idea might work.

I posted a fake "The Sims" inspired social system in a previous post.
One skill used was "Chatting" and I added "(Weather)" as descriptor.
The implication of the game rules was:
- "Chatting" is a skill that you use to make conversation. It's just go get to know each other, spend some time, being friendly, without a particular goal (unlike for example talking about which restaurant to go to or whether the king lends you his 30 soldiers against the orc raiders).
- "Weather" was a descriptor describing the topic of the talk.

In this scenario, the NPC wasn't really interested into chatter (especially about something as shallow as weather), but since the PC was pretty good at chatting, he still listened and wasn't annoyed or disappointed.

Whether "Chat" needs o be a skill in 5E D&D or (weather) is actually a good descriptor for anything (I think in The Sims it works fine.), I can see a system working with such concepts. An NPC might have an ability like "conversation Resistance: Weather -2" or "Conversation Vulnerability: "Politics": +2 if used to enrage"

In the context of a more "reaonsable" game scenario, you might not want a laundry lists of such stuff on an NPC, and keep it focused on what makes sense for the encounter at hand.

Different approaches on how to deal with the courting rival might describe this encounter.
Putting hand on shoulder: "Intimidate (Physical)"
Exposing the fact that the guy is married: "Intimidate (Social)"
Maybe the character has a bonus on Intimidate (Physical) thanks to his high strength. Maybe the target has a weakness to "Intimidate (Social)" in courtship situations (Vulnerability 5 against intimidation (social) since he's married.)

Maybe there woulld not just be Monster Manual, but also a "Social Manual" where the different social archetypes are described.

The real questions are:
1) How complex do you want it to make? Should there really be a second subsystem as complex as combat?
2) Does this really capture the target audience? What if non-gamers are non-gamers because they don't like gaming? It's not just about fighting in combat, it's about using any rule system to resolve a conflict?

 

[xechnao]

Oh, and for the record,



The players' power comes from selecting skills, abilities, classes, resources, items, etc. that affect the dice rolls.

Just as it does in combat.

I see your point regarding DM fiat of your other post above. But perhaps rules should not be so analytical but rather more synthetic. The more analytic rules the more you will cater to the hardcore base and the more you will go away from attracting new gamers. Fate, as described by resistor, seems to have a better philosophy to build solid mechanics upon that will solve this universal conflict problem.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The real questions are:
1) How complex do you want it to make? Should there really be a second subsystem as complex as combat?
2) Does this really capture the target audience? What if non-gamers are non-gamers because they don't like gaming? It's not just about fighting in combat, it's about using any rule system to resolve a conflict?

I'm of the belief that combat needs to be less complex as it is. If the player can make some choices and reflect their archetype in the conflict, that's probably enough.

As for capturing the audience: this makes D&D a broader game. It's not going to capture the segment of the population that doesn't want to sit around in a room for four hours on the weekend, but D&D might need more radical changes to get them. It probably wouldn't look as much like D&D, and it might not be able to give us our robust four hour play sessions, if it changed like that.

Also, I'm not sure there'd be a lot of demand for a D&D that looked like that anyway.

In my mind, capturing the broader segment is more about making D&D accessible to those who care to access it. There is a large portion of the world that will never want to play D&D, and that has to be OK. To own a niche and to grow and define it should be enough. With lowered barriers to entry, anyone who likes heroic fantasy stories should be able to plug into a D&D game and have fun with it.

That also means smaller, cheaper books, easier, speedier rules, and swearing off the need for add-ons like minis and cards and such (unless it's going to be ONLY about minis and cards and such).

 

[xechnao]

That also means smaller, cheaper books, easier, speedier rules, and swearing off the need for add-ons like minis and cards and such (unless it's going to be ONLY about minis and cards and such).

The problem is that I do not see Wotc doing this as long as the hardcore base is big enough to support the business strategy they have planned.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'm of the belief that combat needs to be less complex as it is. If the player can make some choices and reflect their archetype in the conflict, that's probably enough.

As for capturing the audience: this makes D&D a broader game. It's not going to capture the segment of the population that doesn't want to sit around in a room for four hours on the weekend, but D&D might need more radical changes to get them. It probably wouldn't look as much like D&D, and it might not be able to give us our robust four hour play sessions, if it changed like that.

Also, I'm not sure there'd be a lot of demand for a D&D that looked like that anyway.

In my mind, capturing the broader segment is more about making D&D accessible to those who care to access it. There is a large portion of the world that will never want to play D&D, and that has to be OK. To own a niche and to grow and define it should be enough. With lowered barriers to entry, anyone who likes heroic fantasy stories should be able to plug into a D&D game and have fun with it.

That also means smaller, cheaper books, easier, speedier rules, and swearing off the need for add-ons like minis and cards and such (unless it's going to be ONLY about minis and cards and such).

What if there is a large player base that actually likes the game to be this way?

Because seriously, I think I do. I am not a large player base, of course. (I am more average smallish guy.) A game might just not be able to cover everyones need.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

In conflict resolution, you change the question from "Does my character succeed at X?" to "Do I have the narrative authority to succeed at X?"

Then, the only times when Olaf fails are when someone (possibly even his player) is exerting narrative control to make him fail, which by definition means that it's a narratively significant failure.

That does make sense. Having played games with no rules and just storytelling this is really the only area you might need adjudication.

The one thing I'd have to say is that at times not knowing if you can succeed is fun. Some people welcome the challenge of having to improvise a response on the spot, or maybe hope for a failure to create a slapstick moment (or maybe that's just me).

 

[resistor]

The one thing I'd have to say is that at times not knowing if you can succeed is fun. Some people welcome the challenge of having to improvise a response on the spot, or maybe hope for a failure to create a slapstick moment (or maybe that's just me).

Well, the question was not how to design a game to draw in gamers (say, from other forms of gaming), but how to draw in non-gamers. IMO, making it more game-like through randomization can work decently for that, but that's a separate question.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm pretty sure that randomization in RPG mechanics is so far off the radar that its not even an issue.

After all, most boardgames and card games have randomization in them, and some even celebrate it. One could even argue that most RPGs are less random than the typical boardgame.

And the same could be said of card games- RPG players control more of their destiny than in a typical game of Poker, Blackjack, Go Fish, Mille Bornes or almost any other kind of card game bar CCGs.

I (unsurprisingly) disagree with your disagreement.

I think the problem is that non-gamers see boardgames, cardgames, etc. as direct competitors for their time to RPGs as long as RPGs resemble those games too strongly. If they want to play a number-y game with their friends, they'll play Monopoly. Or poker. They already know how to play them, and their vastly simpler.

I'm not sure how your disagreement meshes at all with my disagreement. How is what you're saying a counter to my assertion that the randomness of RPGs is a non-issue?

I play poker with guys who, while they aren't pros, do tend to make enough money in the casinos that their trips are either discounted, free, or paid for by their winnings.

Poker, I've learned, isn't simple- it has hundreds if not thousands of variants. The hands you know (pairs, 3 of a kind, 2 pairs, flush, straight, full house, straight flush, 4 of a kind and more...) are not equally valued in each variant either. And it has a lot of randomness- a regular game has 52 variables in the form of cards, plus the variables of how players play their hands- bluffs, tells, betting style & the like. If there are wild cards, the number of variants increases greatly. And there are probably at least as many "How to play Poker" books as there are for any given RPG system.

While I feel at home with almost any RPG, the randomness of poker leaves me comfy with only a few variants: 5 or 7 card stud or draw, Omaha, and Texas Hold'em.

Blackjack, at the casino level, is not simple either. Consistently properly calculating the odds on whether you should hit on 17 with the Dealer showing a 9 (European rules, with a face-down hole card) in the 4th hand at a table using an 8-deck shoe is beyond most folk.

Despite the complexity and randomness of those games, people are drawn to them in droves because the games have something else to offer. (Usually money.)

So, I reiterate, its not the randomness that keeps people away. Nor, seemingly, is it the complexity.

 

[resistor]

So, I reiterate, its not the randomness that keeps people away. Nor, seemingly, is it the complexity.

My point is that the random elements in RPGs play to the game part of it. As in, the part that is analogous to the word game in boardgame, card game, and video game.

By playing up the game aspect, you make non-gamers ask: "Why should I play this particular game as opposed to others that are more familiar and/or popular?" You're setting yourself up to compete against something that you can't hope to win against.

However, if you play up the narrative aspects of RPGs, there's really not many other activities that offer that. The market's wide open for leisure activities that allow narrative/creative outlets, at least in comparison to the market for traditional games.

 

[Bumbles]

4. The reason why I'd personally want it to be impossible to proceed in this hypothetical game is so that there's no chance to backslide, to play on through a game without considering the in-game situation.

Now that's something of a reason. However, I think the problem with your solution is that it puts a chain on the players rather than encourages them. I prefer carrots rather than sticks myself.

If the player had simply said, "I want to infuse the rope with magic; I roll my Arcana" instead of "I gather some snakes then sacrifice them, taking their spirit energy and putting it into the rope; I'll roll my Arcana to see if it works", we wouldn't have ended up in the same place.

Unless you thought of it anyway. Which you might have, depending on the result of the roll and your own imagination. (I know failing in making a magic item resulting in a cursed one always occurs to me.) Besides, nobody is denying the viability of an interactive process, in terms of producing interesting results. What I find troublesome is the requirements you've espoused.

They seem excessively constraining to me.