Game balance happens at the table. I think we all agree on that one.

I postulate that, with certain rule books, game balance is more or less likely.


One factor is the character of niches. As the Pundit said:

Quote from: RPGPundit;254493What is really important is to create a variety of particular niches, that each player can fill.  Not to make one character equally powerful to another, but to have each character have things they can do, where they shine and others don't.

The problem is that not all niches are created equal. In fact some niches are not niches but are more similar to whole games. In fact, the most common RPGs behave like that: They are more like two closely connected games instead of one.

That is, they include a combat game and an all-the-rest game. Of course, a thief might be useful to open doors, and a scholar might be useful to read weird script. But such things are usually handeled with a single roll. The whole niche of such a character is rolling once or twice per evening. On the other hand, combat can take very long. A fighter will roll several attacks even in a short combat.

So there are two possiblilities: Either handle the whole game with one system or give all characters a niche in every sub-game.



I wrote a series about balancing in the last months.

Three general articles about certain rules features that increase the probability of balance at the table:

Ressourcenstromdoppelung
Potente Werte
Handlungsökonomie

And one article about special balancing feature I used in my game called B&B:

Balance in B&B

If you are interested, I can translate the most important parts.

To me, game balance is about dominate vs dominated choices.  If among the rules alone you have a choice that is dominate ( nearly everyone takes it ) or a choice that is dominated ( almost nobody takes it ) you have imbalance.  The problem in identifying and fixing these imbalances is that what may be a dominated choice for one group (nobody takes skill focus: dirt farming) can be a prime choice for another group.

Your third option seems a close fit if you mean each character would be useful equally if you factor in being challenged by everything.

I, personally, like designs where instead of "combat monster vs skill monkey", you have "offensive combat vs defensive combat" and "social skills vs technical skills" so that characters aren't allowed to be one-trick ponies.  Of course, that's just my preference.

I achieve game balance using the following process:

1. Scribble with crayon the rough outline of the mechanic.
2. Firm up the idea with some numbers, enough to playtest it.
3. Work out some situations on paper of the sorts of things you want to happen in your game. See if the mechanic does it for you.
4. Playtest it.
5. Go to 4.

Oddly, it occurred to me that the process I use for coming up with new academic work is:

1. Scribble with crayon the rough outline of the mechanic.
2. Firm up the idea with some code, enough to run it.
3. Work out some situations on paper of the sorts of things you want to happen in your algorithm. See if the mechanic does it for you.
4. Run it.
5. Go to 4.

I do not attempt to achieve game balance. My group likes a game that feels realistic, and in the real world, some people - and types of people - are better than others, even judging their abilities over a wide variety of situations. This doesn't really bother any of the players - well, one or two - because having balanced power isn't why they're playing the game. The only players in our group who give a fuck about how much power they have - power to influence the results of events in their favor - are the AD&D refugees who always used gaming as a way of feeling better about their perceived powerlessness in real life, and they're growing out of that as they grow in confidence.

engine, that's not what game balance means to me. Game balance is about making sure that the numbers do as you think they should. It's not about fair, it's about consistency. If a pulse last blows your face off from 5 miles away, it should also be able to shoot through a piece of paper at 2 metres.

That's not really what the common meaning of game balance is. I don't know what you'd call that - other than "consistent mechanics" - but it's not game balance.

Oh right, thanks for the link. I sit corrected.

Fuck game balance.

Quote from: Rob Lang;256256Oh right, thanks for the link. I sit corrected.

Fuck game balance.

ONE OF US! ONE OF US!

-clahs

Quote from: Engine;256120That's not really what the common meaning of game balance is. I don't know what you'd call that - other than "consistent mechanics" - but it's not game balance.

I never realized there was an official definition. I find it just as useful as before I knew the official definition;i.e. useless.

Bill

Quote from: KingSpoom;255980Your third option seems a close fit if you mean each character would be useful equally if you factor in being challenged by everything.

Oh, ahm, were you talking to me? I think, I only named two options in my post.

Anyway, "off-fighter vs. def-fighter" and "socials guy vs. tech guy" is like my second one.

Quote from: 1of3;256373Oh, ahm, were you talking to me? I think, I only named two options in my post.

Anyway, "off-fighter vs. def-fighter" and "socials guy vs. tech guy" is like my second one.

I was referring to the third option of the original post by narf: "All characters are equally useful at various times".  I refer to it thinking that it means that someone who takes ranks in lockpicking will be useful when that comes up and someone who takes ranks in forgery will be useful when that comes up and equal ranks are roughly equally useful (without regards to individual group playstyles, though.)

However, while I have your attention, I would be interested in seeing a good translation of the posts you mentioned before.  I've been out of the loop for a while.

I'm not concerned with balance, I'd rather have a nice big book of tools and choose the right ones for the job.  I think designer's should worry about game balance only as far as they're willing to compromise the final product's completeness.  If a rule is just broken and makes no sense then it's a much bigger problem then just game balance.

I've noticed that game balance is an issue people take with Cthulhutech because certain character types are obviously outclassed by others.  The "problem" with this game is that some character types are not meant to mingle with others.  The game has a lot of different power levels you can choose to play at.  You could have street level normal folks fighting cultists very much like classic CoC, or you could have soldiers in Mechs battling the Migou in epic conflicts.

I think the problem with CTech is that it offers so many neat character ideas and doesn't do a hard divide.  They provide all the cool stuff in one book and assume that a sensible group will pick a playstyle and choose their own level of game balance.

Some games choose to divide that power level up in different products but that's not the only way to do things.  Warhammer 40k did this by planning 3 games rather than one to seperate Space Marines from Inquisitorial Acolytes and Rogue Traders.  They did however make up for it by giving us one hell of a thick Dark Heresy book.  Sure we didn't get Space Marines but we got a lot of content regardless.