What gets me playing Draw Steel and not Pathfinder 2e?

[zakael19]

Well yeah, I would never push a game like PF2 or DS! on people I know don’t want to engage with rules. That sounds like a miserable experience for all concerned.

 

[Thomas Shey]

However, being motivated to learn how to use your character is important so that these very involved combats don't screech to a halt.

"What's a minor action?"
"Can I use a reaction on my turn instead of a regular action?"
"What do I add to my attack roll?"
"What is a cone shaped like?"
"When can I spend a Healing Surge?"
"Can I use that Daily power again?"

These are the types of questions what were still being asked on almost every turn - 6 months into our 4E campaign.
It's not just about being a tactical mastermind, it's also about caring enough about the game to put effort in to learn your character and the rules so you're not delaying everyone else's turns and helping to extend a turn to 45 minutes.

Yeah, that's what I was talking about when saying that its unsurprising that when playing a game with character toggles designed to be used to make tactical choices in combat, if you can't be bothered to learn how to use those toggles, you're unlikely to get a good experience. I mean, to be really blunt, barring decision paralysis (which is the bane of any game with meaningful decisions, but also not exactly uncommon), there's few games I know that should demand more than a minute or two maximum to decide and resolve actions.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What you're saying is so true! I've written about this before, but a player in one of my games just doesn't seem to take the time to learn the rules. He's a great guy but it's such a challenge to get his character going. The group played 13th Age before I came into it, but he played a simple character class there and did okay. And we played Feng Shui and he rocked it.

I think designers should consider this in their games, or at least admit that the game may not be for this kind of player if they don't.

I think its fundamentally a fool's errand to really try and build a game for both players with high engagement and low engagement. You can have a degree of variance, but I've not seen a case where trying that didn't create problems (in 13th Age, for example, it ends up walling off concepts into one category or the other and more than one person has problems with that). I agree that means not every game can be for every player, but that's just as true of other game elements, so what else is new?

 

[Thomas Shey]

True, but there are systems that can be learned in 30 minutes. There are also systems that require months of practice and research to do thoroughly.
For me, I'm just not going to take the effort of complex systems anymore. Ultimately, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Obviously a matter of taste and thus legitimate. Personally, my own feeling is if the system doesn't have at least a fair amount of engagement, I might as well be doing freeform roleplaying and not bother with a game system.

 

[SteveC]

think its fundamentally a fool's errand to really try and build a game for both players with high engagement and low engagement.

You may be right. I think it's important to let people know what you're doing as part of game design. I don't think that anyone is going to stumble into Draw Steel with the expectation that it won't require a good deal of engagement, and I think the start of the Heroes book does a good job describing it.

Other games? It varies. This group is currently playing 5E and it's tough, even with just playing a fighter, to keep up with things for this player. Things like "remember you have Action Surge" and "huh, maybe Second Wind?" are common and we're ... 12th level.

 

[zakael19]

You may be right. I think it's important to let people know what you're doing as part of game design. I don't think that anyone is going to stumble into Draw Steel with the expectation that it won't require a good deal of engagement, and I think the start of the Heroes book does a good job describing it.

I really love how up front it tries to be about what this game is as presented.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You may be right. I think it's important to let people know what you're doing as part of game design. I don't think that anyone is going to stumble into Draw Steel with the expectation that it won't require a good deal of engagement, and I think the start of the Heroes book does a good job describing it.

Other games? It varies. This group is currently playing 5E and it's tough, even with just playing a fighter, to keep up with things for this player. Things like "remember you have Action Surge" and "huh, maybe Second Wind?" are common and we're ... 12th level.

Its not impossible to build a game that to some degree supports both, but the devil is when a player playing the simple character realizes the one playing the one who makes more use of the mechanics is either more effective or at least gets to do more cool things.

As an example people don't tend to think of, in the Hero System there are some pretty varied ways to build a superheroic energy projector. One of them is to just build in a ranged attack, a defense (and there are simpler and more complex approaches even there) and a movement power. The character will be functional, and contribute to the game, but the character who built their attack as a multipower with different options, or who routinely use some of the manuever options baked into the game will produce more exciting and probably more effective choices.

Essentially its not a game that rewards the most minimalist involvement, and I'm not sure many do. The only way you can avoid that distinction is if your game simply gives no tools for doing much more, possibly throwing any sort of meaningful choice in the lap of the GM. OD&D fighting-men were simple, but they were also by themselves dull as dishwater.

 

[Enrahim]

OD&D fighting-men were simple, but they were also by themselves dull as dishwater.

( And even then they are at at 1st level possibly more exiting than the cleric without spells, or the wizard with a randomly rolled floating disk + read magic as the only spells in their book (I played the latter in a BX game. It was cool!) )

There is a well known mechanism that rewards system mastery while preserving a level playing field with the less engaged players, even for complex skill based games: Handicap. I think this is an underutilised design potential in ttrpgs. Imagine for instance having to make a new character 1 level higher than the rest of the group if your character dies

 

[ffanxii4ever]

I really love how up front it tries to be about what this game is as presented.

Agreed. It is hard to beat how up front the "What Is This Game?" section in the Introduction is for getting the point across, and I love that there are callouts to other games that might fit what you are looking for instead if you want something adjacent to Draw Steel, but it might not be the right fit.