Why is it so important?

[Raven Crowking]

I don't care for pure-random mechanics in games, certainly not in RPGs.

You might be happier with a diceless game. I hear that 6e might be diceless.

I want a game that someone who is unfamiliar with the capabilities and intentions of my party can design an adventure, that I can take, off the shelf, and run with no more prep than reading it through once, and have that adventure be fun, exciting, and "correct" for my party. If I can't have that, I want a system where I can correct "on-the-fly" for "incorrect" encounters/monsters/etc.

Have you tried 1e AD&D?


RC

 

[IanArgent]

You might be happier with a diceless game. I hear that 6e might be diceless.

RC

I misspoke myself. I should have said - I don't like pure-random game systems. I want a certain amount of uncertainly in my games; but I don't like when the random noise drowns out deliberate action.

So I want dice, but the results of the dice alone should not dictate success or failure by themselves. The PCs need to play smart; and if they take a gamble, they could get punished for it, but I don't like situations where the result is literally based on the roll of the dice. I don't like Save or Die for just that reason.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

To bring something back from a long, long time ago ...

However, from what we have:

If the wizard (or insert Class X) has enough wizardy things to do every round, he will not use up his best wizardy resources as quickly, and consequently will not cause the 15-minute adventuring day problem.​

Are we on the same page so far?

You keep saying "best."

I vehemently oppose your usage of that word, because I can see the trap you're leading me into, and, frankly, I refuse to step into it.

The problem in 3.X (and, frankly, all versions of D&D) is that the wizard who desires to do something wizardly every round doesn't spend his best wizardly resources too quickly; it's that he spends all of his wizardly resources too quickly and runs out of anything wizardly to do.

 

[pemerton]

I have never understood, though this is a long standing issue, how an encounter that poses no risk to a PC (of either resource loss or loss of life) is of any mechanical interest. (I realize that an earlier example about your students attempted to show this, but I didn't quite get it.)

Because I don't know what RPGs you play, I'm not sure what sorts of examples I might give. I'll try one non-RPG example, and then an RPG example.

From time-to-time I play collectible card games with a friend of mine - Middle-Earth: The Wizards (ICE) and LoTR (Decipher). My friend was once the Australian MTG champion, so is a better CCG-player than I am. But as it happens I tend to know the card set for the two Middle-Earth games better than he does, and neither game is prone to come to a sudden and rapid end in the way that MTG is. The result of all this is that, when we play, it is pretty certain that he will win the game. But the win is not "automatic", in the sense that he has to pay attention to the play to bring it off, actually doing the clever things that his level of skill enables him to do. He can thereby derive pleasure from the game - after all, he enjoys doing those clever things with cards - even though there is little likelihood of him losing.

In my experience, the same can be true of an RPG. The main game that I GM is RM. This is a game which, for figthers, involves making a decision about allocating attack vs parry in each round, and about how to deploy Adrenal Moves (which work as a sort of per-encounter resource, as I explained in an earlier post). Very often my players' characters find themselves in fights which they have little chance of losing, provided that they make the correct decisions about attack/parry split and Adrenal Move use. To make those decisions requires information about their opponents - attack strength, armour and other defence strength, etc - which is itself often acquired only during the combat. The result of this is that a typical combat plays out as quite suspenseful for the first round or two, as the players get a sense of what sort of foes they are up against and how they should best respond, and then as an exercise in ruthless efficiency for the next round or two, as the players win the combat through deploying winning tactics. This is a source of pleasure in play - my players are the sort of game players who get pleasure from playing a game well - although typically there is little doubt about the outcome.

A game design/paradigm that produces an X% of PC death per encounter is going to mean (perhaps obviously) a certain frequency of character deaths, new characters joining the party, etc. In these cases the difference of whether this death comes about from player choice or from dice rolling doesn't matter AFAICT. When you say it's "different", I don't know in what relevant ways you mean that it's different.

A subsidiary point to make here is that RM has a series of mechanical features (a very deep resevoir of hits between unconsciousness and death, the existence of Life Keeping spells to stop soul departure, etc) so that being taken out in a combat doesn't necessarily result in character death.

But the main point is that it makes a big difference to a game, in my experience, whether the value of X in your "X%" is a function of player skill or not. In a set of mechanics where the only option is to park one's PC next to the opponent and role full attacks until you win or lose, the value of X will be largely a function of the numbers. This can give rise to the same sort of interest that a lottery does, but I wouldn't see it as mechanical interest of any deep sort. But if X is a funciton of player skill - so that the best player can push X very close to zero - then the game becomes one which rewards skill, encourages group play (as the better players give the less-skilled players advice on how to optimise a situation) and is, at least in my experience, generally fun to play.

Maybe try with this extreme example. 4 20th level characters against 4 standard kobolds. The 20th level characters are at full power, and so they have a huge range of abilities to exercise. There's no chance of PC death. And we'll say there's no resource expenditure issues since it's the only encounter that day (and it probably doesn't even require that). My question is: how can you make this an encounter of "mechanical interest"? If this is a bad example, then why? What fundemental difference is there with any other encounter where PCs know they're going to win and know that there is no impact on their daily resources?

In no edition of D&D do I think that this example can be made interesting in the sense I have described above. In 1st ed, the 20th level fighter closes and kills the kobolds automatically in 1 round, barring natural 1s (because s/he gets 20 attacks per round against 1/2 hit dice creatures). In 3rd ed, its much the same, assuming the fighter has either whirlwind attack or great cleave.

In RM the encounter can be more interesting, because the players have to choose between killing all the kobolds in the first round - and thus facing some risk of suffering real damage - or playing it completely safe, facing no risk of damage unless the kobolds roll open-ended high, but perhaps taking more than one round to kill the kobolds.

But even in RM I don't think it is a particularly good example. 4 20th level characters against 4 Stone Giants might be better, because at that point the ways in which different choices about how the encounter is approached affect the outcome (particularly in terms of the trade-off between speed of resolution and risk run) start to become more complex, and hence more interesting.

My expectation is that 4e, by giving each player a wider range of choices to make in terms of resource-deployment (because fighters will have some, and wizards will have more), will make D&D play (in general, abstract terms) more like my RM example than like current D&D. The way that an encounter unfolds will be more highly dependent on player decisions, and those decisions will be more complex and so require more thought by players. This experience of engaging in a complex activity will be (for some players, at least) interesting.

3E combat takes too long as it is.

Of course I may be wrong, but my prediction is that 4e encounters will, if anything, take longer to play because of the greater number and complexity of decisions that the players will have to make. (Though apparently it will be easier for the GM, and that might compensate to some extent.)

My players are far more likely to take resource attrition, and therefore all encounters, seriously because they know that the effects can actually kill them.

I know by "them" you don't really mean "your players" but rather "their PCs". Nevertheless, I think this is telling, because it suggests a high degree of expectation, in your game, that the player's experience will mirror that of the PCs - for example, that a setback for the PCs is also a setback for the players. Not all RPGs unfold that way - in some games, a setback for a PC can be a reward for the player, in the sense that it can be a source of fun and pleasure in playing the game. This latter sort of player is, I think, less likely to care for playing out the sort of logistical matters to which operational play gives rise.

I think that what is essential is to make resting/not resting an interesting choice, because it is a choice with consequences both good and not-so-good. IMHO, More Relevant Player Choices + Wider Range of Player Choices + Context + Consequence = Better Game.

For those play groups who do not enjoy operational play, what makes not resting an interesting choice is that they find resting tedious to play out. They don't want to specify a camp site, a watch regime, etc. Not wanting to do this, they don't, and proceed even though they are (perhaps) at less than full resources.

My informal assessment here is that many per-encounter folks don't kill PCs, and the players know this, and it diminishes the significance that less-than-deadly encounters have. After all, the PCs want to get to the BBEG, the DM wants them to get there, and everything else really just becomes a formality and a nuisance.[/quote

Is there any absolute loss, though, or do you just get to try to find the Grail and overthrow the king another time?

If, once you've failed the Grail Quest, you don't get another shot at it, then I'd agree that the game without death has equal (or perhaps greater) stakes than the game with death. Of course, if death is easily undone, then the game with death doesn't have very high stakes either.

Not every RPGer believes that adversity for the PC should be adversity for the player. After all, many players experience adversity in other parts of their life - they play games for pleasure. So, if the PCs don't die but don't get the Grail, the consequent unfolding of the plot is itself a source of interest and pleasure.

Do you teach your children that, if they land on a slide in Snakes & Ladders, that they get to just reroll?

But, of course, I can keep playing even if I fall down a ladder. Thus, adversity for my game-piece isn't adversity for me.

Of course, the pleasure of snakes and ladders is essentially that of gambling. It is not the sort of complex pleasure that RPGs offer.

all those story based and tactical issues that make per-encounter interesting are also available for per-day.

I have argued against this in many posts. First, the same tactical issues are not there, because in a pure per-day system the PCs just don't have as many resources to use, and so don't have as many choices to make with respect to them. Second, because in a per-day system the PCs can't continue to engage meaningfully with the world when they are out of resources, the mechanics impose a limit on the amount of engagement per day that is possible, which limit may (from the point of view of the plot and theme the players want) may be meaningless and therefore undesirable.

The problem in 3.X (and, frankly, all versions of D&D) is that the wizard who desires to do something wizardly every round doesn't spend his best wizardly resources too quickly; it's that he spends all of his wizardly resources too quickly and runs out of anything wizardly to do.

Agreed. The wizard runs out of things to do. This can get in the way of playing out the scenario that the players want to.

Well, there is this difference, too. I believe that the story is what happens as a result of player choices and their consequences. I don't believe that it is generally appropriate for the DM to try to "force" a plan of "what will happen".

I don't know what everyone means when they say "plot". When I say that, I mean two things - one is "the overall structure of likely events" and the other is "the story about what transpired in the game". Resource management, and unanticipated situations in general, do not interfere with either one of these.

In some games the plot is not simply "what happens". It is what the players want to have happen, and are setting about to make happen. Of course resource management doesn't get in the way of things happening. Suppose the players want, first, to fight the gate guards, then to sneak through the corridors into the throne room, then to free the king from the control of his evil vizier. This plot is obviously pretty bog-standard for a fantasy RPG, but a system of pure per-day resources can be an obstacle to this, because it may be that all the spells get used first fighting the guards and then turning invisible to sneak through the palace. Which should take precedence for this group of players - their desire to play out this particular scenario, or a mechanical system of pure per-day resources? I don't see why the first should have to yield.

IMHO, the DM should never set the stakes of an adventure so that he is unwilling to accept the consequences of the PCs failing.....or simply choosing not to act.

In many games it is the players, rather than the GM, who set the stakes of the adventure. In that sort of game the PCs are unlikely to choose not to act - as the players will choose to act in pursuit of the stakes that they have chosen.

There is a way of playing D&D which is (in my view) best articulated by Lewis Pulsipher's articles in early numbers of White Dwarf and Dragon. This is a game of resource attrition and operational play. he gameworld with which the PCs interact is almost entirely the construction of the GM, and it is there primarily as a source of adversity for the PCs. The 1st ed AD&D dungeon is the paradigm. In this approach to play, if the PCs get held up then NPCs will steal the loot; if the PCs rest for too long the adventure can come to an end, or become impossible for them to undertake. For some D&D players this is D&D, and even RPGing in general.

But may RPGers don't want to play this way. For those players, the PCs are the vehicles though which they engage in the gameworld to have fun. That fun can have all sorts of mechanical, thematic and other sorts of complexity - it need not be "video-gamey" instant gratification, nor super-hero/Exalted in flavour. For this approach to play, the gameworld is not just a source of adversity, but the site of thematic and other sorts of exploration. But to work at its best this approach requires players to have meaningful things to do in every turn of an encounter, and it requires mechanics that mean that adversity for a PC does not mean simply a loss of playing pleasure for the player (such mechanics are obviously difficult to come up with, but certain sorts of Fate Point systems are examples). On this approach to play, pure per-day resources do not help, and can indeed get in the way.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I misspoke myself. I should have said - I don't like pure-random game systems. I want a certain amount of uncertainly in my games; but I don't like when the random noise drowns out deliberate action.

So I want dice, but the results of the dice alone should not dictate success or failure by themselves. The PCs need to play smart; and if they take a gamble, they could get punished for it, but I don't like situations where the result is literally based on the roll of the dice. I don't like Save or Die for just that reason.

I honestly have never seen a D&D game where a PC got killed without any decision-making that led there. I am sure that there are DMs who roll on the Wandering Damage chart, or who make it impossible to gain enough information to at least guess what a reasonable course of action might be. I just think that those are DM problems, not system problems.

YMMV.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

You keep saying "best."

I vehemently oppose your usage of that word, because I can see the trap you're leading me into, and, frankly, I refuse to step into it.

The problem in 3.X (and, frankly, all versions of D&D) is that the wizard who desires to do something wizardly every round doesn't spend his best wizardly resources too quickly; it's that he spends all of his wizardly resources too quickly and runs out of anything wizardly to do.

Take the fighter build. Include equipment called "Arcane Strike Wand" otherwise equal to a sword. Include equipment called "Athame" that is otherwise equal to a bow. Make them wizard-only weapons, and do not let the wizard use sword or bow. Call the class "wizard". There. Now you can do so something wizardy every round, and you are absolutely equal to a fighter of the same level.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Take the fighter build. Include equipment called "Arcane Strike Wand" otherwise equal to a sword. Include equipment called "Athame" that is otherwise equal to a bow. Make them wizard-only weapons, and do not let the wizard use sword or bow. Call the class "wizard". There. Now you can do so something wizardy every round, and you are absolutely equal to a fighter of the same level.

Honestly, I think the solution is not that horrible as it might seem. Except you should probably add a few more distinctions so nobody notices it that fast.

But what are really wizardy things? Is it just dealing damage to foes?
D&D 4 seems to indicate there is more to it, and that it is not even the most important thing - he is the "Arcane Controller".
So, instead of having something to damage every round, he has something to control every round.
Maybe a "At Will"-Distract enemies ability. Or a once per encounter "Create a wall around a group of enemies for a few rounds". Or a At Will "create difficult terrain"-ability. Or a once per encounter "Dominiate this enemy as long as you concentrate", "Turn your ally invisible"-once per encounter. Sure, some damage dealer abilities might be among them, but it's not the focus.

These are all things the fighter (Martial Defender?) can't do. But do they have to be limited to "once per day" to make such a wizard unique from the fighter? Or is this once per day thing just there to balance the "Save or Die"-attacks or the "deal massive damage to many opponents at once" effect against the fighters "attack each round and deal moderate to much amount of damage to a single foe while taking similar amounts of damage from the foe so that nobody else gets the damage"?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Honestly, I think the solution is not that horrible as it might seem. Except you should probably add a few more distinctions so nobody notices it that fast.

<snip>

These are all things the fighter (Martial Defender?) can't do.

Ah, but if you are going to give Class A flexability compared to Class B, then Class B must get something to compensate, right? So, if Class A gets flexability and unlimited resources, and Class B gets no flexability and unlimited resources, there's going to be a problem.

The solution, of course, is to simply drop the fighter as "unfun". Perhaps we can replace him with some form of Wuxia character that has both flexability and unlimited resources.....say a spell-casting warmage?

Of course, then you need to worry about giving the warmage better armour and attacks than the wizard. Perhaps we should just drop the wizard altogether as "unfun". If we fold rogue skills and healing into the Warmage, we won't need any other class.

RC

 

[Jackelope King]

But may RPGers don't want to play this way. For those players, the PCs are the vehicles though which they engage in the gameworld to have fun. That fun can have all sorts of mechanical, thematic and other sorts of complexity - it need not be "video-gamey" instant gratification, nor super-hero/Exalted in flavour. For this approach to play, the gameworld is not just a source of adversity, but the site of thematic and other sorts of exploration. But to work at its best this approach requires players to have meaningful things to do in every turn of an encounter, and it requires mechanics that mean that adversity for a PC does not mean simply a loss of playing pleasure for the player (such mechanics are obviously difficult to come up with, but certain sorts of Fate Point systems are examples). On this approach to play, pure per-day resources do not help, and can indeed get in the way.

Absolutely dead-freaking, quoted-for-truth, and thumbsed-up just for emphasis.

 

[wgreen]

All right, here are my thoughts on the whole "15-minute day" thing:

It seems that there are a few different potential causes for this "early resting" phenomenon. One is that the PCs are out of resources at that point, and so cannot be reasonably expected to continue adventuring. That seems to be the one most people have been focusing on in this thread so far. This also includes the assumption that the players are correct in their self-assessments; I strongly suspect that, in many of these cases, the PCs could continue, and they do in fact have plenty of resources -- they're just out of a certain kind of resource, and that seems like a big deal to them. Consider a party whose wizard is out of his highest level spells, and pushes for a rest, even though everyone's at full hit points and the wizard still has low- and mid-level spells left.

The other cause I can see is that one or more of the players simply don't want to continue. Why not? In some cases, continuing may simply be boring.

The players of wizards, in particular, want something not just "wizardly," but effective, to do in combat. Once they're out of high-ish level spells, they have little to do but miss with their crossbows and do inconsequential amounts of damage with low-level spells. They don't want to "hold back" in early encounters with their flashy spells, and it's not because they're punk kids who need instant gratification, don't know the value of a gold piece, and never had to walk to the dungeon uphill, in the snow, both ways; it's because they're here at the table to have fun, and they don't find it fun to sit in the back row twiddling their thumbs while the fighter-types actively change the state of the game world.

So, they let slip their fancy shiny spells, and have a great time, for one or two encounters. Then they're out of mojo, and, while the party could continue, the player of the wizard is once again faced with the prospect of sitting on his hands for the rest of the day. So, it's time to camp again.

I do think that per-encounter and at-will resources can help the latter problem. Wizards will be able to do fun, effective stuff all the time, just like fighters can -- albeit in different ways. The former problem might be tricker, although I think good design can help that, too.

Anyway, my somewhat rambling two cents. As you were.

EDIT: basically, what pemerton said, but with different words. Sigh. Oh well.

-Will